76: Storm Front (part 2) Star Trek Enterprise Season 4, Episode 2




Matt and Sean look for the silver lining in the second half of a rough pair of Star Trek Enterprise episodes. 

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Hey everybody. In this episode of Trek in Time, we’re gonna be looking for some silver linings in what has been a rough couple of episodes. That’s right. We’re talking about season four, episode two, Stormfront part two. Welcome to Trek in Time. This is of course, the epi, the podcast, not the epi episode.

The podcast, Matthew, where we take a look at all of star Trek in chronological order. We also take a look at the context at the time of original broadcast. So we’re currently. Starting the fourth season, the final season of Enterprise, which puts us squarely in 2004. And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell.

I’m a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me is my brother Matt. Matt is the guru and inquisitor behind the YouTube channel, undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how you doing? I’m doing really well. How about yourself?

Good. I’m looking forward. You kind of gave me a teaser around the comments on our previous episode that you wanted to share. Yeah. So I’m looking forward to hearing what it is that you’re gonna be sharing with us now. Yeah. This one is from our episode

74 0 Hour, which is the episode right before the episodes we’re talking about.

Today. Mm-hmm. . And there were two comments from Ebos that I wanted to read. And the reason I wanted to read both of these is you could clearly Ebos wrote one at the beginning when he had not listened to our full episode. And then his second comment clearly came after he’d finished. And I liked the , the different takes across these two comments.

So the first one was first Jeffrey Combs. While he makes Star Trek even more star Trek, to me every single time, his enthusiasm graces an. Completely agree. And to add to that, I actually just watched an episode of Lord Dex, where he was one of the voices. Mm. And

he even elevated that show.

So , I love the guy.

A lot of stuff was happening. And in total, the episode could have been messy, but it wasn’t for once. Soto’s character had a good, solid moment, even if it was short and in between all the other stuff. The post-traumatic part of her short story was good, and Linda Park’s acting did it justice and it points out the ship and her crew have not been on a cruise.

The ending of the episode made me think of the showrunners knew the show was done over and out, but with that ending, they wanted to ex extort a last season from the studio’s execs. Luckily, it worked. You guys have a. And then his second comment. Well, after listening to your review guys, the episode was in some ways a messy affair.

Mm. The different stories were easy to follow. So in that regard, the episode wasn’t as messy as it could have been. The endings you guys envisioned for fit the Star Trek puzzle better as they were drawn from Cannon. I didn’t mind the World War II Cliff Hangar because I knew then that the show would at least be around for one more season.

So I was happy for that. Didn’t need the alien at the end for me. Where I’m from, the show aired long after the prime evenings in the US Connections between current events and the show faded somewhat, but the writing was on the wall. Even over here, the show Star Trek as a whole, not just Enterprise, had lost its momentum and needed a winter sleep.

Oh yeah. Good review guys. Like always. You have a good one. Like I said, I wanted to call that out cause it was interesting to see his two slightly different takes and I agree with him a hundred percent. I think Linda Park did a good job, um, in her short moment that she had Yeah. In that storyline, like with her trying to basically kill herself.

It like, it said so much about the character and how she had grown and I, I really admired that. Yeah. But it’s, I, even though it was a messy episode, I think it did a decent. Kind of wrapping everything up and for both of us, when we talked about the episode, when it went to the space Nazis is when everything just took a record scratch and went

completely off the cliff.

Yeah, yeah. For me, it, it really boiled down to, at the beginning of this season, uh, yeah, the missed opportunity. For them to do a episode similar to the episode that followed the best of both worlds, part One and two, best of both worlds, where Picard is Kit Captured, turned into Lo Cutis, the devastating battle where he destroys a huge component of the Star Fleet and then goes on to Earth and Riker and the team are able to.

Take him back and defeat the Borg. Conquest of Earth is followed on with one of the best episodes where Picard goes home and questions whether he should stay in Star Fleet and feels like he isn’t strong enough, and wharf is visited by his parents, which then resurfaces the storyline around his. in the Klingon Empire and his sense that he needs to bear that burden alone and is unsure of how to incorporate his human parents in that.

