Disclaimer:  These reviews are my opinions and not those of Paramount, the Star Trek: Enterprise writers, or anyone else who really matters.  I intend no infringement on their rights, etc.

If you're shy of spoilers and haven't seen the episode(s) in question, *don't* read these reviews (you will have things spoiled for you).  The ratings I give are out of a perfect five stars (it happens, occasionally).  A five-star Enterprise is still not as good as a five-star DS9, as far as I am concerned...but who knows?  We may be getting there some day.

I would like to note that in previous years, I have always done my best to get my reviews out the same night that I see the episode.  However, I have made the decision this season to extend that to a day or two after the episode airs.  I do this to make it less hectic for my schedule, and also to give myself as much time as I deem necessary to write a good review.

But without further ado, onto the reviews, in order from most to least recent.

 
  10/15/04--Review for:  "Storm Front II" (Archer teams up with Silik to destroy Vosk's conduit and save history)

Brief summary:  Archer makes a deal with Vosk--he'll come and meet with him if Vosk will release Trip and Travis.  Vosk brings what he believes are Trip and Travis to the meeting, and they are beamed up.  Vosk wants Archer to give him technology from the Enterprise to aid the construction of his conduit, and tries to convince Archer that he will both set the timeline right and send the Enterprise back to its correct time, once he gets Daniels out of the way.  Archer isn't buying it, and returns to the ship with a promise to consider the offer.  Archer later discovers that 'Trip' is actually Silik in disguise, and as you can imagine, this makes the good captain just a teensy bit angry.  Silik is thrown into the cooler to sweat it out, until Archer comes to a deal with him to go and rescue Trip, and also bring down Vosk's shield so the Enterprise can destroy his facility.  They beam down in disguise, and Archer's resistance fighter friends help them to get into the facility.  They manage to get the shield down, but Silik is shot in the process, and appears to die.  Trip shows up, momentarily doubtful about Archer's identity, but is convinced upon seeing Silik's dead body.  They escape the compound, say goodbye to the resistance fighters, and are beamed back to the ship just in time for Reed to nuke the compound (sorry, I meant 'photon' the compound).  Vosk's plans are thwarted, and Daniels yanks Archer out of the timeline into la-la land to tell him everything is okay again, before plopping both Archer and the rest of the Enterprise back into their proper time period.

I guess I'll start by saying that I thought this was an improvement on the first part of "Storm Front", though still not up there with the best of Enterprise.  When I say it was an improvement, I don't mean necessarily in any thematic sense.  The alien Nazi concept is still just as hokey as it was last week (and indeed, as it was at the end of "Zero Hour" last season).  But this episode may have been better than last week's precisely because the Nazi aspect of the plot was side-lined.  Other than a few cliched arguments with Vosk and a meaningless attempt to grab power from him at the end, the Nazi leader and his cronies had little purpose.  We had some Nazis as cannon fodder when Archer and Silik broke into the compound, but any old bad guys can do that.  Other than some tenuous thematic analogies between the Nazis and Vosk's group (having to do with racial 'purification' and world/universal domination), the writers didn't really have much of a reason for choosing this as a setting.  I know, I know...making it seem more important and relevant.  But a good sci-fi writer should be able to pull this off without involving Nazis (alien or otherwise).

Having said that, this second half did manage to clear up a few things about the temporal mess (though I still have doubts about this!).  I liked the explanation uncovered by Reed about Lenin being assassinated in 1916, thus changing Russian history and allowing the Nazis to concentrate on the other allies.  Ask anyone who knows and they'll tell you how important Russia's role was in WWII; such a significant alteration in its history could very well do as the writers postulate.  It also keys into my own rather lengthy digression last week about how killing off a single person could change history drastically.  I didn't think of Lenin as an example, though perhaps I should have (hindsight is 20/20).

Though I applaud the Lenin idea, I am still somewhat confused about the whole temporal mechanics thing.  Apparently, it was not Vosk's group who killed Lenin, but yet another faction.  So Vosk went back in time and took advantage of this alteration, supposedly.  So Archer thwarts Vosk by destroying his conduit and (apparently) his entire group of alien Nazis.  Supposedly, this prevents Daniels's group from being destroyed (and indeed, we've seen that it works).  But hang on a moment.  Lenin was still assassinated.  The Nazis are still in New York.  History is still changed.  We're told that it was Vosk and friends starting the temporal war that caused Lenin to be assassinated...but wait a minute.  Vosk went back in time to the 1940s before he started that war...and the 1916 alteration had apparently already happened.  Time travel in sci-fi doesn't tend to work like this--if it did, nothing would ever make any sense.  But perhaps the 1916 alteration was done outside of the context of any of this happening, and was already in place when Vosk went back.  If so, Earth's history would still have gone through a great alteration, even without any changes Vosk might have made with his interference in the forties.

