4-01, 4-02. Storm Front.

...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.

Previous Episode: Zero Hour

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2-26. The Expanse.

THE PLOT

An alien probe drops into Earth's orbit, cutting a thick line of destruction that runs from Florida to Venezuala. Enterprise is recalled to Earth to help study the situation.

Their trip back home is interrupted by a visit from the Suliban. Silik takes Archer aboard his ship for a meeting with his contact from the future, who tells Archer that the attack was orchestrated by a rival and carried out by an alien race known as the Xindi. Archer persuades Admiral Forrest to let him chase this lead into an area of space known as the Delphic Expanse. But the Vulcan Ambassador, Soval, warns Archer that previous expeditions into the Expanse have resulted in horrors, and urges him against this course - at the same time ordering T'Pol to leave Enterprise and return to Vulcan for reassignment!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: I've commented in earlier reviews how well Scott Bakula plays anger. Here, we have an episode in which Archer is on a slow burn through the entire run. He isn't actively shouting at people, but there's a definite tension in him in pretty much every scene, even the quieter moments. When Duras continues to attack Enterprise late in the episode, Archer is less inclined to talk and more inclined to resort to his ship's upgraded weaponry than he normally would be - which, along with his vow to Trip to do "whatever is necessary" once inside the Expanse, points to an Archer who's going to be even more volatile than usual in Season Three.

T'Pol: Put in the position of having to decide between her loyalty to the Vulcan High Command and her loyalty to Archer. Previous episodes leave very little doubt as to what choice she will make, but this is where she finally has to choose one, and let the other door close - probably forever.

Trip: Of the three leads, Trip is by far the most human, so it makes sense that he will be the one to have lost somebody in the attack. He gets a couple of very effective scenes with Reed, a quiet one in which he stands at the edge of the crater that was once his home and recalls where his sister's house and the town movie theater were while staring out into nothing, and an angry one in which he snaps at Reed when the other man encourages him to have a memorial service. He can't have such a service - not because of the lack of a body or because his sister "wasn't much into" such things, but because he's not ready to move on. This could lead Trip in an interesting direction in future episodes.

Dr. Phlox: He doesn't share the human characters' emotional reaction to the attack, nor does he have to make any substantial choice as T'Pol does. He stays because he's the ship's doctor, and he knows he will be needed. There's no other pull on his loyalties, so it is not a difficult decision. We do see his loyalty to the ship and his medical ethics when he reacts with evident anger to the Vulcan psychiatrist who is trying to examine Archer under false pretenses in Phlox's sickbay - in many ways, the inverse of the situation Phlox found himself facing in Stigma. He also has a quietly excellent scene with T'Pol, a conversation which pushes T'Pol further toward the decision we all know she will end up making.


THOUGHTS

Enterprise's second season comes to an explosive and surprising climax. I had heard that the second season finale was a change of direction for the too-often directionless series, and this episode certainly lives up to that reputation.

The Expanse opens with a probe dropping into Earth's orbit and cutting a swath of destruction with no warning and no reason given. The casualty figures start high (around a million) and are revised upward throughout the episode. The action takes place over a matter of months, as the regulars prepare for a mission completely unlike the one they have been carrying out. One major character is forced to make a choice about where her loyalties lie, another is given a trauma that will likely impact his future actions. It's the kind of episode that recalls Commander Sinclair's line at the end of Babylon 5's first season finale: "Nothing's the same anymore."

The Expanse works as a change of direction for the series, in that it creates a situation which cannot be simply "gotten over" in an episode or two. Short of going back in time to prevent the attack from ever having taken place (and I will take back every sympathetic word I've ever written about Berman and Braga if that ends up being the resolution), there is no way to hit the "reset" button on this situation. At the same time, it builds on many of the series' ongoing tensions. The Suliban and the Temporal Cold War are touched upon, as are the relations with the Klingsons and the Vulcans. It's not just a shift in direction, it's a shift in direction that uses what has gone before, leaving it all still feeling like part of the same series.