And for them to show up and basically say, we don’t get it, but we love you, so we’ll do whatever. And Wesley Crusher also visiting effectively the ghost of his father and dealing with questions. His identity without having such a huge part of his identity in his life. And that episode does so much without one explosion, without one Nazi, without one.

Like there’s, it’s just lots of really brilliant writing, and I feel like they set up at the end of season three for such a similar moment. Archer wrestling with, I, I did it. I completed my mission. But at what cost? Yep. I wanted to see that discussion. I wanted to see to Paul saying, I’m ready to go back to Vecan, but is Vecan ready for me because I’ve changed.

I’m not what I was and am I Vulcan? Therefore, I wanted to see Sato. Dealing with like physical and mental repercu repercussions of the torture that she’s just gone through. That is, it’s just nightmarish. And from these first two episodes of this season, nobody other than to Paul looks like they’re really carrying much in the way of scars from their previous experiences.

I agree

with you a hundred percent. And I wanna kinda take it back to Eeb boss’s comment. The second part of his comment were, he mentioned that the show faded somewhat. Yeah. But the writing was on the wall. Or even over here, the show Star Trek had lost its momentum. I think there was in general from viewers, star Trek fatigue.

Yeah. Because there had been so much of the same for like a decade. And I think there was also huge show fatigue from the showrunners themselves. And so it’s like everybody was just kinda like, I gave up. I don’t care anymore. Yeah. So it’s like, I feel like we’re seeing that in that transition from season three into season four, play out in

front of us.

So here we are in part two of Storm Front and that alert in the background, that noises you here and it may sound a little funky, a little warbly like it’s losing. The reason for that is because the synopsis for this one is identical from last week’s. Matt, do you wanna really quickly just reread the synopsis for this episode?

Set in the 22nd Century. The series follows the Adventures of the First Star Fleet, Starship Enterprise Registration NX oh one in this episode, after destroying the Xindi Weapon, enterprise finds itself in the 20th century during World War II with Nazis in control of the Northeastern. Captain Archer, Scott Bakula joins S Silik, John Fleck, to stop the Alien Nazis restore the timeline and end the Temporal Cold War.

Thank God. Yes, I added that. Thank God that is going to be . That is going to be a refrain throughout this entire episode. Listeners, be ready. . Matt and I are gonna be celebrating every nail put in the coffin of the Temporal Cold War, the Temporal Cold War . There’s a, there’s, I’m not spoiling anything. Two deaths of two characters who have been in the series since the very first season.

I didn’t miss, I, I won’t miss either one of them moving forward. Mm-hmm. , neither of them was a character that was just like, oh, but what about that guy? No. Mm-hmm. . So we are in season four, episode two. This one’s directed by David Straighten. Alan Croaker handled part one. , both episodes were written by Manny Koto.

As we mentioned before, he was writing himself out of a corner because he’s now a showrunner and he wanted to get back to his goal, hint as to what his goal is. He was interested in filling the gap between this and the original series, so, mm-hmm. , he’s ready to lay out some groundwork of why is the original series, why is the Federation, and why is Star Fleet operating the way it does in the.

That’s what his goal is. So, and I’m all on board with that. I wish there had been Me Too. More of that from the very beginning. Me too. Mm-hmm. , the episode, original air date for part two, October 15th, 2004. And once again, the guest stars. It’s all the same people from the previous episode. Golden Brooks, Jack Kutney, John Fleck, Matt Winston, Christopher Neem, Stephen Sherpa.

Mark Elliot Silverberg, David Pease, Burr Middleton, Joe Marzo, Tom Wright, j Paul Bomer, and John Harel. And on October 15th, 2004, Matt, what were you listening to? Guess what it

was?

It was still maroon five. She will be loved. And at the box office. Matt, what were you lining up to see? What were you grabbing your popcorn to go watch?

Well, it was still shark tail. Oh boy. That’s right. That animated film that we couldn’t recall last week is still number one in the box office. and on television. What were people watching? Well, good news for Star Trek. It was up in viewership, which maybe the 2.9 million viewers told a few friends and 3.1 million showed up to see part two of an episode that they didn’t watch.