This all must mean that Daniels's group has found a way to escape changes in the timeline.  This makes sense according to many pieces of evidence from this episode and others, and it just makes sense.  It seems to me that without this ability, they'd be pretty vulnerable to any of this TCW junk (you can't police the timeline by setting something right if you and/or your organization never existed).  The problem with this theory is that it makes Daniels and his time cops seem very, very incompetent.  These guys are protected from changes in the timeline and can detect said changes, and they *still* can't stop the TCW outright?  Excepting this latest incident, in which they themselves were attacked, these guys should be able to take care of anything they detect (after all, time is hardly an issue for them, if you get my meaning).  Yet time and again, they have to keep coming back to Archer and whining that they need his help, when a few well-placed temporal agents would probably do a better job.

I believe I may have just put my finger on what I have always found inherently implausible about this Temporal Cold War idea.  You have the theory of temporal isolation versus no temporal isolation.  If Daniels and his time cops are somehow isolated from the changes in the timeline, they should be able to take out threats to the space-time continuum with scalpel-like precision, taking as much time as they needed to figure out exactly how to do it (and making the effort more than once, if they screw up the first time).  If, on the other hand, they are not isolated from changes to the timeline, they should not be able to police the timeline at all.  One good alteration somewhere in Earth's past, and *BANG*, the Federation never existed and thus the time cops go bye-bye.  Sure, you can try to get around this by talking about ripples in the timeline and paradoxes abounding...but I don't buy it.

You can probably tell that I welcomed Daniels's claim that this is all over.  Whether he means the whole TCW or just this latest subplot of it remains to be seen.  He seems to be implying that it's the whole TCW that's over...but I have my doubts about that.  Killing off Silik and Vosk isn't going to cut it.  For one thing, we still don't know who Future Guy is.

You know something?  I've always liked Silik.  Even when he was involved in a less-than-sense-making episode (and since he's part of the TCW plot, this means he's always involved in one of those).  After the rather obvious switch with Trip, which we all saw coming from a mile away, Silik's role was to join forces with Archer to defeat Vosk and his dastardly plans.  In a conversation with Archer, he provided a microscopic amount of background information about Vosk and the Suliban, and complimented Archer for handling the Xindi threat effectively (he and Future Guy were involved in getting Archer into that, yes?).  He explained that he and his cohorts were not in league with Vosk because Vosk sees other races as existing only to fulfill his needs (fitting the profile of what we already knew about Vosk).  In other words, Vosk is treacherous (and we see this plainly illustrated when his Nazi friend tries to butt in).  Besides this information and a small amount of insight into his own character, Silik also provided some more octopus effects, which by now have become so routine they're quite yawn-inspiring.  Silik joining forces with Archer to defeat a common enemy was not surprising; nor was his assertion that even when Daniels's group saved his entire species, they were still his enemy (there's just no pleasing this guy).  On the surface, it seems to confirm what we already knew about Silik:  that he doesn't seem to have much of a code of morality, except to offer his services to the highest bidder.  In other words, he does a few odd jobs for Future Guy and gets a cool bag of tricks in return.  But when a guy gets shot, you know you're going to see another side of him (albeit briefly).  Silik even tells Archer that he was a worthy opponent--you know your hero's ego swells whenever they hear that from their arch-nemesis.

Is Silik really dead?  I have no idea.  One could argue that all the repairs to the timeline at the end of the episode brought him back somehow.  After all, Daniels came back to life at the end, right?  This would seem to imply that since Vosk never started the all-out war, Daniels never got messed up trying to come back in time (but somehow he still knows everything that happened when he's talking to Archer at the end).  My point is, since Daniels came back, does this mean Silik never hitched a ride on the Enterprise and went back with them to 1944 to be killed?  And does that mean the Enterprise itself was never sent back, because there was no need to...oh never mind.  Of course, this exposes this episode's huge paradox, but I'll try not to dwell on that.

One could also postulate that Silik's cronies have the ability to clone him (if his genome was getting messed with anyway, they're sure to have a tissue sample or record of it somewhere).  But this always brings back the old problem faced by the Vorta:  that life experience and memories do not get replicated in cloning (*real* cloning, mind), and therefore even a clone that was growth-accelerated somehow would be mentally like a vegetable (or a baby).  Fans have speculated that the Vorta used advanced technology to digitize their memories and send them via implants, so there's a possibility Silik could be brought back in that way.

