Star Trek: Enterprise

“Storm Front, Part II”

2.5 stars.

Air date: 10/15/2004
Written by Manny Coto
Directed by David Straiton

"The building's about to blow up."
"Gotcha."

— Archer and Trip

Review Text

In brief: Watchable, nonsensical, predictable. At least it purports to be the end of the timeline wars.

The bad news is that "Storm Front, Part II" inherits so much nonsensical time-travel baggage from previous episodes (including last week's "Storm Front, Part I") that the premise is all but indefensible.

The good news is that this episode appears to end — once and for all — the Temporal Cold War and all its related, incoherent BS. Personally, I'm in favor of the end of the TCW in "Storm Front, Part II."

If the first two paragraphs of this review seem familiar, it's not because I copied and pasted them (naw); it's because this week's installment of the Jammer Review has become the latest front in the Temporal Cold War, and temporal agents have subjected you to a time loop. As you can see, history has been altered, because this review is now different. (Actually, it might as well be the same, since I'm going to say many of the same things.)

But, you see, now I'm confused, because if the Temporal Cold War never happened, what about all those episodes where the Enterprise was involved in Daniels' temporal shenanigans? Did they also not happen? Or did they kind of happen in a reality that everyone remembers but no one cares about?

And, for that matter, what about the Xindi? Were they ever really a part of the TCW? After Earth was attacked, Silik gave Archer information about the Xindi, implying that they were somehow manipulated by people who were involved. And yet the sphere-builders didn't seem to be a part of the TCW, and rather seemed to represent only their own independent interests.

In essence, "Storm Front" represents about the only thing the writers could really do with the TCW — namely, throw their arms up in defeat and admit that it made no sense and never would or could. That they have slyly packaged that sentiment inside a story that rewrites World War II and pretends to make sense is admirable, I guess. Obviously, we know better, but at least you can still fill an hour of television time with something that is halfway entertaining.

"Storm Front, Part II" — a very average outing — works and fails along all the same lines as "Part I." Since everything was more or less explained last week in the setup, this week's installment pretty much just goes through all the motions we knew would have to happen in order to arrive at a payoff — although "payoff" is too strong a word for the overall experience of "Storm Front."

About the only remaining question is what Silik is up to and why. It turns out that Silik's faction of the TCW also intends to stop Vosk, since Vosk is a madman who sees time-travel as just another technology to employ in improving the universe, to his own ends, no doubt. (In a war as convoluted as the Temporal Cold War, it stands to reason that Silik would eventually end up on our side for at least one episode.)

My thinking is that if the timeline is something that can be changed at will at any point, then reality is meaningless. That's a dangerous storytelling through line, because it leaves us in the middle of nowhere. Besides, how could Vosk maintain any control over such a mess? I would think that at some point he would end up accidentally erasing himself with his own meddling. Of course, reckless sci-fi like this means that there are no answers. In this case, there probably aren't any questions, either.

Well, there are questions of scripting logic, which are pointless to scrutinize but I'll try anyway. Why, for example, wouldn't Silik try to team up with the crew of the Enterprise from the outset? He always has so much information, so why wouldn't he know that the Enterprise was sent to stop Vosk? For that matter, wasn't it awfully convenient the way he was able to stow away on the Enterprise?

In this episode, Silik has complete shapeshifting abilities, allowing him to look like anybody. There's a point where he assumes Trip's identity and then gets aboard the Enterprise when Archer negotiates the release of "Trip" and Mayweather from Vosk. The whole business involving the data disc Silik retrieves is a somewhat flimsy device that takes Silik down to Earth, only for him to return to the Enterprise under a subterfuge that obviously wouldn't last five minutes. Just how did he intend to carry out his mission? He's able to do the highly unlikely, and yet still inept.

In a story that is all plot and virtually no characterization, the one interesting character moment comes when Archer throws Silik against the wall in the brig, and Silik tells him, "You've changed, captain." Indeed. It's a notion worth its own episode.

Silik and Archer subsequently team up to infiltrate Vosk's facility so they can disable the shield generator and the Enterprise can swoop down and destroy the building. Of course, no infiltration would be complete without bringing in the American resistance fighters established in part one to keep the Germans busy. Ensuing are a lot of lackluster shootouts between the Americans and the Germans, which is often laughable in its depiction of German ineptitude (they can't hit the broad side of a barn even with machine guns). I'm pretty sure the only non-German casualty in all the shooting is Silik. The Germans can't even hit Carmine when he's standing in the middle of an alley with no cover. (If people are going to get hit with bullets, can't we at least get some body squibs?)

One thing I liked in the episode was Vosk. As demented (and ridiculous) as his notion of unlimited timeline manipulation is, he brings a sort of calm rationality to explaining it. In the negotiation with Archer, Vosk is so convinced of his own righteousness that he thinks Archer might actually buy into his proposal. Jack Gwaltney is interesting as Vosk, who is a calm and confident villain who speaks precisely but with no uncertain menace beneath the surface (in one scene, he threatens to erase a Nazi general from history).

Archer and Silik are successful in shutting down the shield generator, but of course you knew that. Silik is shot and killed in the process. There are some nifty FX shots of the Enterprise flying over Manhattan (right between the Empire State and Chrysler buildings) and being shot by German fighter planes equipped with plasma cannons. Not quite as nifty is the destruction of Vosk's facility (at the Last Possible Moment, naturally), which showcases the latest in CGI artistry that also looks like an exploding Styrofoam cooler. I'm not sure that's what they had in mind.