Equally important, it's a genuinely good piece of television. All of the major actors are given at least one scene, with only the terminally underused Hoshi and Mayweather given nothing to do. CGI work is excellent, from the opening attack to the edge of the abyss against which Trip stands while giving Reed a "tour" of his home town, to the expanse itself. The script is well-structured, with the quieter character scenes interspersed with a nicely ominous build-up about The Expanse itself, and some Klingon shenanigans on-hand to provide some action.

This is an episode where pretty much everything works, and I would point to this and Cogenitor being my only "10's" of the season as a suitable response to the "Berman/Braga are the devil!" hysteria within Trek fandom. They have their faults as showrunners, but they remain good television writers, something that fandom seems far too eager to forget far too often.


Rating: 10/10.

Previous Episode: Bounty

Next Episode: The Xindi

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1-26, 2-1. Shockwave.

The first season ends and the second season begins with this eventful 2-parter.


THE PLOT

It's a fairly typical first contact situation, one that is by now more or less familiar to both Enterprise and the viewers. Archer is preparing to make first contact with an alien colony, which has some vague similarities to 20th century Earth with some mild cultural reversals (it's a matriarchal society where the men are only just beginning to attain equal rights). Archer leads an Away Team to go down to the surface to make contact, and we're all set for a fairly typical, potentially preachy, likely mediocre standalone episode...

Then disaster strikes, as an accident causes the shuttlepod to apparently ignite the atmosphere, destroying the colony and wiping out its more than 3,000 inhabitants!

Enterprise now faces a recall by Starfleet, with the Vulcans advising that its mission be canceled, with the humans waiting at least another 10 - 20 years before attempting such a mission again.  It appears that the Vulcans have finally gotten what they've wanted from the beginning: Humanity cowed into staying in their own solar system. Archer is too wracked by guilt over the accident to protest.

Then he receives an unexpected visitor: Daniels (Matt Winston), the time traveler apparently killed by Silik, returns to inform Archer that this accident never occurred in the proper, "prime" timeline.  It was the work of the Suliban, attempting to sabotage Enterprise's mission. Daniels gives Archer all the information he needs to retrieve evidence to clear Enterprise. However, unexpected developments leave Archer's ship at the mercy of the Suliban, and prompt Daniels to action which destroys the entire 800 years from Archer's mission to Daniels' present.

It's the end of the world as they knew it. So what do they do now?


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: He's spent all of the first season gradually learning (and sometimes forgetting) lessons about responsibility and consequences. Now, the moment a lot of viewers have probably been waiting for seems to occur: a moment of carelessness causes a catastrophe. Archer keenly feels the guilt, which is compounded when he hears that this incident will be used as an excuse to delay humanity's progress. He briefly allows himself to be paralyzed by that, to an extent that is probably unbecoming in a commanding officer. 

Once given a way to fight, Archer throws himself into that fight with all the energy and enthusiasm at his disposal. When all seems lost, he takes the lead to prompt Daniels to find a way to salvage the situation. By Part 2, Archer seems to finally be growing into his leadership role. Broken Bow Archer was resourceful, but careless and too quick to judge the people under his command. The Archer of Shockwave (particularly Part 2) confidently takes charge of a dire situation and uses the skills of his people to turn a horrible situation to his advantage.

T'Pol: Given her initial adversarial relationship with Archer, it is quite pleasing to see how fully she has grown into the role of his second-in-command. When Archer allows himself to wallow in guilt, T'Pol is the one to try to pull him out of it, insisting that he needs to mount a defense for his command. In Broken Bow, Archer was constantly suspicous of T'Pol, and hated the idea of her taking command of the ship. In this episode, he yields command to her with absolute confidence - which she repays by the competence with which she commands the ship and crew.

Silik: The slimy Suliban's third appearance is, perhaps, a comedown from his triumph in Cold Front. He's less confident here, more clearly a lackey to his mysterious superior from the future. However, the character becomes more rounded, in a way. He seems fully in control when engaging Archer and the Enterprise crew on his terms. But when he is cut off from "Future Guy," he all but falls apart. He spends most of Part 2 snapping at his own lackeys while desperately trying to re-establish connection with his "benefactor." At one point, he is literally on his knees begging for this man from the future to appear to tell him what to do. Far from the sinister man in control of all he surveys, Silik is almost like a child, pleading for a father to guide him, to show him what his destiny should be. It makes him less powerful, but in some ways more interesting. I wonder what might be expected from his next appearance.