Of course, one could also put forth the argument that Silik wasn't really lying dead on the floor of the compound--he was just faking, and as soon as Archer and Trip left the room he got up again.  It could make sense, given his weird physiology, but there are a couple of problems with this argument.  First, even if he was faking, he still has to get out of that building before the Enterprise blows it up (surviving a couple of bullets I could believe; a couple of photonic torpedoes is another matter).  Second, even after he's out of the building, he has already admitted that without the Enterprise, he is trapped in that time period.  Since even Silik would have trouble hitching a ride in a transporter beam (as we've seen in Star Trek IV, it is possible to do this, but people tend to notice when it happens), we have to assume that he'd be trapped in Earth in this screwed up timeline (unless, of course, he knocked out Trip when Archer wasn't looking and assumed his form again before they were beamed up...but somehow I doubt that).  If he's trapped on this alternate Earth with no way out, he might as well be dead...unless Daniels's time cops swing by and rescue him while they're doing clean up.

In conclusion, I have no reason to believe that Silik is alive...but neither would I be surprised to see him show up again.  As we all know, no one is permanently dead in the Star Trek universe.

Although I enjoyed parts of this episode a lot, other parts just seemed to sag.  The argument between Vosk and his Nazi allies had nothing new or interesting.  It's the same old thing we've heard so many times before--two villains posturing and bristling at each other as each pretends to support the other's cause.  Maybe it would have been more interesting if the audience had believed that one of these guys could turn into a defector, or even just a more nuanced villain.  But no...we have here a genocidal racist and a fanatic who is going to reshape the timeline to his own ends.  We know they're both the sludge at the bottom of 'humanity' (pardon the term), and so we're not going to cheer for one at the expense of the other.  Their little confrontation at the end of the episode was even more pathetic, and more or less without purpose.  The Nazi walks in and tries to take over Vosk's compound, and Vosk shoots him a couple of times.  Wow...and what exactly did that accomplish in the plot of this story?  Was getting to see the Nazi shot to death (when we knew the timeline was going to change back anyway) really going to satisfy anything?  Overall, the Nazis played a rather insignificant role in this half of the episode...and that's a good thing.

Alishia's part is also reduced this time out.  About all we get is that she's brave and unselfish enough to want to go back home and help her friends, rather than take Archer's offer of dropping her off in a quiet corner of the planet.  But we already knew that, right?  The one interesting sentiment she expressed was wanting Archer to wipe Berlin off the map.  Given the context of WWII, one can't help but think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...and that whole debate of whether it was okay to kill millions of people in order to save even more.  I've struggled with that question ever since I first learned of those events in school, and I'm still not entirely sure what the answer is.  My instinct is that such mass murder of civilians is wrong, no matter what--and in fact, that it makes us no better than the terrorists against whom we now take the moral high ground.  But the counter-argument is that had those bombings not happened, the war might have ended differently, or at least gone on for longer.  No matter which side of the argument you take, you can see the reason for Alishia's sentiments regarding Berlin, given all that the Germans had done to those under their thumb.  But is the mass-brainwashing/manipulating/subjugating of a population reason for them to just be wiped out altogether--for their lives to cease to count?  I would tend to think not.  Because using that argument, certain countries and/or individuals in this world might feel it's their right to destroy one of our cities.  Practically everyone is brainwashed, in one way or another...and I think it's safe to say that the average American could be described in that way.  But that doesn't mean our lives are worthless.

This episode had a few small character moments.  Reed got to be a hero at the end, forced to manually target the compound instead of relying on sensors (as anyone who's worked around Worf will readily tell you, a weapons officer who can shoot straight is a big plus).  He also got to be the living encyclopedia of WWII aircraft, but I'll forgive him for that.  I didn't expect much from most of the characters, given the focus of this type of episode, but nevertheless I was a little disappointed that there was no scene between Trip and T'Pol.  Yeah, I know they've had lots of scenes recently, but I would have thought that a post-torture moment or two would be nice.  But maybe that's next week.
 

Some notes:

During her brief stay aboard the Enterprise, Alishia was given Ensign O'Malley's room; O'Malley was killed at the age of 26, though I cannot which episode that was, or if it was even mentioned at the time.

Reed's fun facts:  in 1916 someone assassinated Lenin and then vanished into thin air.  Consequently, the Bolsheviks never had their revolution and once WWII rolled around, Hitler didn't consider Russia to be much of a threat.  He was able to concentrate more on the allies to the west, and took out France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain relatively quickly, followed by the eastern United States.  Vosk was apparently not responsible for the Lenin assassination.