Part one. I don’t know how that works, but good for them. Meanwhile, on ABC. Eight Simple rules and complete Savages. Two shows that Matt DVRd regularly

on cbs. Joan of Arcadia had 9 million viewers. It’s the big winner for the week. I believe that in Dateline, which had 9.2. And on Phlox, it was the Phlox movie special C spot. That’s right man. It was the 2001 movie. Neither of us will ever remember. Nope. And on WB, what I like about you and Grounded for Life, both getting about two and a half million viewers per and in the news from this headline caught my eye from the New York Times.

On this day, October 15th, 2004, company News Starbucks plans to expand by 15,000 stores in the us. I just thought it was interesting that that was news back in 2004 when now you can’t throw a rock without hitting Starbucks. They now have 22,000 stores across the nation. That’s not even including global.

Sometimes on the opposite side of the street from one

another. That’s right. , yes. In Manhattan, there’s a, there’s an area where there are three Starbucks all within about a half block of each other, and they are all too. It’s same thing as Boston. You can stand

in one corner in front of a Starbucks and look at the opposite corner.

Oh, there’s a Starbucks . I guess I’m too lazy to cross the street .

I also thought that this little news bit was interesting, Ford. Motor Cars brings back Steve McQueen, a digitally revived. Steve McQueen, who died in 1980 will be repricing the character of Lieutenant Frank Bullit in a commercial promoting the redesigned and retro Ford Mustang.

The ad is part of a heavy push by the Ford Motor Company to convince Americans that a new crop of cars is coming out this month are worth buying on their own merits, not because of $5,000 rebate or zero interest financing. I found that interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it was part of, at a, at the time, a big push in digital FX have reached the point where we can resurrect any actor from any period and reuse them in all these ways.

And I think that it’s l it largely fell flat. Mm-hmm. because the people that they were going and grabbing and pulling back current audiences didn’t even know who they. So, mm-hmm. . I love the idea that in 2004, they thought the greatest way to sell cars to 30 somethings was to resurrect an actor who died when they were a child.

So that I just think is interesting. Second, I remember this commercial, and I remember being impressed by the ability for them to do what they did to resurrect that actor and have him sitting behind the wheel of a new Ford car. The technology. Was on display as being able to do what they claimed it could.

I wish some of that video effects skill , yeah, was a little bit more present in this episode. There is a sequence in this episode that I do think was impressive and interesting, and I wish there had been more of it, but we’ll get there as we talk about the episode. , everybody who’s a regular listener, who, who tuned in last week for our discussion of part one.

You’re not gonna be surprised by anything we say in part two, at least not from me. Part two is just tying all the threads together from part one and, and just sending the temporal Cold War out into space. It’s, and it’s overdue. The really like, , it feels like the series has struggled ever since.

Suggesting the temporal Cold War was a thing with what that means, how it manifests and what to do with it, and it never felt like they figured out how to manage it, especially when you compare it to BA’s other best known project. Quantum Leap. Yeah, . Yep. Which is so. and so well conceived with what is it about?

Why is he doing these things? What are the rules? The temporal Cold War never had any of that. So we have, nope. In this episode, the conclusion of people have now started the factions. What are factions in time travel? What does that even mean? The factions have now. Cold War, hot meaning they’re going back through time and they’re changing things.

What would the goals be? None of that’s ever laid out. Ultimately, the hint is we wanna stop humanity from doing something. But what that is and why is never clarified. So Vasque, the main villain in this, says at one point, My people have the ability to control entire worlds, to change the direction of the galaxy, to do all these things.

There’s, but there’s nothing, there’s no meat on that claim. Did you find yourself like wondering like, what are the goals here? What are they trying to do? .

Well, they never, because he’s a mustache trolling villain, they never gave any of that, and it bothered me a lot. It’s like they could have shown, they could have mentioned some kind of a side between him and one of his subordinates or something like that.

Or maybe he goes on a rant at the Germans where he could have explained something they had already done. Mm-hmm. . , like an ex like to basically terrorize the German and put him in his place. He could’ve said there was a species mm-hmm. that thought they could stand up to us, and what we ended up doing was blah, blah, blah.

He could’ve just like very coldly described what they did and he said net species no longer exists, right? It’s like he could’ve just been very threatening and explained it, and then we as a viewer be like, oh crap. This is how they use this technology and this power to kinda consolidate their own interests.

So what, okay. .

