4x02 Storm Front, Part II

[Dimitris]

Production: 078
Season: 4 Episode: 2
Air Date: 10.15.2004

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


Synopsis

Archer reunites with his astonished Enterprise crew and learns from Daniels on his deathbed that a radical Temporal Cold War faction threatens to obliterate the timeline. Archer returns to the Nazi-occupied eastern United States of the 1940s, and enlists the help of resistance fighters Alicia Travers and Carmine to destroy a massive time machine under construction on the surface.

Meanwhile, hoping to forge an alliance with Archer, alien leader Vosk releases his captured prisoners Tucker and Mayweather, but this forces temporal agent Silik to emerge from the shadows to pursue his own agenda against Vosk.

[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:
Jack Gwaltney as Vosk
Golden Brooks as Alicia
Steven R. Schirripa as Carmine
John Fleck as Silik
Christopher Neame as German General
Mark Elliott Silverberg as Kraul
David Pease as Alien Technician

Creative Staff:
Director: David Straiton
Written By: Manny Coto

[Dimitris]

08.06.2004
Production Report: "Storm Front, Part II" Continues Nazi-era Epic

SPOILER ALERT!!!
The 1940's-era adventure continues for the NX-01 crew in "Storm Front, Part II," which saw a variety of location, backlot and swing set locations, with continued use of period vehicles, wardrobe and other set dressing in the production that concluded Tuesday. And in this episode, John Fleck gets to show his real face for the first time in Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the script written by Manny Coto, Archer and Silik (Fleck) — who still very much dislike each other — have to work together to foil the plans of Vosk, the Na'kuhl temporal operative responsible for the changes in the timeline that led to Nazi occupation of the eastern United States in 1944. If they fail, the "Temporal Cold War" won't be "cold" anymore, and could lead to the destruction of time itself.

The majority of this shoot took place away from the standing ship sets. Though this segment had the usual seven-day budget, it actually spanned two whole weeks because the schedule bounced back and forth between Part I of "Storm Front" and Part II (related report). Part II began on Wednesday, July 21, with scenes from both segments involving Fleck in Suliban makeup, on miscellaneous ship sets including the Brig. Day 2 was the following Monday, which was a location shoot in Griffith Park, the large park just a few miles north of Paramount that surrounds Dodger Stadium and holds the Griffith Observatory (seen in "Future's End, Part I"). That was an unusually short day, coming in well under budget at 6.5 hours for two scenes in a "Wooded Area" that included Scott Bakula, Connor Trinneer, Anthony Montgomery (all in period clothing), Jack Gwaltney as "Vosk," a few Nazi soldiers and a couple of MACO extras.

Day 3, Tuesday, was spent entirely on the Bridge set, with the entire principal cast minus John Billingsley (because his character isn't usually on the Bridge). The next day was spent mostly on swing sets on Stage 9 representing interiors of Vosk's Compound. On this day Fleck started out in his usual Suliban mask, but then he got to take it off and reveal his natural visage — as Silik shapeshifts into human form while on the surface of Earth. That night, the cast and crew went outside into the alley behind Stage 9 for the exterior of Vosk's Compound. Though Fleck is looking human in those scenes, the shots will be digitally manipulated in post-production to render some of Silik's shapeshifting moves.

Thursday was the last day for Part I, and Part II picked up again on Friday with sequences on the Paramount New York Streets backlot. Bakula performed those scenes with guest stars continuing from Part I that included Golden Brooks as "Alicia" and Steven Schirripa as "Carmine", along with Fleck in human form and a contingent of extras in Nazi uniforms and other period wardrobe. Things wrapped up Monday and Tuesday of this week, on mostly swing sets for the climactic scenes, which — once visual effects are completed in post — should be nothing less than spectacular. The long day Tuesday was capped by a night shoot in the soundstage alley for an elaborate firefight sequence using conventional prop weapons, including a hand-grenade explosion which sent three German-dressed stuntmen flying.

David Straiton was director on "Storm Front, Part II." Straiton also directed last season's second episode, "Anomaly," along with location-heavy "North Star," and several other Enterprise episodes including the Hugo-nominated "A Night in Sickbay." Coto, who is now the head writer of the show, wrote both parts of "Storm Front."

The second episode is tentatively scheduled to air Friday, October 15. Season 4 is set to premiere with the first part of "Storm Front" on Oct. 8.

