“Zero Hour”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 3, Episode 23
Production episode 076
Original air date: May 26, 2004
Date: February 14, 2154
Captain’s star log. On the Reptilian ship, Dolim gathers his senior staff for a celebratory meal of live mice. They even raise the mice like they’re making a toast. Dolim also wishes the Guardians had made the Reptilians the dominant species on Xindi—then their homeworld would still be in one piece and the Avians wouldn’t be extinct…
On Degra’s ship, Archer instructs the ailing Sato to decrypt the schematics for the weapon, which Degra encrypted. They’re also starting to catch up to the weapon, though they’re still too far to tell how much of an escort the weapon has.
In the Sphere-Builders’ dimension, they’re concerned that the number of timelines where they succeed are diminishing, despite the imminent arrival of the weapon in the Sol system. They resolve to act more directly, including picking up the alteration of space around Sphere #41, the one Enterprise is heading toward.
On Enterprise, Tucker is worried about being able to maintain the deflector beam they’ve modified to mess with the sphere. But T’Pol tells him to go ahead regardless of the consequences—the Sphere-Builders have to be stopped, especially since it seems unlikely that they will settle for only destroying Earth and only altering the Delphic Expanse.
Mayweather detects a lot more spatial anomalies around the sphere than expected, and Phlox confirms that the space near the sphere—including where they need to go to destroy it—will now kill everyone on board. He synthesizes a neuroleptic compound that will stave off the effects for about a quarter of an hour, but that’s the best he can do. Unfortunately, Tucker needs the power from the impulse engines to make the deflector beam work, which means Mayweather has to pilot them on thrusters, while staying in the fifteen-minute window.
Sato is having trouble focusing, partly because she’s not entirely recovered from being tortured by Dolim, partly due to guilt over what she did when in Dolim’s thrall. Archer gets her to focus on Degra’s encryption.
Archer then informs Reed that Sato will go with them to the weapon, as she’s been there and can guide them to where they have to go.
Then Daniels snatches the captain and brings him to 2161, when Archer will be present for the signing of the charter that forms the United Federation of Planets. Daniels urges Archer to not go on the away mission, as he can’t risk his life for the sake of the future. Archer tells Daniels to go fuck himself and send him back to 2154, please, as he has a homeworld to save.
When he gets back, he’s informed that only Dolim’s ship is escorting the weapon. The Insectoid ships are nowhere to be found.
Dolim’s ship comes out of the vortex. For some reason, despite the planet being in danger of attack, the number of Starfleet ships protecting Earth is zero. There’s just one outpost, Yosemite Station, which Dolim destroys to remind us all what a creep he is. (The live mice lunch wasn’t enough?)
Enterprise approaches the sphere. The skin of everyone on the bridge starts to dry out and crack, which Phlox says is expected, and to not scratch it. Three Sphere-Builders materialize on board and start sabotaging the ship. Phlox figures the space they’re in is altered enough so that the Sphere-Builders can thrive. He tells the MACOs to alter the frequency of their phase rifles to something that will harm them. (On the regular setting, the beams just pass through.)
Shran shows up and provides cover for Degra’s ship, protecting them long enough to get in range for Archer, Reed, Sato, and the MACOs to beam on board. Sato leads Archer to the control section for the weapon, and Sato instructs him on the sequence he needs to follow to overload the weapon. A MACO holds off one Reptilian for a bit, but is eventually killed—then Reed kills the Reptilian. However, in the fight, Sato loses her datapad, and has to instruct Archer from memory.
Archer instructs Reed, Sato, and the surviving MACOs to beam back; he’ll follow after he’s laid charges on the weapon. As he’s doing that, Dolim attacks. Archer gets his ass kicked, but he slips one of the charges onto Dolim’s shoulder and blows him up.
Enterprise is barely able to collapse Sphere 41, which has a cascade effect on the other spheres. The Sphere-Builders scream and dematerialize back to their own dimension. The entire sphere network collapses.
The weapon blows up. Earth is saved, as are the Xindi and all the other denizens of the Expanse. Archer is believed to have been killed when the weapon went boom.
An Aquatic ship escorts Enterprise back to the Sol system, but when they arrive on Earth, nobody replies. Mayweather and Tucker take a shuttle to San Francisco, only to be menaced by planes shooting bullets.