Yeah. Yeah. For me, the, the, yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I was gonna say for me the, the biggest missed point of interest, and the only reason to do what I’m gonna talk about now was going to be, would be if you were going to hold onto alt history as being a focal point of the show. So I understand why they didn’t go this direction.

but I talked in the last episode that the alt history stuff seemed to me to be the most interesting. Yes, yes. And in this episode in particular, you get a neat scene with the. Propaganda lieutenant. Well, you get the opening I thought was, was awesome. Brilliant. Because yes, it was total alt history, uh, newsreel propaganda around Adolf Hitler, visits New York City and is receives a warm welcome and the president is working with him to make both Nazi Germany and the United States strong again, and, and opposing those forces that have been trying to hold them back.

And it’s all. So subtle that you know what’s being swept under the rug by the newsreel is like the Nazis are blaming the Jews and mm-hmm. , there’s a global conspiracy by the Zionists to take over, and the idea that Roosevelt would be aligning with that, it’s like all of that is terrifically rendered. And then mm-hmm.

the scene later in the episode. It came out of nowhere and it feels like Mani Koto came up with a really neat chain of events of how changes in history would’ve impacted how things unrolled. and so he just gives it to Lieutenant Reed to say, yeah, like it doesn’t make any sense that it would be Lieutenant Reed saying all of this, but it’s this argument of somebody in one of these factions assassinated Vladimir Lennon before he could be involved in the communist uprising in Russia.

As a result, Russia does not become the Soviet Union, and therefore is not a threat. Nazi Germany. So they focus all of their efforts moving westward and quickly sweep through Western Europe, including England, and then make the leap across the Atlantic into New York and Washington DC and are able to get a foothold there.

Really interesting alt history I found that far. . Interesting. And even with the aspect of like, well, what if they had played around with Daniels sending them to this timeline, and then they have to figure out where further in time they have to go, to go further and further back to figure out what’s the linchpin.

Mm-hmm. , wouldn’t it have been interesting to have a, the enterprise has to save Lennon like. Like pushing back that direction and saying like they’ve got some temporary tech from Daniels who’s given them this to say like, you need to figure out what the key elements are, what has been changed, and you need to stop those things and you’re gonna have to do it by going back a couple of years at a time.

And then, You could have had an episode where it was like, well, we’re still not there. Done. And then go back until you finally, it’s like, oh, it’s because they killed Lennon. Lennon is the key. So it’s like we have to save, you know, Lenn.

They could’ve done, they could had Daniel’s hand, Ziggy to the captain.

There you go. Say take this and keep going back in time. Kidding. Wink or Winkle. Yeah, . Exactly. .

But that aspect, like really kind of like pulling at the threads of history is where the temporal Cold War could have found its most interesting footing, and instead it was just used as like a curtain. or a screen to Project Star Trek onto.

So it was, it was so poorly conceived right from the beginning. So that now why invest time and energy into making sense out of it when you’re trying to end it. So it’s like, I feel like Mani Coto is like, I could do some really interesting stuff with time travel. I could do some interesting stuff with old history, but we’re just trying to get out of this.

We’re just trying to get out. , you end up with the focus being the resistance, pushback, Archer, convincing the resistance how to, what they need. And ultimately, Daniels at the end of the previous episode is like there’s a super thing, you need to blow it up and mm-hmm. finding that super thing. So much of this episode felt like a little bit of a shell game.

you know, the P is underneath one of the shells and you’re moving ’em all real quickly. Mm-hmm. , there’s always somebody stuck on earth. Yep. And the first episode was Archer and Trip and Mayweather were on the ship, and then Archer gets back and now tripping Mayweather on earth and they’re in danger. So it’s like the Nazis have to have somebody at all times.

Mm-hmm. . And in this one, it’s. and Mayweather. But Tripp has already, and we didn’t actually mention this in the previous episode cuz it was, it amounted to nothing but s Silik is there s Silik is on the ship. Yeah. And we see him running around and he attacks Tripp. Here we see the, the, the final stage of what that all means.

And the way it manifests is in one of the silliest little kidnappings you’ve ever seen where. trip is being held by the Nazis and then looks at the ceiling of his cell and sees Silik. Mm-hmm. , and then later on we see as Trip and Mayweather are returned and they go back to the enterprise. It’s actually a pretty cool scene, but again, logic of things don’t really, really like.

