OEEG: Cold Front

Description: Okay, remember way back in the pilot? The whole entire story revolved around this temporal cold war? Yeah, we're finally getting back to that again. I wouldn't have a problem with them not doing this for so long if not for the fact that it was the central issue of the pilot. If that's not what the series is supposed to be about, then why bother with it?

So, we finally see Silik getting chewed out by Future Guy (I still can't believe they never bothered to name him; this ain't exactly the X-Files here), and he's strict: for failure, he's losing his enhanced vision. Wow, a two-fer, something that makes no sense either in-universe or out of it. In-universe: "You failed me, and I don't like that. I'll make sure you're even more likely to fail next time." Out of universe: "What's the best way to make the bad guy even more threatening to our heroes? By making him weaker each time he comes back!" It did such great things to the Nausicaans, the Hirogen, and the Borg, right? The only thing dumber than all that: the decision to do the operation in the temporally messed-up room. What idiot could possibly think that a place where you don't know if things are really where they appear to be is a place to perform surgery on your f*cking eyeballs!

Goddamn, these people are idiots, and we are barely over half a minute into the episode. Why do you people do this to me? Why do you hate your audience so much?

We come back, and Mayweather, Hoshi, and Reed get to banter just a little bit. Of course, it's just amongst themselves, since we can't have our heroes mixing about with the black guy, the asian girl, and the guy who's likely gay. Someone who is allowed to mix with them is pure, white, and likely straight Daniels, who you might remember from- never! He asks about why they changed course as he serves Archer his breakfast - turns out there's a stellar nursery. Ah, actually exploring! With some ships in there. Oh. Yes, seeing the formation of stars is certainly not as interesting as a flying lump of ice. I know it's also supposed to be about meeting new civilizations, but so far it seems Archer doesn't have any interest in anything that isn't cool. "Unless you can make a snowman on it, have my dog pee on it, or it has a boat, don't waste my time."

So they fly in and find a transport ship, with a kind of sentient green bean piloting it or something, and who sounds just like Squidward from SpongeBob Square Pants. Archer does his usual rambling speech - why does he always talk to people through the comm system like they were all deaf and retarded? Anyway, the upshot is that the green bean alien is here to deliver some pilgrims to witness the Great Plume of Agosoria, when the protostar burps up some neutrons. They believe it's a sacred event, like those hippy flower children that smoke a joint while watching whales breach and think they've suddenly touched the face of God or something. Green bean alien says that he'll pass along Archer's invitation to come over to the pilgrims, but he'll be staying here, presumably away from all the butter. So the pilgrims come over, a group of aliens who seem to have their tesicles on their foreheads. They give Archer the gift of a clock and Tucker a bottle of transmission fluid to drink. Archer talks in more of his "are you deaf or retarded" voice, even when talking to Dr. Phlox. What is his deal? Did he take the freighter captain up on the whisky last episode after all and short out some brain cells? They talk about religion for a little while with the typical Star Trek approach: let's be really noncommittal about anything. Archer speechifies: "I guess you could say I try to keep an open mind." Yes, very open... that's how your brain fell out.

Incidentally, we once again see the black guy, the asian girl, and the likely gay guy are stuck on the bridge the whole time everyone else is drinking and whooping it up elsewhere while they talk about their diversity. Reed leaves for a minute and leaves Mayweather in command, and Hoshi tries to convince him to sit in the captain's chair while he's in charge. Eventually he does, but Reed returns and Mayweather is quickly shuffled off to the back of the bus, I mean, to his seat. Enjoy it while it lasts, Travis, because you know that half the time you're not even going to get a line during this season. As if to remind us of the subtle and not-so-subtle racism of Enterprise, we cut to our resident idiot cracker, who's lecturing about the warp reactor. Apparently he assumes that people who are here to observe a rare astronomical event must be idiots, so he's caught off guard when they ask him questions he has trouble answering. Since he's distracted by the shiny objects of Engineering, he doesn't notice when an undercover Silik (which we know because the camera had earlier focused on him while the ominous Trek music played) reaches into some restricted area and breaks something. Really alert, these Starfleet guys.

The green bean captain contacts Enterprise to tell them about some plasma lightning to watch out for, so they decide to go around it, for all the good that'll do. Down in the guided tour, Dr. Phlox takes a medical scan of an alien to show everyone their nifty MRI. The whole ship shakes, causing Archer some concern - yup, the storm keeps blasting them, so Tucker takes this opportunity to continue the lecture: "Here's a good example of how we can reroute the energy flow to protect our critical systems." Hm, that's useful - we use a similar system. It's called a surge protector, and it's fifteen bucks at True Value hardware. This causes lots of lights to flicker and all that, and down in the mess, Daniels looks worried. Hm, yes... I can see why the nervousness of a waiter would matter to us, given that we have this long relationship with him, since he gave the captain breakfast.

