4x01 Storm Front

[Dimitris]

Production: 077
Season: 4 Episode: 1
Air Date: 10.08.2004

Archer and the NX-01 find themselves in Earth's past, with events of World War II altered by the Temporal Cold War.


Synopsis

Having mysteriously survived the destruction of the Xindi superweapon, a battered Archer awakes to find himself back on Earth in the 1940s in the custody of Nazi SS agents, and learns that Nazi-uniformed aliens have successfully helped Germany invade the United States. When he manages to break free of his captors, Archer joins forces with American resistance fighters to unravel the conspiracy behind the occupation.

Meanwhile, believing Archer sacrificed himself to save Earth, T'Pol and the battle-weary Enterprise crew attempt to figure out how to return to their own time. But then a near-dead Daniels appears and informs them that the future has been wiped out by a faction of the Temporal Cold War, the same faction responsible for the altered events on Earth, and they must be stopped.

[Dimitris]

Cast & Creative Staff

Cast:
Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer
John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox
Jolene Blalock as T'Pol
Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery as Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Hoshi Sato
Connor Trinneer as Charles "Trip" Tucker III

Guest Cast:
Golden Brooks as Alicia
Joe Maruzzo as Sal
Jack Gwaltney as Vosk
Tom Wright as Ghrath
John Harnagel as Joe Prazki
Steven R. Schirripa as Carmine
John Fleck as Silik
Matt Winston as Daniels
J. Paul Boehmer as SS Agent
Christopher Neame as German General
Sonny Surowiec as Nazi Soldier #1

Creative Staff:
Director: Allan Kroeker
Written By: Manny Coto

[Dimitris]

07.31.2004
Production Report: Season 4 Kicks Up "Storm Front"

SPOILER ALERT!!!
When production of Season 3 concluded last March, it was still uncertain whether the cast and crew would be returning for a Season 4. But, with a sigh of relief, they have, and principal photography concluded Thursday on a most unusual episode.

Audiences were left downright perplexed by the season cliffhanger of "Zero Hour," but this episode will end the guessing game about that bizarre ending. Archer and the NX-01 did indeed end up in Earth's past, during World War II — except that events have been altered by the Temporal Cold War. Archer, of course, is on the surface, fending for himself as he tries to figure out what the heck is going on, while his crew is in orbit doing the same. In fact, what has happened is that, with alien help, the Nazis have conquered the eastern portion of the United States, and much of the action of this episode takes place in a German-controlled Brooklyn. The title is "Storm Front," written by Manny Coto, and is the first of two parts.

John Fleck and Matt Winston make return engagements as temporal agents "Silik" and "Daniels," respectively. Also, Tom Wright, who turned in a striking performance as the title character of Star Trek: Voyager's "Tuvix," plays one of those Nazi aliens named "Ghrath." (By the way, those aliens are not Remans as some have conjectured; they are a new species, a Temporal Cold War faction called "Na'kuhl.") Christopher Neame, who played "Unferth" in "Heroes and Demons," also returns as a German General.

The guest list also includes some "stunt casting" (the words of UPN president Dawn Ostroff) for the roles of some of the 1940s New Yorkers. Golden Brooks, best known as "Maya" in UPN's Girlfriends, plays "Alicia," an African-American woman who helps Archer get back on his feet. There are also two ringers from HBO's The Sopranos as resistance fighters of dubious moral character: Joe Maruzzo ("Joe Peeps") as "Sal," and Steven R. Schirripa ("Bobby 'Bacala' Baccalieri") as "Carmine."

Production commenced on Thursday, July 15, with director of photography Marvin Rush behind his new digital Sony 900 camera — this is the first Star Trek episode to be shot entirely without film (related story). Allan Kroeker was in the director's chair for "Storm Front," picking up where he left off with "Zero Hour." The schedule over the last two weeks actually bounced back and forth between "Storm Front" and the second episode, "Storm Front, Part II," directed by David Straiton, which explains why the seven-day allotment for the first segment stretched over two weeks.

The first two days were spent on standing ship sets such as Sickbay, the Bridge, Ready Room and Transporter Alcove. Connor Trinneer and Anthony Montgomery also got inside the Shuttlepod setpiece to complete the scenes started in "Zero Hour." The wardrobe and makeup were carefully "distressed" to match the look from the Season 3 finale, including the healing wounds on Linda Park's temples.

The following Monday, Scott Bakula hooked up with Brooks and the Sopranos guys for interior scenes in a New York apartment, constructed inside Stage 9, the normal swing-set soundstage. Tuesday there were other swing sets involving scenes with the Na'kuhl characters. Wednesday, Fleck reported to work for scenes from both Part I and Part II.