Ambassador Soval: He seems to almost revel in the opportunity to cut short Enterprise's mission, insisting on the ship's recall even when Archer has proved his ship's innocence. Most interesting is that he doesn't seem very interested in the destruction of the colony. He doesn't inquire for more details about the Cabal.  He isn't even mildly intrigued at the "Temporal Cold War," even though by the end of this 2-parter, there is a fair amount of evidence of its existence. In fact, when Archer tries to elaborate on these areas, Soval firmly brings the discussion back to Enterprise's mistakes and disruptions.

I can't help but wonder if Soval might be in league with the Cabal. This 2-parter touches again on the enhanced Sulibans' ability to shape-shift. Do we know for certain that Soval is a Vulcan? Could an enhanced member of the Cabal have taken Soval's place, to influence events? Soval has behaved in a very un-Vulcan manner on multiple occasions (an emotional outburst in the pilot, a decidedly emotional exit in this episode). I'm sure my musings are far off the mark - but there is definitely something going on, if not with the Vulcans in general than at least with Soval in particular.


THOUGHTS

As befits any season climax, Shockwave is a big episode, with a story that literally spans 1,000 (well, 800) years. There are multiple battle scenes, chases, escapes, time travel, post-Apocalyptic landscapes... It's about two steps away from being Enterprise: The Movie. With a fast pace and plenty of incident, the 90 minutes of this 2-parter go by very, very quickly.

Pretty much every character gets a moment to shine. Though the bulk of the action goes to Archer and T'Pol, the supporting cast also get their moments. Trip and Hoshi work surreptitiously to free the command crew to retake the ship. Dr. Phlox provides key assistance in this, and also displays a refreshingly different perspective on Enterprise's recall.  Reed discovers key evidence in the initial accident and undertakes the least pleasant, but most necessary, part of the escape from the Suliban. Everyone gets a page.

Well, everyone except Mayweather, who, as per usual, largely sits around like set dressing. By this point, it must have been clear to all and sundry that his was the one character that truly didn't fit. Cutler (R. I. P., Kellie Waymire) was in exactly three episodes, and she feels more like an intrinsic part of the crew than Mayweather! So why didn't the producers take the opportunity of a season finale to jettison this useless character? The Suliban attack on Enterprise would give a perfect opportunity to do some house-cleaning. Why renew Anthony Montgomery's contract for another season of Mayweather, when by this point it's clear that the writers have no intention of even trying to do anything interesting with the character?

Ah, well. It's a good 2-parter, with some excellent visual effects, well-directed action pieces, and a handful of rather good character scenes in the bargain. As is almost always the case, Part 1 is stronger than Part 2, but the two parts together form a coherent and satisfying whole. It's no Best of Both Worlds, but it is a very satisfying piece, effectively tying off the first season while hopefully raising the stakes a bit for Season Two.


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: Two Days and Two Nights
Next Episode: Carbon Creek

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1-11. Cold Front

THE PLOT

The Enterprise encounters an alien ship carrying a group of pilgrims. They are traveling to a stellar nursery, in order to view The Great Plume of Agosoria, which they associate with the beginning of the universe. Archer invites them aboard, granting them a tour, as they all wait for the Plume. The tour takes an unexpected turn when a plasma storm nearly destroys the Enterprise. Only the disconnection of a conduit before the storm saves the ship... a disconnection that was not performed by any member of the engineering crew.

The mystery deepens when Archer is told by Crewman Daniels (Matt Winston), that the crewman is actually an agent from the distant future, here to stop the Suliban from changing history during the Temporal Cold War. The Suliban, Silik (John Fleck), whom Archer had encountered back in the Pilot, has infiltrated the pilgrims. Daniels enlists Archer's aid to find Silik - but Silik may be one step ahead of both of them...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: Silik raises a very good point, in his confrontations with Archer in this episode. Archer rushes to trust Daniels, with very little evidence to indicate that he should. Is it simply that Daniels appears human, and Silik appears... Well, sort of scaly and creepy and lizard-like? Archer shouldn't trust either of these characters as far as he can throw them, and yet he almost instantly takes Daniels' side. This, along with his issues with the Vulcans, may point to a buried streak of xenophobia in the captain (which, as with his other flaws, would be interesting to see genuinely explored).

