monkee reviews 'Storm Front, Part Two'
First Impression: Bleah. The best thing I can say about this is it's behind us now, and we can get on with the REAL Season Four. And I hope Star Trek can exercise some restraint and keep away from the Nazis from now on!
I don't know what to tell you. Last week, I was willing to go with the flow and accept the whole Nazi thing for what it was - a bit of silly Trek weirdness. This week, I just couldn't do it. It's not fair for me to change my mind in the middle, but there you are. Maybe the novelty wore off. Maybe last week I was just so glad to see the show resume, I was willing to be tolerant. Or maybe it's because between Parts One and Two, I saw the movie 'Schindler's List' for the first time, and suddenly, turning the Nazis into two-dimensional villains, and secondary villains at that, seemed insulting and irresponsible. Whatever the reason, though, I found Part Two difficult to sit through. The action was too forced and predictable, the mobsters were too cutsie, and the denouement of the temporal cold war arc was way too abrupt and disappointing.
And yet I'm still optimistic for the season. I think the writers, in trying to add a 'fresh, unexpected twist' to the Xindi arc, wrote themselves into a corner. This is what they had to do to get out of it. The temporal cold war arc was an unfortunate casualty. After the timeline 'reset' itself, and Enterprise found itself approaching Earth and being met by all the Earth ships (in a scene strongly reminiscent of Voyager's finale), I was pleased. NOW we can get down to business.
And now, let's get down to the business of this review.
Vosk and the Alien Nazis: Vosk quickly discovers that Trip, Mayweather and Archer are not, as he suspected, temporal agents. They aren't from far enough in the future to be manipulating time for themselves. He returns Trip and Mayweather, and attempts to convince Archer to be his ally. With Enterprise's resources, he can finish his conduit faster, and in return, he promises to reset Enterprise's timeline and return the ship and its crew to the proper century. Archer's not buying it. Wisely, I should think. He says 'Yeah, right, I'll give it some thought,' and returns to Enterprise.
The Chicken and the Egg: It turns out that Vosk and his people didn't even start this particular temporal war battle. An unknown person or persons from one of the other factions started it by assassinating Lenin in 1916. This changed the history of Russia, and by the time Hitler came to power, they were not a threat. Hitler was able to concentrate on the west, and then the eastern United States. Yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. The whole temporal mess is full of inconsistencies and paradoxes, as only a story involving time travel can be. Reed tries to apply logic, but Archer arm-waves it all away with, "The chicken and the egg, Malcolm." And I reckon we'll have to accept that. Actually, I'll be glad to if it means I can get a break from time travel stories. They're giving me headaches.
Archer's reunion with Trip and Mayweather is cut short when Phlox reveals that Trip is actually Silik. And so the plot thickens...
An Unlikely Alliance: Silik replaced Trip while he was in the Nazi compound in Manhattan. The real Trip is still there, bound and locked in a storage room. Silik was there stealing data from Vosk's faction. Archer suspects that Silik's 'benefactor,' also known as 'shadowy future guy,' wants the data in order to send himself back into the past instead of just an image of himself. Archer also suspects that Silik planned on using Enterprise, somehow, to send the data disk to the future. No matter, though. Archer needs Silik's help to retrieve the real Trip, and get inside the compound to take out its shields so Enterprise can blow it up. Silik doesn't want Vosk to succeed in building the conduit, so for the moment, their goals coincide. An unlikely alliance is formed.
Cute Mobsters and Resistance Angels, Revisited: Archer offers to send Alicia anyplace on Earth - preferably someplace where there are no Nazis. Naturally, because she's a Resistance Angel ™, she declines. She wants to be back in her neighborhood to help take care of her own. There, she patches up Carmine, who has survived his latest encounter with the Nazis. When Archer and Silik beam down, they enlist the aid of the 'insurgents in the hood,' forming an even unlikelier alliance.
Carmine was really getting on my nerves this week. Lines like "How about I start removing your teeth with my knuckles?" and "What a way to spend a Saturday night!" made me want to run screaming from the room. I shouldn't complain, though. At least the terrible dialog woke me up.
