“Storm Front”
Page 5 of 6until the stage is ready. Rush explains that the new technology allows the director to see a live monitor of the footage, as it will appear in the finished product. This lets the production team see immediately whether a scene has been completed to their satisfaction and move on or take more footage if necessary.”
I can’t say the same for the visual f/x however. They’ve been more than excellent throughout the first three seasons but in this episode they were not quite up to that standard. The scene showing Silik, literally taking form from out of the ceiling of the ship was very well done but the explosions were mediocre at best. It’s a pity because the f/x were one of Enterprise’s strong suits.
Two Voyager alumni appear in this episode: Tom Wright who played Tuvix in “Tuvix” here plays Ghrath and J. Paul Boehmer who played the Kapitan in “The Killing Game I and II” is an SS agent in this episode.
We’ve seen Nazis used for a story three times now in Trek series: in TOS’s “Patterns of Force”, Voyager’s “The Killing Game I and II” and of course in last season’s finale “Zero Hour”, this episode and we will see them again in part two of course.
As I expected, last season’s finale was the end of the Xindi arc. I’ve stayed away from spoilers so whether or not it gets mentioned again or if there are after-effects this season, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I want to be surprised. I also expect the Temporal Cold War to be resolved in “Storm Front, Part II” although that may come back as well. Regardless, I enjoyed the Xindi arc. It had one of the most dramatic scenes, where Degra was murdered by Dolim, that I’ve ever seen in a Star Trek series. But it was more than that. It was a neat, compact arc that managed to tell a decent and relatively engaging story and conclude it, albeit somewhat abruptly. This is why I suspect we may see something about it again.
Now we have Nazi aliens, the eastern portion of America occupied, the White House under the control of the Nazis, mobsters turned resistance fighters, Silik, Daniels and it’s 1944. It’s quite a mix. Last season’s finale, “Zero Hour” was written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga and it was left to Manny Coto to make sense out of that ending and I would assume wrap-up the Temporal Cold War this season. It would be interesting to know if they gave Coto an outline of “Storm Front” or whether it was all left to him. Regardless, this episode isn’t great but it’s watchable. There are a few too many cliches like the way the mobsters and the Nazis are portrayed but what the heck, it’s fun nonetheless if a little silly and predictable.
The story however is simple sci-fi action. There’s no allegory here that I can think of except for perhaps seeing the White House draped in Nazi banners et al might be construed as meaning something to some people in these political times but I doubt the writer meant it that way. There’s no real meaning to all this.