We cut to what appears to be a German field hospital from the World War II era. Archer is one of the patients, and he’s about to be interrogated by some Nazi officers—one of whom is an alien…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently destroying one sphere destroys the entire network, which is incredibly convenient…
The gazelle speech. Archer manly-mans his way through the entire episode, refusing to let anyone else do anything important unless it’s absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, one of those things is decryption, for which he needs the very very very badly hurt Sato…
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is very obviously only just barely holding it together emotionally speaking at this point, but she manages it, and does an excellent job commanding Enterprise as they do the thing. As one sign that she’s not entirely herself (or, at the very least, that she’s warming to Tucker), she finally admits to Tucker how old she is, something the engineer has been wondering about for three years now. (She’s almost 66.)
Florida Man. Florida Man Saves The Day With Technobabble!
Optimism, Captain! Phlox is at the tactical station on the bridge for no compellingly good reason during the climax, regularly dispensing wisdom on how to deal with the Sphere-Builders and their icky changes to space.
Good boy, Porthos! Phlox continues to care for Porthos in Archer’s absence, and T’Pol actually pets him and talks to him as she and the doctor discuss the pooch’s fate in light of Archer’s apparent death.
Blue meanies. For some inexplicable reason, they did not play the Mighty Mouse theme when Shran showed up.
Better get MACO. A MACO named Forbes is the unsung hero of this episode, as he stops a Reptilian from killing Sato and Archer and holds the Reptilian off for precious moments that allow the other two to continue their sabotage. The Reptilian eventually kills Forbes, but still, that holding action was critical. And the poor bastard didn’t even get mentioned by anyone. We only know his name from the patch on his shirt….
I’ve got faith…
“Tell Archer we’re not even anymore—he owes me!”
–Shran keeping score.
More on this later… Daniels brings Archer to the signing of the Federation charter. Speculation among fans had this as being around 2161 and that the founding worlds of the Federation were Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, and Andor. TNG had codified the 2161 date in “The Outcast,” and this episode does likewise for the founding planets. (Though some fan speculations had Alpha Centauri as a fifth founding world.)
Welcome aboard. The great Jeffrey Combs is back for a rather gratuitous appearance as Shran, but it’s Combs as Shran, so who cares? Matt Winston returns for an even more gratuitous appearance as Daniels, though that’s mostly to set up season four’s opening two-parter.
Several more recurring regulars make their final appearance: Scott MacDonald as Dolim (who is killed), Rick Worthy as Jannar, Tucker Smallwood as the Primate councilor, Josette Di Carlo, Mary Mara, and Ruth Williamson as the Sphere-Builders, and Bruce Thomas and Andrew Borba as Dolim’s soldiers (who are also killed).
And finally, stunt performer Michael J. O’Laskey plays the poor unfortunate Forbes.
Trivial matters: This episode closes out the Xindi arc that started at the end of season two with “The Expanse.” It’s the last appearance of any of the Xindi species until Prodigy’s “Crossroads” and Discovery’s “…But to Connect.”
This episode also revives the Temporal Cold War arc, with Daniels being cryptic and stuff (and confirming fan theories about the founding of the Federation), and giving us a wacky time-travel adventure for a cliffhanger.
Finally, for something incredibly trivial, in an alphabetical listing of every Star Trek episode ever produced, this one would be last, as it’s the only Trek title that starts with the letter Z.
It’s been a long road… “Your captain’s sacrifice will not be forgotten.” All right, we need to start with this. The 11 September 2001 attacks were, as I type this, almost twenty-two years ago. And yet, Manhattan is still restricted airspace, very carefully regulated.
So why is Earth being left completely undefended? We know Archer is checking in with Earth and Vulcan High Command pretty regularly, so they must know that danger is imminent, plus Earth was directly attacked by these guys once already. Earth should be on high alert, and the months since the last attack should’ve been spent fortifying Earth’s defenses.
Instead, we get bupkiss aside from a nick-of-time arrival by Shran. Which is fine in and of itself, I guess, because Shran is fabulous, but where the hell is the rest of Starfleet? Were they on a coffee break? What the hell?