"The timeline's resetting itself," Daniels helpfully informs Archer, in a line of dialog that actually uses the word "resetting" to invoke a Reset Plot. "It's almost ready," Daniels says. Just how "long" does it take for a timeline to reset itself and become "ready"? Do such terms apply? Never mind, because I'm with Archer: "I'll take your word for it."

Being the Timeline Inquisitor that I am, I must ask if Silik is really dead. Couldn't he be alive in some other time period? After all, Daniels, who died last week, is alive in the 29th century because of the reset timelines. Shouldn't this go for Silik? Is there some Timeline Law that says Silik must stay dead in a timeline that never existed simply because he wasn't from that timeline? Not that it matters, because the Timeline Laws are probably just Timeline Suggestions.

In a story free from all notions of cause and effect, the only net effect is that my brain hurts. I'm probably focusing too heavily on goofy logic. Let it be said that "Storm Front," while positively absurd, is workable as an exercise in predictable absurdity. More importantly, it marks the end of all this temporal nonsense, which is as crucial a quality as any. (Shadow Man or Future Guy or whatever he's called does not make an appearance here, so I guess we'll never find out who he was/is. I can live with that.) May the timeline no longer be this series' playground.

The final shot of the Enterprise's homecoming is nice. I just hope that next week we get a breather and a coda to these two big storylines being wrapped up in the course of three episodes. Now that we've seen the end of the Xindi and Temporal Cold War arcs, let's at least find out what it means to the characters who carried out the missions.

Next week: You are cordially invited to a Vulcan wedding.

Previous episode: Storm Front, Part I
Next episode: Home

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Comment Section

56 comments on this post

    I am reminded of a book I recently read called "All in an Instant".

    Long story short, it takes place in a 'sea' of time where the ocean floor is our 3D earth and any wave causes untold changes to the futureward end of the sea.

    Basically, there was a ton of mass changes and you go far enough into the future and try to anchor down on Earth and you basically go mad because there are millions of changes every second and you can't process it.

    And you can't ever mold a society to your fitting, because anyone can go back half a second before and just undo everything...all the way back to man's beginning (which in the book is guarded by a group of people, so that man can't erase itself).

    All in all it was a bit of a mindtrip, but fairly awesome.

    I rather liked the concept of Vosk tricking the Nazis the whole time. He was leading them on with promises of new technology and weapons, all the time he was diverting resources to the Conduit. If the Nazis had just ignored Vosk, they would have been a lot better off.

    This is a bit like an Arthur C Clarke short-story called Superiority. Essentially 2 warring planets in the future. 1 planet is far more advanced, and there is no doubt they will win the war in the long run. But the war is taking its time, so they divert resources to build bigger better weapons to bring the war to an early close.

    Meanwhile the enemy just continues pounding away and eventually wins. The story has lot more to it than that, and is quite amusing.

    I just watched "Storm Front" again last night and two things struck me for the first time. First, the closing shot of this episode certainly evokes the closing shot of VOY: "Endgame." At least ENT had a little bit of followup with the following episode. Why I never noticed it before, I'll never know.

    Secondly, just as an attempt to also make logic out of the illogical TCW arc, I have this question. If the timeline has fully reset, as Daniels says, and the TCW never happens, doesn't that mean Enterprise did explode with all hands aboard in "Cold Front?" If I remember correctly that power surge or whatever it was that was affecting the engines was not an act of sabotage. Which means if the TCW never happened, the crew never met Silik which means he would not have been aboard the Enterprise to prevent the ship from exploding which means 3 1/2 seasons worth of this series never would have happened. Earth's first Warp 5 vessel would have blown up just a few months into the mission. Which means no ship would have been able to prevent the Xindi superweapon 'cause Silik wouldn't have warned us and no ship would've been in the Delphic Expanse 'cause Columbia wasn't ready to launch until "Affliction" which would have been way too late.

    Which means if Earth was to survive the TCW needed to happen and now I'm cross-eyed to quote Austin Powers. Maybe ENT takes place in an alternate ST universe and all the discrepancies no longer matter. I am curious to see of there will be any reference to ENT in the new ST film.

    Anyways, just thought I'd share. Sorry this was so long.

    I know it's been an awful lot of time since this episode originally aired, but I was re-reading this page and it was quite surprising to me that there's no mention of the teaser either in the review or the comments.

    I never saw anything like that teaser coming, it was quite unique for a Star Trek episode, enormously enjoyable and very well made.

    Well... the Temporal Cold War ends (or apparently, never took place) and surprisingly ST Enterprise gets another *GOOD* episode!!

    Very much like Jammer (even though our points of view differ), most of the things I said in my comment of the previous episode can be applied here: we have a well-written script, meaningful dialogue, good acting, high-quality production values (minus the final blast... "exploding styrofoam cooler" indeed)... all adding to make a good Trek outing. One which resolves the Temporal Cold War BS in the most graceful way as humanly possible: the push of the Reset Button[TM] and the stop of this nonsense once and for all. More importantly, the episode doesn't try to explain it away with *more* nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense.

