star trek enterprise nazis

Show Spoilers
Night Vision
Sticky Header
Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01E02StormFront

Recap / Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 01 E 02 Storm Front

Edit locked.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_2468.JPG

Tropes in this episode include:

Actor Allusion : Both Joe Maruzzo and Steve Schirripa were on The Sopranos , in which they also played gangsters.
Actually Pretty Funny : The SS officer tells Archer that he will one day go to Hollywood and meet Betty Grable , then puts his arm around him and asks if he'll introduce them. Archer replies "She's not your type," to which the SS officer laughs.
The SS officer transporting Archer is quite jovial and says he'll one day meet Hollywood starlets.
Vosk is rather polite and soft-spoken for an interstellar warlord.
Alien Blood : Everyone except Archer is shocked when Sal shoots one of Vosk's mooks and he bleeds pale yellow.
Almost Dead Guy : Despite all the gruesome damage to his body, with Phlox noting it's a miracle he's still alive, Daniels manages to survive just long enough to tell Archer about Vosk and what he needs to do to fix the timeline.
Alternate-History Nazi Victory : What did you expect when you see German troops patrolling Brooklyn in 1944? That said, the Nazis are in a very precarious position, with the Americans poised to counterattack.
Alternate History Wank : A successful German invasion of the U.S. East Coast probably would have needed all of the Wunderwaffen Vosk was working on. It's mentioned that the Third Reich controls all of continental Europe, the British Isles, much of Africa, Moscow, and a map shows that they've advanced halfway down the East Coast. This is actually lampshaded by the Generalmajor , who says there's a lot of talk that Germany has advanced too far, too quickly.
Anti-Air : Trip and Travis get hit by flak cannons over San Francisco , which is their cue to hightail it out of there.
At the Nazi headquarters, a map of the United States shows the American flag with 56 stars, rather than the 48 it had at the time.
Alicia is unfamiliar with the term "World War II," even though use of the term started shortly after the war began.
When Archer is being transported at the beginning of the episode, the German vehicles are painted in the yellow and brown color scheme of the Afrika Korps . Being that they are in a wooded rural area near New York City, they should be in standard field grey.
Also, the Kübelwagen clearly has a Wehrmacht license plate, even though it is being driven by SS personnel.
Even with plasma cannons , the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber is still a poor choice to send against an airborne target. Though they were originally created for ground attack and the only planes Vosk had.
At Least I Admit It : When Vosk tries to make Archer believe that Daniels and his temporal watchdogs are altering history to their own benefit: Vosk: They have an agenda. Archer: So do you. Vosk: At least I don't hide my intentions.
Big Brother Instinct : Sal and Carmine feel this towards Alicia.
Big "NO!" : Vosk when Enterprise destroys his temporal conduit, killing him.
Blatant Lies : Vosk tells the General that he and his men take their oath to Germany "very seriously," when they're really using the Nazis as a means to get back to their own time.
Blood Knight : Carmine is especially giddy while leading the attack on Vosk's compound.
Body Horror : Daniels is going through a lot of it. Phlox says that some of his tissue is over a hundred years old, while others are in a fetal stage.
Brandishment Bluff : When Vosk loses patience with the Generalmajor , he threatens to erase him from existence . This is a bluff, as he's lost his access to time travel and won't be able to do any such thing until the conduit is complete (after which it won't make any difference to him anyway), but the Generalmajor doesn't know that.
Buffy Speak : Alicia isn't fond of going through Enterprise 's "dissolver-thing."
Bulletproof Human Shield : At one point during the climactic fight scene in the Nazi compound, Silik grabs a mook and uses him to take a bullet from one of his buddies. Silik then takes the dead man's gun and shoots the buddy in question.
Bullying a Dragon : The Nazis have launched an invasion of North America, but even so, they are confined to the Eastern Seaboard while the rest of the United States is unoccupied. The Generalmajor also notes that their rapid expansion has left them spread too thinly, and they're vulnerable to an imminent counterattack.
Captain Obvious : When Silik and Archer are pinned down by enemy fire: Silik: We're in an extremely precarious position. Archer: I hadn't noticed.
