[7.1/10] Hey, I get it. Enterprise had a new regime in the form of Manny Coto, and he presumably wanted to clear the decks. He’d already wrapped up the Xindi arc, and now he and his team thought it was the right time to wrap up the Temporal Cold War arc and move on too. Silik dies. Daniels is told to stop messing with the Enterprise. And apparently killing insta-bad guy Vosk not only resets the timeline to its natural state, but ends the war across time once and for all. That’s all...okay, if not exactly a super-satisfying conclusion to a storyline that’s been running through the show for three seasons now.
Still, the whole thing feels like a rush job. I understand not wanting to devote three full episodes to this whole weird alternate history plot and Vosk’s crew. But we just met these guys, and now it turns out they’re responsible for this whole, seasons-long kit and kaboodle? Frankly, it reeks of the same kind of laziness of the Sphere-Builders emerging out of nowhere as the real villains of the Xindi arc. But even there, we at least got a few episodes of the Sphere-Builders to get to know them the tiniest bit before BOOM, KABLAM, they’re all gone and the day is saved and the big deal overarching plot is over.
We get two episodes to get to know Vosk, learn why he is the evil of all evils, what he wants, and why, before he too must be blown up so that all can be set right again. We also have to spend several awkward scenes delivering some hastily-cobbled together lore about why Silik hates Vosk and why he hates Daniels, and none of it is organic or really satisfying.
Still, the second part of “Stormfront” does two things that make it interesting, if only briefly, in between instances where the show is clearly straining to try pack a season’s worth of developments into the conclusion of a single two-part episode.
The first is that it has Vosk make a pretty convincing case for why Archer is being hasty in opposing him. Vosk raises the fact that Daniels (and presumably his associates) haven’t exactly been neutral observers on the whole timeline issue, that they have an agenda. When Archer challenges him on the same point, Vosk doesn't deny it, but says that he’s open and frank about it rather than only giving cryptic hints and nebulous guidance. He also makes a pretty convincing pitch that the Temporal Agents restricting time travel for him is like the Vulcans restricting warp drive for humanity -- a kind of unwanted and unneeded babysitting that prevents different species’ from their own exploration and self-determination.
Enterprise did the same thing with Silik a while back, and treats this situation the exact same way. Rather than showing Archer debating or even seriously considering Vosk’s points, he just goes with who brung him to the dance, and Vosk quickly resorts to an “I will destroy you!!!” level of evil just in case the audience thought for a split-second the show might subvert expectations a little. Let’s be real -- this show was never going to have the scary looking alien in the Nazi uniform turn out to be not so bad or have shades of gray -- but it could at least have pretended to take him seriously as a character for a scene or two.
The other things that boosts this episode is that, after scads of appearances where Silik was just an indiscriminate, one-note bad guy on the show, he gets his own set of layers and shading here. Again, the explanation of his backstory is very rushed, but the notion that Vosk tried to wipe out his people, and so he and Archer want the same thing creates an interesting motivation and team-up for the both of them.
It’s also the most distinctive Silik has been as a character. The interrogation scene requires a lot of rank speculation-as-exposition in a way that feels unnatural, but the resulting pairing between Silik and Archer is surprisingly effective. The two of them working together to infiltrate the Nazi bunker and blow up the conduit has some genuine suspense to it, and his death scene is unexpectedly moving. For one thing, despite the cruddy mid-00s CGI, human-ish Silik gets to be a badass in taking out Nazis. For another, his dying words to Archer that he was a “worthy opponent” makes you feel like there was more to this guy that we never really got to find out given this rushed conclusion.
In the end though, most of the episode is just the usual “we all have to work together to blow up the big thing” sort of storytelling. Archer reunites with Alisha and Carmine, who agree to use their resources and allies to help get into the Nazi bunker. There’s faux-tearful goodbyes to characters we just met and who don’t resonate beyond some residual Sopranos affection.
There’s also a power struggle within the bad guys’ ranks, and the rank and file Nazis want the aliens to turn over their technology already. It’s kind of a waste beyond Vosk getting to flex on them and once again show how evil he is. It’s another minor plot obstacle thrown into an episode that already feels overstuffed in its attempts to include everything and the kitchen sink. And that’s before the silliness of seeing the Enterprise fighting alien-upgrading Nazi planes over downtown New York City.
Nevertheless, however implausible or overly tidy Archer’s rescue, victory, and return may be over these two episodes, there is something undeniably heartening about the crew returning to Earth, their Earth, after all this time. The music swells, and a flotilla of other space ships greet them, and even your humble reviewer’s cold dead heart flutters just a little at the catharsis over our heroes making it back home after so much and so long away.
