...or Archer vs. the Space Nazis!
THE PLOT
The mission to stop the Xindi weapon has succeeded, but the Enterprise's ordeal is not over just yet. The ship has been taken back in time to 1944. But it's not the 1944 that should be. The Germans are in North America, with battles raging in Virginia. Brooklyn has been occupied. And somehow, Silik and the Suliban are involved.
Unbeknownst to Enterprise, Archer survived the destruction of the Xindi weapon and was thrown back in time as well. He awakens to find himself a prisoner of the Germans. Freed by the American Resistance, he recovers. As he figures out what has happened, he puts together a desperate plan to get history back on track so that he and his people can get back home.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: The grim Archer of Season Three remains intact for this 2-parter. "You've changed," Silik notes when Archer responds to his jibes with physical intimidation. "Not at all for the better," Archer agrees. The violence of his deeds during the Xindi arc seems to have become a part of his character now. It will be interesting to see how he deals with that, once he's no longer in the midst of such desperate situations.
Trip: Displays very understandable frustration when he realizes that they are not home. After 8 months in The Expanse, he had to be eager to return to Earth. It's refreshing that one of the characters actually shows a human response to the instant, crushing disappointment. It's also good that, after snapping at T'Pol on the bridge, Trip immediately finds T'Pol and privately apologizes for his outburst.
Silik: After sitting out the entirety of Season Three, Silik finally returns. I'm almost surprised how happy I was to see him back. As ever, Silik has his own agenda - one that seems to involve keeping the Enterprise crew alive. In his first enounter with Trip, he takes care to make sure Trip will survive before stealing the Enterprise shuttlepod. Later, he captures Trip (which amounts to moving the engineer from one cell to another one), but again makes sure that he remains alive and well. Given the nature of the episode's ending, I'm not sure whether we will see Silik again or whether we're done with him. Either way, he gets a decent turn, getting some good scenes with Archer. Actor John Fleck even gets to spend a fair amount of Part 2 without the extensive makeup job.
Villain of the Week: Jack Gwaltney is Vosk, the agent from the future. He is single-minded in pursuit of his goal, using the Nazis essentially as a supply line for himself while stringing them along with promises of superior weaponry. When his lieutenant wonders why he doesn't simply provide the promised weapons, he pragmatically replies that he has no intention of supplying the Nazis with weapons that they could in turn use against him.
THOUGHTS
Enterprise kicks off its final season with a 2-parter that takes its cues from the well-worn premise of, "What if the Nazis had won the war?" Thankfully, it throws in some interesting turns. One is that while this is an alternate history, the Nazis haven't actually won. More to the point, they don't appear likely to. With Vosk deliberately withholding the future weaponry he has promised the Reich, the Nazis find themselves facing a counterattack that seems likely to defeat them after all. This new version of history may result in an entirely different future, if it were allowed to stand... but that future would not be a Nazi one, because even in this history, they lose. This makes for a neat twist to a cliched premise. I also really enjoyed the newsreel that opens Part 2, an extremely well-done bit that segues into the main titles beautifully.
Storm Front is fast-paced and enjoyable, but it squanders its potential to be anything more than a fun romp. The first half delivers a couple of strong dramatic scenes. There's a memorable moment that's right out of any number of Holocaust movies, with Nazis pulling people of ethnic descent out of their homes and into trucks, and shooting one man who attempts to resist. In another scene, Archer is walking along the street, talking with Alicia (Golden Brooks), a Resistance leader who also happens to be a black woman. Both of them are subject to some jeers from some German soldiers, who try to provoke Archer and tell him that if he likes the company of black women then they'll allow him to accompany Alicia "when we send her back to Africa."
Moments such as these genuinely provoke a response, and make me wonder how effective this 2-parter might have been if the Nazis were treated as a serious threat throughout. By Part 2, they've been relegated to the status of cartoon stormtroopers, and the dramatic effectiveness of the "Nazis occupying Brooklyn" scenario is replaced with generic action set pieces. It's goofy fun, in a "B" movie sort of way, but it's fair to say that it's a bit of a comedown after the excellence of the last chunk of the Xindi arc.
The ending seems to imply that this marks the end of the Temporal Cold War. If so, it's not much of an ending, answering virtually none of the questions raised in previous episodes (Who is Future Guy? What is Silik's agenda? What was the ultimate goal anyway?)... but at least it's entertaining. I do hope there's better to come, but as a bit of featherweight "action movie" nonsense after the heaviness of the previous season, this wasn't at all bad.
Rating: 7/10.
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