The rest of it is an exercise in artificial suspense while barreling toward a foregone conclusion. All the interesting stuff—Degra’s change of heart, Archer convincing three-fifths of the Xindi Council to back off their plan to commit genocide, etc.—happened in previous episodes. This leaves us with just the Action Climax, and it’s pretty nowhere. Allan Kroeker directs it decently, at least. But aside from Sato’s struggles to keep her shit together (which Linda Park plays magnificently), there’s nothing compelling happening during these sequences, just a lot of generic shouting and posturing and clichés.
Ultimately, we’ve come full circle: the Xindi arc started out as a bunch of nonsense trying to kickstart a show that was, to say the least, moribund, and it ended with a bunch of nonsense. And it’s capped off by a truly bizarre-ass cliffhanger that promises more time-travel shenanigans from a show whose previous time-travel shenanigans have been, to say the least, painful.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido has stories in two new anthologies out now: Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups, which he also co-edited with Jonathan Maberry, and which features team-ups of classic characters (Keith paired H. Rider Haggard’s title character from She with the Yoruba goddess Egungun-oya), with other contriors including fellow Trek scribes David Mack, Greg Cox, Dayton Ward, Derek Tyler Attico, Kevin J. Anderson, Diana Dru Botsford, David A. McIntee, and Rigel Ailur; and Sherlock Holmes: Cases by Candlelight Volume 2, which has four tales of Holmes & Watson by Keith, Christopher D. Abbott, and two more fellow Trek scribes Michael Jan Friedman and Aaron Rosenberg.
There is a very, very good reason why Doctor Phlox is at Tactical.
No, he is not the replacement for Reed. He is actually substituting for T’Pol as the acting science officer, which he had done in several other scenes earlier in this episode. And considering that this is neither a normal battle, nor a normal science mission, it makes plenty of sense to have the science officer at Tactical.
This realignment of the roles, and the fact that it was a season finale, made it almost thinkable that Captain Archer would die heroically. T’Pol was finding and defining her role as the new captain in ways she hadn’t always done during temporary command.
On the minus side, I guess every side in this struggle could have won if they had just done the steely gazes and the no-you-live-I-die speeches to a more appropriate time, and decided beforehand that they were going on a mission where all of them were expendable. “What have you done,” Dolim asked/complained. Well, if Dolim had simply done things instead of attacking unarmed outposts, he would have won …
When it comes to the absence of the rest of the fleet, they always flip-flop regarding ranges and camera angles. The weapon was 2 million kilometers from Earth, I believe, while starship combat ranges are measures in the single-digit kilometers. Shran had taken the same subspace vortex as the weapon and Degra’s ship, right?
I remember thinking this one was pretty okay right up until the last three minutes when we got that stupid Nazi cliffhanger that made me want to throw my TV out the window. I’d just sat through what felt like a year-long sabbatical from Enterprise‘s actual premise as a Star Trek prequel, only to have it end with an exercise in turn-of-the-millennium America’s inexplicable nostalgia for the Second World War. Thank Christ that Manny Coto was able to resolve it in only two episodes, rather than the (supposedly planned) season-long arc.
As I follow this rewatch, and view each episode within the week before the post, I do notice a strong correlation between the warp factor rating and how much I paid attention while watching.
I actually cheered when Shran appeared. The rest is a blur.
Before I get into my actual opinion of this episode, I just want to put in a good word for Mr Scott MacDonald – an actor who put in some Trojan work proving that, when cliches work like gangbusters, they’re more properly called classics.
Quite frankly, @krad, the General’s decision to immolate Yosemite Station strikes me as less a sign that “This dude is creepy” and more a reminder that “When this dude says he is going to kill Every Single Human, he means it” – and I’d argue just about every single scene he’s in from the murder of Degra is entirely in line with a personality best summed up as “Juggernaut” (I know, I know, I’m an easy mark – but dagnabit, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dolim smash his way through the opposition, along with almost every obstacle, and I think it’s a shame nobody else seems likely to join me in a Klingon Death Scream for a minor villain who richly deserves his place in Bad Guy Valhalla).
General Dolim is, on paper, a hoary old dinosaur of a cliche, but on the screen he’s growled, prowled and finally roared around like a TYRANNOSAURUS REX (Proving once again that it doesn’t matter if you’re a dinosaur when you are the coolest sort of dinosaur): part of that’s down to the character design and good direction, but full credit to Mr MacDonald for going Full Darth Vader under that extensive make-up job.