On the other hand, Alicia, who I actually liked, seems to get lost in the shuffle in Part Two, never quite exceeding her role as Resistance Angel ™. Archer promises to try to restore her neighborhood and her husband to her. He ultimately succeeds, but we never get to see her happy ending. Pity.
The Big Reset: From here, the episode deteriorates into a bland action-fest. The insurgents provide a shoot-em-up diversion while Archer and Silik infiltrate the compound. Archer is able to bring down the shielding, although Silik is killed in the subsequent shoot out. Archer finds Trip and they and the insurgents escape the building. Vosk manages to open the conduit but stands around too long for dramatic effect. By the time he actually steps through, Enterprise has fired on and hit the compound. The conduit is destroyed, Vosk is killed, the timeline resets itself, and all is right with the universe. At least for now.
Silik's Tale: There was something disconcerting about seeing Silik with a human face, wearing jeans and a striped polo shirt, but then, a lot of the episode felt just a little off to me. In any case, while strolling the streets of Brooklyn, Silik tells Archer of his history with Vosk. Apparently, Vosk's species (never named) once tried to eradicate the Suliban by going into their distant past to prevent them from attaining sentience. Daniels was the one who stopped them, but Silik still considers him, and anyone else who opposes him, an enemy. It's too bad that the very minute that Silik becomes a more multi-dimensional, interesting character, he's killed off.
Of course, can a time traveler ever truly die? Daniels certainly keeps on coming back. Maybe we'll see Silik again, too.
Revelations: I'm going to throw this out, even though I'm not sure I was supposed to be reading this much into it all. Both Vosk and Silik cautioned Archer against trusting Daniels too much. Now Vosk clearly was a megalomaniac, but is there any truth to what he said? "If you've ever dealt with them," he says of the temporal agents, including Daniels, "you know they do much more than watch history unfold. They interfere with events. They have an agenda." That rings true to me. Who's watching the watchers, here? Where's the Guardian of Forever when you need him? (Her? It?)
Daniel's Lives! Again! Yep, he's back, with his cute little Michelin Man uniform intact. He appears to Archer as the timeline resets itself, and tells him that the temporal war is now coming to an end, and he's saved countless lives. "Just send us home," Archer tells him. "I want you to leave me and my crew alone." There's a finality to Daniel's goodbye, which I take to mean the temporal arc is now over. If a temporal arc can ever truly be over, that is. Haha.
Anticlimactic: Or maybe it's not over. After all, we still don't know who 'shadowy future guy' is. I hope it's not over. It's not that I'm all that keen on it, it's just that I think it could have all been resolved in a much tighter and cooler way. I wanted to see the Xindi arc tie into it a bit more definitively. And I thought that there were countless interesting little twists they could have given it. Twists that didn't in any way involve Nazis.
A Big Mess: The bottom line? I found this episode to be sloppy and dull. Usually, Star Trek is more than just a television show to me. I'm able to suspend my disbelief and lose myself in the wonderful universe that they've created. Not so this week. This week, I felt like I was watching a television show, with actors reading lines of dialog, and some of them not all that well. I had to sit through far too many Vosk/Nazi and Carmine scenes, and I didn't get to see enough interactions between the regular characters that I love! It felt like a lot of action and no heart.
Concentration Camps? What Concentration Camps? Could they have done something interesting with the Nazi's? Yes, although it would have been risky to try it. I'm not convinced they could pull it off. But in Storm Front, the Nazi's are little more than cardboard cutout villains, with accents as bad as anything Hogan's Heroes had to offer. In reality, the Holocaust was a horrific, evil thing, much more immediate and frightening to us than red-eyed aliens. The plight of the Jews, Concentration Camps, Hitler's 'superior race' - none of it was even mentioned in Storm Front. How much more unsettling would it have been for us to feel that Alica, as a black woman, was in imminent danger of being captured and thrown into a concentration camp on, say, Long Island, where American blacks and Jews have been disappearing? Like I said, I'm not sure they could have pulled off anything that serious, but perhaps they should have at least tried.
