78 – Storm Front, Part II

Grade: D-

Summary

Continuing the storyline from the previous episode, Archer and the Enterprise crew have to deal with this threat from futuristic aliens and mid-20th Century Nazis. Archer must get help from the WWII resistance fighters to destroy the time conduit constructed by the aliens.

Commentary

Well, it’s back to mediocre episodes for this franchise.

One of the problems I see with this episode is that we never once feel like Archer or any of the crew is in any real danger. Maybe if they had killed off a few of the regulars, stories like this one would have more impact.

About the only good thing about this episode is that we finally get to put the Temporal War behind us forever – well, at least we hope so anyway. My only question is that if the Temporal War never happened, wouldn’t everything be different – including the fact that Enterprise was launched at all? After all, in the very first episode, a couple of Suliban attacked a Klingon, and that’s what started humanity’s trip into the great unknown expanses of space.

If the Temporal War never happened, wouldn’t the whole first 3 seasons have been different? Maybe we should have seen the Enterprise have to deal with these changes. Now that would have been interesting. Instead, we’re going to be back to the ho-hum episodes that we’ve already seen a zillion times before.

It’s too bad that Berman and Braga have virtually no imagination. This season could have been a heck of a lot better if they had dealt with this question.

Of Note

Some of the “newsreel” Nazi footage was real, and some of it was altered for this episode. That’s probably the most interesting thing I can say about this.