Whoa! As the theme song goes - "it's been a long time...". After many, many, many so-so episodes, we finally get one that's really worth watching! So, what was so good about it? The whole thing (minus commercials)! It was good enough to warrant a watch of a repeat. At first, one might think that this "alternate" timeline of earth blowing up and stuff might seem kind of desperate writing and lame. However, it was anything but! Every minute of each scene was valuable to the story line and entertaining. Watching humanity and the Enterprise crew struggle to overcome such devastating odds and making one last stand at Ceti-Alpha 5 was well dramatized. It was so well played out that one tends to get the feeling that they are actually part of the unfolding story. One could sense the real feeling of what was at stake with the Xindi. It made this episode a very good contribution to the Xindi arc.

Beyond the overall earth-destruction plot, there was some real good character story telling with T'Pol and Archer. Good stories focus on characters. And this story did a good job at evolving the T'Pol/Archer relationship in the future. T'Pol's bondage with Archer was well dramatized beyond that of typically loyalty and friendship. For most people, it may be frustrating to have to re-explain to Archer what happened every few hours for 12 years, but for T'Pol it didn't seem to be a problem. Perhaps saving her live had something to do with this gratitude, but maybe that life-saving event brought out a bit more in her character and feelings towards Archer. Although, Archer is typically the main character for Enterprise and many of the scenes in this episode did tend to focus on his situation, it seemed more that these events were being portrayed from T'Pol's perspective. Her character was still logical, yet her story telling to Archer had some real feelings.  Some good kudos goes to Jolene for her acting in this one.

Overall, this was a well acted and portrayed episode. The directing gave the scenes a good logical, meaningful, and well paced flow to the overall story. To my surprise, I really didn't get the feeling that I was watching a rehash of TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" or Voyager's "Year of Hell". Although, there may have been some general similarities, this episode told it from its own unique way that made for an entertaining hour. It was a good ending that Archer nor anyone else "sensed" what had happened in the future.

This is one of those episodes that deserves a better than average rating. It's too bad that viewers had to wait until sweeps week before seeing the "good stuff". For this Enterprise season, it was worth it.