I just read that Brannon Braga and Rick Berman stepped back from Enterprise at the end of Season Three, leaving relative newcomer Manny Coto as the show runner for Season Four. I'm anxious to see if, with B&B gone, Coto was able to right any of the many wrongs B&B had introduced to this franchise-killing show, even if too late to save it.
Before he could do any good, however, Coto had to sort out the mess B&B left him with in the form of an ill-conceived, ridiculously delivered alien Nazi story line that served as the cliff-hanger at the end of Season Three. For that matter, Coto also had to find a way to extricate the show from the time-travel addiction it had developed under B&B.
So I will try to give Enterprise (and Coto) a bit of a pass for the monstrosity that is "Storm Front".
Okay, maybe I can't. "Storm Front" is so remarkably bad, even for Enterprise, that some comment is required. And I mean bad in terms of Star Trek, bad in terms of science fiction, bad in terms of television drama and bad in terms of historical accuracy.
I can honestly say that, in my humble opinion, "Storm Front" is as poor a representation of Star Trek as the worst episodes of Season Three of TOS. And that's saying something. It is an insult to the loyal Star Trek fandom and, if anyone with half a brain was still watching Enterprise after the first three seasons, this two-part debacle must have driven them fully and finally away.
First, a mea culpa. I erred in writing in my last post about the alien-Nazi cliff-hanger that brought Season Three to a close. I did not realise that Enterprise had moved back in time all the way to the 1940s -- when Mayweather and Tucker flew over San Francisco, they commented that it looked like the San Fran they knew. Despite the sudden appearance of P51 fighters, I took their comment to mean that somehow the timeline had been changed to the extent that Earth never progressed passed World War II, which continued into the 21st Century. I was wrong.
At the start of "Storm Front", Enterprise finds herself back in 1944 but things are very different: the north-east part of the U.S. is under Nazi occupation, Europe and most of Russia too. Yep, another time travel story and this one more ridiculous even than the earlier ones.
Archer, believed dead by his colleagues, is in the hands of the Nazis but, as he is moved from one prison location to another, the American underground attacks the convoy and rescues/captures the Enterprise captain for themselves. Meanwhile, the crew on Enterprise is trying to figure out where and when they are and how they got there. A badly mutilated Crewman Daniels suddenly shows up in the sick bay and T'Pol, recognising that he must have something to do with it, desperately tries to communicate with him before he dies.
On Earth, Archer wakes to find himself in the care of Alicia Travers, a kind African-American woman who turns out to be the maternal force behind the New York underground. New York is under Nazi occupation and its former street gangs and organized crime organizations are now waging a guerrilla war of their own. Through her gang connections, Travers helps set up a meeting for Archer with an alien operative who is working with the Nazis. Archer finds out that the aliens represent another faction in the Temporal Cold War and are trapped in the past. They have joined forces with the Nazis so that they can gain access to the materials necessary to build a time conduit that will permit them to return to their century and win the TCW.
Meanwhile, back on Enterprise, the Suliban commander, Silik, has made an appearance and stolen a shuttle pod. Enterprise pursues and shoots the pod down but, when Tucker and Mayweather beam down to retrieve the pod, it is too badly damaged and must be blown up instead. The two Enterprise crewmen are then captured by the Nazis.
Archer confiscates the alien's communications device while the local gangster shoots the alien dead. Archer manages to contact Enterprise in time for him and Travers to beam up just as they are captured by the Nazis.
Surprise surprise. Archer enjoys a brief joyous homecoming, then heads to Sick Bay for a chat with Daniels, who has held on just long enough. Daniels tells Archer that he sent Enterprise back to 1944 because a crazy alien named Vosk is there, manipulating the timeline in a mad effort to win the TCW outright, which might just succeed. Vosk, you see, isn't really on anyone's side in the TCW -- he just doesn't believe in the Temporal Accords and thinks anyone should be able to time travel whenever he or she wants and change time in any way possible. This is all well and good because Vosk himself is about the only person who seems to be in a position to master time travel so that he can use it with exact precision for his own advantage.
Daniels tells Archer that only he can stop Vosk and that, if he fails, it means the end of all time entirely. (cue dramatic music).
