Title :
Storm Front, Part 2
Series :
Rating :
Overall Ep :
78
First Aired :
15 Oct 2004
Stardate :
1944
Director :
Year :
Writers :
Season Ep :
YATI :
Enterprise is greeted by a huge fleet of Human and Vulcan ships when she arrives back at Earth. Where were all these when the Xindi weapon was approaching unopposed?
Great Moment :
Enterprise flying over New York.
Body Count :
Most notably, Silik and Vosk. We also saw the German General murdered by Vosk, and a whole bunch of German soldiers killed. Presumably some hundreds or thousands would have been killed off screen in the USA's counter-attack on the Germans.
Factoid :
In case you were wondering, yes, the actor who plays the Human-looking Silik is indeed the guy who has been under the makeup all this time.
Plotline
Vosk offers the captured Trip and Mayweather to Archer as a sign of good faith, hoping to make a deal where he will restore Human history in return for Archer's help in building his time conduit. After getting his men back Archer declines the deal - only to find that Trip is actually a disguised Silik, who is working against Vosk for his own ends. Faced with the imminent completion of the conduit, Archer must ally with his old enemy and risk all to strike against Vosk.
Analysis
Well, Storm Front isn't the best two parter, but it's at least a pretty decent action show and it
does wrap up the Temporal Cold War arc once and for all. On the down side, the temporal side of things doesn't make a whole lot of sense - why does destroying the conduit re-write all of history, removing
all the damage done by every faction? They don't even try to explain it. Still, time travel stories rarely make sense and the writers have many times fallen back on the old ploy of having one of the characters just complain about how hard it is to make sense of it all and then leave it at that - a clear message to the audience not to bother trying to work it out themselves. Storm Front is a particularly bad offender in this respect, but it's only going where other episodes have gone before.
On the plus side, the action is pretty cool - I loved seeing Enterprise sweeing in over New York being attacked by plasma weapon equipped Stukas. It was nice to see Silik working with Archer, and it was nice to finally see John Fleck without the Suliban makeup on - bet he enjoyed not having to spend a few hours a day in the makeup chair!
As an example of how Enterprise is going to fare under Manny Coto, it's hard to judge this early but if Storm Front is any indication then he's going to dump many elements of the first few seasons and presumably strike out in new directions. Rumour has it he wants to tie Enterprise much more into TOS, which can only be a good thing if it's done properly. Time will tell...
