Storm Front Part I

Archer awakens in a primitive 20th century battlefield hospital on Earth, apparently in the 1940s. But he hasn’t gone back to become a part of history. He discovers that the timeline has been altered, leading to a Nazi invasion of the east coast of the United States – and the Nazis seem to have advanced alien help. Aboard the Enterprise, T’Pol and the crew are coming to grips with the unlikely fact that they seem to have traveled into an alternate timeline of Earth’s past, but as far as they know, Archer died about the Xindi sphere. Archer escapes his captors and is found and helped by a member of an underground resistance movement fighting to retake America from the Nazis. Aboard the Enterprise, the enigmatic Crewman Daniels appears suddenly in Dr. Phlox’s sick bay, but this time the time traveler is near death, barely able to warn the crew about what has happened: the temporal cold war has heated up and erupted into open conflict, and all of history – Earth’s and otherwise – is the battleground. When Silik appears in the shuttlebay and steals a shuttlepod after stunning Trip, it appears that Daniels is telling the truth. On Earth, Archer’s captors discover that he’s from the future, despite his escape, and Archer himself is having trouble convincing the resistance fighters that aliens are influencing their history…until he’s able to show them the evidence in person.

Season 4 Regular Cast: Scott Bakula (Captain Jonathan Archer), Jolene Blalock (Subcommander T’Pol), John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox), Dominic Keating (Lt. Malcolm Reed), Anthony Montgomery (Ensign Travis Mayweather), Linda Park (Ensign Hoshi Sato), Connor Trinneer (Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III)

written by Manny Coto
directed by Allan Kroeker
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Golden Brooks (Alicia Silvers), Joe Maruzzo (Sal), Jack Gwaltney (Vosk), Tom Wright (Ghrath), John Harnagel (Joe Prazki), Steven R. Schirripa (Carmine), John Fleck (Silik), Matt Winston (Daniels), Christopher Neame (German Guard), Sonny Surowiec (Nazi Soldier #1)

Notes: This episode marks the beginning of executive producer Manny Coto’s tenure as “showrunner,” the producer primarily responsible for the creative content of a show, following a last-minute pickup by UPN. It also marked the first full-time use of widescreen digital video as the primary means of shooting a Star Trek series; prior to this season of Enterprise, while video was occasionally used for inserts, pick-up footage and monitor shots, the primary means of shooting the series was on film. With this season, the series also moved to a Friday night time slot, a move which made many fans apprehensive since the final season of the original Star Trek failed to achieve high enough ratings for a fourth-season pickup on Friday nights in 1968-69. It would turn out that the comparison wasn’t entirely unfounded.