It is interesting that he recalls that on their first meeting, Silik tried to kill him. That's actually only partially true. Silik was initially completely disinterested in Archer. He only tried to kill the captain when Archer made it clear that he knew more than he should. Archer was there; he should remember that at least as well as I do. Archer's selective memory here is interesting. Also, and I know I've said it before, but his impulsiveness and his insistence on trusting people he has no particular reason to trust... This *needs* to blow up in his face, and soon.

T'Pol: Her skepticism about Daniels' time travel claim is refreshing, and raises a good point. Daniels showed Archer a fancy light show with technology far in advance of humanity's. On the other hand, as T'Pol and Trip point out, they've already seen plenty of technology far in advance of humanity's. Nothing they've seen proves that Daniels is from the future - a point both Trip and T'Pol seem to agree on (and which Archer, in typical fashion, ignores).

Trip: In addition to actually agreeing with T'Pol's caution on this occasion, Trip gets an amusing moment during the tour. His assumption that these pilgrims must be simple folk, and that the Enterprise's engineering system must be beyond their understanding, gets turned on its head when it turns out that several of the pilgrims know as much - probably more - about warp systems than he does. Yet another reminder that the technology that still impresses the humans is old hat to many of the aliens they encounter.

Villain of the Week: Silik the Suliban returns, and he's still creepy. I enjoyed his attempts to reason with Archer. He does have a point: We do not, at this point, actually know that Silik represents "the wrong side." We're led to assume this, because of the events of the Pilot. But it's entirely possible that Daniels represents the "wrong side," and that Silik - while certainly motivated by self interest - may actually be the lesser of two evils. Even Archer acknowledges that they know nothing about Daniels, even at the end. And when Archer prevents Silik from ultimately completing the last bit of his mission, Silik's last words to him are to hiss that Archer may have imperiled his own future. Why should Silik bother? Why not just get out of there? Maybe Silik is telling the truth... or at least, believes that he is.


THOUGHTS

For the second disc in a row, we have a mediocre episode and a downright bad episode followed by a very strong installment that promises even more interesting things to come.

I'm feeling more convinced than ever that this show would have benefitted from shorter seasons, to cut out the filler. Can you imagine the first part of this season running something like this?

Broken Bow
Fight or Flight
Strange New World
Breaking the Ice
The Andorian Incident
Cold Front

That would be probably the strongest and most interesting start of any Trek spinoff, ever. Unfortunately, pointless filler episodes keep intruding to gum up the works. Instead of 26 episode seasons, 13 to 16 episode seasons would have served this show far better.

Ah, well. At least this was a good one. The Temporal Cold War comes up for the first time since Broken Bow. There, it was fancy window dressing for an otherwise fairly typical Trek plot. Here, it is the plot. Archer is given one bit of information, then another bit of entirely conflicting information, and ends the episode knowing possibly even less than when he started. He does know now that cold warriors from the future have an unhealthy interest in Enterprise... or does he?

I keep coming back to the doubts expressed by T'Pol and Trip. They raise a good point. All the proof Archer (or we) have of a Temporal Cold War stems from two different guys claiming to be from the future and one of them showing Archer a light show. What if there is no Temporal Cold War? Silik's superior could easily be from a more advanced current race, using technology and genetic upgrades to lie to the Suliban for reasons of his own. Similarly, Daniels - aware that Archer has encountered Silik, and guessing that Archer has been told of the "Temporal Cold War" - could be simply telling Archer a convenient lie to enlist his aid. Just because two different people on opposite sides have told Archer the same thing, that doesn't make the thing they told him true.

The episode is directed with quite a bit of visual flair. Silik makes his escape from the Enterprise in a moment that looks like it belongs on the big screen, not the small. The light show Daniels shows Archer is impressive... as is the The Great Plume, for that matter. Finally, I loved the final shot of the episode, leaving us with the image of the seal on Daniels' locked quarters. The open ending has left us with more questions than answers, and a sense of ominous things to come - which, at this point in an arc, is exactly as it should be.


Rating: 8/10. Good stuff.

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