    Some comments on certain things you said in you review Jammer: Silik's "You've changed, captain" line for example. Not only is the notion interesting but even more important is Archer's reply. "Not all for the better" he says, a witty, self-referential one-liner that would feel very out of touch if uttered in any of the three previous years (the pinnacle of writing ineptitude). With this line Archer acknowledges how much the events of season 3 transformed him, but more importantly I think he's also referring to the mistakes he's made, how he the dark no-nonsense Archer came to be formed. What the writers tried to impose on us over the course of 24 episodes the previous year (and which instead always made us look upon Archer as a moronic a**hole) is somewhat reconciled with a single line of dialogue.

    Maybe I'm seeing into this too much, but it's funny how that line can give you the difference between a negative reaction/impression and a positive one.

    I do agree on the largely ridiculous Germans-can't-aim-for-sh** action-sequences, but to be honest it's not the first time we've seen those (and not just during the general ST Enterprise era of mediocrity). Ridiculous? Yes. Surprising in a Trek context? Not really, it serves the plot albeit in a very convenient & contrived way (could have been improved by better staging though, no doubt).

    As for Vosk's lines (the dialogues with Archer & the Nazi commander, the speech to his people), I thought they were all spot-on. Vosk oozes in solemnity and self-righteousness, he gets all the tones right and says things that stop a room talking (they put the Nazi commander right in his place!). Soon enough you realize just how evil/demented Vosk is, but it's a profile that fits perfectly with some of the other villains encountered in Trek lore. And while you do, you're not drawing palm to face cringing at what would be shi**y lines of dialogue had this been written by B&B. Tosk's dialogue isn't a masterpiece, but by comparison of seasons 1-2-3 it might as well be.

    I think the reason you could not like the "Storm Front" two-parter more than a certain level Jammer, is that you were expecting a *rational* resolution to all this. You set the bar of your expectations too high. What I did instead, and this from the very beginning of part 1, is take the decision to separate Enterprise in two periods: on one side, the period where all this TCW bullsh** originated (Berman & Braga); on the other the moment where we finally had some good writing (Manny Coto). To me the situation can be equate to B&B dying and Coto having to inherit and take care of their inbred mutant offspring. What to do with the freak? Push a button and pretend it was never born.

    Mission accomplished.

    I'm inclined to think that Shadow Man/Future Guy is no other than Rick Berman. He came to see the damage his time line manipulations wrought.

    Storm Front for me was 2.5 stars, I agree with Jammer. I skipped a lot of it since it was pretty stupid story-wise. But Vosk was great as a red-eyed, bat-faced, Nazi-helping, time traveler. Hmm, I wonder if his race is evil? (just kidding!) ENT really was over the top with a lot of the aliens being so super evil looking and almost always turning out to be evil. No surprises here. But Vosk acted well and convincingly despite a dumb story and a preposterous premise. I ended up skipping to to Vosk and his crew, they were good. As was Silik. Which leads me to what I think was the biggest Temporal Cold War mistake: casting Matt Winston as Daniels. Winston has a bland, featureless appearance, almost a bit feminine. And his voice and acting mannerisms matched his physical appearance. John Fleck was really good as Silik; he could bring life to silly lines and stories but Winston was just a pasty, boring, plain guy mouthing lines about non-nonsensical, overused time travel drivel. It reminds me of Highlander where Connery could say the dumbest lines and make them powerful and believable with his legendary voice and physical gravitas. Winston? Not much Connery in there. Or Fleck/Silik or Gwaltney/Vosk or MacDonald/Dolim or Andrew Robinson or Jeffrey Combs or Tony Todd (man, DS9 had some great semi-guest and guest stars!) or etc. Winston was miscast and could not cover up silly time travel stories with any kind of heft or believable acting. Well, it’s over, time for less time travel … I hope!

    Another enjoyable episode for me. This also felt like a series finale.

    I have a feeling the last few minutes was the original ending to the show before S4 got commissioned and the time travel nonsense shoehorned in. It just feels like it "flows" from just before things got goofy at the end of the last episode of S3. Though with the difference of Archer being present...

    Would've been a nice way to end, but too much of a copy of Endgame anyway.

    I feel Archer was speaking for all of us (especially if the writers heard the same feedback?) when he said along the lines of "please just leave us alone now, I'm tired of your time travel stuff". Amen. It's been a fun ride especially towards the end of S3, but yes... time for something new! Can we trek across stars nao? Seek out new life and new civilisations and all that jazz? Soon find out!

    All I can say is that I am thankful I can forget all of this ever happened, because none of it matters anyway.

    I don't understand why everyone is celebrating the Xindi mission though in the next episode. If the timelines are reset to their natural place, then shouldn't the entire 3rd season be removed from the story? Or did the Xindi attack actually happen in the cannon timeline as we know it? If it did, then why has nobody heard of it at all? Or are we still in an alternate timeline anyway?

    And if having to stop Vosk was the solution all along, then why didn't we just do that from the start? Why didn't anyone try and stop Vosk and his race even in the 28th century, let alone in the 22nd or 20th centuries?

    And if there's all of these factions in the Temporal Cold War, then why does stopping Vosk put an end to it? Don't they also have to stop the Future Guy too?

    As many other people concluded, none of this makes any sense at all.

    I don't think it's "well-written" or "good". I wish I could go back and skip over these two unnecessary and and ultimately pointless episodes.

    Rather than beat a temporally displaced horse, let's look at what *really* worked:

    Column A:

    - Billie Holiday and the subtext of accelerated integration
    - Silik's "You've changed" and Archer's response
    - the reactions to Archer being alive
    - performances

    Column B:

    - the newsreel
    - laser Stukas shooting the Enterprise
    - flying over Manhattan

    If you look at Column B, there are some enjoyable things that are mainly "ooh shiny". I don't have a problem with them.