Regarding the episode as a whole, I actively enjoyed all of it – being an optimist, I would like to think that Starfleet’s assets around Earth Orbit are dealing with some major issue unrelated to the Xindi Crisis (because a setting should always be larger than just the stars), but I do agree that it’s more than a little vexing that this isn’t made explicit – and I consider it a very solid conclusion to the best season of ENTERPRISE to date, with that final scene in particular reducing me to cackles of delighted anticipation with it’s sheer, B-Movie shamelessness.
Next season we’re HUNTIN’ NAZIS!
Ahem. Look, I do understand that other viewers may feel less delighted by the impending prospect of STORM FRONT, but having managed to watch* a whole season of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and decided to go no further, ‘STAR TREK Vs The Nazis’ is exactly what I’m looking for.
*It’s a quality show, but with the benefit of hindsight one can safely say that I seriously resent being obliged to endure the company of victorious Nazis (and other Fascists) for a whole d*** series.
@2.
I was also happy they resolved the space Nazi episodes quickly, but, putting aside the standard use of Nazis as pulp villains, the nostalgia for the conflict in America at that time wasn’t inexplicable at all. This was just a few years following Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” giving a fresh and popular perspective on the war. Then toss a modern conflict into the mix like the so-called War on Terror, with Americans desperate for clarity, framing it as a good fight like in the old days, and it becomes clear why the Second World War was important yet again. See also the current neo-Soviet nostalgia in Russia fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine and so forth.
One might say that some wars never really end. They simply get filed away for later use.
Hard disagree on Shran’s appearance being gratuitous. Clearly this is a pivotal moment in human-Andorian relations and leads towards the signing of the Federation Charter. My only complaint is that some Vulcans should have shown up and fought alongside the Andorians to really drive the point home.
Every time I watch this episode, I really, really wish they HAD just killed Archer off heroically. I never bought Scott Bakula’s performance as a captian. He had no command presence, no gravitas (partially because he keeps turninghis back to the camera when he speaks!). Even Tucker felt like more of a captain when the script had him in command and screwing things up. The crew’s undying loyalty to Archer always felt scripted and forced rather than earned. And this episode was the perfect chance to fix it!
Think of the stories we could have had if they’d killed Archer: A crew truly processing the permanent loss of a captain, Trip taking command, Seth MacFarlane as the new engineer (hey, I can dream!), Porthos and Phlox permanently a pair. It could have truly taken Star Trek where it had never gone before.
Instead, we get one of the silliest time travel 2-parters, which I don’t think ever actually explains HOW Archer survived that explosion, before we get back to decent episodes. What a missed opportunity!
Daniel Friend: Yeah, as I’ve said elsewhere, if all I knew of Bakula was Enterprise, I’d think he was a terrible actor. He’s been so good in virtually everything else, but Archer really was just kinda nowhere……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I found this episode mildly entertaining aside from The Twilight Zone ending. I’d give it at least a 5, maybe 6. The live mouse toast scene was brilliant! I’d call it one of the best moustache twirling one offs in Star Trek history. I thought Dolim’s death was also pretty awesome. The look of sheer horror on his face when he realized what Archer had done was epic. And Jeffrey Combs is always worth the price of admission. This ultimately was a pretty shallow episode with a bizarre ending, propped up by a few great scenes, but at least I wasn’t bored.
@8: I think T’Pol would have made a far better and interesting captain than Archer. Just contrive a way to give her a field promotion and honorary placement in Starfleet.
I second the notion that Archer should have died in this episode. Then we could have had T’Pol leading the next season. It would have been great, especially considering the upcoming Vulcan arc. Wouldn’t it have been better if a Vulcan saved Vulcan society?
Ahh yes, Zero Hour. The episode that gave us the Archer Maneuver…namely Sticky Grenade to the back- Boom. Master Chief would be proud.
As a Tri’Pol kinda guy, that denouement scene with them was adorable, he’s clumsily trying to compliment her and she gets genuinely offended.
I’ve wondered about where Starfleet was. My first thought is that they were at the edge of the system and didn’t realize the attack was on until it was too late. But that doesn’t really make sense because the first Xindi Weapon popped out of a subspace corridor at point blank range, so they should expect that. It’s great for Shran to be big damn heroes, but it doesn’t make Starfleet look great.