[Dimitris]

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.


Analysis:

While "Storm Front, Part Two" inherits all of the problems of "Storm Front, Part One", it does a reasonable job dispatching them, despite cramming in so many plot threads that I couldn't keep track of where everyone was and how they got there, exactly. The opening is one of the best Star Trek has ever done, a fake newsreel showing Hitler's triumphant entrance to New York, cruising past the Statue of Liberty; it's somehow creepy and humorous at the same time, a combination of Zelig and Triumph of the Will. It's still a somewhat cartoony Hitler - more akin to Mel Brooks' "Heil Myself" than the architect of the death camps we never hear about in this episode - but since we are watching a cartoony version of history anyway, the one where EVIL ALIEN NAZIS take over the world, it's perfectly fitting.

Again, there's so much action packed into the episode that it's hard to talk about the regulars, their motivations and their finest moments. When so much time is given to the spunky 1940s woman, the Tony Soprano of the American resistance, the jets that fire plasma, the spaceship hurtling past the Chrysler Building, the unexpected switcheroo of Suliban from adversary to ally, the competition between aliens and Nazis to see who can be the baddest of them all...well, it's hard to worry about little things like whether T'Pol has a personal interest in saving Tucker's life or whether Phlox should have jabbed a needle into Silik's arm and knocked him out the second he realized he wasn't Tucker, which must surely have been before he got around to letting Archer figure it out. It's unfortunate that instead of seeing for ourselves how much tougher Archer has become, we have to have it announced by Silik; that's just bad writing, telling instead of showing. But I guess screen time must be saved for Loch Ness Monster jokes and a few seconds of Reed demonstrating his WWII weapons geekery.

For the purposes of the plot, I'm still not sure why it mattered that Lenin was assassinated and there was no Soviet Union, nor that that meant the time-tampering was broader than just the 1940s scenario. It makes even less sense that aliens would have been building their conduit in Manhattan when Hitler controlled all of Europe, particularly since the much-discussed squadron wasn't even in the city and had to be shipped in. Naturally it's fun to listen to an alien tell a Nazi that his puny little master race could be wiped out of existence, then to watch the most arrogant of the Nazis get shot by his gray-skinned ally, but it's also depressing, particularly when Vosk makes a Hitleresque speech about how his race can perfect itself and vanquish those who oppose them. I understand how Alicia feels when she reacts with horror to learning that there's still war in Archer's era and that people pretty much suck across millennia. There's been way too much solved with guns on Enterprise and not nearly enough diplomacy.

And "not all species have the same values we do" or whatever Archer's line was? Ugh. The Xindi War was not about different values, but rather about the fact that the Xindi believed, for very good reason, that humans were going to wipe them out of existence, and chose to strike first. One can certainly argue that this was a poor choice but it is not radically different from the logic used repeatedly by human cultures to attack neighbors. It's also fairly similar to the logic that set off the crisis in "The Andorian Incident", where mutual distrust and cultural differences are nearly enough to spark a war. As Vosk points out, we can't even be sure that Daniels' values are altruistic; okay, it's nice to know that his colleagues saved the Suliban from temporal tampering, but we still don't know (and perhaps never will) the root of the conflict between 29th century humans and the shadowy guy from the future who was advising Silik all along. We're just assuming the humans are the good guys even though Daniels has jerked Archer around all along.

This is probably more deep thinking than the episode deserves. I guess I'm frustrated to see the apparent end of the temporal cold war when we still have no idea exactly what it was about, and in an episode I'd rather remember as comic relief than the kickoff to what could be Enterprise's last season. If I'd been writing a follow-up to the evil alien Nazi in "Zero Hour", I'd have dispatched him in the first ten minutes of the new season in some really cheesy way - T'Pol finding Tucker in her shower and realizing all of last season was a dream, Archer learning he was hit on the head and imagined the warplanes and the Nazis, something undoubtedly stupid but at least it would have taken up only a handful of minutes of screen time instead of the entirety of two episodes to get them back to series-time. Because no matter how much distraction we receive in the form of Nazis and mobsters and New York and Billie Holliday and Hitler and the Chrysler Building and machine guns and World War II flying aces, it doesn't make up for the abrupt kicking to the curb of the Xindi arc, nor the lack of character moments. It's full of sound and fury, and we all know what follows that: signifying nothing.

[EllHize]

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