Star Trek: Enterprise

"Storm Front, Part I"

2.5 stars

Air date: 10/8/2004
Written by Manny Coto
Directed by Allan Kroeker

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"What's happening is beyond your comprehension." — Silik, describing the timeline plot

In brief: Watchable but nonsensical — and there's little here that you wouldn't have easily extrapolated from the ending of "Zero Hour."

The bad news is that "Storm Front" inherits so much nonsensical time-travel baggage from previous episodes (including last season's final 60 seconds) that the premise is all but indefensible.

The good news is that this episode sets up all the pieces to possibly end — once and for all — the Temporal Cold War and all its related, incoherent BS. Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Personally, I'm in favor of the end of the TCW in "Storm Front, Part II."

The other bad news is that ending the temporal war (or at the very least this two-parter) will apparently be accomplished with a Temporal Reset Button — of the sort found in Voyager's "Year of Hell." The idea goes something like this: Blow up something that's real big and controls time, and all of the "correct" timelines will be magically and instantly restored. The paradoxes are everywhere, but they all become irrelevant if you can blow up the device that has created (or has not yet created) all of the paradoxes and manipulations. Or something like that. (The new paradox becomes, how do you stop something that never was destined to be a by-product of a paradoxical event in the first place, and ... oh, never mind.)

The other good news is that this is all tolerable under the oh-just-forget-the-paradox-stuff writing of Manny Coto and the brisk directing of Allan Kroeker. It's not what I would call good, but it's tolerable and sometimes entertaining as nonsense.

I guess that makes this episode a real mixed bag. Reaching into World War II is a time-travel cliché, and alien Nazis are in concept no less goofy here than they were at the end of "Zero Hour." But at least now we can see how the writers develop and play out this Twilight Zone concept. Their approach is in the tradition of silly sci-fi fun, which is maybe the only workable approach, since the concept is too ridiculous to be worthy of social relevance.

In this rendition of an alternate 1944, World War II has taken a very different course because aliens have been helping the German war effort by supplying them with better weapons in exchange for the Germans helping the aliens build a temporal "conduit" (more on that later). This alliance has allowed the Germans to defeat Europe and invade the United States, the eastern portion of which they now occupy. There's an amusing shot of the White House adorned (defaced) with Nazi banners. It's amusing because it's simply impossible to take the image the least bit seriously in the context of this zany story. I'm not complaining that it's amusing, because I actually like the creators' audacity in showing it. (Later, we see a map that spells out the battle lines and the occupied U.S. territory.)

During an ambush, Archer escapes his captivity from the Germans and finds himself in a history that doesn't track with what he knows to be the actual timeline. He is rescued by American resistance fighters based in an occupied Brooklyn. Included among them is a young African-American woman named Alicia (Golden Brooks) and two Italian-American former loan sharks (read: mobsters) named Carmine (Steven R. Schirripa) and Sal (Joe Maruzzo).

If there's a message to be found in this episode (and it's mostly reduced to a non-point) it's that this version of 1944 America seems to have been forced, as a matter of survival to fight the Germans, to put aside more of its social and ethnic prejudices more quickly than its counterpart in the real timeline. It's a message the story does not insist upon or underline, but simply presents as a given. It's the only trace of social relevance in an otherwise nuts-and-bolts installment where dialog is mainly limited to exposition (there are a lot of characters who have to figure out just what exactly is going on here).

Meanwhile, the Enterprise crew, orbiting 1944 Earth and still believing Archer was killed when the Xindi weapon exploded, must figure out how to return to their own time. They get some clues into the mystery with the help of Temporal Nonsense Agent Daniels (Matt Winston), who shows up on the Enterprise but is practically unrecognizable. Phlox discovers that some sort of temporal cataclysm has caused various parts of Daniels' body to transform to differently aged stages, from infancy to elderly, turning him into a grotesque patchwork that we might as well call the Temporal Frankenstein Monster.