@6 / When I talk about “inexplicable turn-of-the-millennium World War 2 nostalgia,” I’m including Saving Private Ryan and The Greatest Generation as part of that. And I find it inexplicable because spending the War on Terror being consumed with nostalgia for another, much larger and deadlier war that one’s own generation didn’t aactually have to fight in just seems kind of daft to me. *shrugs*
@14.
That’s just it, because most of us didn’t have to fight the wars of the past we can look back from the perspective of comfort and clarity, with the vain hope that if the framing of a current conflict is similar that the outcome will also follow suit. In addition to that, I would say there’s a good deal of living in denial inherent with nostalgia. Comfort is key.
The only thing I can think of to say is, didn’t Archer slip the grenade under those weird wire loops on the Reptilian costume’s shoulders? I thought it was clever that they actually found a way to make that totally pointless costume embellishment relevant.
Wasn’t the Columbia under construction in Earth’s orbit? That’s at least one starship right next to Earth that could try to mount a defense against the Xindi attackers.
And in a sour Trek-related note, Manny Coto has just passed away.
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/manny-coto-24-american-horror-story-dead-1235666016/
An action-packed finale that drops any pretense of being anything other than pure adrenaline. In that sense, it works pretty well – aside from that out of the blue cliffhanger, that is. There’s something to be said about the way the story ends right as the weapon is literally about to fire on Earth, exactly a year from when the whole thing began. Blowing up the weapon on episode 24 of all places is very much saving humanity at the 11th hour. And that climatic shot of Archer escaping from the explosion full Rambo is clearly a moment the writers wanted to do ever since the season began.
And I gotta admit. I kind of like it. Not only Kroeker is firing on all cylinders for this outing, but it’s also helped by another insane score from Jay Chattaway. Easily the best season-ending music score for Trek since the DS9 finale (even better I’d say – none of the Dominion War music tracks was this expressive).
That’s why they moved up the moral issues and debates to “The Council” a couple of weeks before. The slam-bang ending was always the endgame. No wonder Brannon Braga moved on to work on 24 after Trek – season 3 was as close as Trek has gotten to being plotted like a day in the life of Jack Bauer.
Also, on a VFX-related note. That shot of the weapon exploding looked eerily similar to the Borg cube’s explosion from “Best of Both Worlds”, 14 years before. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reused the pyrotechnics to save on an already tight budget. Much like the Klingon Bird of Prey’s ST6 explosion being reused several times.
Then there’s that WTF ending. It’s ironic that this rewatch was posted less than two weeks after Dial of Destiny opened. The Enterprise flying into WW2 era was also imitated years later on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – the season 6 finale as they fly into NYC. It should be noted Band of Brothers was still a recent thing when they wrote this.
Still, I wonder how much in advance was this cliffhanger ending written. Given how late the show was renewed for season 4, it would have been pretty underwhelming to end the entire series on such a simple action set piece. Not much better than Voyager’s “Endgame” in that regard. That’s why I feel the cliffhanger was a literal last-minute rewrite, because of course a Berman-era Trek show has to have a cliffhanger ending. Thankfully, they resolve this mess quickly enough in season 4.
“Your world is no longer the only one in jeopardy.”
A decent enough conclusion but not without its flaws. It manages to give everyone something to do, which is a rarity on this show. (Even Glorified Extra Mayweather gets a bit more than his usual “Aye, sir.”) Whilst the show is clearly struggling to utilise Daniels by this point, with this being the second appearance in a row where he turns up just to tell Archer not to do something and get told to take a long walk off a short pier, the rest of the supporting cast get decent material too. I admit to smiling in anticipation when I realised Shran was about to show up.
While Archer’s the one with all the big heroic stuff, Linda Park gets some of the best acting material as a completely broken Hoshi struggling to pull herself back together. And there’s some good stuff between T’Pol, Phlox and, for once, Trip: She has two fantastic scenes with each of them. While Archer’s apparent demise is pure Disney Death (as TV Tropes would put it), it does allow us a sweet little scene of T’Pol comforting Porthos while simultaneously echoing one of Tucker’s earlier comments. Jolene Blalock seems to have leaned into the idea of a more emotional T’Pol, playing the character as if she’s constantly uncomfortable and struggling to adjust to these new feelings.