Saving Graces: This episode did have two things going for it - the alternate history Hitler newsreel teaser, and the Earth History montage at the end. It was chilling to see Hitler 'greeting enthusiastic crowds at Times Square,' but it was also amusing. Does propaganda/spin EVER change? The montage at the end was brilliant, too. As Archer and Daniels wait for the timeline to reset in a temporal vortex, a montage of Earth history appears behind them. It reminded me strongly, and in a good way, of TOS's Guardian of Forever. I watched it in slow motion once or twice and saw: cave drawings, Stonehenge, Easter Island, Da Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man,' Native Americans, various depictions of battles/wars, a train, Hitler, Kennedy, a peace rally, a nuclear power plant, the burning towers on 9/11, Enterprise leaving spacedock, and Archer running on the exploding weapon. No doubt I missed a lot of other cool stuff. I loved this! It was the highlight of the episode for me.
Fun Factor: Okay, I'll also admit that it was kewl seeing Enterprise blasting its way through 1940's Manhattan. But even this, the newsreel, and the montage couldn't combine to make the episode truly worthwhile!
Character Interactions: Well, let's see...ummm...there weren't many to speak of, actually. As I said, the writers were too busy subjecting us to Carmine's scintillating dialog. We did get one fun tidbit, though. Reed reveals himself to be a fighter plane geek. Hee.
Archer Watch: Archer was fine. He did everything he should have to restore the timeline and bring his people home. If Daniels does return, though, I think he should proceed with caution. I did like his admission to Silik that he had changed, and not for the better. I'm pleased that Archer knows this, because it's an indication that we'll be seeing him confront it later.
Mayweather Watch: He got a few half-decent lines. And he got to get beat up real good, off screen at least. If you're Mayweather, you can't expect much more than that!
'shipper Watch: You had to peer really hard between the lines for this one, but T'Pol did seem a tiny bit concerned about Trip when she asked Archer if he'd found him yet. More dramatic was Trip's reaction upon discovering that Archer was alive. If the building hadn't been about to blow up, Archer would have gotten a big hug, I just know it. Awww...
Best Lines:
"The next time you feel the urge to threaten me, remember this - I can erase you from history as if you never existed." (Vosk, to Nazi)
"I believe that time travel is a technology, no different than your warp drive, to be utilized for the benefit of all species. Societies, cultures can be improved through the careful manipulation of historical events." (Vosk, to Archer. Yikes.)
"You've changed, Captain." "And not at all for the better." (Silik and Archer)
"Whadda we goin' afta next, the Loch Ness Monsta?" (Carmine, to Archer. And actually, it wasn't a 'best line' at all, but it was so incredibly bad, I had to include it!)
"Look, Carmine. I'm going to make this real easy for you. I'm going to help him. All you have to decide is whether or not you're going to help me." (Alicia, to Carmine)
"Soon, history will belong to us. We will stretch out our hands and mold it to our will. Not even the gods of our ancestors could have imagined such power." (Vosk, to his followers. Yikes.)
"You've proven a worthy opponent, Captain. I would have preferred to die fighting you." (Dying Silik, to Archer)
"Captain? You're alive?" "As long as you don't pull that trigger." (Trip and Archer)
"I can't...I can't believe it." "The building's about to blow up." "Gotcha." (Trip, Archer, Trip - an emotional reunion!)
"I want my neighborhood back. The way it was. And my husband - I want him home. Fix all that, okay?" "I'll try." (Alicia and Archer)
The Most Sanctimonious Line:
"On Earth, between human beings, war has been eliminated. But the galaxy's a big place, with thousands of species. Not all of them have the same values we have." (Archer, to Alicia. Ugh.)
Rating: The cool newsreel and montage couldn't even bring this episode up to the level of average television. Yikes. 6.5/10.
Next Week: YES! A Vulcan wedding! A Trip/T'Pol embrace! Enterprise returns to Earth. Now we can get on with the season. I'm looking forward to it - see you then!
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