About here, Silik (John Fleck) shows up on the Enterprise, attacks Trip, steals a shuttlepod, and takes it down to the surface for reasons left unknown to us until part two. Trip and Travis beam down to find Silik but find only the abandoned shuttlepod, which the Nazis stumble across just after Trip and Travis have rigged it to explode. What's the only thing better than the writers blowing up a shuttlepod? Blowing up a shuttlepod full of Nazis, naturally. Unfortunately, Trip and Travis are immediately captured by another patrol, then held prisoner and threatened by Vosk (Jack Gwaltney), the leader of the time-traveling aliens.

Meanwhile, some friction arises between Archer, Sal, and Carmine, when the Nazis start storming through the neighborhoods looking for the escaped Archer. Sal and Carmine want to know how Archer figures into all this. Archer, for that matter, wants answers to his own questions. Eventually they work together to arrange a meeting with one of their informant's contacts, rumored to be a gray-skinned, red-eyed, inhuman Nazi collaborator. This alien believes Archer is a temporal agent sent through time to stop them from building their temporal conduit. Archer gets some crucial information before Sal shoots the alien to death.

Later, there's a shootout when the Nazis try to recapture Archer. This scene is an effete, bullet-riddled action sequence that's allowed to go on too long, but it's ironic that Schirripa's character ends up killing more people in a single scene on Star Trek than in four seasons on The Sopranos. Archer contacts the Enterprise with a stolen alien communicator, and Archer and Alicia are beamed up in perfect transporter ex machina fashion.

Daniels, at death's door, explains to Archer that Vosk is the leader of a dangerous, radical faction waging a full-throttled temporal war, and is responsible for all the shifts in the timeline, and who has put himself on 1944 Earth to rewrite history — and that 1944 Earth is the one time/place he can truly be stopped, because to stop him here is to stop him from ever having tampered with the timeline in the first place. Daniels tells Archer that he must find and destroy Vosk's conduit (read: big time machine), before Vosk can escape to ... somewhere/somewhen.

Daniels then expires right on cue. The guy always was a master of convenient timing (and probably will be again; you never know with those temporal loopholes).

This plot is a transparently obvious concoction, but on those terms it moves from beat to beat and engages our attention. The story invites us to embrace its absurdity and works as entertainment. It basically breaks down the entire temporal war (at least I think it does) to a single battle in Earth's past, that revolves around a single sci-fi MacGuffin: Vosk's conduit that the Nazis are constructing for him. The episode ends on an intriguing image that contains an effective Raiders of the Lost Ark echo — a massive time machine being built in a warehouse where Nazi banners hang from the ceiling.

But the biggest problem with "Storm Front" is its apparent, inherent meaninglessness. There's just something frustrating about a plot where none of the guest characters matter because they're all phantoms in a timeline that's going to be erased. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself and should wait for part two, but if you listen to what Daniels has to say, it practically plays like the writers' confession that all this temporal nonsense has gotten so out of hand that they simply have to wipe the slate clean in one bold, contrived stroke.

Then again, that may not necessarily be a bad thing, because then we can get back to stories that matter and make sense.

Next week: The Enterprise battles to save its own future. Bet you've never heard that line before.

Previous episode: Zero Hour
Next episode: Storm Front, Part II

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42 comments on this post

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David
Fri, Jan 4, 2008, 12:41pm (UTC -6)
Like so many Enterprise episodes, I enjoy them on their own terms. I do not require that every TV show known to man be relevant socially, politically, etc. This is well-executed entertainment and I'd rate it higher than your 2 1/2 stars.

However, as always, I enjoy your reviews. They depict a highly intelligent mind. Keep writing!
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Conor Worley
Tue, Feb 3, 2009, 12:06pm (UTC -6)
Having more or less disregarded the Temporal Cold War since its inception at the beginning of Season One, this is the first episode connected with that concept that I actually enjoyed. I also saw great social relevance in the way it depicted even supposedly backward mid-20th century humans putting aside their prejudices and vices in order to serve the greater good. It was a fun season opener that receives far too much negative publicity from the Trek community.
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Marco P.
Thu, May 12, 2011, 10:20am (UTC -6)
Believe or not... I LIKED this one!!!!!!!!

