Cold Front: Enterprise Retrospective

Yes, I still have a lot of these episodes to review. I actually got the first season on Blu-Ray for Christmas, which is nice. Three more seasons to go...

So, Cold Front was the 'mid-season finale' (although they weren't called that back in 2001) for the first season of Enterprise, and it brought back the Temporal Cold War that was introduced in the pilot, Broken Bow. It wasn't very popular with fans, adding an unnecessary complication to the prequel series and one that obvious never reappeared in any other Star Trek show. But it's here, and we have to deal with it.

Here's the plot recap from Wikipedia:

Enterprise investigates a stellar nursery with several ships inside. Hailing one, they encounter a group on a pilgrimage to the Great Plume of Agosoria. Every eleven years, one of the protostars emits a neutron blast that the pilgrims consider a sacred event. Captain Archer invites the pilgrims to visit Enterprise. In Engineering, Commander Tucker explains the Warp 5 engine to the pilgrims. One alien discreetly disconnects an antimatter junction, and his arm morphs, revealing him as Suliban.

As Enterprise tries to go around a plasma storm, a bolt strikes the ship and causes an antimatter cascade that almost reaches the reactor, but is stopped by the disconnected junction. Tucker detects the sabotage in the junction, but does not suspect any of the crew. Crewman Daniels informs Archer that he believes one of the pilgrims is Silik, the Suliban whom Archer previously encountered. In his quarters, Daniels tells Archer he is not Starfleet but from the 31st century, commenting that the people who command Silik in the Temporal Cold War are from an earlier century. He comments that he has been sent to capture him, and asks for permission to tie his tracking technology into the ship's internal sensors.

Silik appears to Archer in his quarters and claims that Daniels' group was responsible for the antimatter cascade, and that the Temporal Accord is a lie. In Engineering, Daniels detects Suliban bio-signs, but is surprised and vaporized by Silik. T'Pol and Tucker summon Doctor Phlox to revive the now unconscious Archer. Archer asks Tucker to use Daniels' sensors to locate Silik while he and T'Pol visit Daniels' quarters to study the database that Archer saw earlier. It is gone. Silik escapes to Shuttle Bay 4, and refuses to surrender the device, so Archer shoots it from his hand. Silik opens the bay doors and freefalls to a waiting Suliban shuttlepod, and Archer asks Lieutenant Reed to seal off Daniels' cabin and any temporal secrets it may hold.

*************

So, there's some shipboard action in this episode, and more questions than answers about the Temporal Cold War. Is Silik telling the truth? Of course not, because he's the bad guy, but it's not always obvious, particularly when dealing with someone like Daniels, who is from nine hundred years in the future and most definitely has an agenda of his own.

There are some amusing bits in this episode, such as when Trip tries to explain the Warp 5 engine in extreme layman's terms, only to have one of the aliens ask him direct and points questions about technological sophistication and making him look like a bit of a fool. The reveal of Daniels' 'archive' device is pretty neat, and the ominous ending when the cabin being sealed off suggests that there will be more to this later on.

I liked this episode, although it didn't really jump out as anything special. The alien cultures were interesting, having their own motivations and understanding of the universe. Archer gets to be heroic again, T'Pol gets to be very skeptical, and Silik gets to save the ship. I'll give it a 6 out of 10, and let's see what the second half of the season brings us.

I wrote my own far-future science fiction, Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System, which is available in e-book and paperback format at an Amazon website near you. Check it out, and see another view of the far future.