While the climax is a bit drawn out, it’s still a satisfying moment where the sphere network goes kablooey and the Sphere Builders all disappear screaming. I remember reading a review describing Dolim’s death as spectacular and then being slightly underwhelmed, so in my rewrite I changed it to slap the explosive on him, shoulderbarge him down the shaft and blow him up in midair with a grim “That’s for Degra.” (Yes, I can be a bit bloodthirsty at times.) Still, I did appreciate Dolim giving Archer that “Oh, you bas-“ look as he realises what’s about to happen.
But okay, the episode’s biggest weakness: A good chunk of the episode takes place in Earth’s solar system, yet it acts as though the only people in the galaxy are the ones with speaking roles. Remember in ‘The Expanse’, when the Klingons pursued Enterprise into Earth’s solar system and immediately a bunch of Earth ships appeared to back them up? As krad ponts out, here, we are, a few million kilometres from Earth, a planet Starfleet knows is in danger of attack, and there isn’t a single ship defending it, with Archer having to rely on the Andorians and a bunch of people who were on the other side a few episodes ago for back-up. There’s no reaction from anyone on Earth to what’s going on, no attempt by any of our characters to contact the planet. (To be fair, there’s a throwaway line about the radiation from the weapon cutting off communications.) And then, having got all the way to Earth, Reed, Sato and co fly all the way back to Enterprise, in the Expanse, and then fly all the way back to Earth again for the closing scenes. I mean, what the heck? Did they even talk to Admiral Forrest and the others while they were at Earth? Would it not make more sense for the Xindi to drop them off home and then go back for Enterprise? Oh, but there’s a season cliffhanger coming up, and if Reed and Sato don’t get back to Enterprise they won’t be in the fourth season opener, so damn logic.
And it’s a shame that, when the party return to Enterprise, T’Pol and Tucker note Archer’s absence but no-one says a word about Random Dead MACO. Especially given Reed’s sorrow at losing Hawkins last episode. Poor Random Dead MACO (AKA Forbes, apparently).
Dolim blowing up a defenceless human outpost is a rather dark mirror of Archer doing the same in ‘Azati Prime’. Daniels shows Archer his future self present at the birth of the Federation, which we’ll see for real (sort of) in ‘These are the Voyages’. Shran makes his second appearance of the season: He’ll be back next year in ‘Kir’Shara’.
The Reptillian pilot detects seven humans aboard the Xindi vessel when there should only be six: Was he picking up Daniels? Mayweather seems to be doing all the work on the bridge early on. Later, Phlox gets to man tactical (is that the first time we’ve seen him at a bridge station?), while, with T’Pol in command, Tucker spends much of the episode at science station (nice try @1 trying to justify it as the consoles being swapped over but…why would they?) and even runs communications at one point.
I believe Channel 4 trimmed the scene of Dolim and his cohorts eating live mice: We saw them picking them up for the toast, obviously intending to eat them, but we were spared the gory details.
@19: Very sorry to hear that. I’ve been critical of his contribution to Star Trek whilst rewatching this season but things have definitely picked up as we near the end, and it’s a shame he’s not with us as we prepare to watch “his” season.
The biggest disappointment of this episode for me was the lack of little horns on the mice, like the Alfa 177 canine from “The Enemy Within” or the targ from “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
(OK, maybe not the biggest disappointment…)
@21. john_takis: I’m not saying that the Xindi Reptilians went to the trouble of acquiring Earth mice in honour of their impending immolation of Humanity’s cradle, but wouldn’t it be a Classic Villain move to have done just that?
@13. mr_d: Something I’ve noted once or twice across this rewatch is that, when he’s not being Average White Captain or an incurable optimist, Jonathan Archer can be a bad, bad man (He’s not as inherently cool as Captain Sisko, but I suspect he might be even more prone to go dark).
Oh, and it occurs to me that the show could have struck a balance between killing off Archer – whom I genuinely like – and moving a new Captain in, they could have show him suffer life-changing injuries that forced him to go from Captain to statesman.
@8. Daniel Friend: I’m not a McFarlane man, but I would absolutely love to see his ENTERPRISE character crop up in an episode of LOWER DECKS – as I’ve noted before, I’d love to see them do a change of pace episode or two showing how the ‘Lower Decks’ experience has changed across the history of Starfleet and Mr McFarlane could probably channel “Back in my day!” energy to good effect.