In my review of last week's episode, I was a little hard on Trip for not knowing how to fight a Suliban.  Well, this week we saw that Archer is just as bad.  In the Sickbay scene, Archer knows from a glance at Phlox's padd that Trip is not really Trip.  In fact, he knows that Trip is really Silik.  Once Silik keys into this fact, a struggle ensues.  At one point, Archer has his arms wrapped around Silik's torso, as if that will somehow hold him off.  What did I say last time about having Silik in a head lock?  That it tends not to work?  The same general principle should apply here, and Archer should know this.  Over the course of the series, Archer has fought Silik what, five or six times now?  (It sure feels like that many).  Yet Archer cheerfully gets Silik into this hold, seeming to think that it will do some good...and he seems somewhat miffed when Silik slithers out of it.  Granted, it's hard to fight this guy at all, but punches do work (and so do bullets, but that doesn't matter in this context).  My point is, I think Archer could have done a lot better.

Just a little quibble, but isn't Archer ordering 'Trip' and Travis to get back to the ship and *then* opening his communicator and ordering 'beam them up' just a little redundant?  Not that this sort of thing hasn't happened before in Trek, but the way he said it made it seem a little odd ("Yeah, Cap'n...we'd actually be glad to, but you're the one holding the communicator, remember?").  Maybe if he'd just told them he was sending them back instead of ordering them to go back...?

Something else which struck me as stupid (and probably more significantly so than the last thing) was the way the Enterprise hovered in orbit, within range of Vosk's plasma cannons.  I realize they may have been there for transporter reasons, and I realize that Archer had his own guns trained on the compound (with its shield still up), but this still seems stupid.  Archer should have ordered the ship out of range as soon as he heard about these plasma cannons (even if he had to do the ordering on an open comm line).  He had nothing to lose, since he didn't seem to have any true interest in bargaining with Vosk after 'Trip' and Travis were returned, especially since Vosk didn't seem to be aware that he still had the real Trip on his premises at the time.

Yet another question:  Why does Silik beam down in disguise?  By 'disguise', I mean, wearing some Earth-style clothes and still having a wrinkly green head.  He also had to steal Trip's jumpsuit when he was disguised as him.  I ask this because he seemed to have no problem at all in replicating Trip's face and voice when he was impersonating him...so why are clothes more difficult?  Why would he not just go down as Silik, and morph into a human when needed?  I can see a few possible answers to this; the first is rather obvious, and the other two involve the amount of effort it takes to stay transformed.  The first theory is that Silik cannot replicate clothes unless (perhaps) he is really stark naked at the time.  The problem is, we see him being invisible all the time, and his clothes seem to be just as good at this as his skin.  But perhaps different clothes shapes are more difficult (even though different skin/bone structure shapes are not).  The second theory is that he wanted to appear inconspicuous at a distance without having to transform until he had to because "it takes a lot of effort" (yes, the quote is from Martia, not Silik, but so what?).  Walking in the New York night with period clothes on might be enough to conceal you from a distance without having to bother with the details yet.  The third theory is that with these transformations it takes more effort to do the full body job than it does to do just the head and hands...so maybe even after the transformation Silik was still Silik under the clothes, if you know what I mean.

As a note related to the above point, it was nice to see John Fleck's real face.  He's played several Trek characters, but I believe they've all been elaborate makeup jobs.

I loved the shot of the Enterprise flying lower over the red-tinged Earth.  It was kind of symbolic, as well.  I also liked the shots of the Enterprise flying over New York...it *almost* made this whole concept of setting this in an alternate 1944 worth it.  Though if you ask me, all those phaser beams that missed the planes must have done a lot of damage to the city!

Despite this episode's shift of focus away from the Nazis and the resistance, the episode opened with a Nazi propaganda film which showed Hitler touring New York among massive, cheering crowds, and spoke of the Germans' commitment to rid the Americans of their 'parasites' which were hampering their economic growth.  I know it's obvious material...but I still found it chilling.  And yes, I still see the connection to Iraq; what the Bush administration has been doing lately in painting a rosy picture despite reality is just about as propagandish as you can get.

Silik's fun facts:  According to Silik, Vosk tried to eliminate the Suliban at one point by going back in time and preventing them from becoming sentient (you'd think a simple virus engineered to wipe them out would have been easier, but anyway...).  Silik further claims that Daniels's time cops kept Vosk from getting away with this.  Despite their salvation of his race, Silik claims he will always view Daniels and company as the enemy.
 

"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 the Nazi commander.  Yes...it's a good line, but again, I fail to see how this would work without creating a huge paradox in Vosk's own personal timeline (how can you carry out your threat to erase this guy from history if he never existed for you to threaten in the first place?).  But never mind.

"How does that thing work, anyway?  On second thought, I'd rather not know." --Alisha to Archer, regarding the transporter.

"Are you saying you owe Daniels's people your lives?"
"They still oppose us; they're still our enemy.  That will never change." --Archer and Silik, regarding the incident with Vosk trying to prevent the Suliban from attaining sentience.  But you never know when change will strike, octo-boy.