You can feel Coto and Enterprise contorting themselves to make a clean slate here. That contrivance and convenience makes what seems to be the final chapter of a major ongoing story less satisfying than it should be. But for good or for ill, the board is clear now, with one more season for this series to define itself and move forward. Here’s hoping it’s worth the ups and downs it’s taken to get here.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-08-10T20:27:03Z
[7.1/10] Hey, I get it. Enterprise had a new regime in the form of Manny Coto, and he presumably wanted to clear the decks. He’d already wrapped up the Xindi arc, and now he and his team thought it was the right time to wrap up the Temporal Cold War arc and move on too. Silik dies. Daniels is told to stop messing with the Enterprise. And apparently killing insta-bad guy Vosk not only resets the timeline to its natural state, but ends the war across time once and for all. That’s all...okay, if not exactly a super-satisfying conclusion to a storyline that’s been running through the show for three seasons now.
Still, the whole thing feels like a rush job. I understand not wanting to devote three full episodes to this whole weird alternate history plot and Vosk’s crew. But we just met these guys, and now it turns out they’re responsible for this whole, seasons-long kit and kaboodle? Frankly, it reeks of the same kind of laziness of the Sphere-Builders emerging out of nowhere as the real villains of the Xindi arc. But even there, we at least got a few episodes of the Sphere-Builders to get to know them the tiniest bit before BOOM, KABLAM, they’re all gone and the day is saved and the big deal overarching plot is over.
We get two episodes to get to know Vosk, learn why he is the evil of all evils, what he wants, and why, before he too must be blown up so that all can be set right again. We also have to spend several awkward scenes delivering some hastily-cobbled together lore about why Silik hates Vosk and why he hates Daniels, and none of it is organic or really satisfying.
Still, the second part of “Stormfront” does two things that make it interesting, if only briefly, in between instances where the show is clearly straining to try pack a season’s worth of developments into the conclusion of a single two-part episode.
The first is that it has Vosk make a pretty convincing case for why Archer is being hasty in opposing him. Vosk raises the fact that Daniels (and presumably his associates) haven’t exactly been neutral observers on the whole timeline issue, that they have an agenda. When Archer challenges him on the same point, Vosk doesn't deny it, but says that he’s open and frank about it rather than only giving cryptic hints and nebulous guidance. He also makes a pretty convincing pitch that the Temporal Agents restricting time travel for him is like the Vulcans restricting warp drive for humanity -- a kind of unwanted and unneeded babysitting that prevents different species’ from their own exploration and self-determination.
Enterprise did the same thing with Silik a while back, and treats this situation the exact same way. Rather than showing Archer debating or even seriously considering Vosk’s points, he just goes with who brung him to the dance, and Vosk quickly resorts to an “I will destroy you!!!” level of evil just in case the audience thought for a split-second the show might subvert expectations a little. Let’s be real -- this show was never going to have the scary looking alien in the Nazi uniform turn out to be not so bad or have shades of gray -- but it could at least have pretended to take him seriously as a character for a scene or two.
The other things that boosts this episode is that, after scads of appearances where Silik was just an indiscriminate, one-note bad guy on the show, he gets his own set of layers and shading here. Again, the explanation of his backstory is very rushed, but the notion that Vosk tried to wipe out his people, and so he and Archer want the same thing creates an interesting motivation and team-up for the both of them.
It’s also the most distinctive Silik has been as a character. The interrogation scene requires a lot of rank speculation-as-exposition in a way that feels unnatural, but the resulting pairing between Silik and Archer is surprisingly effective. The two of them working together to infiltrate the Nazi bunker and blow up the conduit has some genuine suspense to it, and his death scene is unexpectedly moving. For one thing, despite the cruddy mid-00s CGI, human-ish Silik gets to be a badass in taking out Nazis. For another, his dying words to Archer that he was a “worthy opponent” makes you feel like there was more to this guy that we never really got to find out given this rushed conclusion.
In the end though, most of the episode is just the usual “we all have to work together to blow up the big thing” sort of storytelling. Archer reunites with Alisha and Carmine, who agree to use their resources and allies to help get into the Nazi bunker. There’s faux-tearful goodbyes to characters we just met and who don’t resonate beyond some residual Sopranos affection.
There’s also a power struggle within the bad guys’ ranks, and the rank and file Nazis want the aliens to turn over their technology already. It’s kind of a waste beyond Vosk getting to flex on them and once again show how evil he is. It’s another minor plot obstacle thrown into an episode that already feels overstuffed in its attempts to include everything and the kitchen sink. And that’s before the silliness of seeing the Enterprise fighting alien-upgrading Nazi planes over downtown New York City.
Nevertheless, however implausible or overly tidy Archer’s rescue, victory, and return may be over these two episodes, there is something undeniably heartening about the crew returning to Earth, their Earth, after all this time. The music swells, and a flotilla of other space ships greet them, and even your humble reviewer’s cold dead heart flutters just a little at the catharsis over our heroes making it back home after so much and so long away.
You can feel Coto and Enterprise contorting themselves to make a clean slate here. That contrivance and convenience makes what seems to be the final chapter of a major ongoing story less satisfying than it should be. But for good or for ill, the board is clear now, with one more season for this series to define itself and move forward. Here’s hoping it’s worth the ups and downs it’s taken to get here.