Unbelievable as it may, if one makes total abstraction of the CORE of this episode which contains the utter ridiculousness that is the Temporal Cold War (in all its convoluted mess requiring at last a resolution), "Storm Front, Part I" is actually a well-executed, well-acted Star Trek outing. Worthy I'd say of any of the Star Trek series.

Yes, keep scratching your eyes but it's true. Get rid of Daniels and all his lines of dialogue, the mysterious re-appearance of Silik, and any further reference to the Cold War BS (do keep some time-travel elements in, because you have to explain how the crew finds itself in the middle of WWII) and all the ingredients are here:
• a well-written script,
• meaningful dialogue (minus one or two corny lines, but that's per usual Star Trek standards),
• a hint of social relevance (albeit very diluted),
• good acting (when captain Archer returns to the bridge for the first time I even saw a glimpse of emotion in T'Pol's eyes, one I actually *believed*)
• ever-present high-quality production values

I am surprised you're giving this one just 2.5 stars Jammer. You have been way more forgiving of much worse material in your reviews before. For my part, I consider the inheritance of the Temporal Cold War a crux writer Manny Coto dealt with admirably.

So what if, as you say, "all this temporal nonsense has gotten so out of hand they simply have to wipe the slate clean in one bold, contrived stroke"? It is actually the most graceful thing to do, because nothing they could ever imagine to *rationally* explain everything would sound "logical" to anyone. Swipe it under the rug and pretend it never happened (kinda like this series, but I digress and don't want to be negative today; I actually *did* like this episode -here's to hoping part 2 will be just as good).
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Milica
Sat, Jun 30, 2012, 10:52am (UTC -6)
I hate these indefensible time travel paradoxes, including the plot hole - why didnt Daniels take them a few years back, because the timeline with Nazis in the USA is already different from the normal one. The whole point of STar Trek is for us to imagine the future, and if you take it back into the past, the magic is gone.
Of course, as a really loyal Trekkie, Ill enjoy any episode Im served... but still - they could have been more creative in this episode.
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Cloudane
Wed, Dec 5, 2012, 2:07pm (UTC -6)
I have no idea what is going on. So I'll watch the next one with a pancake on my head.
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Ken
Wed, Jan 9, 2013, 10:54am (UTC -6)
What?! 200 years in the past? I've just started watching the episode - I'm 5:47 into it - and I'm supposed to believe that Enterprise went to the past?!

This show is just nonsensical drivel to me. The Aquatics just dropped off Enterprise to earth in the last episode! Were they also 200 years in the past? How on earth did Enterprise get to the past? Is there a temporal shield around the Sol system or something that prevents that keeps everyone else in normal time, but Enterprise is 200 years in the past? What the hell?

Last season's finale was simply awful when it came to the ending, but let's forget how stupid that was. There was nothing to make the audience believe that Enterprise had traveled to the past once the Spheres and the Xindi weapon were destroyed. Yes, we saw Nazi's, but it appears to be an alternate timeline - albeit one where technology didn't progress as quickly and the Nazi's had won with alien assistance. Now it's the past?

I give up.
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David
Wed, Jan 9, 2013, 11:38am (UTC -6)
Ken - This 2-parter was Manny Coto's attempt to wrap up the ill-conceived Temporal Cold War. He did as good a job with it as was possible, in my opinion. Please just stick with it and you'll see how everything is explained. There "are" some cool FX action scenes in part 2 that are worth watching. I just try to enjoy the shows on their own terms and it goes easier that way.
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Ken
Wed, Jan 9, 2013, 12:51pm (UTC -6)
Heh, I don't blame Manny Coto for trying to clean up the mess created by B&B. Ending the 3rd season with time traveling Nazi aliens was a huge misstep for the series, and really ruined the tempo of what the previous shows were going for.

I learned later in the episode that Daniels sent Enterprise to the past. While we've seen Daniels transport people and small things to different time periods, I didn't even think he could send entire ships to a new time period. I wouldn't have a problem with this story-telling device if the switch happened in a similar way to the other time travel visual devices.

