4.02: Storm Front (part II)

Dave

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With the help of Silik the Suliban, Archer hones in on the temporal operative who altered Earth's past and threatens to destroy all of time.

Written by Manny Coto and continues on directly from part I.
 
I thought that I was giving Ray plenty of time to get his review in first this time…

from The Trek Nation
Plot Summary: As Hitler arrives in New York, the Nazi general headquartered in the White House demands the squadron promised to him by the aliens and is informed that if he is not more accommodating, he and his people may be erased from history. In private Vosk concedes that he does not trust his Nazi allies. The aliens have realized that Tucker and Mayweather are not temporal agents, but they don't believe their presence on Earth in this era could be an accident. On Enterprise, Alicia begs Archer to bomb Berlin with his ship's weapons, but he insists that this is not the way to defeat their common enemy and asks for her help in finding his missing crewmembers.

Vosk contacts Enterprise, telling Archer that he will hand over Mayweather and Tucker if Archer will agree to meet with him. After beaming a rather battered pair of Enterprise crewmen back aboard, the captain listens to Vosk's plea for assistance as Vosk insists that Daniels and his people manipulate the timeline just as shamelessly as he does and they have agendas as well. If Archer will help him, Vosk promises, he will set Earth history as it was before any temporal agents began to interfere. Back in sickbay, Archer begins to tell Tucker about the conduit and the temporal shield when a glimpse of Phlox's readout reveals to him that "Tucker" is not human; he struggles and fights with Silik, who has taken Tucker's form to sneak a disc of schematics of Vosk's facility aboard the only vessel present that could carry Silik into the future.

Vosk contacts Archer, telling him that a thief from Archer's era has stolen data belonging to him and that he is prepared to fire a plasma cannon at Enterprise to retrieve it. Archer refuses to make a deal, returning fire with phase cannons, but Enterprise is damaged. T'Pol discovers that the crew cannot pinpoint the location of the conduit, nor can they disable Vosk's shields from orbit. Silik tells Archer that although he has no interest in saving the life of the man whose form he took to escape from Earth, he does not want Vosk to succeed in completing the conduit and will help Archer sneak into the facility where the device is being constructed so that Archer can place a homing beacon for Enterprise. Alicia recruits mobsters in the American resistance movement to help Archer and Silik get past the Nazis guarding the building.

Vosk makes a speech about how temporal manipulation will allow his people to perfect themselves, then prepares to use the finished conduit to reach the 29th century. When he learns that the facility has been breached, he breaks the alliance between the aliens and the Germans and sends his enhanced squadron of jets, originally promised to the Nazis, to fight off Enterprise, which has entered the atmosphere to blow up the facility after honing in on the signal Archer has planted. But ionization in the atmosphere is blocking Archer's communications with the ship, and Silik is shot and killed by the Nazis. Just afterward, Archer finds Tucker, who has escaped from the corridor where Silik left him. The two return to the ship, where Archer orders Reed to fire on the facility. It blows up just as Vosk enters the conduit, killing him.

Daniels, who is alive and healthy again, shows Archer the timeline resetting, but Archer is unimpressed, begging to be sent back to his own era and to have his crew left out of the temporal cold war. He and his crew can see Earth on the viewscreen but they are uncertain which era they have entered until signals start coming in, and dozens of friendly spacecraft approach Enterprise.
This episode had a lot of problems to solve from part I and it did clear up a few things:

Silik was actually on our side, so that was why he helped Trip.

In fact, it was good that he had been taking such an interest while aboard the Enterprise, because otherwise he would never have known that Trip believed Archer was dead. Then when he impersonated Trip it would have been obvious as soon as Archer collected him.

The Timeline was actually altered back in 1916 by the assassination of Lenin. The Bolsheviks did not seize power in Russia, and instead the Mensheviks were not such an ideological threat to Nazi Germany. Germany never invaded Russia and so could concentrate on their Western front. I’m not a historian so I don’t know how likely that scenario is, but who altered the timeline back in 1916 was never explained.

Actually, nothing about the ‘Temporal Cold War’ was explained. Was Daniels really a good guy? Vosk begged to differ on that. Who was the man in the shadows that controlled the Suliban? Was that Vosk? Why was ‘everything’ reset back again, when Enterprise had seemingly been a very small part of a much, much larger conflict. Did the ‘Xindi War Arc’ not take place now? Is Trip’s sister still alive? Does Archer still "owe" Shran? Why were the Sphere Builders involved? Did I fall asleep during several episodes?

There was further poor shooting from the German soldiery. Even with automatic rifles they couldn’t hit the ‘Soprano’ family, but pistols easily picked the Germans off one at a time.
 
Actually I think it would be fairer to say Silik was on his own side and supported Enterprise more on the grounds it was the lesser evil.

Overall I think Daniels was too. But how did he come back less cooked than he was last week? Or was it an incursion before he had his molecules scrabbled to say thank you for something Archer was going to do in his past? I wonder how often he meets himself?

At least Archer had the intelligence, at last, to tell him where to go. Pity he was three years behind the rest of us!

Looking at it, I think the Xindi War arc must have happened. Certainly nothing Enterprise has done could have prevented it. But hey did fullfill the prophecy that the Earth would destroy the Xindi, afterall their 'Home Space' no longer exists.

Looking at history.
We should forget Stukas! They were obsolete before the Battle of Britain, there is no way the Germans would cart that much scrap aluminium to America, they wouldn't survive a sortie.

Would bumping off Lenin in 1916 would have had a major effect?
There were far more 'Leaders of the People' than just Lenin, so I would have thought it would largely have brought Stalin's rise a little earlier?

German/Russian relations were not bad before Germany invaded. Infact Stalin was aiding them by maintaining large supplies of grain. Why Hitler invaded when he did, is still something of a mystery.

Don't wait on me. I don't often get to see the first showing:wave:
 
You made some good points, some I hadn't thought of. Maybe this episode has just too many problems -- it's not worth listing them all. But on this one...
Originally posted by ray gower
Daniels... how did he come back less cooked than he was last week?
I thought that the Timeline being reset, he now never got "cooked" in the first place. But thinking upon it more, he is a semi-permanent time traveller, the alterations to Earth's Timeline didn't affect him before, so the "cooking" occurred outside of the alterations seen in Earth's past. Therefore resetting the Timeline should also make no difference. Do I make any sense?

Maybe we should just forget this episode as a bad job!
 

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