Travis takes an opportunity to return to his parents on board the Horizon, the ship he grew up on, but he learns that his father has recently died, and as a result his brother has assumed command, a position he seems ill-equipped to cope with.

While I have a bit of a problem with Travis from the off, ie he's far and away the least interesting and most poorly-developed character in the show, there's no reason why I should hate this episode just because of that. Here is a chance to give Travis more to do, to get some insight into his life, his past, his relatives. Do we get that? No, not really, and that's why this episode is so disappointing: it's a giant missed opportunity.

For starters there seems to be some kind of timestream problem; at the start Travis is looking forward to spending some time with his parents, then he suddenly learns that his father is dead. Yet when he gets on board the Horizon, no one seems to be doing any mourning, as if it's been months ago. Now, what's going on here? I can understand Travis not being able to visit his family very often because he's not likely to cross their path and Enterprise can't make stop-offs to make the crew happy every few days, but the ship is in constant contact with Starfleet; why can't Travis keep in touch with his family? Indeed, why can't they keep in touch with him? Surely it's a fairly vital piece of information? And if they did keep in touch and it really only has been a brief amount of time since Mr Mayweather passed on, why is no one that bothered? It's all a bit odd.

It doesn't help that it's just cliché central from here on in, with Travis having trouble relating to his brother, who is the Horizon's new captain. I suppose it's just the way it has to go in family episodes, with someone not getting on with someone else and friction, otherwise you don't have an episode, but in this case it's really six of one and half a dozen of the other. On the one hand Travis has no right to interfere with the running of Horizon, but on the other his brother is being unreasonable in refusing simple upgrades that will help the ship run smoother. their mother is there as a calming influence, but none of this friction seems to be especially well resolved, with a vibe of 'Let's just kiss and make up because it's the end of the episode' rather than through any kind of character arc through the episode. All of Travis's family seem, frankly, about as interesting as he is. It's a shame as there was a real opportunity here.

Meanwhile, as part of Archer's ongoing 'humans are best' training system, T'Pol is forced to go and see a movie, specifically Frankenstein because it will help her to fraternize with the rest of the crew. Now, why is this? Is she meant to be on board conducting some kind of human-related science project? As she rightly points out, why should she have to mix with the rest of the crew. It's her life, and you don't see Archer forcing any of the other crew members to do things so that they can feel part of the team. It's just trying once again to enforce beliefs on someone because you believe them. T'Pol might love old horror movies, but that doesn't mean she should be ordered to watch them on the offchance. And anyway (copyright laws aside), why don't they put on Die Hard or something? Surely that'd be much better. We don't all acquire a love of old movies, you know.

It's not a truly depth-plumbing episode, but it gets awfully close.

**

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