I used to love Star Trek. I thought the best of the many spinoffs was The Next Generation – far better than the original, both in terms of acting and production values, as well as in writing. And after TNG it went downhill, too. Needless to say, when the series Enterprise came out, a few years ago, I was unimpressed, and I never watched more than a few episodes.
But it turns out, among the many unexpected things I found stashed on my hard drive recently, I found all of seasons 2 and 3 of Enterprise. In a fit of escapist boredom, last night, I watched a few. Compared to the first season, which is what I had seen before, the writing was improved. And the main actors had developed some rapport and cohesion, too, so that the whole seemed less of a violation of the canon.
I saw one episode in particular, last night, that I rather liked. It was entitled "Twilight," and, like most episodes of Star Trek that I like best, it involved themes of weird time travel conundrums, alternate histories, and memory. In fact, the plot was basically a rip-off of the movie 50 First Dates, which starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It`s one of my favorite cheesy romantic comedies, because the themes, involving the nature of memory and the narratives that make up our lives, along with the ending, are pretty deep, in my opinion. Anyway, take that same plot, and put the captain the Barrymore character`s role, and put T`pol (the Vulcan first officer) in the Sandler role, and you get the plot of the episode. It was … philosophically hilarious. So I liked it. It will rank up there with some of my favorite Star Trek episodes.
OK. Back to reality. It`s raining. I think I`ve decided to return to Fukuoka, today. I`ll resume my WAITING, there.