Sunday, August 11, 2013

Zero Hour

***** (5 stars out of 5)
Raise your mouse to the final episode of Season 3!  Reptiles on the Rampage! A Mammal Alliance racing to find and disrupt Death Sphere 41!

Daniels jumps Archer 7 years into the future. (That sounded a little filthy. Time-Jumps his bones? No, still a bit erotic...) To the day the Captain signs the Charter of the United Federation of Planets. Urges Archer to send Reed or some other peon to their death on the Xindi planet-cracker. "They are not crucial to the future of mankind. You are." Archer, as usual, pays him no heed. Sexy time-travellers are speed-bumps, not stop-signs!

A trio of trans-dimensional saboteurs attack Enterprise, striding through walls and zapping MACOs with space magic.  Just this side of 15 minutes in toxic space and Tucker's jiggery-pokery sends the demonic spheres back to blazes. With the human crew's skin cracking from the exposure, but probably nothing a vat of Space Noxzema couldn't cure. (Phloxzema?)

The Yosemite 3 research station- happiest place orbiting Earth! Until today. 40 unseen Yosemite Sams are killed by Dolim for an appetizer. (Really? This lizard needed lessons from Governor Tarkin. Day One: Alderaan. Day Two: head for Yavin. Day Three: blow up Yavin. Instead of: build a single-use prototype, give Alderaan a warning shot, spend six months building, testing, and debating, give Alderaan another warning shot.)

Shran and the Andorians ride to the rescue, running interference for Archer's boarding party to disarm the WMD. Archer's team pulls out, but the Captain trades punches with Dolim until the chance arises to stuff a grenade down the terrorist's pants. Then the victor's needful Running-In-Slow-Motion down an exploding gantry to nowhere as the Death Star goes blooey.

"Zero Hour" was Valentine's Day, 2154, although anomalies or a drug-addled slip of the tongue has T'Pol recording it as 2152. (Maybe she wishes the last two years never happened... or had been spent fighting Romulans or something canonical?) The Delphic Expanse is healing already. Probably no-one will ever hear of the Xindi again or mention how awful these events were as an object lesson at any point in the next century or so. It'll be like they never existed! The Xindi Aquatics thoughtfully give the banged-up starship a lift through subspace back to Earth in a day and squelch off somewhere for celebratory pie.

But what's this? It's an Earth without man-made satellites, without Lunar 1 colony, they can't even get Wi-Fi. It DOES have WWII planes and Remans dressed as Nazis, however! Twist Ending? Cancel us NOW, suckas!

At 65, T'Pol is getting too young for this shit.

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