    If you look at Column A, you see the things that really matter. These are the things that give it depth, emotional resonance, or reasons to care about any of it.

    Unfortunately, Column A is pretty slim for two hours of television. It also shows that these two episodes focused relentlessly on things that were pretty much by-the-numbers and pedestrian. Gun battles and fighting. SFX. Time travel hoohah. Captures and escapes. Aliens and Nazis arguing tediously over things that won't matter to anyone. Trip escaping from the Evil Alien Nazis and then doing absolutely *nothing* of consequence, despite seeing the Evil Alien Nazis on the verge of their Moment of Triumph. Another convenient communication blackout. Silik wasting most of his talents -- why didn't he go on ahead and kill all the guards while cloaked? -- and then dying pointlessly. As with the previous episode, it's little more than moving pieces to where the script needs them to be, full of arbitrary and unexplained conveniences and limitations.

    For a conflict that has involved so much airtime and so many players, it's completely baffling who is fighting for what or why. There's really no stake for viewers in any of it, because we know that it will all be magically undone anyway. And if you think about what Vosk tells Archer for even a second, it makes no sense. I can only commend the actor for keeping a straight face as his character is trying to recruit Archer to his side against Daniels because Daniels' side is a bunch of meddlers. This is coming from the Evil Alien Nazi who is rewriting the history of Archer's planet and promises to put it all back later when he's won the Time War, pinky swear. It's the episode's most unintentionally amusing moment.

    Something that sums up everything wrong? The goodbye scene between Alicia and Archer. Predictably issued in the middle of a terribly unconvincing gun battle, it's totally uninvolving because this Alicia will never exist. There's nothing poignant about it, and Archer is a lump. The scene is completely perfunctory and emotional deadweight, included only because it ticks off the checkbox. This is City on the Edge of Boredom.

    Rubbish start to the final season.

    Agreed we all wanted the end of the TCW; I just wish it had happened off camera.

    I couldn't give a rat's about any of it. Voyager meets Doctor Who.

    Forgettable.

    1.5-2 stars.

    hnm yeah the time travel thing is lame... just filling up space... filler episode..

    i do love daneils though... enterprise j!!!!!

    love future tech, i hope they make a series about the 31st century. great stuff

    hmnm yeah looks like the xindi will be removed from the timeline no conflict now makes all of season 3 a bit pointless....

    and what the hell happened to captine archer.. hes a disgrace to star fleet.... growing life forms for parts, stealing aliens warp cores... where have the ethics gone? jane way would never have done this... and she went through the year of hell.. although that never technically happened either at least t was only two episodes. (good plot though).

    yeah i dont think any starfleet captian would act the way acher acted shocking !!!

    So...if this episode undoes the Temporal Cold War, does that mean any episode of Star Trek: Enterprise that involved the TCW didn't happen? And if that's true, does that include "Broken Bow", the pilot episode?

    We need Dulmer and Lucsly now more than ever.

    Wow. How can anyone think the writing in this episode was good? This two parter was a total mess. I give it 1 star for the great shots of enterprise over old New York City and for other special effects related to the Nazis coming to America. Everything else was trash.

    Reed determines a different history where Russia never went communist, and therefore Hitler focuses entirely on the West, but in Part I, it is mentioned that the Russians are trying to retake Moscow from the Germans.

    So, here's the big question from this two-parter and "Zero Hour": No Earth ships responded when the Xindi weapon emerged from the vortex -- but there's a small fleet when the Enterprise returns at the end of this episode. WTF?

    Think about this: The weapon emerges and one of the Earth's orbital station is there AND Shran is there. So, it's not as if everybody emerged from the vortex in 1944.

    Even with the goofy rules/non-rules of the TCW, the orbital station's presence means that the ships exiting the vortex didn't emerge in some alternate timeline. So does the presence of Shran and his ship.

    It makes it look like Starfleet wasn't on high alert after 7 million people were killed a year earlier. And it's also totally inconsistent with what we see after the timeline is "reset" in the two-parter.

    Also, why didn't Reed or someone on Degra's ship try to signal Earth after the weapon was destroyed? I'm sure that would have been something Starfleet HQ would have liked to know. And if there was the orbital station, odds are Reed would have found Earth below.

    (Note that a similar problem happens in BOBW. The Borg cube and the Enterprise are in orbit of Earth, but no one from Earth seems to contact the Enterprise! Granted, the planet's defense might have been crushed by the Wolf 359 attack, but presumably someone was still at Starfleet Command.)

    BTW, Reed could have contacted Earth and the events of "Storm Front" could have still happened. He could have given the all clear, returned in the vortex to meet up with Enterprise and THEN the crew could have found the alternate 1944. Or, he could have tried to give the all clear and found nothing down there. Then, he would have rushed back to Enterprise and said, "Earth is saved, but it's not our Earth."

    I too am glad the TCW appears to be over — it was extremely uneven (to put it mildly) and the Xindi arc at least managed to divert me from the TCW’s more bizarre holes. What amused me was how the writing seemed to have an undertone at times where the writers were practically shouting “we know our predecessors made a pile of sh*t and we’re doing our best here to fix it and get it over with”.