Thursday, a portion of the Paramount backlot was transformed into a Nazi-occupied New York. On the storefronts, there were posters plastered all over showing an American eagle holding a swastika and reading "Your New America" and "Two Nations, One Voice." One of those posters, prominently placed, had graffiti painted over it reading "Nazi Butchers Go Home!"

There was another, particularly ingenious stroke of art design on this backlot set: Other posters scattered about promoted a boxing match at Madison Square Garden between "Kid McCook" and "Mike Mason," with a second match, "Prado vs. Bailey." Sound familiar? It's a reproduction of the boxing poster prominently seen in a similar New York setting in "The City on the Edge of Forever." (If you look closely enough, however, it's not a perfect match. For instance, on the bottom, instead of an admission price, there's a line that says "Pevney Boxing Company" — a reference to "City" director Joe Pevney. Hey, it's an altered timeline, okay?)

The names you will see on the storefronts are all inside references. For example, "T. Purser Hardware & Plumbing" — Tom Purser is the show's construction coordinator. "Drozdowski Merchantile & Dry Goods" — Dennis Drozdowski is part of the special effects crew.

One end of the backlot set was the same corner where Archer and T'Pol stopped at an ATM in Detroit, in last year's "Carpenter Street," also one of the same locations used in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Time's Arrow" and Voyager's "11:59." You might also recognize a subway stop from "Non Sequitur."

It was also for these backlot scenes that Wardrobe and Props had to outfit a number of Nazi soldiers with proper attire and weapons. A number of period vehicles were also brought to set.

On Friday, the call time was in the evening, for night shots taking place in the alleyways behind the Enterprise soundstages. The following three days (Monday through Wednesday of this week) were devoted to Part II (stay tuned for the next production report). Part I finally wrapped Thursday with a location shoot 63 miles north of the studio. The crew set up in a place called Sable Ranch in Canyon Country, near Santa Clarita. A number of World War II-era "picture vehicles" — namely a German Jeep, Truck and Motorcycle — were put into use. Bakula did daytime scenes in that location, with his stunt double Vince Deadrick Jr. performing some of the more physical moves. Once the sun went down, Trinneer and Montgomery did night scenes dressed in period civilian attire.

Writer Coto, who also carries the title co-executive producer, is the new "showrunner" of Enterprise alongside Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, which puts him substantially in charge of the creative direction of the show. Coto made a splash last season with scripts for "Similitude," "Chosen Realm," "Azati Prime" and other notable segments. Kroeker has been Star Trek's main go-to guy for season premieres, finales and important two-parters over several series, especially Enterprise.

Season 4 is currently set to premiere on Friday, October 8, at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.

[Dimitris]

Plot Summary:

As Tucker and Mayweather return to Enterprise on a shuttlepod damaged by warplanes, Archer is transported in a Nazi Jeep that resistance forces ambush. The German officers are killed and Archer is taken to the home of Alicia, a woman who cares for injured Resistance fighters and tells him that he's her first POW - a sailor, she assumes, from the sunk USS Enterprise, based on his insignia. On Enterprise, the crew hears Nazi broadcasts and Tucker asks T'Pol to spare them a lecture on the official Vulcan position on time travel: obviously they're in the 1940s. Mayweather speculates that perhaps they arrived at this time for a reason as Silik crawls across the ship's ceiling.

In a White House covered with Nazi flags, a uniformed alien tells a German officer that he has requisition forms for equipment. The officer objects that the materials are needed for the effort against the American resistance, but the alien assures him that their weapons will make the Nazis immune from attack, enabling them to target non-Aryans with pathogens in their water supply. The Nazis are searching for Archer, particularly the aliens who have determined that his communicator comes from the future, but Alicia's friend Sal and his henchman - though distrustful of Archer's refusal to explain his origins - help him make contact with a man who claims to have seen an alien in New York.

Daniels appears on Enterprise, near-death, explaining when he can speak that the Temporal Cold War has become deadly, with agents changing history across many centuries. He has brought Enterprise to 1944 because at this time they may be able to stop the people who have altered the timeline. Silik attacks Tucker in engineering and steals a shuttlepod after insisting that what is happening is beyond the Enterprise crew's comprehension. T'Pol assumes that Silik is one of the enemies of whom Daniels spoke and has Tucker and Mayweather beam down to find him, but though they locate and destroy the shuttlepod before the Nazis can take possession of it, they are unable to find the Suliban.

Archer meets with one of the aliens supporting the Nazis and learns that they are helping the Germans win World War II because they need help building a conduit back to their own era. Sal kills the alien when more Nazis approach, but not before Archer has taken his communicator, which he uses to call the ship for a beamout just as he and Alicia are about to be taken into custody. T'Pol has them brought on board, but is unable to get a lock on Tucker and Mayweather whose signals have been obscured by the shuttlepod explosion. Daniels warns Archer that the alien Nazis are led by Vosk, a fanatic whose people are destroying all of time and who must be stopped before he can complete a temporal conduit to return to his own era. As he dies, Daniels begs Archer to find and destroy the conduit, which is housed in the same facility where Tucker and Mayweather are taken to be incarcerated and tortured.