Subverted for a change—Alicia sees the word "Enterprise" on Archer's jumpsuit and assumes he was off the aircraft carrier (which has apparently been sunk by the Japanese). His clothes do look like a boilersuit that might be worn in a ship's engine room - but that doesn't explain her apparent nonchalance about the very un-aircraft carrier-like starship Enterprise illustrated on the patch. He later wears some clothes that belong to Alicia's husband.
Averted when Archer and Silik don period-appropriate clothing before infiltrating the German compound.
Daniels dies. Again. But it doesn't stick. Again. Maybe.
Silik definitely is killed, though.
Cool Plane : The already cool Stuka dive-bomber is equipped with plasma cannons by Vosk. They're sent to fight off Enterprise .
Day of the Jackboot : What better way to show this than by having the White House draped in swastika banners. Currently serving as the Trope Image.
Deal with the Devil : Vosk asks for Archer's help to complete his time conduit, and offers to restore the history he knows once his group has defeated the Temporal Agents.
Earn Your Happy Ending : After a year of hell, Enterprise finally returns to Earth and is welcomed home by an armada of Starfleet and Vulcan ships.
Easy Logistics : Averted —the German Generalmajor tells Vosk about their supply problems, both from overextended forces and Resistance attacks.
Enemy Mine : Archer and Silik team up to stop Vosk.
Final Solution : Vosk proposes using a waterborne pathogen to eliminate non-Aryans. Like his other promises, he likely just thought this up on the spot to appease the Germans.
Good Cop/Bad Cop : Archer and Sal, respectively, when dealing with one of Vosk's mooks. Archer has to actively restrain Sal from killing him.
The Good Guys Always Win : Discussed by the SS officer with Archer: "In Hollywood movies, Americans always win. Too bad for you you are not in a movie. "
Historical In-Joke : The mafia are the ones leading the resistance against the Nazis, which they actually did in Real Life . Not being fans of Mussolini, the American mob families used their connections to gather intel prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily and helped the FBI root out Nazi spies .
Hopeless War : Zig-Zagged . While the Nazis occupy the East Coast as far as Ohio and South Carolina, they are suffering major supply problems and the Americans are preparing to launch a counterattack. However, Alicia sees it as hopeless, saying it seems there are fewer places where the Germans aren't every day. She also mentions that her husband is fighting in the Pacific, where things are going just as badly.
Implausible Deniability : Trip explodes when T'Pol orders a diagnostic to be done of the sensor array, saying that the three 50 cal bullets they just pulled out of the shuttlepod is sufficient evidence that they've time-travelled. She then clarifies that it's quite obvious they're in the past; she's trying to determine how they got there.
The Informant : Archer is put in contact with a man who sells information to one of Vosk's men on what the Germans and La Résistance are doing. However, the informer frankly admits that he doesn't know squat, so he makes most of the stuff up.
In Spite of a Nail : Malcolm determines that the timeline changed when Vladimir Lenin was assassinated in 1916, preventing the Communist takeover of Russia and thus allowing Adolf Hitler to focus on the west, all the way to the American East Coast. However, the rise of communism was the driving force behind the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany . In addition, Lenin was smuggled back into Russia because the Germans were hoping he would destabilize Russia to the point they would withdraw from the war. If he died before the Bolshevik Revolution, it's unlikely World War I would have ended the way it did.
Is That a Threat? : Silik: Do we really need these people? Carmine: What do you mean, these people? Silik: I don't see how they can be of any use to us. Carmine: I'll tell you how I can be of use to you. How about I start removing your teeth with my knuckles? Silik: Are you threatening me? Carmine: Hey, give the man a prize! Silik: Why would you do that?
Sal shoots one of Vosk's mooks in the hand to make him start talking.
Trip and Travis get roughed up by the Germans.
Just Think of the Potential! : Vosk disagrees with the Temporal Accords because he views time travel as no different than warp drive, a technology that can improve species for the better.
La Résistance : Italian mobsters are disrupting the German occupation of New York.
The Mafia : Archer's allies in occupied New York.
Mistaken for Transformed : Toward the end, Trip holds Captain Archer at gunpoint, believing him to be Silik in disguise. Justified as he thought Archer was dead.