Well, another bolt of space lightning strikes, this time hitting the warp manifold. Shit starts blowing up all over the place, gradually heading towards the warp core (space lightning moves about as fast as a gerbil through those little plastic tubes), but stopping when it hits that cord Silik broke earlier. Turns out he saved the ship - good for him. Of course, nobody knows that - Tucker says none of his people did it, and Captain Green Bean says that none of the pilgrims are taking credit for it either. This is the time for Daniels to finally come forward - he reveals to Archer that it was Silik, the one that he fought on the helix back in Broken Bow. Oo, mysterious and shit... yawn. I criticized the Michael Jonas story over on the Voyager page, but in spite of how stupid it wound up, I still thought it was good that they at least had Sbarge showing up in a whole bunch of episodes doing stuff, showing he was part of the crew. Nope, not here... Daniels just shows up out of nowhere and drops into the middle of the story. *sigh* It's like the creators of this show had a mandate: I want you to search these story ideas for any signs of suspense, then hunt it down and kill it!

Daniels takes Archer to his quarters, but not in the likely gay way of Reed. He talks about the Temporal Cold War, and to help he pulls out a big-ass iPod and causes all these nifty shapes and stuff to appear around them. Turns out he comes from about nine hundred years in the future, and he is a member of one side of the Temporal Cold War, one which believes in strictly not getting involved. Another faction, the one that Future Guy is involved in, manipulates past events. Besides that difference, Daniels' group, being from a later time, can appear fully in the past rather than looking like a low-cut Darth Sidious. Anyway, he's here to catch Silik, and he wants Archer's help to do it. Archer needs to bring in "some of his crew," and you know who that means: the upper echelon non-gay white folk! T'Pol says that the Vulcans have studied time travel and found no evidence that it exists or could exist, because the Vulcans need to be wrong about everything. This, by the way, is a pity. I was really, really, hoping that for once, the creators here were doing something clever. See, I was hoping that the spy array on P'Jem, the one that Archer revealed to the Andorians, wasn't to spy on the Andorians, but was just one part of this whole Cold War thing, that all the Vulcan brouhaha we had so far was actually because Future Guy and his faction were human and there were concerns about humanity being infiltrated by their agents.

Nope! It was just the Vulcans being dicks again! Hey look, suspense! Bam bam bam!!!

Anyway, even Tucker isn't convinced, and you know it's bad when he's not taking a chance to spit on the Vulcans. This does nothing to sway Archer, and he orders them to help Daniels try to find Silik, who is likely coming over with some more of the aliens to watch the burping star. Well, now that Archer's out of earshot, Tucker reflects on how frickin' awesome it is to meet someone from the future, but T'Pol is still very skeptical, so now he takes the opportunity to slam Vulcans. Ah, good, we almost missed that chance to beat the dead horse.

Archer finds out that most of the aliens are now on board, and takes time to talk with Phlox, who speak with a series of gestures that's half reverential, half high school kid imitating a karate movie. He questions him a bit, trying to figure out who might be Silik. Of course, he could ask Phlox who was scanned by the super-MRI to know who to eliminate, but why think when you can just glare suspiciously at a group of testicle-foreheaded monks?

Down in Engineering, Daniels is setting things up, spending some time messing with Tucker's head with things like talking about Earth in the future by saying "That depends on how you define Earth." Yeah, nice try. What has it been blown up by Vogons and rebuilt? Just make with the scan, McFly. Tucker sees Daniels' iPod and asks what it is as he picks it up and starts playing with it. That's there for anyone who argues that Tucker's antics are a ruse - no, he really is as stupid as he acts, as no one with a brain who suspects someone of being from the future will just start futzing with their advanced technology unless they were an idiot. To show a good example, Daniels puts on a set of temporal brass knuckles and walks through a wall to go fix a conduit. Well, at least Kitty Pride here's maintaining a low profile. But just imagine if Tucker just started messing with that and dropped halfway into the floor before it fell off his hand? Go on, really imagine it. Do it. Yeah, it's a guilty pleasure, isn't it?

Archer returns to his quarters and his dog is acting anxious. Turns out Silik is in here, but because Archer had to get a little ankle-biter all it's good for is sitting there growling, wimpering, and farting, so he doesn't actually do anything useful. So instead Silik and Archer discuss the situation. Silik says that Daniels isn't part of some noble group, but rather just another faction there to manipulate time. Archer doesn't trust him because, you know, Silik tried to kill him and all that. That really is a pretty hard sell, and what tells me Silik is likely full of it. If Future Guy had sent someone else, then it might carry more weight, but as is there's nothing to back up what he's saying. Even Archer can see that, so finally when T'Pol contacts Archer, Silik pulls a gun and stuns Archer, having found out what's going on. He leaves, the little ankle-biter yipping the whole time.