    Loved the dogfight over Manhattan with the Stukas with frickin’ laser beams…disliked the Nazi alien idea to begin with, but while there, what the hell. The newsreel at the beginning was also top-notch and nicely wove in real American Nazi sympathizer footage, mostly from the German-American Bund, a real Nazi group in America leading up to the war (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPGT7EaCiIY for a sample). Somebody did their historical homework.

    I recommend Christopher Bennetts book "Watching the Clock". He provides an intriguing answer to all questions about the Temporal Cold War and really brings it to a conclusion.

    Just had to say Jammer than the beginning of your review make me LOL. You were spot on.

    I've always said, as far as German Star Trek episodes go, this one was the best.

    Here's Daniel's quote from the end of this episode:

    "DANIELS: It's quite a sight. The timeline's resetting itself. You did it. Vosk is dead. He didn't make it back. All of the damage he caused, it never happened."

    While this 'can' be digested and argued to mean that none of the time TCW stuff never happened, I think it's a huge stretch to assume that.

    I take this statement to mean the timeline was resetting itself regarding what Vosk had attempted to change this time. If you're going to make the argument that nothing ever happened WRT the TCW because Vosk died here, then you could also make the argument that Kirk should have faded away when he traveled back to his WWII occurrence. If he traveled back, did the Federation/Star Fleet ever exist if the allies were foiled during WWII? etc, etc, etc.... I'll side with Janeway here and resolve this to "temporal mechanics give me a headache". You can (and have to) make assumptions every time some sort of time travel is done. But it's a Star Trek staple so I live with it.

    I'll side with the fact that 'Future Guy' was Archer reaching back to help himself. Which means that Vosk wasn't directly responsible for everything that happened to Enterprise.

    Silik did tell Tucker: "What's happening is beyond your comprehension"

    So who am I to make factual heads or tails of this?

    ***Shrugs shoulders***

    The TCW is "over" and Enterprise can proceed on.

    Aside from the fact I didn't want to see these episodes, I wanted our heroes to get back to Earth, both SFI&II were very well done I thought.

    Yes, I'll agree the German's can't shoot, but when do they when they are the bad guys in a movie?

    Jack Gwaltney was incredible as Vosk and John Fleck was again outstanding as Silik. I’m actually sad to see Silik go.

    3.5 of 4 stars for me.

    Now-I am a Brit and I absolutely love Doctor Who...but the idea of World War Two iconic aircraft shooting laser weapons was nicked from this episode and transplanted to the Spitfire attack on the Dalek Flying Saucer in 2010's Victory of the Daleks.
    I too liked Archer's knowing self aware comment to Sillik,thought Silik was rather likeable in this one but this episode's greatest significance is the end of that mind boggling baloney that was the temporal cold war.

    @Peter: Yay, another fellow Whovian on this board! I never thought of the laser-equipped WWII planes in "Victory of the Daleks" as being ripped off from this episode, but I see your point.

    This episode was enjoyable, but overall forgettable. It felt like a really weird detour needed to justify the "WTF" cliffhanger at the end of "Zero Hour".

    And I'm really tired of evil alien Nazis. Note to the next Trek TV series: if you must pick a group of evil humans from the past to use as a punching bag, please pick something else from some other era, like the Augment soldiers from the Eugenics Wars (Khan et al) - a historical era we never actually saw on the series. Now that would be interesting.

    Oh snore! Seriously, after the whole Xindi season, we get this dull, talkative big waste of 2 episodes.
    And Nazis - so trite, so lazy. We need someone evil: hey the Nazis! It's not only sorry writing, but irreverent to the victims of the Holocaust. I can't stomach scripting in Nazis for entertainment purposes.
    Truly mind boggling lack of creativity If they were going to jump into a protracted coda after season 3, logically it would concern Xindi relations.

    A fairly underwhelming end to the TCW saga - the whole thing was feeling a bit tired by this point and it showed here. Silik's demise was a case in point, it seems like they were hardly trying to give a decent exit. And for the whole reset point - well you could see it coming but it was never going to be properly explained. There were also a stack of tedious gunfights we could have done with less of.

    One of the other problems with it was that it felt smaller on occasions than it perhaps should have done - Vosk's speech to the troops seemed to be conducted to about 6 of them and might have played better in a bigger context. There were also some fairly patchy visuals, and you wonder if time/money was running short at some points given the high quality of the attack run in New York, for instance. 2.5 stars overall.

    Well about 12 months ago I threw the remote at the TV at the end of Stormfront Pt1 in frustration.

    Since then I have had the pleasure of watching the entire Battlestar Galactica set on DVD (never made it to air here in Australia) and after that was working my way through Defiance - but a few days ago I did notice that unloved and unwatched Season 4 of Enterprise sitting there on the shelf laughing at me, so I dragged it out of storage to see Stormfront Pt2. Not. A. Good. Idea.

    I don't know if I've been spoilt by BSG but this felt even more hollow and by the numbers than it did a year ago. I still have the rest of the box set but am I safe in assuming that "this" is rock bottom and the only way from here is up?

    So far Andromeda and smoking are the only two thing I've ever actually "given up" on, hoping not to add Enterprise to that short list !

    @eastwest101

    Season 4 is generally considered the best season of Enterprise I think, though consensus varies from fansite to fansite.

    S4 has a new executive producer, Manny Coto, and Storm Front was his attempt to tie up and end the Temporal Cold War after the F-U Breman and Braga left as the season 3 cliffhanger as they were booted out the door.