Archer and Travers enjoy several moments that are basically stolen from First Contact, wherein Picard and Lily do basically the same dance. Travers then asks to be sent back to New York so that she can continue to work with the resistance.
Vosk contacts Enterprise and asks for a meeting. Archer complies, in exchange for the return of his two missing crew, and the meeting goes down well. Vosk tries to convince Archer of the rightness of his cause and to obtain access to Enterprise's technology to complete his time conduit.
Archer asks for time to think and returns to his ship with his rescued crewmembers. There, Phlox is on the ball enough to realise that Tucker is actually Silik in disguise and Archer is able to capture the Suliban and put him in the brig. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the real Tucker manages to escape the alien Nazis and hide himself in their facility.
Silik has stolen data on the alien installation which proves invaluable as Archer and his crew plan an assault to destroy it before Vosk can return to his time and win the TCW. Silik agrees to help: he stands as firmly against Vosk as Archer does. Archer and Silik (now disguised as 21st Century actor John Flek) return to New York where they enlist the aid of Travers and her gang for a frontal assault on the alien compound. They need to get into the facility to knock out its shield so that Enterprise can then fly in and blow it to pieces with a couple of well placed "photonic torpedoes". Enterprise has to be close enough for visual aiming since its targeting scanners are damaged.
Travers' gang overwhelms the Nazi guards and Archer and Silik infiltrate far enough into the facility to knock out the shields. Enterprise starts its run. Silik is shot by the last human Nazi standing and dies an honourable death; Tucker emerges and only decides against shooting Archer (he at first believes that, since Archer is dead, the man standing in front of Tucker must be Silik) when Archer shows him the real Suliban, lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
Meanwhile, Vosk and his six compatriots have completed their time conduit and brought it online. As it warms up, Vosk orders his special squadron to launch and attack Enterprise to stop her from torpedoing the facility before Vosk and his pals can leave.
The squadron turns out to be about 100 Stuka dive bombers, armed with particle weapons. Enterprise, however, shrugs them off as Archer and his pals flee the site. Enterprise's torpedoes hit home, Vosk screams his dying breath in frustration and Archer finds himself in a strange place with a healthy Daniels, who assures him the time line is fully repaired and everything is as it should be.
Archer then tells Daniel to return him and his ship to its proper time and to leave them the hell alone, now and forever. Cut to Enterprise appearing in normal space some distance from Earth, greeted first by radio traffic from the usual Earth outposts and then by a massive fleet of star ships representing a variety of races.
Okay. That's the plot. On to the problems. And there are many many problems.
The episode explains that the timeline has been changed in two ways: 1) someone assassinated Lenin in 1916, resulting in a failure of the October Revolution in 1917, which meant that the Soviet Union never formed and Russia was never considered a threat to Hitler, meaning he could focus on the Western Front until Britain fell; and 2) Vosk and his (6) mates arrived from the future in 1942 and took up with the Nazis, providing them with unidentified kinds of help that enabled Germany to solidify its grip on Europe and launch an assault on the U.S.
I am not a historian nor do I have any significant knowledge of the people and events involved in the formation of the Soviet Union but I very much doubt that the elimination of one of the seven key figures in the October Revolution would be sufficient to derail the Revolution entirely. I know that many elements associated with Enterprise have long held that a single individual can be critical to massive movements in history (certainly they feel Archer, and only Archer, makes the Federation happen) but, even if Lenin were assassinated by persons unknown in 1916, it is highly unlikely that the October Revolution would never happen as a result.
I have, however, studied the Second World War to some extent and I do not buy the argument that, if it were Czarist Russia rather than the Soviet Union on Hitler's eastern flank, he would not have felt the need to invade her after losing the Battle of Britain. From what I understand, Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union was not simply a matter of feeling vulnerable -- he did not feel he could successfully invade Britain unless he had air superiority over the island nation and, in the Battle, his air force failed miserably at wiping out the RAF and winning such superiority. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in part because the Western Front was closed to him.
By the time Vosk and his mates had shown up at his door in 1942, Hitler would already have been mired in a war on the Eastern Front and would not likely have defeated Britain.