"Not even the gods of our ancestors could have imagined such power." --Vosk to his followers, regarding their coming domination of time.

"You've proven a worthy opponent, Captain.  I would have preferred to die fighting you, but I suppose I can settle for this." --Silik to Archer; whether this is really the end or not, that wasn't a bad last line.
 

Rating:  ****1/2  I give this the same rating as last week's, even though I thought it was generally an improvement.  To me, most of the improvement came from focusing less on the Nazi/resistance storyline and more on the TCW action (even though the TCW concept itself is still flawed, in my view).  But in the end, I think the question is this:  did the setting of the episode lend anything to it, or did it come off more as an elaborate way of digging the plot out of the hole they had dug in last season's cliffhanger?  I would tend to think the latter.  Even though there were interesting moments related to the setting in both parts of this episode, on the whole it seemed more like a big gimmick.  Without Silik, it would have rated even lower.

10/8/04--Review for:  "Storm Front" (trapped in an altered version of 1944, Archer and the Enterprise must prevent alien Nazis from destroying history)

Hello again; do you remember what happened last time?  Good.  Not that this makes any more sense if you do....

First, a brief summary of the plot.  Archer is being transported by a Nazi convoy when it is attacked by insurgents.  Archer gets away from the Nazis, is wounded, and is taken in by the insurgents.  He wakes up being tended to by a beautiful young woman (now where have we seen this before?).  The woman, who is African-American, is named Alishia Travers; they are in what is left of her home, which she informs Archer is in Brooklyn, NY, in 1944.  The Nazis are occupying the city, and we later learn that they control a large portion of the northeastern United States, including the District of Columbia.  With the help of Alishia's resistance cell, Archer obtains information about the grey-skinned aliens he had seen.  After a face-to-face meeting with one of these aliens, in which the alien ends up getting shot to death by one of the resistance, Archer learns that their grand plot is to build some sort of conduit that will get them back to their own time period.

Meanwhile, the good people of the Enterprise struggle to figure out what has happened and any potential way to get back to their own time.  Silik has arrived at some point; he infiltrates the ship and steals a shuttlepod; Trip and Travis are sent down to investigate and end up being captured themselves.  Daniels has also shown up, looking slightly the worse for wear (which is understandable, considering different bits of him have aged various amounts, some of them over 100 years).  Phlox is doubtful that he will survive long.

The two stories converge as Archer and his friend Alishia get cornered in a shootout with the Nazis and manage to communicate with the Enterprise and get beamed up.  Archer gets the chance to speak with Daniels before he dies; Daniels tells Archer that numerous factions of the Temporal Cold War have infiltrated various points of history and are trying to change important events in order to achieve their own ends.  He warns that the leader of one of these is a criminal called Vosk, who traveled into the past before coming back into the future to wage and win a war on Daniels's people.  This is why Daniels is here, in bad shape because of the fractured time frames, and he stresses that Archer must stop Vosk here in order for history to be set right.  Daniels then dies from the massive stresses on his body.

There, do you understand everything?  Good, because I don't...but we'll get to that later.  First a few general points about the episode.  I thought that as a season opener, it was average--nothing great, but nothing more horrible than what I might have expected.  I still find the concept of alien Nazis a bit hokey, to say the least.  Some might suggest that Nazi Germany, being the complete racists that they were, would have a few qualms about dealing with people who have faces somewhat like grey prunes--people who make the diversity of human appearances seem not very diverse at all.  Consider the scene in which the Nazi guards harass Archer and Alishia because they are people of two different races walking together...and then consider the casual way the Nazi leader speaks with Vosk.  However, if history has taught us anything, it is that when someone has something you want, you deal with them no matter what your personal preferences.  Particularly if that someone seems to have technical knowledge or power that could win your war for you.  Another thing to consider is the dichotomy of such a world view as the Nazis held, remembering, for instance, that Hitler's grandmother was Jewish.

I have no idea whether the writers intended this or not, but from my perspective, it looked like this episode paralleled the situation the Iraqi people are in today.  The use of the term 'insurgents' to refer to the resistance fighters was an interesting choice, given current events, though I am not certain the writers meant it to resonate in that way.  I am not here to change anyone's mind on the Iraq war, nor do I think anything I say here is likely to sway anyone.  I will say, however, that I was against the war from the beginning, partly because I could guess what wars do to a society and the people within.  This episode shows us the point of view of the 'terrorists'--the ones who resist the occupying army.  I am not comparing the conduct of the US army in Iraq to that of the Nazi army, either in this episode or in real history.  I am just saying that I understand where the insurgents are coming from.  In both cases.

