How Trek Tackled Mental Illness in Star Trek Enterprise’s Twilight S03E08

By Owen Quinn author

Star Trek Enterprise goes 40 First Dates as Captain Archer suffers a debilitating mental condition in which he wakes every day with no memory since her was hit by an anomaly while saving T’Pol. T’pol tells him what has happened in the twelve years since the accident every day without fail. But the Xindi are still a threat, having virtually wiped out humanity. Will Doctor Phlox’s cure work in time to save what is left of humanity or is this the day humans are exterminated completely from the universe?

All photos copyright Paramount Pictures

I am rather partial to alternate timelines and ‘what if’ scenarios in sci-fi. It has been done many times in Star Trek history but Star Trek Enterprise did it best in the third season episode Twilight. It skillfully explores the impact of a rehabilitating mental illness on a person and those surrounding him.

The third season of Enterprise dealt with the mission to the Expanse from which a species called the Xindi have launched a devastating attack on Earth killing millions including Trip Tucker’s sister (Connor Trinneer). Scott Bakula’s Captain Archer must lead a desperate mission to an unexplored area of space filled with strange anomalies and distortions that can destroy ships. Their mission is to contact the Xindi, whom they discover are actually a conglomerate of different species, and negotiate a peace before the Xindi launch their superweapon to destroy the Earth completely. The initial attack was a suicide run. The Xindi are being by extradimensional beings intent on changing the Expanse into their new homeground resulting in the eradication of the unsuspecting Xindi. They have been fed a story about how humans will wipe out the Xindi which keeps them focused and unaware of the disaster the dimensional beings are planning behind the scenes.

We have already seen Earth attacked but the constant threat of the superweapon is always there in every episode so we finally get to see what would happen if the Xindi succeeded in destroying the Earth.

As the episode hook opens, Archer wakes up to the ship shaking. He stumbles on to the bridge where there is a battle taking place. T’Pol is dressed in a captain’s uniform while barking orders. But the scenario they have all feared plays out before them as the Xindi weapon fires at the Earth. It boils and breaks apart before exploding. Their mission has failed and why is T’Pol telling guards to remove Archer from the bridge? In the next scene, Archer wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings and with grey hair. He leaves his room and meets T’Pol making breakfast in a kitchen. She is not wearing her uniform and has long hair. She says that today is an important day and she has much to tell him. Over the first half of the story, she takes him through what happened to them.

Archer and T’Pol are caught in an anomaly which traps the Vulcan science officer under a door in the anomaly’s path. Refusing to leave her, Archer saves her but is hit by the force wave. When he awakes he discovers that it has been three days since he was hurt and the last thing he remembers is saving T’Pol. The anomaly has left an unknown parasite in his brain that causes him to forget everything after the anomaly in hours. Soon the mission suffers. Archer believes he is adding great ideas to the mission but he has forgotten they have all been given before.

Without Archer, the mission fails and Earth is destroyed. The Xindi flood the galaxy and exterminate nearly all of humanity. The Enterprise becomes a Battlestar Galactica of sorts as it leads a rag tag fleet of human survivors to the Ceti Alpha system where ships were deconstructed to form houses for those remaining. Less than 6,000 humans remain. Trip is now captain of the Enterprise and Malcom Reed (Dominic Keating) is about to become a captain too. He will command the Intrepid. All they can do is patrol and ensure the Xindi do not discover their location. Now they live in isolation, hunted by the Xindi whose presence is ever present.

Our greatest fear is to lose our minds to some mental illness and when we see someone as strong as Archer fall to such an illness, it is saddening to say the least. We all know someone who has dementia, Alzheimer’s or another mental illness and the effects are heartbreaking. We get top see Archer’s frustration then slow acceptance that he is no longer fit to command. The sad thing is this is a daily thing for him as every day for him is a new one where he is learning all of this for the first time. This also means that when he learns of the Earth’s destruction and how many people are left, the pain is as intense as the first day he learned of it. All he can really do on a day to day basis is walk his dog Porthos and tell the school children about his past adventures. In Archer’s words, all he can do is stay out of the way of the Xindi mission. Illness robs you of dignity at the best of times and routine keeps us going so when this is taken away then it has a severe detrimental effect. Archer was tasked to stop the Xindi threat and this has brought him down from a beacon of hope to a nuisance. How many times do we see that in life? Were someone that was once active and full of life is reduced to an armchair now reliant on others, both medical and loved ones for daily help.

And on the flipside, we look at the impact of caring for someone with a mental illness actually has on someone’s life. T’Pol gives up everything to be Archer’s carer. She even refuses an offer from Ambassador Soval to return to Vulcan and bring Archer with her so the experts on Vulcan can help him. She owes him her life as it could so easily have been her in Archer’s position. She has a care of duty for him that goes way beyond her sphere of command. Soval and Phlox both acknowledge her feelings for Archer which clouds her logic. But since she became part of the crew, she has learned how wrong her superiors were about the capability of humanity.

Imagine the great patience she must possess to endure this pain. While it is bad for Archer, it is equally hard on her. Being the bearer of bad news is a difficult position to be in so imagine being that for twelve years. She must be the one that tells Archer every day of the disaster and watch helplessly as he is plagued with pain and guilt over the failure of their mission. Remember there was no hope or inkling of a cure or treatment for Archer’s parasites so this would be a lifetime commitment. Or perhaps the word vocation would fit better. There are millions of people in the position of unpaid carers all across the world who must struggle with this every day. It is stressful and frustrating at times with only the death of the afflicted person their way out. So it is nice to see this acknowledged in a sci-fi show of all things.

The two handed scenes focus the attention on Archer and T’Pol almost like a stage play. In many ways, the relationship between carers and those with the illness is a two handed scenario which unfortunately does not have the trappings of sci-fi to make it alive and interesting. You hope each and every day that some cure will be found. People spent so much time searching the internet for a possible cure, some test trial or the discovery that some animal holds the key to cure Alzheimer’s. And all the while, all we can really do is stand and watch those we love fade away to a mere shadow of those former selves and shed silent tears at your own helplessness and the failings of the medical world. When a parent no longer recognises their own child, it can destroy you. But when they, for a god given instant, do recognise you, it is equally heartbreaking and joyous at the same time.

In all the doom and gloom, there is always the hope for a cure and Twilight certainly brings it. In an alternate timeline, you can do anything you want including kill everybody. Dr Phlox has finally found a cure to destroy the parasites but it requires the energy produced by the warp engines. The crew are reunited and T’Pol discovers that the first set of parasites Phlox has nuetralised have disappeared from all the scans ever taken, including the very first one twelve years ago. It seems the parasites exist in both spatial and temporal bodies of existence. So what happens to them now, will happen in the past. It means that this history will never happen and they still have a chance to save Earth.

For one last time, Archer is the man he was. The Xindi locate the colony and board Enterprise. The bridge explodes killing everyone there. As Archer overloads the ship to self destruct, the resulting explosion will vaporise him and the parasites just as Phlox’s colleagues suggested. Phlox is killed leaving just T’Pol and Archer to destroy the Enterprise. It goes out in a blaze of glory resulting in history being restored.

In their final moments, it comes down to the afflicted and his carer to save the day. Twilight does a great job on exploring, actually exploring the impact of mental illness for both the patient and their carers. It delivers a great story packed with emotion and action that is relatable to the viewer as well as rewatchable. It also touched on themes of surviving disaster and how the individual copes with it as well as mass genocide form a foe that will not listen to reason.

This is a great episode you should really catch.