When the weapon was destroyed, why don't we see space station, dry docks, and other ships around Earth? Why not a few Vulcan ships orbiting the planet as well? Are we to believe there's nothing around earth at all, so it's impossible to tell that we've traveled 200 years in the past? There should have been a transition, and sensors should have picked it up. The crew shouldn't have been so stumped as to what happened. This is what sensors are for - they should have thought to use them.

The whole temporal cold war arc is just confusing. The Sphere Builders, on their own, would have been enough - but to ham-fist them into the TCW arc with the other factions makes it appear like the entire arc has no direction and is completely unplanned (because it probably was).

And who is Vosk anyway? Who are these aliens? As far as I can recall, I haven't seen them until this episode. If they were such a threat, why not show them earlier? Why introduce an entirely new race at the end of the TCW arc? It reminds me of the ending of Mass Effect 3 with the stupid star-child. And what about Future Guy?

*Claps to complement the competency of Enterprise's writing staff*
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Ken
Wed, Jan 9, 2013, 12:57pm (UTC -6)
I'm also aware that the Reptilian Xindi destroyed one of the stations orbiting earth, but as we know from past shows, there are more than 1 station orbiting the planet, and there should be more ships on any given day.

But even if we assume that was the only station orbiting Earth, surely the sensors could have detected the debris, only to not detect it anymore once the ship traveled 200 years in the past.

And I gotta hand it to the writers too. In Season 3's E2, Travis states he can tell something is wrong "because the stars have moved". This is how they figure out that they've been pushed back 100 years in time.

If that's the case, why can't Travis or anyone on Enterprise tell they've been sent *200* years in the past? Wouldn't they also check the stars, or does that gimmick only work once?

Sigh. The more I think about the episodes, the more problems I find with them :(
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auralgami
Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 5:09pm (UTC -6)
To continue with what Ken is saying, there's a difference between this episode and a "well-written script".

Was no one else bothered by the oh-so-convenient loss of communicator signal because of the shuttle explosion? Despite all the vehicles converging on the area, no one thought to, you know, make a plan?

What was the deal with Silik? First he wants Trip in the shuttle, then he stuns him and leaves him behind. If he just wanted the shuttle, why couldn't he steal it with no one looking. If he wanted Trip, why didn't he take him? For that matter, how did Silik get aboard and why doesn't he have his own ship? No matter how you look at it, Silik's an inept idiot and the scene makes no sense.

Let's think big picture for a minute, too. Until Daniels expositions everything, nobody is quite sure what is going on except that they are in an altered past. Shouldn't the characters think twice before shooting *humans* and abandoning Trip and Wallpaper with their contaminating technology? *We* know there will be a Temporal Doodad with a reset button, but they don't, not until Daniels tells them. Every human killed could be generations worth of future ancestors paradoxed out of existence. Archer himself takes aim at some Nazis.

Stuff likes this makes our *main characters* look like idiots. They don't think about anything. They just react, stimulus response. Note that the Enterprise crew does jack -- no one seems to be doing anything productive, planning, analyzing, or working to solve the predicament. Why? Because Archer will show up and tell everyone what to do. They all have to wait around until that happens.

It's plot-by-numbers -- setting up the pieces and then writing around what's needed, without bothering to make sure any of it holds together. The explosion causes communication interference because we need Trip and Wallpaper to be captured. Silik really doesn't need Trip at all, except to exposition to him and appear cryptic and threatening.

I'm all for junking the Temporal Cold War in as short a time as possible. What I am not wild about is that instead of any sort of emotional catharsis from the Xindi season we get Evil Alien Nazis and time travel nonsense. We just completed a season unlike any in Star Trek and now we have completely disposable Reset Button episodes. The only thing that separates it from a schlocky Voyager episode is the lack of either holodecks or nanoprobes.

The episode has terrific visuals, decent acting, great pacing (except for deadly dull gun battles -- just what we all wanted to watch on Star Trek), and is a generally fun if eye-rolling ride. But, once the mystery of What Is Going On is solved -- heck, once we know we're in an altered timeline -- we know it's all essentially meaningless.

