Not quite a week late, I finally got to watch the season 3 finale of “Enterprise” tonight. Okay, that was fweakin’ weird. The last five minutes of that show certainly left things in a completely unexpected way.

Now there are rumors out there that Brannon Braga, writer of a few great Trek episodes and a boatload of average ones and a rather large handful of crappy ones, may be taking a back seat for season 4. Which suits a lot of the Trek faithful just fine. Taking a more active role will be one Manny Coto, who has penned a good number of quality Enterprise episodes this season, so things may be on the rise.

Still, there’s that bizarre season 3 ending, and poor Manny’s left holding the bag. Well don’t fret Mr. Coto, I’ve got Season 4, Episode 1, Act 1 all sketched out:

T’Pol: Primitive Earth airplanes? Are you positive?

Trip: Shuttlepod’s got the bullet holes to match. What the hell’s going on?

T’Pol: Ensign Mayweather, scan for any remaining anomalies, particularly temporal in nature.

Mayweather: I’m detecting one off the starboard bow. But it doesn’t look related to the spheres.

T’Pol (looking in her little scanner thingy): It’s increasing in size and approaching the ship.

Admiral William T. Riker: SHIELDS UP! RED ALERT!

Trip: Who the hell are you?

Daniels: My apologies. I think I can explain… If you’ll just give me a moment.

[Daniels fiddles with the PADD he’s holding. Riker disppears, and is replaced by a Gorn.]

Gorn: Arrrrr!

Daniels: No, that’s not it either. Hold on.

[The Gorn disappears, and is replaced by Archer, who is wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt and holding a coconut containing some enjoyable beverage and a little paper umbrella]

Archer: Aw, Daniels, I was just starting to feel relaxed.

Trip: Will someone PLEASE tell me what the hell is going on?

Daniels: My apologies everyone. As soon as the Xindi sphere exploded, I managed to remove Captain Archer from the timeline. I figured he needed a vacation, so I sent him to Tahiti for a week.

Archer: Sort of.

[Daniels stabs at the buttons on his PADD]

Daniels: Unfortunately this THING isn’t working very well, and he went on a few… detours. As, I understand, have all of you. Anyway, everything’s back to normal now. I think. Well, I must be going. Captain, you probably won’t see me again. It’s been nice working with you.

T’Pol: What about the “Temporal Cold War?”

Daniels: Oh, that little thing? We fixed that all up last week. I thought I mentioned it.

Archer: No, but I’m glad to hear it. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to go home now.

Daniels: You got it. [Disappears]

Hoshi: We’re being hailed by Starfleet!

Archer: On screen.

Admiral Forest: Congratulations to all of you. I have new orders for Enterprise. She is to dock at the shipyards for a complete overhaul while her crew relaxes on Earth.

Trip: About damn time!

Admiral Forest: But don’t relax too much. Once the Enterprise is back to 100 percent, we’re sending you to the Tellarite homeworld. It seems they’re having some difficulty with the Romulans.

Lt. Commander Worf: Romulans. They are without honor!

[commercial break]

Manny, twenty bucks and it’s all yours.

[update 10/25/2005: Nearly a year and a half later, and I just came up with the final line to this script. Had to come back and add it in.]