Wither?
Tonight, the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise's fourth season aired, "Storm Front, Part II." Well, the NX-01 is back in the twenty-second century, and the Temporal Cold War seems to have come to an abrupt, undignified, and highly unsatisfactory ending. Regardless of whether it was a good idea, the Temporal Cold War has been an integral part of Enterprise since the series pilot, "Broken Bow," when the show was called just Enterprise (Star Trek was added to the title at the beginning of the third season). To end it as they did... I'm not trying to be unnecessarily nasty, but it honestly seems like the Star Trek: Voyager way of doing business.

And that's the sad part. To this point in time the Trek to which Enterprise bears the closest resemblance is the deservedly maligned Voyager; "Storm Front, Parts I and II" had more of Voyager's "Future's End, Parts I and II" in it than Deep Space Nine's "Past Tense, Parts I and II." My hope is that now that the third season-long Xindi story line has been wrapped up, Enterprise can get back to the business of founding the Federation. I liked the show before the radically different Xindi arc and I liked the broad strokes of the Xindi arc (if not some specific points). I hope to like the fourth season, but "Storm Front" was a dreadfully inauspicious beginning.

I choose to blame the whole "Storm Front" mess on Brannon Braga and his crappy "gotcha" gimick at the end of the third season. It was a pathetic idea to begin with and no one could have written a good way out of it. Wanker.

Major Temporal Cold War Episodes
"Broken Bow, Parts I and II"
"Cold Front"
"Shockwave, Part I"
"Shockwave, Part II"
"Future Tense"
"Storm Front, Part I"
"Storm Front, Part II"

Hmmm, I imagined my own version of Voyager, the awesome Star Trek: Odyssey (star of 2003's recurring feature "Retroactively Making Star Trek: Voyager Good"), perhaps I should create my own ne and improved version of Enterprise? "Retroactively Making Star Trek: Enterprise Better" coming soon to the Secret Base near you?