Like it or not, the Temporal Cold War has been a bad idea for three seasons. I guess it's only fitting it goes out in the same underbaked, nonsensical way it has shuffled along. However, even if you are handed a parting middle finger with the Evil Alien Nazis, that doesn't mean Enterprise and the viewers should be subjected to two more hours of pointless, plotless, characterless bubblegum.
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David
Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 5:21pm (UTC -6)
For resolution to the Xindi arc, you have to look no further than to the 3rd episode "Home". It's an excellent episode IMO.

Yes, they shouldn't have gone here for 2 episodes, but I always like alternate timeline episodes, exploring a "what if" scenario. The reasons for landing here were contrived, but what they did with it was pretty good.
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Ken
Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 6:33pm (UTC -6)
I don't mind "what if" situations, but I tire of these episodes that go into Earth's past, use Earth history on another world, and/or use the Nazi's. We had two Voyager episodes that were very similar to this one, and the original series also had an episode that dealt with the Nazi's.

Episodes like "Tapestry", "All Good Things..." and "The Visitor" do the "what if" scenario a lot better. You don't have to go into Earth's recent history and re-create a show about Alien Nazi's for the 4th time just to create exciting and impacting "what if" story at all. It just comes off as bland and formulaic.

What they should have done was found a way to deal with Future Guy instead, and just never introduced Vosk and his species at all. I just don't see the point. It would have cleaned up all of the lose ends of the TCW arc a lot better, and it may have made a more fulfilling episode. As is, I just don't care about it. It does not matter.
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Nebula Nox
Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 11:18pm (UTC -6)
I agree that the alternate realities feel meaningless ... but I don't understand why. It's not as if the non time travel Enterprise episode are any more real than the time travel episodes. None of them ever really happened.
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Teejay
Mon, Jul 15, 2013, 4:02am (UTC -6)
@ Auralgami: Travis=Wallpaper? That made me chuckle!

One other thing I'd like to point out: although the outside of the ship still looks like hell, the interior shots look like everything has been repaired. When did that happen?
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Kyle
Sun, Mar 9, 2014, 1:34am (UTC -6)
Really enjoy the perspectives in these reviews, but I find it a little odd that one would be looking for social commentary with such determination. If there is no discernible commentary, episode fail. I don't think that's what the series was attempting at all.
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John G
Sat, May 24, 2014, 5:22pm (UTC -6)
While I have gamely gone along with the series until now, this whole Nazi alien think just irks me. Waaaaaay to close to “Voyager”, and it wasn’t very good when “Voyager” did it, either.

One thing no one else has mentioned, a little to my surprise, is the fact that this “conduit” that supposedly is so important to the eeeeeevil aliens is being built in occupied New York. Huh? If it’s so crucial to their mission, why not build it in Germany itself, where it would presumably be much safer from attacks by partisans and the Resistance and where the local workforce is presumably rather more eager to build it? Also, if these guys can build all sorts of futuristic stuff with 20th century technology, if they really wanted to muck with the timeline, just build a few nukes for the Nazis (or offer to tell them how to do it) and the war is over. If they want to keep the Nazis on a leash, then only make a few low-yield ones, just enough to change the course of the war but not enough to end it overnight.

One angle on this that I would have loved to see get explored…if we *really* have to go the Nazi alien route, then make it turn out that Hitler or Goebbels really were aliens themselves all along. Maybe even go so far as to have the Manhattan Project be stuck and need covert help from “Enterprise” to get started…or even better, have the “Enterprise” inadvertently give them that help…and make it crucial to “our” history. Otherwise…meh, why should I care, knowing that the temporal reset button is just an episode away? This whole reset thing’s been done to death and is really getting old fast.

Really bummed…the series had been looking up for some time, but it’s taken a definite detour to the worse IMO.
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Snooky
Wed, Jul 16, 2014, 2:03am (UTC -6)
I groaned so loudly when the Nazis appeared. Alien Nazis, even. So silly. What a come down from the end of the Xindi war/sphere story. (And it really was unnecessary for the sphere race to also be mucking about in time.)

