The Mirror universe is a nice place to visit but at last we get a view at living there. You know what? It's more exciting the other way. Evil Archer sees a need to infiltrate Tholian space to try and recover a super weapon (hints of the Xindi here?). To do so he commandeers the ship away from Evil Admiral Forrest and uses a cloaking device to approach the weapon's asteroid-dock. Oh look! It's the Defiant, from "The Tholian Web." (Don't ask me how, just go along with it!) A small landing party beams aboard but the Tholians blow up Evil NX-01. Not bad, as cliff hangers go!

Distinguishing these characters and their "normal" counterparts is sometimes hard to tell, especially without evil facial hair. Evil Porthos is well, evil, as is Billingsley's bloodthirsty Phlox, dissection table and all. "Delta Radiation" Trip looks good... er, bad... but otherwise comes off as plain. Evil T'Pol doesn't do much except get pushed around. Evil Hoshi does a good job advancing by conniving between bedmates. Evil Reed is a MACO leader, lusting after a TOS-phaser (Keating's obviously having fun playing him); evil Mayweather is also a MACO, one of the captain's men. Oddly, I can't detect much difference in the evil Captain Archer, yet I suspect Evil Reed will soon kill him for slamming him up against a wall. The clear winner here is Evil Admiral Forrest, who survives an assassination attempt (Archer can't even get that right!).

The new opening sequence was clever, depicting the martial progression of the Empire into space. The "agony booth" was fun to see but I missed the portable agonizers. For some reason I was pained to see the Tellarite in the booth but pleased to see Evil Crew get some. The Tholian was somewhat cheesy but a thoughtful extension to the TOS portrayal of the alien. And finally! Evil Enterprise has a computer that can talk! Go figure.

The "continuity" parts of the episode, like the revised "First Contact" opening, and the Defiant sets, were done exceptionally well, technically. Immensely I dislike the thought of Cochrane starting the Empire by attacking instead of welcoming the Vulcan ship, but I think it'd make more sense to put the genesis at Edith Keeler surviving the truck accident. And coming into the MU cold, without any explanations, is awkward, less about Enterprise surviving on its own and more of leeching off the success of its predecessor(s). But as a gift to the fans, it works, and I liked it.