The various series of Trek have always used analogies to get points across.  Some are more clumsy and/or obvious than others.  The scene I mentioned earlier with Archer and Alishia being harassed by the Nazi soldiers was a portrait of an ugly racial prejudice, but it fails to acknowledge that at that time, most parts of our own country had similar attitudes toward African-Americans and especially mixed couples.  It's all well to paint the Nazis as the bastards that they were, but for goodness sake, don't paint America of that era as some sort of shining example to humanity.  I refer you to the excellent DS9 episode "Far Beyond the Stars".

Character moments did exist in this episode, though they were not as meaty as I might have hoped.  Trip and T'Pol's best scene came when, after having been a little snappy with her on the bridge, Trip comes into her office and apologizes, explaining that it was just a jolt being stuck here when they were expecting to go home.  T'Pol is understanding, and there is a nice bit of interaction as she admits to wanting to visit her home as well.  But why do I get the feeling we're going to be subjected to a scene of about this weight every episode or so for a long time?  It's not that I'm against a glacial pace in building relationships, but I'm sure I'm not the only one to want to see more development of characters as opposed to random and often hokey time travel plots.

I thought Archer had a fairly good rapport with Alishia, particularly in the scene on the balcony, but again, the relationship needs more development to be more interesting.  The possibilities could be interesting if he falls in love with her (yeah, I know she's married, but that doesn't always stop people).  We might see a situation akin to the one in "City on the Edge of Forever", in which Kirk's love interest almost destroyed history by surviving.  But on the other hand, Alishia might just be an interesting character from that era who we can latch onto to keep up the connection with that timeframe.  Or who knows, maybe Mayweather dies in interrogation and she becomes the new helmswoman (one can always hope).

This episode saw the return of two of the most prominent figures thus far in the Temporal Cold War:  Daniels and Silik.  We had seen Daniels a bit last season (as you'll recall, he warned Archer in the final episode not to be the one to stay aboard the weapon, as he was more vital to history than Reed or Sato).  Silik had all but disappeared for the last year or so.  I believe the last time we saw him was in season two's finale, where he was a minor facilitator in the scene between Archer and Future Guy.  In terms of screen time, neither Daniels nor Silik had much screen time in this episode, though their roles were larger than that.

Daniels was there basically as the harbinger of doom--and the oracle who told our heroes what had to be done to set things right (wait a sec...isn't that the reason he's usually there?.....Never mind).  He was also the 'guest star in distress'...and in his case, the distress ended up killing him.  I make no secret that I never had much of a place in my heart for Daniels, who always struck me as too much akin to a Voyager character for my liking, besides being a sort of 'easy out' for the writers whenever they want an air of mystery regarding the TCW without having to explain themselves.  However, the manner of his passing did elicit some sympathy from me...though I have no doubt he'll be back once Archer sets the timeline right again.

Silik's role was minimal in this episode, though we're sure to see more of his plan later on.  We do not yet know whether he is allied with Vosk or working against him (though probably the latter), and he gave us the interesting tidbit that he seems to believe Trip is essential to something or other.  At least, I assume that's why he saved his life...probably Future Guy just warned him not to kill anyone on the Enterprise, as it might somehow affect the timeline.

Vosk's plan seems on the surface to be simple:  alter the outcome of the second World War so that the allies lose and the axis powers win...thus throwing Earth's history off completely and preventing the Federation from forming.  If this is so, one wonders why he would even have to fight Daniels and his group at all, as they would cease to exist.  But maybe that's the idea.  I must admit, I am not totally clear on what is going on here.  Daniels spoke of Vosk going back in time, then coming forward and destroying the future.  For the moment, I am assuming that what we're seeing now is Vosk on his trip back in time.  It's clear that he is trying to get a conduit built so he can travel through time, and I assume that once he has this conduit, he will be able to travel to Daniels's time period and wreak havoc.  Therefore, Archer's goal is to either stop this conduit from being completed, or to otherwise prevent Vosk and company from entering it (by destroying the conduit or destroying them--or both).

If this is true, I have some serious doubts about Daniels's logic--and no, I do not buy his little explanation about temporal paradoxes and turbulance in the timeline.  Daniels appeared to claim that if Vosk was prevented from leaving 1944 Earth, everything would be all right and reset itself.  But how would it reset itself if we only change time from that point?  The Nazis have control of New England and the Mid-Atlantic, and have battlefronts in Virginia and Ohio, among others.  Everyone knows this is a significant deviation from actual history that will not be set right by simply beating back the enemy; history has already been changed irrevocably.  Okay, so what?  Well, I would contend that at some point, Archer has to actually go back further in time, to the point where this all started--when Vosk appeared on Earth, or whatever.  But they don't have the technology to do this, as far as I know, and their usual avenging angel in the form of Daniels isn't going to be pulling any tricks this time.  I suppose Silik might somehow involve them in this, but other than that, I can't think of a solution.  Perhaps I lack a true understanding of the situation as it stands.  But the way I see it, taking out Vosk at this point in time will not reset everything.  After all, if history remains altered in 1944, the Federation's history will be altered as well, in more ways than you might think.

