Day 346: Enterprise, Storm Front (Part 2)

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S4EP2, “Storm Front, Part 2”

 Summary: As if winding up in an alternate history where the Germans are winning WWII isn’t weird enough, the Enterprise’s situation has gotten even more complicated. Tucker and Mayweather have been kidnapped by the Nazis and the aliens who are helping them, and Daniels has informed Archer (who finally managed to return to his ship and reunite with his crew) that the aliens are building a conduit to return to their time. If they succeed in this, the world as Archer knows it will disappear. Naturally, Archer plans to do what he can to stop this, and it turns out he’ll have an unlikely ally. Silik, the Suliban who kept popping up to cause trouble in the early seasons, is back, and although he doesn’t like Daniels much, he hates these aliens more. And as the saying goes, the enemy of the enemy is my friend.

Standalone Thoughts: Unlike what happened with “Shockwave”, Part Two is better than Part One, though I still wouldn’t call it anything more than decent. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it’s better, but there are a few possibilities. One is that the episode is able to concentrate on the story instead of having to give us a lot of exposition. Another is that there’s a fair amount of action, so you can at least enjoy the spectacle even if the story isn’t grabbing you. A third, though this one is more hit and miss, is the fact that the episode flirts with grey morality à la “Cold Front”, though it isn’t anywhere near as successful because a) it’s not seriously explored, and b) one of the guys claiming that Daniels isn’t all that he claims has sided with the Nazis and is wearing an SS uniform. Forgive me if I take his words with a grain of salt.

This also ties in to the one thing that’s really worth discussing about this episode; the fact that it’s the official end of anything to do with the Temporal Cold War. According to Memory Alpha, the new showrunner didn’t have a lot of interest in the idea, so decided to just end it so he could focus on other material. And on the whole, I’m mostly all right with that decision. When you get right down to it, Enterprise didn’t actually do all that much with the Temporal Cold War. If you include “Detained” (which is more about the impact the war is having than the war itself), there are only a dozen episodes out of ninety-seven that touch on it. Furthermore, very little is actually done in those episodes, other than letting us know it’s a thing that exists and dropping references to future events in Star Trek history. In that sense, we don’t really lose anything by drawing it to an end. On the other hand, though, the wrapup doesn’t exactly answer any of the few questions that did come up in the course of the “arc”, like who that shadowy figure the Suliban were working for was. The whole way the arc was handled doesn’t exactly feel like a letdown, but for something that was set up to be a big part of the show, it probably could have been handled a lot better.

Looking at the two-parter as a whole, I’d say it’s not the greatest start to Enterprise’s last season. However, if you look at it as housecleaning, dealing with the last remnants of both the Xindi arc and the Temporal Cold War, then it may be easier to accept them on their terms and consider then something that needed to be done before things got really interesting. Though of course, I’ll actually have to get through the rest of Season Four before I can really make that claim…

How it Relates to the Whole: Like I said, the biggest thing this episode does is wrap up everything to do with the Temporal Cold War. I don’t believe it has any other impact on the rest of the show, and that’s probably for the best. It’s an entertaining enough diversion, but I’d rather focus on more interesting material.

Other: *After the “previously on” segment, the rest of the teaser is taken up with a newsreel showing how this world is different from our own, primarily by showing Hitler visiting America. Whoever put it together did a good job of taking old newsreels and turning them into this new vision, and the voiceover announcer sounds exactly the way you’d expect him to. But while it’s a great bit of mimicry, I’m not sure if it serves any purpose. We already have the gist of what happened from Part One, so we didn’t need this information. One more reminder that Enterprise’s talent for teasers is a bit lacking, I guess.

*Since this is the last time we’re going to see him, now’s as good a time as any to bring up something I probably should have brought up before and comment on Daniels’ future outfit;

I don’t know if that’s the norm for his century or just what temporal agents wear, but the outfit looks like it’s made entirely out of licorice. I can’t imagine it’s all that comfortable to wear either. Further proof that the further humanity advances, the worse their fashion choices become.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Again, Malcolm doesn’t get much to do in this episode, but he is the one who pinpoints where the timeline changed, and did a pretty thorough job of tracing how events were altered from there. It’s admittedly not essential information, but I liked the scene, and since it’s pretty much his biggest moment (yes, there’s the ending, but that was part of a group effort), I figured I’d give it to that.