Bonus points if the character actually dines out on having been chewed out by Trip Tucker that one time …
@19 RIP Manny Coto….*glances around so I can blurt it out* The last showrunner of real Star Trek!
@@@@@ Eduardo S H Jencarelli,
That…is a kick in the gut. Manny Coto helmed the upcoming season 4, which is one of my all time favorite seasons of Trek EVER. I’ve kind of held his name in reverence because of that. I’ll be sure to stop by the memorial post on Spacedock in Star Trek Online and pay my respects.
@23. Richard: That can only be called one of the most grotesquely unfair insults to … well, basically EVERYTHING STAR TREK in the last two decades.
To keep this exchange short and relatively civil, one can only say that I completely disagree with your opinion.
RIP to Manny Coto. Like the previous 3 seasons of Enterprise, season 4 had it’s share of missteps, but I thought on his watch, most of the best future Federation world building took place.
It was a good finale, and while it was stupid to leave Earth undefended, who needs a fleet when you have Commander Shran on your side!
And then they had to spoil it all by saying something stupid like time travel.
I’m not convinced they left Earth undefended.
Starfleet is small at this point. They’d be hard pressed to patrol the solar system.
Archer used Degra’s ship because Enterprise, Earth’s fastest ship, was insufficient to catch the Xindi fleet.
The Xindi exited a conduit within range of the station. Nothing Earth had could respond on time unless they were docked at the station itself.
Space is big. Structures in space are isolated. This is one of the few times in Trek space felt truly vast and empty.
And the unfortunate thing is, they probably didn’t write it that way on purpose.
Ah yes, Zero Hour, a decent-ish (5 or 6) episode slammed down to 3 because of the Alien Nazis two parter that follows right after. I get it; WW2 nostalgia was pretty high at the time what with all the big picture releases, but man I didn’t like those. But, I’m getting ahead of myself here; back to Zero Hour proper.
It always has irritated me that there were no other ships from Starfleet with the only explanation being that they were guarding Sol’s perimeter, but considering that the prototype Weapon dropped in at point blank, you’d think that Starfleet would keep ships closer to Earth. I doubt that Columbia was in any shape to help in Earth’s defense; when we visit her in “Home” the ship is pressurized and maintaining life support, but critical functionality for things such as combat are definitely missing, not to mention we don’t know if Columbia is capable of flying at that point.
@20. I’d wager that Science (or Ops in the 24th century) has more to do with deflector shenanigans than Tactical, especially since Trip peers into the sensor hood (cowl?) presumably studying the effect the deflector is having on the sphere with the appropriate sensors from Science for analysis of something complicated.
Now then, onto the Season 3 conclusion and then I can be ready face-first into the toilet bowl for Storm Front before we’re finally rid of temporal nonsense.
lerris: Nonsense. Earth was a target. They knew Earth was a target. It should’ve been defended with everything they had. They had a year to prepare. There is no excuse, none, for there not to be a crapton of defenses all over Earth.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@30/krad: Unfortunately, the lack of defenses at Earth/Sol has been a problem ever since The Motion Picture, when the only Starfleet vessel capable of intercepting an intruder on course for Earth was a drydocked ship not yet ready for launch. Although at least TMP handwaved that Earth had a planetary defense grid that V’Ger neutralized using the codes hacked from the Enterprise‘s computer.
lerris, krad, CLB and a few others: Like I said, one of the things that annoys me about it is that they actually got it right a season earlier and had a bunch of ships in Earth’s solar system intercept Duras as soon as he poked his nose across the border. Where did they all go?
@32 Duras at least crossed the border. The Xindi emerged from a vortex that materialized behind the likely defensive line.
@33/lerris – Okay, but given that the last Xindi attack also involved popping out of a subspace corridor right above Earth, it’s not clear why they would put their defensive line so far out that they can’t reach the weapon, even with the Andorians to keep it busy for several minutes.
(Incidentally, I’d like to think that Shran became a bit of a folk hero on Earth after his actions in this one)
@30 said: “lerris: Nonsense. Earth was a target. They knew Earth was a target. It should’ve been defended with everything they had. They had a year to prepare. There is no excuse, none, for there not to be a crapton of defenses all over Earth.”