The Temporal Cold War was always meant as an analogy to the real cold war (the name could have been more subtle, perhaps).  In this episode, you start to get the idea of what happens when all of these factions start using their equivalents of nukes--in other words, start messing with timelines.  What you end up doing is destroying vast amounts of the timeline, and if you're not careful, yourself as wellf (just like with nukes, eh?).

But there is another problem with all of this.  When you have dozens of agents from various factions scattered around, each doing their best to manipulate time to their own ends, you can imagine the chaos that must ensue!  I mean, imagine Vosk's plan is going pretty well, but then some other faction sends a couple of agents back a few more years to the end of the first world war, and somehow they manage to manipulate the war's economic consequences and distribution (reparations, and such) so that Germany does not become impoverished and the Nazi party never gained power.  Or more simply, just have someone smother baby Hitler.  If you don't swallow that, imagine someone going even further back and lending advanced technology to the Saxons just before the Norman invasion of England--the entire history of Europe would be altered.  Even killing off a single individual could have vast connotations--what if someone had killed Jesus or Mohommed before they got the chance to preach anything?  One could argue that others would have risen to prominence and thus the voids filled, but how much of history would have been altered if two of its major religions had never existed?  Knocking out certain leaders like Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Genghis Khan would have altered events, certainly.  A little while ago, I watched a show about a recently rediscovered book which contained the writings of Archimedes.  Many scholars believe that had this book been available to certain mathemeticians or scientists during the Renaissance, calculus would have been developed far sooner, and our technology would now be far more advanced than it is.  History is a fragile thing; changing it is almost too easy.

Tired of Illani's ramblings yet?  Bear with me.  The reason I spend so long on this is I'm having a hard time believing that, given these circumstances of dozens of agents working against each other throughout history, anyone could get the outcome they wanted.  Group A tries to rewrite history by having the Nazis win World War II, but Group B spoils it by smothering Hitler in his cradle.  It's the classic paradox, and no matter what temporal babble excuse comes out of Daniels's mouth, I still think this kind of story is ridiculously complicated and difficult to resolve.

I have just spent several paragraphs complaining about temporal mechanics and that junk; for that, I apologize.  I have always cared more about character arcs than plot twists, temporal or otherwise, and so I enjoy episodes that come back more to the characters.  This one was just the season opener, and I didn't expect much on the character front.  However, it did have some nice moments, character-related or not.

For instance, I liked Trip's little fight with Silik, though the fact that Silik did his octopus impression to wriggle out probably surprised no one except Trip, who really shouldn't have been surprised either (surely Archer briefed him on fighting this guy!?).

Archer:  Listen, Trip, if you ever fight this guy, watch out for what I like to call his 'boneless moments'.  If there's a weapon nearby, he *will* be able to grab it, even if it looks impossible.  If you have him in a head lock, he *will* be able to slither out of it.  If you try to kick him in the gooneys, he *will* have moved them safely to his knee.  If you...uh, Trip?  Have you been listening to a word I've said?

Trip:  Oh, sorry Cap'n...I was just thinkin' about tonight's neuropressure session with T'Pol....

Archer:  I give up....
 

Yeah, maybe that's what happened.

Other interesting moments in the episode?  Well, the scene where Archer and Alishia are beamed up just as they're about to be captured or killed is reminiscent of a lot of scenes of beaming away from similar strife, perhaps most famously the one in Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country.

One thing which disappointed me in this episode was the failure to acknowledge Hoshi's physical and mental condition.  Recall that this episode begins right where the last one ended; Hoshi was still recovering from the brain parasite thing and had come up to the bridge because she wouldn't miss seeing Earth again for the world.  But in this episode, it's as if she's fully back to normal with no lasting side effects from the parasites.  This short-changes the difficulties she went through in the previous episodes--it makes it seem much less important that she had this done to her.  I would prefer that the effects be more long-lasting and not so easily cured.  I also think her little character arc with Reed from the previous couple of episodes needs to be resolved (or continued in a new way).  Just my opinion.