Anyway, there's a brief scene where Phlox leads the pilgrims in chanting gibberish while looking at the protostar. Finally the rambling ends and we get back to Daniels, who narrows down that Silik is on their deck. They try to evacuate, but Silik gets the drop on Daniels and blasts him into pieces, but because he's from the future the pieces all just disappear with the fresh smell of pine. T'Pol and Tucker witness this horror, so naturally their first reaction is to just walk away and leave Silik to do whatever he feels like in Engineering. Nope, not my department, we're just the chief engineer and the first officer, an intruder with access to our warp reactor ain't our problem, no sirree! It's not even as if they've been threatened or anything, they just see him get disintegrated and aside of Tucker thinking that Daniels getting blown up looks cool they seem kind of nonplussed, as if it was every day someone showed up and blasted a time traveling waiter.

So they try to get hold of Archer, but there's no answer, so they decide to check him out. Phlox wakes him up and they fill him in on Daniels, so he decides to try to track Silik down himself. So he contacts Reed to tell him that there's a Suliban loose on the ship and to find him. Wait wait wait- This is after Daniels specifically told Tucker to tell Reed to seal off C Deck and head down with a security detail, and Tucker didn't? "Hey, I'm the chief engineer, you're not the boss of me!" What's more, after they see Silik kill Daniels, no one bothers to tell Reed what's going on? What kind of ship is this when the two senior officers not only can't be bothered to deal with a murderer on their ship, but won't even take five seconds to call security?

Let me ask again: Why do you hate your audience so much?

So Archer sends Tucker down to Engineering to see if he can use Daniels' equipment to track down Silik. Now that Archer's awake Tucker's back on the job - guess he got all his training from working on a road crew: only work when the boss is around. Archer then checks Daniels' quarters, but it turns out Silik stole the cool holographic thingie. Things get worse, as Hoshi reports that someone sent out a message using the comm system, but it was encrypted. Damn, if only she knew how to decrypt things this week. So, Archer heads down to check in with Tucker, and soon they spot where Silik is. Using the Kitty Pryde technology, Archer chases Silik through a wall and gets the drop on him, but as always happens, they don't just bother hitting someone with a stun setting so that the bad guy can get away like the script demands. Star Trek writers seem to have learned everything from watching how the Superfriends deal with the Legion of Doom.

Yup, the ship lurches, and now Silik is busy fighting Archer. If you've been following the pattern, you no doubt guessed that Silik quickly kicks Archer's ass in a fist fight, then takes off for the shuttle bay. Archer pursues, still with the phase pistol, and even after just getting his ass kicked for not just stunning Silik, he decides he still won't stun him, and just points it at him: "I'm not going to ask you again," he says. Yeah, cool action moment from a guy who just got his ass wupped by a bendy-doll chia pet. Well, finally Archer fires, only he shoots Daniels iPod rather than Silik. It'd obviously make more sense to shoot Silik and then deal with Daniels' stuff, but that's just not Duchess' way of thinking.

Yup, sure enough, Silik opens one of the pod doors and the air starts flying out. Archer decides to get into the spirit of things by flipping himself over the railing for no reason so that he can be hanging over the opening. Oh, and for plot convenience sake, the Kitty Pryde brass knuckles get sucked off his hand and out into space, but Archer finally manages to get his dumb ass onto the catwalk. Silik just leaves him, realizing that a crew that has no idea of how security works, and is captained by a man who won't shoot at him and curls up into a fetal position after one punch to the gut isn't exactly something to worry about. Instead he jumps out into space without a suit, where he gets picked up by one of the Suliban funky pods, and Archer tells Enterprise to just let him go rather than pursuing so Silik can come back again for the season ending cliffhanger - oh, did you expect otherwise? Did you think that if they spent the whole damn pilot on this temporal cold war stuff it'd actually be part of the storyline? Silly reader, what show do you think this is? No, aside of a little Suliban plot like ten episodes from now, you're not going to see this again until the end of the season. If you hate the Temporal Cold War, I guess that'd make you happy. Me, I'm just annoyed. Enterprise has no idea what it's actually supposed to be about, and the one thing they can always fall back on is this central premise, but no, the last thing we want is direction.

So Archer futzes with his alien clock and then he and T'Pol discuss the report he's going to make on the Temporal Cold War - yeah, because when Daniels said to tell as few people as possible, he didn't really mean it. Archer then has Daniels' quarters sealed off in case there's something else dangerous in there, so Reed sticks an ice cream maker to the door to keep it safe, since even Silik wouldn't dare risk the ire of Baskin-Robbins.

Rating: 6

Star Trek, and all related characters are property and trademark of Paramount Pictures.
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the views of anyone
connected with Star Trek: Enterprise, or the staff and management of Paramount Pictures.
All original material copyrighted.