    Coto, being a bigger fan of TOS tried to start tying Enterprise back into the mythos of that show, and if you'll keep watching and continue to read comments, you'll see I ended up being a bit of a fanboy. Knowing the ideas Coto had for future seasons made me appreciate the show all the more.

    So yes, Storm Front is rock bottom, though there are some episodes in the season that are regarded as bad, but like some TOS episodes, they're sure fun.

    That said if you must watch the very last episodes, Don't. But if you insist, think of it as an extra, with the prior episode being the true finale.

    @eastwest101

    Oh, and to be clear, that last awful episode I mentioned, was written by Berman and Braga, because they weren't bitter enough I guess.

    Eastwest101: I think I speak for a large portion of us when I say that "Terra Prime" is generally considered the true finale of Enterprise, and the monstrosity that follows can be safely ignored.

    Nolan: Whoops, just saw your comment and that you basically said what I just said. Apologies for basically parroting you without realizing it! :/

    Thanks for the heads up Nolan, I didn't realise that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were given the "ejector seat from Enterprise (although upon viewing Stormfront 1 and 2 one can see why!) - will continue throuth to Terra Prime now.

    It was a messy but probably necessary effort by Manny Conto to wrap up the awful temporal Cold War arc but after seeing Conto's post Enterprise work in the form of various seasons of 24 and Dexter.

    Bit of a shame that Coto wasn't brought in earlier to "save" Enterprise - might have been an interesting show if he had been given more time and a bit of leeway.

    @eastwest101

    Hey, no problem. If you continue reading though the reviews and comments, I apologize in advanced, I ended up gushing on about Enterprise and where it could have gone pretty hard. And often.

    @ eastwest101
    Wed, Jul 6, 2016, 11:19pm (UTC -5)

    "Bit of a shame that Coto wasn't brought in earlier to "save" Enterprise - might have been an interesting show if he had been given more time and a bit of leeway. "

    Also a shame that Enterprise wasn't on a crappy network. It definitely earned a season 5 (material wise).

    Coto is awesome. I wish they'd grab him for the new series.

    Not only was this a bad episode, but if you watch the fake newsreel footage carefully, you'll note that one of the 'parasitic elements' that needed to be rooted out was apparently the Canadian Prime Minister during WII, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

    Granted, I've always suspected that if time travelling Nazi vampire aliens were to invade America they'd naturally want to make us into your puppet rulers, but I think the producers might have gone a little too far with that one.

    Daniels isn't a Temporal Agent... He's actually a Plot Exposition Agent fighting in the Script Cliché Bar Brawl. He appears when ever the series arc or plot has become so convoluted or derivative that only his few lines can untangle the mess in the viewers mind. Or that's he's hope, of course, it doesn't always work.

    Not only is this derivative of the many Star Trek Nazi and Star Trek time -travel episodes they've managed to wedged in the Star Trek Gangster cliché as well.

    If you want proper alternate time-line Nazi science fiction please read "The Man in the High Castle" by Phillip K. Dick.

    As with part one this gets a hardy Bonk Bonk on the Head!

    What a rush! From the Xendi to the altered time WW2 plot, Enterprise has been quite a ride for sci fi buffs lately. Love it ! Keep it coming!

    I think the best part about "Storm Front, Part II" is the unusual alliance between Archer and Sillik and the moment when Sillik dies, his last words to Archer. I guess this is a bit cliche but there are plenty of cliches in this 2-parter along with a lot of TCW nonsense. I wonder -- did the Sillik ever tell Archer prior to going back down to Earth what he did with Trip? I also don't recall the Suliban being able to shapeshift. I guess Sillik picked up some new tricks over Season 3.

    Also thought it was pretty funny to see Sillik dressed in civilian clothes but without the hat (Archer was wearing it) as they both stood on the transporter.

    Vosk and his men are your typical villains -- believing they have the right to become great by manipulating the timeline as they wish. But I liked Vosk's character development -- seemed like a sane, calm "person" when negotiating with Archer. Ultimately he shoots the German general and you see his true colors, using the Germans to further his ends.

    I'd rate "Storm Front, Part II" 2.5 stars - it was a bit better than Part I in some ways as, once we had gotten over the questionable premise, it became easier to accept. But there's also the predictability factor holding it back -- i.e. the big reset is coming. The execution is standard ENT and it was an interesting twist to see Sillik/Archer teaming up given all they've been through (imagine Kirk/Khan teaming up). Anyhow, you get Daniels thanking Archer at the end in some type of time continuum being reset -- if that's the end of the TCW, I'll be happy.

    Did nobody else see Alicia as a total cut n paste of Lily from First Contact? Right down to her "Jean-Luc, blow up the damn ship!" speech, only here it's "Archer, don't stop until you kill every last one of those bastards!" 🙄

    Only 4 years too late, but...

    @ian

    'and what the hell happened to captain archer.. he's a disgrace to star fleet.... growing life forms for parts, stealing aliens warp cores... where have the ethics gone? Janeway would never have done this...'

    Seriously? Janeway was the most ruthless, murdering, incompetent, unfeeling captain ever in Star Trek history. Archer is a saint compared to her.

    Anyway, a decent episode, not as good as the first one. But those German fighters firing plasma cannons or whatever they were, was pretty f-ing cool.

    2 1/2 stars.