One final point.  This pathogen Vosk offers to the Nazis...the one that will kill all 'non-Arayans'.  I will assume Vosk was just making an empty offer, because if he was in earnest, it shows a serious lack of understanding from the Enterprise writers.  Even assuming the Nazis would actually want to wipe out all 'non-Arayans' (which in this case probably means anyone who's not blond with blue eyes, and would include Hitler, many of his leaders, and probably most of the remaining German population as well), there is no way that even the most skilled scientist could engineer a disease that would take out this target population.  Phenotypes (what we see as the expression of the genes) are rarely a good indication of the underlying genotypes, and any attempt to sort this out would be a nightmare.  But criticizing the science on this show is like picking on Bush for saying 'nucular'...after awhile it doesn't seem worth the arguing.
 

Some notes:

In this version of history, the naval ship known as the Enterprise sank.

The Nazis have occupied the Northeast US (but not Canada) down to at least Ohio and Virginia (but from the glimpse of their war map it looks like it's down to somewhere in the Carolinas).  They have control of the capital, and therefore the White House (don't get me started on Nazis in the White House...just don't).

Apparently the war is also going badly for the other allies; Moscow has been taken, though the Russians are attempting to retake it.  Nothing was said about Britain or anywhere else.

The grey people have blood that is either yellowish or orangish, probably depending on the light (I could see tones of both on my screen, though I would tend toward yellow).

Archer is from upstate New York.  I'm not sure if we had heard this before.

I mean no offense by these next statements (we all get a bit nutty now and then, myself included).  But I imagine there were a few nutty shippers out there who had latched onto the scene near the end of "Zero Hour" where Hoshi gives Trip a hug when she and Reed give Trip and T'Pol the news that Archer didn't make it.  Wow, they said...Hoshi likes Trip afterall!  Well, sorry to disappoint you, folks...but she did the same thing to Archer in this episode!  I guess that means that Hoshi is just a sweet, huggy sort of person.  (In fact, the shipper in me likes to think she hugged Reed the same way when they first found out that Archer was dead on 'Degra's Ship'....I can't help it).  Perhaps giving this trait to Hoshi is not the most flattering thing, considering all the accusations by fans that she's not 'tough' enough...but on the other hand, I don't think liking to hug people makes you weak.  Just perhaps a tad unprofessional.  It's certainly not as bad as exposing yourself to the audience all the time, such as her female co-star does.

Vosk, the leader of the TCW's most dangerous faction, is the chief alien Nazi.  He is violently opposed to the temporal accords, and has developed some sort of 'stealth' time travel, whatever that means.  Daniels claims that Vosk was almost captured, but escaped into the past with his stealth time travel.  They eventually located him but they were too late and Vosk was able to return to Daniels's century and defeated Daniels's bunch.  Vosk launched the war that's destroying all of time (don't ask me why he'd *want* to destroy all of time, considering he has to live in it, but maybe he didn't think things would get this out of hand).  Anyway, Daniels claims that here in 1944 is where Vosk can be stopped, and if Archer and company are successful in this, the big bad war will never happen and the timeline will be restored.  (I still don't think everything would be set right, but never mind).

I am also in some confusion over whether Vosk is the same species as his cronies; for some reason, they look different to me, although it could be just variation within the species.  He looks like he's part Reman, perhaps?

Probably a meaningless nitpick, but are Vosk and company using UTs?  Or are they speaking German?  The episode shows them speaking English, the Nazi guy with an accent.  I assume it was simply easier to do this than to have the actors speak German with subtitles.  Forget I brought it up.
 

"How do we return to our century?"
"You can't; it doesn't exsit, not the way you know it.  Neither does mine." --T'Pol and Daniels.

"What's happening is beyond your comprehension." --Silik to Trip; count me in too.

"You won't stop us!  When we get back, you'll never have existed!" --one of the grey guys to Archer, just before getting shot.  Yes, this kind of reminds me of the line from Bashir to O'Brien in "Trials and Tribble-ations", except that there it was in a humorous context.
 

Ratiing:  ****1/2  A fair start to the season, considering what we had to work with from the cliffhanger of last season, but I'm not entirely convinced that this story will be particularly plausible or interesting.  I will do my best to reserve judgment until we get more of an idea of what this is all about; after all, I was one of those complaining about the Xindi arc for awhile, only to have it exceed my expectations by the end.  I am still not entirely convinced that restricting an entire season to one arc is a smart way to go; last season may have been interesting, but it ended up short-changing all but the 'Big Three' in terms of the amount of good stories they got.  I would like to see more of Reed this season, and definitely more of Sato, who is the most horribly underused character on the show.  Mayweather is a different matter, as I'm not sure he'd be interesting even if you gave him every other line, but I suppose it's possible.  In any case, whether there is an overriding plot arc or not, the core of the episode is the characters and their conflicts, and how well those things are written.  I am hoping for the best this year, and also that Enterprise does well enough to stay alive for a year 5.