Mm-hmm. Trip and Mayweather are being. Scanned by Phlox. Phlox very subtly, gives a hmm, response to the readings, shows it to the captain, subtly walks over to a calm panel casually is calling security. Archer is having a very awkward looking conversation with trip when. , they suddenly start fighting. And it turns out that S Silik has made himself look like Tripp.

Now s Silik making himself look like a human down to every detail. Have we seen that before? No, we haven’t. And that’s his ability to do that. Like it feels like it comes out of nowhere. But that being said, I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea that he would be sitting there with a doctor who’s clearly scanning.

and he would be thinking, he get away with it. They’re never gonna figure out that I’m not a human. Like I just laughed at that out loud. I was, I was like, this is really pretty funny that like, wait a minute, you figured it out. just because of that sensor that could clearly tell I was a Suliban . So now we have s Silik involved in the back and forth, and you have a number of scenes with Archer and him in the cell and Yes.

Can I

just point out that you actually don’t even need Silik in this episode? Oh no. He does nothing. Yeah, he. Nothing. He opens the door. That’s why I was laughing. He opens the door the first time. The previous, yeah, in the previous episode, when I read the wiki wiki description, I kind of laughed at the fact that they called his character out as helping to stop the, the whole thing.

And it’s like when you actually watch the episode, he does nothing of value. It’s like he’s there so we can watch him die. Yeah. They literally, I think he’s there

just so they can kill him. Yes. That’s it. Daniels arguably does. Yeah. And Silik, because he’s taken them back in time. Mm-hmm. , and he’s also on hand so he can die.

It’s, yep. This is literally, I feel like, I feel like Manny Coto was like, , I gotta get these guys outta here and I’m gonna do it by having them die on screen. Daniels has died in previous episodes. It’s always been kind of offscreen. It’s always been kind of like, and Whoopy, and they’re gone. Mm-hmm. . And this time it’s literally he’s on a table and goes, ah.

And then it is gone. . Although I take that all back. He comes back. He comes back.

So he’s at the end. Ugh. He’s at the end.

So frustrating. I forgot that. But Silik S’s. Silica is gone, silica is dead. He has a pretty overwrought death scene for being a villain and he makes the claim that so many star Trek villains say, which was , I wish I could have died at your hands instead of the way I did.

And I’m just like, why do they keep saying that? I,

I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna body shame the actor that plays Silik, but there were a couple shots from me you could see clearly. Yeah. His, his, his little pooch that he had down there. Yeah. Yeah. And all I kept thinking was you couldn’t put some spanks on him because he’s eight.

alien. That can literally change his shape. Yeah. ,

he’s decided to have, he’s decided to have, have, uh, underwear lines and invisible underwear lines and a kind of little gut. Yeah. That’s, that’s what his species thinks is attractive. So, but yeah, SI’s involvement is a little bit of CGI stuff. Like he goes in the fight sequences.

He does a kind of like, turning limp noodle , which I love the idea of like, of a species that’s like, okay, we’re gonna practice limp noodle. This is when they’ve got you in a bear grip and you just need to go, Ooh. Like the idea that somehow a human wouldn’t be able to put enough pressure. To actually continue to hold somebody who was going limp noodle.

I love the idea that as soon as somebody turns into kind of like a bag of water, the human’s just like, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t, my thumbs don’t work anymore. . Um, so you get a couple of scenes with that, and then you get a couple of scenes where you get a scene where he goes through a next to a door.

Matt, do you wanna go into the details of what that vent is there? I don’t remember.

I blacked it out. Sean ,

the vent is there for the convenience of having s Silik go through it. There is no reason Yeah, why there would be a vent. That’s why I blacked it out next to the door. It like, it could have been a mail slot, it could have been anything.

It literally is just an air vent. Next to the door and I’m like, well that’s convenient. Good thing that was there anyway. .

Well, this of the two episodes, I think. Okay. You’re gonna say they’re both weak. I think this is the weaker of the two episodes. Mm-hmm. , um, For me, most of my comments I was writing down were very like really, really?