Star Trek: Beyond gives a little bit of maneuvering room here by stating that there was a “Xindi War” that Idris Elba’s character was a veteran of. Maybe other Xindi ships were distracting the earth forces at that time.
@30. krad: While there’s no excuse, there may still be good reason – given that in THE NEXT GENERATION era the Galaxy was able to produce adventures and misadventures enough for now fewer than three ongoing series, it’s perfectly-plausible that the much less settled Galaxy of the 22nd century has been shooting a whole quiver-full of adventures and misadventures at United Earth, with the inevitable consequences for her defences, whilst viewers have been bound to follow those of the Starship Enterprise only (If nothing else, one can certainly imagine that the Xindi Attack and the ensuing crisis drawing the attention of more than one opportunist looking to exploit Humanity’s desperate desire to do SOMETHING).
It would, however, most certainly have been nice to get a hint of this sort of thing from the actual show.
This episode was awful and anti-climatic but worse it left a mess for Manny Coto to clean up. The next two episodes are utterly terrible. It wasn’t until I randomly rewatched Battlestar Galactica 1984 that I concluded it was a bad rip-off too. Any one else see similarities between Storm Front and BSG 84?
It’s been a long road … but really looking forward to Krad viewing the best (but still wildly uneven) season of Enterprise.
@33: As others have said, given that the Xindi probe also emerged from a vortex right on top of Earth, you’d think they’d have set up a defensive line within that range, rather than one they know the enemy can just jump in behind. (To be fair, it seemed to take the Enterprise crew a long time to realise the Xindi had vortex technology, although they seem to be in regular contact with Earth, at least until recently, so you’d expect them to pass the news on.) A few ships in orbit, as opposed to unarmed space stations, would have worked wonders.
If this theoretical defensive line on the edge of the system did exist, it might have been smart for the episode to actually mention that, and that they were too far away to intercept, rather than acting as though the three ships we see are the only ones within light years. I’m far from convinced that’s plausible anyway: The weapon came out of the vortex 2,000,000 kilometres from its target and didn’t seem to be moving pretty quickly. I know warp jumps within a system are meant to be dangerous, but when the planet’s about to be destroyed anyway, there’s not much to lose.
@37/bob: It was Galactica 1980, and only one hour of the 3-hour premiere was devoted to a Nazi time-travel storyline. I don’t see any more than a superficial parallel. What matters is not what a story is about, but how well it’s told, and nothing about Galactica 1980 was well-told. (The people making the show didn’t even want to make it. ABC insisted they make it in order to expand the syndication package and amortize the cost of Battlestar Galactica‘s effects, sets, costumes, etc. So it was essentially made under protest and no care was put into it.) Whatever faults “Storm Front” may have, it’s still exponentially better than anything in Galactica 1980.
@krad, is the upcoming schedule posted anywhere? I like to watch the episode myself before I read your views. I guess there will be an overview on the 17, and 4×1 on the 24th?
o.m.: I haven’t posted a schedule as such, but the current plan is:
17 July: third season overview
24 July: “Storm Front”
31 July: “Storm Front, Part II”
7 August: “Home”
14 August: “Borderland”
21 August: “Cold Station 12”
28 August: “The Augments”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad, thanks for the info. I understand that things may change, knock on wood.
Thanks for the timetable, good to know even if things might change later. Hope you do allow yourself an occasional holiday though too.
bob: HOLIDAYS ARE FOR THE WEAK!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, workaholic
Two million kilometers is really close to Earth—only about ten times the average distance of the Moon. For a ship with interstellar capability, that’s nothing at all. When Dolim expressed surprise at the number, it wasn’t clear to me at first that he was surprised by how far they were from Earth or by how close they were.
As a new viewer I supposed the absence of defending ships fitted in with Enterprise’s inability to contact anyone on earth and Luna that was discussed near the end of the episode. It would seem they had moved timelines already at that point. .
Script nit: Hoshi’s parasites are described twice as her being ‘drugged’, I think by Tucker and Archer, before Archer once again mentions parasites.
lunnunis: they had not switched timelines at that point because the Xindi were not in the alternate time track. Daniel’s didn’t switch them over until the end of the episode.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Perhaps I missed something but how did Shran know when and where to show up to help Archer and co fight off the Reptilian Xindi and get to the Weapon?
rwmg: He read the script for the episode ahead of time…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, kidding, mostly