    I think I mentioned on another review that my appletv allows me to fast forward with the captions on; you can watch everything at 2X speed, and still follow the dialogue. I used that for almost all of "Storm Front Part I"; I only went to normal speed for one quiet moment between T'Pol & Trip on the bridge. That episode was just pointless cliche's with almost no character moments.

    This episode was better...there were character moments (Jammer and everyone else noted "you've changed, captain."). The actors playing Vosk & Silik did a good job without a lot to work with. The plot got a bit more interesting, as there were apparently at least 3 sides in the TCW, instead of 2; and for a moment we might have considered that Vosk was telling the truth & he was the one who was actually on our side. That would have been a good twist: the evil-looking alien working with the Nazis turning out to be the humanity's savior. Alas, Archer didn't even consider it could be true & it turned out not to be.

    Of course, the best part of this episode is that it ends the Temporal Cold War. Looking at the series a second time, it actually negatively affected fewer episodes than I remembered. But it was still a failure of an idea.

    Despite the good parts, I was still fast-forwarding through a lot of this episode. I'll give "Part I" 1 star & I'll say this episode just barely makes it to 2 stars (if I went really fractional, I'd probably give it around 1.75 stars).

    I've only watched TNG besides Enterprise, and that was a long time ago. Does the series ever mention Archer and the first Enterprise saving Earth? Are the aliens that they stole the warp coil from, still limping home?

    I agree. Utter nonsense, but the feeling is good, finally completing a long bumpy road trip.

    Stukas with plasma cannons : Reminiscent of “Sharks with Friggin Lasers on their Heads”. From Austin Powers...

    Dreadful start to season 4. Comic book Nazis, mind-numbing action sequences, and absolutely no interesting ideas explored whatsoever. I did not become a Trek fan for this BS. No stars. The only positive is hopefully we've waved goodbye to the temporal cold war and the Suliban and we can get on with some more TNG-style exploration now.

    I watch this series to be entertained and this two-parter fulfilled my goal. Loved the portrayal of the people in the ‘hood and enjoyed seeing Enterprise receive the welcome it deserved.

    So England was quickly overrun - a ridiculous line delivered by the only Englishman aboard - but the plucky ol' US of A managed to hold out against aliens using time travel technology and plasma weapons... OK. Well this is for American audiences after all.

    If Vosk was a hundred times scarier, and was played with passion, rather than simply reciting bland lines in his old man voice, this could have been an epic two parter. Unfortunately he was just "there" and was not memorable for anything other than his Nazi uniform (which has already kind of been done in TOS and definitely done in Voyager). The Hirogen were certainly scarier than the not-Remans.

    Also, the special effects were HORRIBLE. The aircraft strafing Enterprise and particularly the building blowing up were some of the worst CGI I've ever seen, and I've watched Tripods, Blakes 7 and classic Dr Who (not the horrible, brain rotting crap of modern Who which simply exiats to push the BBC's agendas).

    I will always have a soft spot for Enterprise. But having watched it through again (and having skipped a minimum of 10 to 15 episodes, two of them halfway in), I can wholeheartedly say the shows I just mentioned bury Enterprise. They focus on plot and acting rather than special effects, which makes them scary and gripping. There are few enough episodes that stories are usually well paced. Just don't watch Tripods series 1, that is the exception to the rule.

    First, a question in case anyone is still reading this: Whatever happened to the captured, cloaking Suliban cell-ship that was used to save Archer and Reed from hanging in S2 or S3? It survived that episode... shouldn't it still be around, and super-useful?


    Some fun to be had here (stukas with beam weapons! Aliens in Nazi uniforms!). An end (hopefully?) to the TCW. But a few extra criticisms to add:

    Everything is set in the USA, yet again, of course. Yes it's the main audience's home, but do the producers really think their audience is so ... so provincial they'd have no interest in action sequences elsewhere? The obvious location would be Germany, since surely Vosk would be doing "research" and time-conduit construction there, not near the front lines (why would he move his facilities to North America, since obviously he started in Europe)? Or would it have been so terrible to set this in, say, a Britain in the midst of German invasion? Everyone would still speak English, of a sort.

    Do we really need more of the "Main Villain's ally decides they can't work with them anymore, so goes alone to the Main Villain's lair to tell them it's over" cliche? When the German commander had Vosk in the German HQ, he snarled and let him leave. When he was ready to say "you're done, I'm taking over" he took 2 unprepared guards with him to Vosk's alien-held compound. Yeah, sure.

    What exactly did Archer need Silik for, in bringing down the shield? Archer had the base layout, the location of the Magic Terminal... Silik did precisely one thing that a MACO couldn't have done: slithered through a vent to open one door. A tiny 22nd-century explosive would have done this just fine.

    And speaking of SIlik: so now he (and other Suliban?) are full-on Changelings, able to imitate specific people, including their voice (and not showing up as anything peculiar in the transporter, which makes absolutely no sense). So since the Enterprise crew still have their memories it seems (and their WW 2-era outfits), yet again it's bizarre that anyone is surprised at the existence of advanced shapeshifters like Odo & company. So now we have canon-breaking early introduction of full-imitation shapeshifting, cloaking technology all over the place, thanks a lot.


    Finally, as a Star Trek fan since TOS, I've finally decided the shows would all have been much better without three "easy-out" technologies that constantly needed to be explained away, or (too often) forgotten. I'm not referring to the many single-use techs, annoying though those were... but to long-standing established techs that were unfortunate temptations to lazy writers, and constant irritants because clever use (sometimes demonstrated in lone episodes but then forgotten) could solve many problems.