Having Nazis feels like such a cop out to me. So overdone. It was stale when TOS tackled it. It's low-hanging fruit because everyone hates Nazis.
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Peter
Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 3:47pm (UTC -6)
The light at the end of the tunnel is the prospect of the long overdue termination of the truly misconceived temporal cold war story non-arc that has so blighted this series.
Mind you FrankenDaniels is quite entertaining.
The huge downside to the fourth series of Enterprise which picks up tremendously after Stormfront is ,I am afraid, the dreadful final episode . I only watched about five minutes of it when it was first shown over here but I wanted to throw a Phaser 1 at the tv in anger even so.
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Joel
Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 2:20pm (UTC -6)
Star Trek Time Travel has become WAY too overdone. There's a right way and a wrong way to do it and going back to WW2 is definitely the wrong way.

The right way is to use computer graphics to insert the crew into earlier episodes of Star Trek TOS, the movies or TNG.

Going to the 20th Century is passable but ultimately unsatisfying. If we're going to explore earth's past, we ought to take a look at a portion of the alternate history that we've heard about but never seen. My vote would be a look at the Eugenics Wars.

But WW2? Nazis? A case of mistaken identity? Yawn. It was already too unbelievable when Kirk and Spock did it in the Original Series. And it hasn't gotten any better since.
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Yanks
Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:14pm (UTC -6)
Joel,

"But WW2? Nazis? A case of mistaken identity? Yawn. It was already too unbelievable when Kirk and Spock did it in the Original Series. And it hasn't gotten any better since."

Totally agree about the WWII thing... you'd think it was a right of passage or something... TOS did it, TNG did it, VOY did it... but I will say, as trek-WWII episodes go, this is the best one.
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Diamond Dave
Fri, May 13, 2016, 10:54am (UTC -6)
I think the biggest problem (as others have noted) is that the Temporal Cold War storyline has lost cohesion to the point that it is very difficult knowing what the heck is going on. Introducing the Vosk at this juncture adds another confusing plot line, and throwing in Silik for no obvious reason doesn't help. Of course Daniels is there to move the plot along - but when the plot is "destroy big alien machine to save the timeline" you can't help thinking that it's been done before. Only without Nazis. 2.5 stars.
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rose
Mon, Nov 14, 2016, 10:15am (UTC -6)
at least travis got kidnapped for a change and given more lines. lol
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Lupe
Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 3:27am (UTC -6)
I've missed out a lot of reviews for late season three eps; I'l try to catch up.

This isn't going to be very in-depth, and it can be taken to apply to both parts of this episode.

I think we're largely in agreement that season three turned a corner somewhere in its second half, and that the standard of the episodes in its last third, on average, was high. I'd say it seemed like a show that had finally found its feet. There is a scene in one of these episodes though, where Archer addresses the crew, and tells them that when this mission is over they can go back to doing what they did before. I understood what he meant, still it seemed to be an ominous reminder of how dismal things had become in season two. This was not what I wanted to return to after 'the mission'.

Well I can't say that this season four debut particularly reminds me of seasons one of two, but let's be honest, it's a considerable let-down. Freakin' alien time-travelling Nazis with the worst make-up seen on Trek since... when, actually? This whole two-parter was very mediocre. Come on, Manny - we know you can do better than this.
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Lupe
Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 3:52am (UTC -6)
Having said that, the end of part two does hopefully bring this temporal Cold War thing to a close, and in a way the final scene is the true end of season three.
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DDT
Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 9:57pm (UTC -6)
The only thing I hate more than Nazis are Star Trek Episodes with Nazis (with the exception of the Original Series one where they weren't actual Nazis from the past) I give this episode a Bonk Bonk on the Head.
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Rahul
Mon, Jul 24, 2017, 2:23pm (UTC -6)
Back to the Temporal Cold War story to start Season 4 -- which unfortunately means more confusion, paradoxes, nonsense, but also the basic plot of trying to stop 1 crazy person from doing something.

Lots of questions start getting answered as Part I unfolds -- there's the usual Archer being lucky not have been shot on multiple occasions. ENT has plenty of these kinds of scenes on different worlds, perhaps only fitting that it needed to be done with WWII era guns.