Analysis:

The piece of me that wants to try to start Star Trek: Enterprise's fourth season on a serious note, discussing the important social, political and historical themes the show has promised to explore this year, is being stopped cold by...well, Evil Alien Nazis! Never mind that the US had better production capabilities than the Germans in the '40s and the aliens would have been better off joining the Allies. Never mind that Nazis would have been about as likely to remain loyal to gray-skinned aliens as murderous time-traveling extraterrestrials would have been to leave any humans - racially pure or otherwise - still standing after they got their supplies. Folks, we've had evil aliens on Star Trek before, and we've had evil Nazis on Star Trek before, but have we ever had time traveling evil alien Nazis with plans for genocide in the 20th and 29th centuries at the same time? No, sirree, we have not!

"Storm Front, Part One" is a thoroughly entertaining episode that I think suffers greatly from having been broadcast the hour before a US presidential debate. Because, let's face it, it's hard to make even a decent science fiction allegory seem immediate and relevant when there are real politics right there. Star Trek has done a couple of fairly good Nazi stories, and some truly excellent stories about people coming together to face alien threats, and some time-travel fables that allowed a glimpse into our own past and required us to think about the choices that led us into some of our gravest errors. Viewers who watched the presidential debate on UPN got to hear President Bush asked a question about things he wished he had done differently and would change if he could take them back. He ducked the question, and, really, I feel as if the Star Trek producers have done the same: instead of giving us a meaningful might-have-been, or even something like the Xindi arc which provided parallels to our own era, they threw all sorts of flash and dash with little substance.

Mobsters! A mutilated time traveler! Warplanes! A shuttlepod explosion! Suliban! Gunfighting on the streets of New York! SS officers in the White House! Air raid sirens! Alleyway chases! There's an amazing amount of action in this story, which leaps right in from the end of last season's "Zero Hour" cliffhanger with Trip and Travis fleeing on the shuttle and Archer sitting in a Jeep with a German officer's arm around his shoulders, listening to blather about how Americans make good movies but their warriors are more successful onscreen than in the real world. No sooner does the Nazi make the statement than the good guys come leaping out of the trees to kick butt, just like in the movies! And the rest of the episode stays true to that formula. No one dies whom we really care about - Sal was fun, it would have been entertaining to keep him around for one more episode, but as soon as he blasts that alien Nazi it's pretty obvious he's bought his ticket to the farm. Silik shows up to provide menace, but he isn't the bad guy, because in any storyline with Nazis, the Nazis have to be the bad guys. And anyone who becomes an ally of the Nazis, let alone a self-indulgent alien time traveler? Is obviously a murderous fanatic! We hardly need Daniels to explain that!

There are some things Star Trek has always done well - lighting, makeup, effects, pacing - and "Storm Front, Part One" is no exception. It's certainly not boring. The aliens are suitably nasty-looking, Sal's funny, Alicia's spunky and gets in some of that Benny Russell-style protest of historical prejudice. And I have nothing but good things to say about the new digital film because I couldn't tell the difference from the film quality of last season (I did wonder why Paramount didn't spring for a few more extras, as it's hard to believe that there were absolutely no people on the streets of Brooklyn even with a Nazi curfew in effect, but that's budget cuts for you). There are moments when I am almost tempted to believe that there might be relevant social commentary being attempted: Does the image of foreigners stampeding through New York trampling on American values mean something? Shall we guess whether there's a message in the image of Nazi banners fluttering around the White House about the current administration?

In a nutshell...no. None of it leads anywhere. This isn't "City on the Edge of Forever", where Kirk recognizes that peace and optimism have to be sacrificed in the face of the fascist threat, and it isn't "The Killing Game", where aliens discover via a Nazi holo-scenario that humans will fight oppression even when their memories have been altered. The writers conveniently sidestep the horrors of the Nazi death camps by suggesting that these aliens have a magic pill to wipe out all non-Aryans, and thank goodness for that because the idea of this show attempting to say anything about the Holocaust gives me hives (unlike Voyager's excellent "Remember" and "Living Witness"). "Storm Front" is a romp with a built-in reset button, kind of a refreshing, over-the-top change from the darkness of the Xindi arc, and sometimes it's nice to have villains who are such evident bad guys that they don't need personalities. But if this episode represents what the bulk of season four will be like, then Enterprise has declared its irrelevancy in a world that could desperately use some relevant, incisive perspective of the sort that Star Trek once supplied.