Enterprise’s Twilight was originally a Voyager story

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Twilight” was voted one of the best

In the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise, the crew was trying to find the Xindi weapon that would prevent the aliens from destroying Earth. A brief break in the fighting came by way of the eighth episode of the season, “Twilight.” In this episode, an anomaly has left Captain Archer unable to form any new long-term memories. He wakes up to discover not only is T’Pol taking care of him, but the Xindis destroyed Earth and almost annihilated the human race.

The episode shows a strong connection between Archer and T’Pol and ups the stakes with the struggle to survive, and to, hopefully, reset the timeline so the anomaly never happened. But originally, “Twilight” wasn’t written to be a love story for this couple even though it did have the makings of that. According to writer Mike Sussman in an interview he gave to Startrek.com, he pitched the story to the Voyager producers.

“Twilight” was meant to be a Janeway/Chakotay love story

Sussman said that he wrote the story for Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay. Originally, the captain was going to have the memory affliction, and Chakotay was going to be her caretaker. It was his attempt to write a love story for the couple, but the Voyager producers turned it down, possibly because Kate Mulgrew had already nixed the idea of a romance with Robert Beltran’s character on the show.

Sussman does think the episode worked out better as an Archer and T’Pol story as it had the Xindi War to up the stakes. And though some fans might have seen this as a potential romance between the captain and his second in command, it ended up being more of a story about dedication and love without the romance. And it worked as a successful episode as it was voted the #1 fan favorite in an online poll conducted by UPN prior to the final six episodes of the series airing. It was re-broadcast on 8 April 2005 because of that.