Online Critics Relieved To Pass 'Storm Front'

See Also: 'Storm Front, Part II' Episode Guide

Online reviews for last Friday night's episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, the second part of the season premiere, "Storm Front, Part Two", were largely dismissive of the season opener and looking forward to the rest of the year, though there was some frustration expressed at the lack of real resolution to the Temporal Cold War that had driven the series since its inception.

• TrekWeb's O. Deus called "Storm Front II" a distinctly stronger episode than its predecessor, praising its smooth flow and refreshing entertainment values after the dragging of part one. "In Archer's interactions with Silik he has come rather close to the Kirk ideal of deliberate judgement, cool command, and personal risk taking that is a long way from Archer in the first two seasons as naive, bumbling and arrogant," Deus wrote, though "at the end of the day Part II is still popcorn entertainment." Beyond the special effects, he expected little to remain memorable from the "Storm Front" duology. The full review is at TrekWeb.

• Jammer at Star Trek: Hypertext gave part two of the season premiere the same two-and-a-half-star rating he gave part one.

  The bad news is that "Storm Front, Part II" inherits so much nonsensical time-travel baggage from previous episodes (including last week's "Storm Front, Part I") that the premise is all but indefensible. The good news is that this episode appears to end - once and for all - the Temporal Cold War and all its related, incoherent BS.

  Reality on this series is becoming meaningless to Jammer, however, because if the Temporal Cold War never happened, does that negate all the previous episodes in which Daniels and Silik appeared? "Or did they kind of happen in a reality that everyone remembers but no one cares about?" With praise for Vosk's rational righteousness and hope that next week there will be a return to characterization, Jammer's full review is at Star Trek: Hypertext.

• The Great Link's Michael Marek dropped his rating from the previous week to a three out of five from a four out of five, calling it "visually stunning and is a much-needed wrap-up to the temporal cold war storyline" but noting that the special effects were the main reason to watch. "The episode leaves us with a series of unanswered questions that almost certainly will never be answered," he observed, putting forth queries:

  How did Silik get on board Enterprise? Who was Future Guy and what was his real agenda? Why could he only project his image in time while others can out-and-out travel in time? Were the Sphere Builders connected or were they a completely independent group with time travel capability?

  as well as others. Marek did say repeatedly that he is cautiously optimistic about Manny Coto's arrival on the series; if you want to read why, the full review is here.

• Lower Decks' Diesel Micky Dolenz also dropped the grade from the first to the second part of "Storm Front", awarding part two a 6/10. "It was rather like a root canal: painful to endure, but probably necessary. Now that the infection has been cleaned out, we can move on," he wrote. The loose ends from the Temporal Cold War were dismissed rather than wrapped up, as "Archer's insistence that he didn't want to know any more about Daniels infernal war conveniently allowed the writers to escape the need to create a plausible explanation for any of it." Dolenz said that he did not blame Coto, but was disappointed we would never learn what Future Guy's real goal was, nor how the time traveling factions worked. For more, visit Lower Decks.

• Chris at Xenoclone's Enterprise Power Rankings found the alien Nazis amusing in a comic-book tradition and had particular praise for the opening newsreel footage. But unhappily, the rest of the episode is not as imaginative: "The problem lies in that the plot doesn't have a clear succession of rising events. Silik's "death" is anticlimactic. There's never a showdown with Vosk. The Temporal Cold War isn't explained." Cliches riddle the episode, and the writers evade topics that should be resolved instead. Xenoclone is one of the few sites to express concern about Coto taking over the show instead of cautious delight:

  The creative efforts that went into extending and enhancing each Xindi plot have all but been forgotten thus far. The Xindi deserve better than this. I know Coto is all for doing it 'Original Style', but let's not forget the Xindi, Mr. Producer Man.

  The full review is here.

• Erik Dardan Ymeraga at Section 31 gave the episode a C- and said "the best thing I have to say...is that it wasn't quite as bad as the one before it." With excess violence and an "almost nonexistent plotline", finding plot inconsistencies and a lack of emotion like that in "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original series. "'Storm Front, Part II' painted what should have been a frightening picture of a manipulated history, but it failed to make it believable. An even bigger crime, it failed to make us care, and that's something I really can't forgive," he wrote in the review here.

• The Daily Trekker reviewed the episode as well, in German. Bernd Paulus gave the episode four out of ten points, asking many questions about Silik's function on the series and finding it outrageous that not one Resistance fighter was wounded while the Germans were slaughtered. He also found the violence excessive and the time-travel illogical. The full review is here.

• Television Without Pity has recapped the episode, offering a comic summary of its highlights.

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