I guess I wonder how the grey-skinned aliens first allied with the Germans, but it is somewhat surreal to see how far Hitler got with the aliens' help.

I will give ENT credit for its big budget -- elaborate production. "Storm Front" got some decent guest actors as well.

But I'm hoping "Storm Front" is the end of the TCW -- it's a story arc that's dragged on (Daniels' makes yet another mystical appearance) for now 4 seasons. It's full of holes, plenty incoherent and definitely not worth trying to wrap your mind around.

Still, "Storm Front" was a decent hour of Trek entertainment ENT-style, but points have to be deducted for the implausibility of the premise and "why should I care" aspect of the episode. I think 2.5 stars is an appropriate rating. Part II is likely to be fairly predictable, but we shall see what twists are thrown in.
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Skiflo
Sun, Oct 1, 2017, 3:03am (UTC -6)
This is so much better than the other Nazi episodes of Star Trek.

The TOS one wasn't a time travelling episode, just one where a rogue Starfleet officer set up a Nazi regime on another planet and the Voyager one was on the holodeck. This is the only one that was actually during WWII. Not that that is what makes it better. Only providing information.

It was better because it was. That's why. So there.

I didn't really like the loan shark people. I could have done without them and just had some not so stereotypical characters instead.

But all in all a good episode.

3 stars from me.
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Thavash
Sun, Oct 8, 2017, 12:49pm (UTC -6)
Did anyone else get a "Quantum Leap" vibe from this one seeing Scott Bakula in a WW2 setting ?
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Nievesg
Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 3:12am (UTC -6)
I'm loving your excellent reviews, and the fact that comments are well tought and interesting, too!
I didn't watch ENT until 2017 and I love it.

Being a Doctor Who fan, I enjoyed the TCW, I can buy the paradoxes and even make some sense out of them: Daniels took them there because that's where Vosk started his timechanging career.
This means, stopping this Nazi timeconduit will correct all the Vosk-related timewar (I assume this American-Resistance timeline is started in the past of our world, but in the future of Vosk). Vosk must have been the main timewar enemy, according to Daniels, but not the only one.
This would explain why most timewar events are erased by destroying the Nazi timeconduit, but not all (i.e. the Xindi war still happened, and all Silik/Daniels encounters of the first ENT season remain unchanged, as Vosk wasn't involved).

Character construction is deeper at the next story "home" (specially the rare adult message "you can't always win, but you can stay strong and become an admirable man" just before and during the wedding).

Battlefront wasn't so deep, but it was enjoyable.
I loved the calm and solid charactee of Vosk, the alliance with Silik, and I am absolute fan of timetravel, WW II and mobster stories, so I found this episode fun!
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Josh
Sat, Jan 6, 2018, 11:05pm (UTC -6)
At this point, I am getting burned out by this constant string of overwrought conflicts forced on our heroes by bargain-basement villains. Dolim and his ridiculous costume. The Guardians. Now these alien Nazis. I hope Jammer's interpretation is right that this is the end of the interminable Temporal Cold War.

I really wanted to see some consequences to Archer's more questionable decisions in the expanse. What happened to the Illyrians? Forcing Hoshi to do some cryptography BS despite her "neurotrauma"? I guess that was not a big Dgiven she rushes to hug Archer when he returns to the bridge.

Jammer also unwittingly exposes a huge flaw in the episode when he talks about how the Nazi occupation forced Americans to band together and overcome their ethnic prejudices. Give me a break. If the Nazis did invade America, they would just as easily found collaborators who would be willing to do all the policing and ethnic cleansing and genocide, just like they had in Europe. This episode just pandered to American self-conceit by showing Nazis as solely foreign occupiers.
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Jasper
Sun, Dec 2, 2018, 4:16pm (UTC -6)
Hey Lily, welcome aboard Enterprise...uh, I mean...Alicia. Sorry, same concept, other timeline.
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NoPoet
Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 1:32pm (UTC -6)
Re-watched this after many, many years, and despite the obvious VFX budget hit which will continue to plague this season, I actually really enjoyed this one.