There was comments like the hand wavy chicken or egg comment the captain made about how this timey Wyse works and it was like, okay, that’s them saying we give up, let’s just, yeah, move on. We’re not gonna try to explain it. They

literally say, how is like, if you can get rid of VASc, you will undo all the change.

How, and they even make the point of saying, we don’t think Voss was the one behind killing Lennon. So getting rid of Vasque. Won’t change anything, wouldn’t undo that. So like, yeah, there’s, just don’t think about it too

hard. Don’t think about it too hard. . But the, the, the, the other comment, the other line that to me was speaking of os was where I thought, wow, this is over the top.

The show is jumping the shark right before our eyes. It’s when he says the conduit will hold. Yeah. It was that line for some reason. Just for me. It was like, oh, oh dear. Oh dear God. Here we. Here we go.

I like that he made his moving speech about we will return home and we will take our place. As the commanders of the galaxy, and it’s literally like half a dozen guys and they’re all like pray.

Yay. Total,

total lack of energy in the room at the idea that we, we are going to be at the pinnacle of control of all things in the galaxy and will be like God’s and the responsive , one guy in the background going. I’m happy about that.

If you had, if you had today’s technology and budget, it’s like you would’ve taken those 12 actors and made them look like 50 or 60 actors that are all doing different things.

But the, the other thing that I thought was, had me laughing so hard was when I can’t remember who it was that was like, turning the tables in the Germans. Mm-hmm. and starts to like kill the Germans. And there’s these two German cars, , they’re standing there with their rifles and the take down and the turning the table starts and they both go Hall

And they reach in their guns and they start like fumbling with their guns. Like how do you use these? And then they get taken down. It was like, They’re there as guards. Yeah. Those guns will be ready to go. They’d be like immediately shooting and instead, like the directing was like, okay guys, we gotta give them time to kill you.

So, uh, just start fumbling with your guns. Right. They immediately grabbed like the things that, you know, like you pull back to like, yeah.

Cock the guns. They’re depicted. They’re depicted, like those guns already cock, they’re depicted like they’re bumbling when Yes, the setup is, the German war machine at this point is operating at high efficiency.

And these soldiers, yes, were good. To actually get into and hold us territory. Yes. So like these will be your, your, these will be your top line guys. And this is supposed to be not in this portrayal. Yeah. And this is supposed to be the most secret. of locations because this is the location where this alien research is taking place, and they have what seems to be , half a dozen guards.

I mean, . Yeah. It’s like, again, there’s like five guys visible and, and, and three of them got killed right off the bat. and the firefight that takes place on the ground is pretty laughably bad. Where I think that this episode and, and you just mentioned that between the first two episodes, you thought part one was a little bit stronger than part two.

Mm-hmm. . I actually would flip that. For me, I found part two to be more watchable, simply because it does what you were saying. It felt like the first one was trying to do this felt. Let’s just buy into being a Saturday morning cartoon. Let’s just be action for me, the sequence where the enterprise is coming in, into the atmosphere in order to attack the facility where this device is being built that’s gonna allow VASc to return home and therefore become the master of the universe.

Hooray When the enterprise comes in and is attacked by Nazi airplanes that have been fitted out with plasma cannons. Mm-hmm. , that entire sequence is first of all kind of goofy cuz those Nazi planes, it’s literally just like, here’s a Nazi plane and they’ve glued laser cannons onto it. It looks like something like, A Saturday morning cartoon would do as opposed to like, you’re telling me that the aliens wouldn’t have said, Hey, would you like jet Technology?

Like , the Nazis were developing V2 rockets and we’re trying to create jet propulsion for planes, and in fact we’re able to create Jets prop. They were able to create prototypes given enough time, the Nazis would have likely launched. Air fighters, that would’ve been jets. Mm-hmm. . So you’re telling me that this alien race that is first of all building a time tunnel and second giving them all sorts of handheld.

Plasma guns that can blow up tanks, like they would say, oh yeah, your airplanes. How would you like it? If we just stapled some laser cannons to the wings, , that’ll be great. Right? Yeah. Like I expected there to be like some sort of Nazi jet would be coming off the ground instead. It’s kind of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Here comes some Nazi World War II airplanes with laser cannons. Okay. You get a kind of fun little space battle, like yeah, over New York City in the background. You get to see the Chrysler building, the enterprise State building. You get to see them flying over Manhattan as as the attack is taking place.