Then comes the question of the invasion of the United States. Hitler's armies were already showing the strain of occupying much of Europe, carrying on a war in Russia and fighting Britain and her allies in Africa. His forces were stretched awfully thin.
Even if we overcome the challenge of getting his armies across the Atlantic Ocean in sufficient strength to invade the heavily populated North Eastern U.S. (and nothing in the show suggests that Vosk and his mates were even remotely capable of helping them accomplish this feat), where did Nazi Germany get the manpower and material to carry out the invasion and occupy the areas they conquered?
And how did they overcome a U.S. army, navy and air force that, even in peace time, posed a formidable battle force?
On a more detailed level, what is this about Stukas forming Vosk's treasured special squadron? Stukas? In 1944? Are you kidding me? Stukas had a top speed of just over 200 mph and, by the Battle of Britain, had proven a significant liability in most air operations, sitting ducks for fighter air craft that were not remotely as fast or well armed as the P51s, P47s, P38s, Hell Cats, Corsairs and other fighter aircraft of the U.S. armed forces later in the war.
Why would Vosk choose the Stuka for his advanced weapons? Where would he get them? Why wouldn't he focus instead on helping the promising jet experiments that led to the launch of the ME 262 in 1943? With Vosk's help, the Nazi jet program could have leapt years ahead and might even have made a difference in the outcome of the war.
I also wonder why Vosk would choose to build his facility in the U.S., where the Nazi's are still involved in a bitter battle for control and reign supreme over only a small part of the continent, rather than in Europe where complete Nazi domination would have meant his facility was fairly safe. I mean, let's face it, a group of thugs with pistols and rifles manage to overwhelm the security around Vosk's New York facility -- why would he take that risk?
Can a ship of Enterprise's size, weight and design really fly through Earth's atmosphere at a speed as low as 200 kph? I'm actually asking that question: I don't know and am honestly interested.
Why create the spectre of Vosk's special squadron and then have them be so remarkably ineffective against Enterprise?
On the time travel side, since when did Daniels weild the power to move an entire starship back in time? In all other situations, he's moved a single person, perhaps two. Why now, even as he's dying, is he able to move Enterprise and Archer in separate but apparently concurrent transactions?
And how did he transport Archer from the Xindi weapon and Enterprise from out in space at the same time?
And why didn't he put Archer on Enterprise when he moved them both?
Any why did he put Archer and Enterprise in 1944, hours before Vosk completes his time conduit, and not in 1942, just before Vosk arrives and begins his interference? Talk about creating unnecessary pressure!
Why does Vosk only bring six people with him? Why does he not bring any stuff with him? He brings his communicators and some other little bits of technology but he makes it clear that he is dependent on the technology and materials of 1940s Earth to build his time conduit. Why?
And when Archer and Enterprise succeed, how is that Daniels is already back and alive to show Archer the time line repairing itself when it is clearly repairing itself from beginning to end in chronological order (note the images on floating around them), yet Daniels comes from the 28th Century or so? Wouldn't the repair of Daniels have to wait? How could he possibly be there to witness the timeline's repair when he is at the end of it?
And when Archer and Enterprise are returned to their proper place and time, why is Enterprise still damaged? Weren't the Xindi assault on Earth and everything that follows also part of the contamination of the timeline that should have been repaired?
I also can't figure out how Earth manages to gather a multi-species fleet of space vessels to greet Enterprise when her return is so unexpected yet doesn't have a single star ship on patrol to intercept the Xindi weapon when it makes its expected appearance.
Oh, there are so many. so very many problems with this episode, I have only begun to scratch the surface.
"Storm Front" is an awful pair of episodes. If there were any intelligent people still watching Enterprise at the start of Season Four, this debacle must have sent them screaming for their remotes.
The only thing remotely redeeming in this 84-minute nightmare of television making is that Coto actually had two of his characters say exactly what the remaining audience was thinking:
Tucker blows up at T'Pol in the first five minutes, expressing his frustration that, after the long Xindi trial, he expected to be able to sit back and rest on his laurels for a while, not worrying about time travelling and all that;
Archer blows up at Daniels, telling that, now that the Temporal Cold War is over and done with, he never wants to hear from Daniels or his time agents ever again.
And I think everyone still watching Enterprise offered a heart-felt amen to that.
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