I'm glad the TCW is finally being resolved. Not resolved as in wrapped up neatly with explanations, shocking revelations and consequences, but as in "blown the shit out of with photon torpedoes", the only response modern audiences can understand!

I don't think Vosk was very well written or acted though. This was jarring after how good much of seaaon 3 was in those regards. And yet again, a chance at continuity or even just being a prequel are lost, because Vosk and his men aren't Reman, they just look like them. Why aren't they a breakaway faction from the future trying to escape Romukan oppression? (If you're going to use time travel you may as well go all in rather than bugger about with half-arsed nonsense that satisfies nobody and accomplishes nothing.)

My best friend has been watching Enterprise through and so far, he has failed to be impressed by almost anything. This isn't all the show's fault - he is extremely difficult to please - but his number one complaint these days is no longer that the show is boring, but that he doesn't understand why half the episodes need to happen. And in that, he's got a point. There is a shit-ton of filler, and ideas that simply should have been better thought out.

Still... I enjoyed Storm Front pt1 for what it was, an hour's mindless entertainment.
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spinalatte
Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 11:57pm (UTC -6)
If they do wrap up the time travel, then they need to start having holodeck malfunctions or the writers will not know what to do with themselves.
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The_Man
Fri, May 29, 2020, 9:39pm (UTC -6)
Tucker acting like an insubordinate and unprofessional idiot. He's comes completely unhinged and shows up his commanding officers. How is he command again?
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Cody B
Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 2:05am (UTC -6)
I read the description for this episode before I watched and I imagine I thought what most others thought if they first read the description. Oh boy, we got a dud. Well it’s not the best but I have to say they did as good of a job as can be expected with a story like that. In fact I’d provably give it three stars. If you ever watched Man In the High Castle and thought “I’d just love some Star Trek along with that Hitler” well wish no more. Can’t speak for part two as I haven’t saw it but this one manages to not be the disappointment that all but seemed guaranteed.
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Gail NYC
Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 6:13pm (UTC -6)
I enjoyed this one!

Thavash, this was just the latest in a string of episodes that I got a "Quantum Leap" vibe from. Whenever Archer wakes up in some strange new place or time and has to figure things out, I get that vibe. Happens a lot.

I could definitely have done without the Italian-American mob stereotypes, but other than that I thought it was fun.

Some of you are saying "Alien Nazi bad guys" like it was a BAD thing!
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Silly
Mon, Dec 7, 2020, 5:03pm (UTC -6)
Space Nazis. Oh how clever.

Coto should have wrapped up this hilariously cheap cliffhanger in the first five minutes with it being just some hallucinations or something. I know he got handed a cliche sandwich, but he didn’t have to eat it.
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Frake's Nightmare
Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 3:57pm (UTC -6)
And the question is: how come they only made 4 series ? and the answer is: every blessed episode of every blessed season......as if the last omnishambles was insufficient, well they've certainly trumped that.
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Jeffery's Tube
Thu, Jun 24, 2021, 9:00pm (UTC -6)
Total garbage. A story absolutely no one was asking to see. Who was this episode supposed to be for? Oh, that's right: Berman and Braga, who would rather be making ANYTHING other than Star Trek at this point. Well, they got their wish.

Enterprise got a lot of press about its fourth season and how it was going to be "for the fans" and finally focus on prequel ideas to TOS, and how there was a new showrunner now and that everything would be different since Manny Coto was in charge. And then people, who have been told (for the second year in a row now) that the show is going to be better and that it's going in a bold new direction, tune in excitedly for the season premiere and see . . . this.

One leftover EFF YOU from B&B (although not their final one, as we all know). Enterprise never had a damn chance.
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Davidw
Sun, Sep 3, 2023, 10:23pm (UTC -6)
Surprisingly entertaining nonsense. There's a certain suspense. Actual dialogue, and the seeds aren't rushed but there's a pace to the plot. I think Voyager had an episode in a hologram that was much more boring. Then of course there was Patterns of Force in TOS.

The main problem here is that the villain looks utterly ridiculous much like the Zindi.
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Michael Miller
Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 1:41pm (UTC -6)
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.
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Michael Miller
Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 1:55pm (UTC -6)
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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