And then when the enterprise comes in low, And does its bombing run over the facility. I thought all of that was kind of fun, like, okay. Just leaning completely into the action. I also like that this episode was the one where you end up seeing Reid talk about like, , like what are the, what are the steps that made history change?

Like, how did we get to where we are? I also like the fact that the heroin, the, the Brooklynite that Archer meets, she just makes the argument of like, I just want, I just want to get things back to the way they were. And it’s about. Helping the community. I think that that message resonated in the episode that, that these were people who were feeling repressed, but ultimately were trying to help other people as opposed to protecting themselves.

Like in episode one when we talked about this last time, I do wish that there had been a little bit more of a, what does collaboration look like? What is the US power structure that. , there would have been elements. I mean, we’re seeing it today and it’s like, it’s in the news right now with people saying, I love Nazis.

Uh, what would it have looked like for a Nazi power structure to take hold in New York City? New York City had pro Nazi Nazis. Prior to our entry into World War ii, there was a Madison Square Garden or something like that. Yeah. Madison Square Garden had a huge rally that was pro-Nazi, and it, it would have been the case that if the Nazis had landed, there would’ve been a group of people who would’ve been like, we can make this work.

And mm-hmm. , some of those people would’ve been affluent. There might’ve been members of government that it would’ve been okay with becoming a sort of, uh, Puppet government underneath Nazi control. There would’ve been faces that would’ve been willing to try to propaganda for them to keep the peace. There would’ve been all sorts of layers to what it would’ve looked like.

I would’ve enjoyed a little bit more of that. We didn’t get that. We just got street fighting and we get the bombing run and we get Voss, for whatever reason, standing in the middle of the time tunnel as it collapses with his face looking like it’s just kind of like twisting and him yelling. Yeah, no. In order to know that he’s gone.

We get SI’s death, we get Daniel’s death, and then Daniel’s return with the. Everything’s going back to normal. Everything’s going back to normal. Look at this and the time threads are resetting, and here

we’re in the universe of energy at Disney World’s. Epcot. Yeah. Watch this sequence of events happen before your eyes.

Yeah. It felt very . I’m, I’m sitting in a Disney

ride. Yeah. And it felt very much like being in a Disney ride. It also felt very much like it was a scene built for this podcast because we’re, we’re here saying like, let’s talk about these shows and about the world in which they were broadcast. Many of the scenes running in the background behind Daniels, as he’s saying good news, everything’s returning to normal, included a shot of Saddam Hussein and a shot of an invasion into Baghdad.

So they were pulling right from the current events of 2004 to put them in and saying to the viewer like, yeah, this is the world. You remember, this is, this is what actually happened. So,

There is one. Let me ask you a question. Was, was there any heart in this episode? Because there is one sequence that made me go, ah, , was there anything in the episode that made you do

that?

There’s a little bit of a, of a tug in the right direction. When Trip first sees arch. and it plays up with the, from his perspective, he does not know. This is in, in his attempt to escape from the Nazi facility, which he sometimes somehow is able to be hidden in a room. That for who knows how long, for who knows how long that apparently nobody just opened that door and like, Hey, what’s this guy doing?

Tied up on the floor, like he’s just lying there. He gets loose and then is apparently just sneaking around in the facility and I thought, okay, trip will have a hand in stopping the time tunnel. Yep. I thought he was gonna do something. He didn’t. He didn’t do anything. So when he finds Archer and thinks that Archer is Silik,

I thought that that was a nice moment, but yeah. What was the moment you were looking for? It

was the last shot of the episode, , when the enterprise is back at Earth and coming towards the earth and then you have all the ships that are coming towards them. Yeah. And you had the Vulcans and you had the different races that were there trying to greet the enterprise coming back from this massive mission.

Right. It like actually hit my heart a little bit of like. Friends. Yeah. , like, you know what I mean? Like here’s, here’s the, the beginning of the federation. It was like, it was kind of cool to see and it was like, to me, it made me, at the end of the episode actually kind of sad for the episode of like, wait, you mean to tell me The one thing that just pulled my little heartstrings was this stupid shot of Vulcan chips coming from the earth to welcome the enterprise back.