    To whit: transporters (by far the worst offender), fairly easy time travel (ooh, slingshot around the sun... so very risky, yet it works every time), and Borg nanoprobes (mainly in Voyager, but also in the newer fast-assimilation upgrade of Borgs generally).

    Really, one of the things I've found most refreshing about Enterprise is the (until recently) avoidance of the transporter except in extremis. It made sense with an immature tech... but I'd rather have seen a universe entirely without that magical device, and the glaring, unexplored possibilities it introduced.

    I also wondered about Silik really being dead. I look forward to settling into some exploration, science missions, and weird sexual tension between crew members.

    Synopsis: Captain Jonathan Archer woke to find himself trapped in the past, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. And so Captain Archer put right what once went wrong, and hoping that his next leap will be the leap home…

    Well that’s about as good as you can expect when it comes to wrapping up all that silliness. Not as good as the first part but still decent. Boy I sure do hope that’s the end of both the “Temporal Cold War” time traveling crap as well as any season two threads. Put it all to bed please. Unfortunately I’m really doubting it with the way Daniel’s said it’s “almost” over. Well regardless it’s on to the next and hopefully not as silly episodes.

    Really bad episode. All action non-sense in all directions. 1 star for ending the TCW bs, I guess.

    What is it that warrants 2.5 stars? I really wonder.

    Not that it matters given the overall level of absurdity, but how did Archer get back to the Enterprise? A few minutes earlier Archer could not contact the Enterprise to beam up Silik when he was dying. But then he magically transports from the streets of NY to the ship without any explanation. The script itself just gave up.

    And yeah these fighting scenes between the resistance and the Germans are so laughable. A bataillon of heavy armed trained soldiers in fortified positions (guarding one of the most valuable tactical buildings on the US front) vs a few mafiosi with handgun hiding behind a car…

    4 seasons into the Temporal Cold War and I still don't have a clue what it was about, who Silik was working for or what his ulterior motives were, and who the good/bad guys really were. I do know that I'm glad it's over.

    In the recap Trip says "we are at least 200 years in the past", but shouldn't he have said "we are at most 200 years in the past"? The bullets could have been from any time AFTER WW2, at least in the original time line.

    Also how did that Suliban guy (Silik) manage to make his clothes morph to fit through that air vent?

    A mediocre action centered episode. Reset buttons don't usually bother me as long as I was entertained and where possible the content was thought provoking.

    Over all score: 5/10

    Bad, stupid episode.

    Just to nit-pick their knowledge of history.
    Anyone wanting to help the Germans would NOT kill Lenin. Consider:
    April 1917: The German government helps Lenin return to Russia to foment revolution.
    Oct. 1917: The October revolution.
    March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia signs a separate peace treaty with Germany.
    1920ish: Russian Civil War
    1930ish: Soviet agricultural "reforms" result in mass starvation and lead to Ukraine later welcoming Germans as liberators.
    late 1930s: Soviet leadership liquidates most Army generals leading to massive Red Army incompetence.
    August 1939: Germany and USSR sign a non-aggression pact.

    It's hard to imagine a Russian history more favorable to a Nazi invasion than this....

    It's hard to enjoy episodes where the plots are so confused beyond reason you can't even make sense of what's going on at any given moment. Star trek really could have made better time travel episodes than these totally insane ones with 20+ contradictions. I think the temporal cold war was a bad idea for enterprise. The first episode of the series introducing it made absolutely no sense, so it's not a surprise the "resolution" of it made no sense either. I'll give it 3..no actually 2.5 stars because I can't stand episodes where too much time is spent on "old Earth". I watch star trek to get away from that primitive crap for a couple hours. Even the ones where they deliberately go back in time on their own volition, like "assignment earth", I would never want to take the chance of being stranded in a barbaric, primitive time period with no tech to make food/water out of thin air..etc. Why not just go back 20-30 years so life would still be tolerable in case you got stuck. This going back hundreds of years never made sense to me.
    The other thing I find ridiculous about the enterprise series in general is the astronomical amount of insane stuff that just so happens to be all occurring within, what..150 light years of Earth? Sentient Evil repair stations, Vulcan feuds, Suliban, the Delphic expanse, those mysterious spheres, xindi..etc, like what are the odds? Voyager all of that made more sense because they were traveling tens of thousands of light years across the galaxy, but in enterprise, you seriously expect me to believe all of this stuff, deformed space, time wars, magic repair stations, Vulcan wars, genetically enhanced invaders, xindi,...etc is all occurring so close to Earth and only the starship Enterprise is the one encountering it all, and NOT Earth itself, or any of the other federation planets? What happened to the 1 in 43,000 planets having intelligent life? Are there even enough starts within 150 light years to host that many planets to begin with, let alone intelligent life, let alone life with star trek level technology? Man if the xindi were only, what, 50 years earlier before start fleet was founded they would have successfully destroyed Earth? I guess the superhero ship Enterprise was launched just in the nick of time? Guess they better thank Archer and that guy for stealing the NX beta and kick starting the warp program, otherwise Earth may not have been there. I guess the temporal agents didn't think to destroy Earth BEFORE the 22nd century? Before Enterprise could have interefered with it at all, or even knew about the temp cold war. I mean how idiotic can this be?

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