The pause of hiatus allows the insight that refreshes. While Star Trek Enterprise unintentionally (or not so) abandons the mission to seek out new life or civilizations, humanity here and now keeps the flame alive by deed. The "old" big news remains the successful Chinese manned orbital insertion, followed by their ambitious aim at the moon in the next two decades. More recently the International Space Station passed two more milestones, five years in construction and three years in occupation. Expedition 8 maintains the outpost despite tightening resources, legislative apathy, and even strange noises. They patiently await the return of the shuttle fleet to space to resume expansion.

A few weeks ago the ambitious SpaceShipOne effort tickled the X-Prize with a promising five-day turnaround. (The X Prize rewards the first private launch and re-launch into orbit inside two weeks.) The orbital engines have yet to be tested but their effort is serious, and considering other competitors the Prize becomes theirs to lose. Farther out, V'Ger (er, Voyager One) continues apace as mankind's farthest toss at about 90A.U. That puts it ninety times farther out from the sun than its origin twenty-six years ago, and despite some instrumentation shutdown it's still phoning home regular and utile weather reports from the final frontier.

Contrast these developments with where our small-screen dreams are being led. Nine of eleven episodes in Season Three deal directly or indirectly with the Xindi conflict, excluding "North Star" and "Extinction" but including Archer's dream in "Twilight." I'm still not too keen on the "new direction" (being fond instead of McCoy's claim that "killin' is stupid and useless"), but admit it entertains. Then comes "Carpenter Street" declaring that all we've been told about the conflict is "not supposed to happen." How can fans take the threat seriously - not to mention the series as a whole - when one ill-conceived (and physically ridiculous) plot device obliterates the newer ill-conceived but at least breathing plot device?

It's bad enough if Trek's other captains don't exist in Archer's future - but according to Daniels even Archer doesn't exist in Archer's future! NX-01's been dead, the colony's been dead, finally this Xindi conflict - all never happen, and that's not consistent either with the rest of Trek or even itself. While we make steady steps towards actually trekking to the stars, the televised version seems content to ignore them altogether. Just drink your Temporal Kool-Aid and shut up. "What are you … temponauts on some kind of 'Time Trek?'" Lacks that certain convincing ring, doesn't it?