Yeah. It’s like, that’s the part that I got all like sentimental about. And the rest of the episode I was kinda like, all right. Yeah, ,

it shows you where. when you take a star Trek fan. Yeah. And I’d be interested for people to weigh in on the comments, like, as a star Trek fan, what is the one thing that you know will have impact on you?

Like Yeah. And I know for me what that is like for me it’s, it’s any time you see that kind of, . Well, we have such difference. There’s so many things between us that are so different, but I get you and I will do whatever I have to to help you. Like that. For me is, is the moment. Anytime any character is just like, oh, but ha ha, I just like, ugh, right in the heart, like it gets me.

Yeah. And. Seeing that field of ships, it does that. It’s that thing of like, here come the Vulcans. Here come like, it might even be an Andorian ship in that group. I think there was an Andorian too and there’s, there’s a number of new vessels that are new star flea vessels that are smaller that are coming out.

Mm-hmm. . And so it’s like all of that and you feel like, like yeah, this is really the beginning and like everybody there is just like showing up because you did it. You did the impossible. And the enterprise at that moment, the consist. in the model that used for these episodes. It is, there’s huge gaps in the saucer.

Like you can see directly into the, like there are sections of the ship that are just closed off. It’s off, yeah. Because there’s, there’s holes in the ship and the woman that Archer befriends is actually temporarily staying in the room of a dead crewman. Like little things like that that are just like, They maintained a consistency here.

That makes sense. And for that final scene, I agree with you, it hits you, but to listeners and viewers, what is it that hits you every time you see Star Trek when you’re like, Oh, every time they do this, it’s what works for me. Let us know in the comments. I think Matt, that does it. I can’t . Yeah, I, I don’t wanna, but this, these two episodes are done.

Yeah. I don’t want to beat up on, on the, the show too much. These, we’ve had episodes before where we’ve talked about like, oh, we’re kind of like beating up bragging on this. I really do feel from Akoto in this. Me too. He was given an impossible. and that impossible task was to make sense of what may have been a late night spitball in the writer’s room.

Like, why don’t we close with space Nazis? And then he had to make hay out of that, and he makes the best hay he can while closing the door on what is arguably one of the weakest long-term plot elements. In Star Trek, which is mm-hmm , if you’re introducing the temporal Cold War, and it’s not the entire point of your show, if you’re not gonna be following a crew around that is bouncing around in time to undo the problems that are being introduced in the Cold War.

you can’t, I, I don’t know how they envisioned that. You could have, oh, our story is gonna be about this crew in this ship moving forward in regular time, but we’re also gonna introduce all this other stuff. You can’t, like, you can’t slice the cake that direction. It just doesn’t make sense. Mm-hmm. , it makes sense.

So I’m glad that they’re putting it to rest. I’m glad. Silik is gone. Like all of those little elements of the the story, I was just like, put it, put it away. Um, yep. So next time we’ll be seeing what will arguably be considered Manny CODOs first real foray as shore winner into what enterprise will become in season four with the episode of home.

But before we get to that, Matt, as we’re signing off, do you have anything you wanted to share with the listeners about what you have coming up? Yeah. Um, I’ve mentioned

this in the previous episode, but there’s a episode talking undecided about being able to, a new technology to be able to cool things without electricity, which is gonna, could have a huge impact on cooling our homes, food, you name it.

And also in the new year, I have an episode coming up on wood batteries, which again,

wood batteries, , it’s, it’s really kind of, , would that be called Splinter Cell? Maybe not. Oh, Sean, oh boy. As for me, , you can go to sean Ferrell dot com and find out more information about my books. Or you can go to your local bookstore or any bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore seller.

They’re available everywhere and I appreciate your interest. If you do go looking for my work, And if you’d like to support the show, please consider leaving a review on Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever it was you picked up the podcast. You can also leave a like on YouTube where you might be watching our smiling faces, even as I speak.

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Thank you so much for listening or watching. We really appreciate all of your time spent, and I promise you next week we’re not gonna be ragging the way we’ve been ragging these past two episodes. No, we’re, we’re out of those dark days and I think we’ve got some good stuff ahead. So looking. Thank you so much for checking us out and we’ll talk to you next time.

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