In the teaser for Part 2, Hitler pays a visit to New York and gives a four-hour speech outlining his vision for relations between the Reich and America.
Not Me This Time : Just before Daniels passes out in sickbay, he warns T'Pol that "You have to stop him!" When Tucker has his run-in with Silik in the shuttlebay, the crew assumes he was the person Daniels was talking about. And just like last time , they're wrong — it's a brand new enemy, namely Vosk.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome : Towards the end of Part II, the Americans begin a counterattack to reclaim the Nazi-occupied East Coast. Malcolm is especially amazed by what he sees.
Oh, Crap! : Malcolm has a very subtle one when he tells T'Pol and Trip that the dispatches he's picked up mention battles in Virgina and Ohio, indicating that the war is going very differently than the history they know.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business : During the interrogation in the brig, Archer slams Silik against the wall. Silik: You've changed, Captain. Archer: And not at all for the better.
Pet the Dog : When Silik steals the shuttlepod from Enterprise , he takes the time to pull the phaser-stunned Trip out of the launch bay so that he doesn't get spaced.
Piggybacking on Hitler : Vosk is only using the Nazis for their own purposes, and doesn't want to give them the weapons they've developed because he doesn't trust the Nazis to use them against him.
Politically Incorrect Villain : A pair of SS troopers call Alicia a negro and a bitch and say that they'll send her and Archer (a "negro lover") back to Africa to "run through the jungle together."
Also, before tossing a grenade at the German guard post, Carmine says "What a way to spend a Saturday night!"
Pre-War Civilian Career : Alicia: Yeah, tell him what you guys did before the war. Sal: Nothing to tell. We were delegates for the Construction Workers Union. Alicia: Right. The loan-sharking was just a part-time job. Carmine: We helped people get out of financial difficulty. Since when is that a crime? Alicia: When they didn't pay you back on time. That's where the crime part came in.
Punch-Clock Villain : The German Generalmajor , who seems to be in the dark as to what Vosk's plan actually is and is primarily concerned with the imminent American counterattack.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech : Vosk delivers one to the German Generalmajor . "You are a fool. You think we're equals because I allow you to participate in this struggle. You fight to control nations. We dominate entire worlds . We extend our will across time . If your race were to endure for a million years, you couldn't begin to approach what we've accomplished. The next time you feel the urge to threaten me, remember this: I can erase you from history as if you never existed."
Red Eyes, Take Warning : Vosk and his mooks.
Reset Button : Killing Vosk and destroying his conduit undoes all of the damage the timeline has suffered.
Rubber-Forehead Aliens : Inverted. John Fleck finally gets to appear without prosthetics of any kind when Silik disguises himself as human.
When Vosk is showing footage of a weapons test, one shot shows a plasma rifle destroying a building. The explosion is from VOY's " The Killing Game ".
Hitler's visit to occupied New York was created from footage of his visit to occupied Paris, along with footage of an actual American Nazi Party rally (which didn't really have Hitler in attendance).
Stupid Jetpack Hitler : Subverted , actually. Vosk and his group are getting German resources to build their time conduit and plasma rifles. However, they don't actually plan on giving these weapons to Hitler.
Tactical Withdrawal : After disabling the facility's Deflector Shields , Archer tells Carmine to pull his men out before Enterprise can blast it to hell. Carmine: Start falling back! We gotta get the hell outta here!
Tank Goodness : A pair of Jagdtigers can be seen outside Nazi headquarters in Washington.
Part 1: T'Pol and Hoshi are on the verge of tears when they hear Archer's voice again, and then he returns to the bridge.
Part 2: Hoshi seems to tear up when Enterprise returns to the 22nd century and she successfully contacts Starfleet.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork : Vosk is annoyed by the Generalmajor , who in turn is upset with Vosk for not delivering his promised weapons.
Teleportation Rescue : Enterprise beams Archer and Alicia up just as Vosk and his men corner them.
Think Nothing of It : Of the "Save your thanks and leave me the hell alone" variety when Daniels tells Archer how many lives he's saved by ending the Temporal Cold War.
Time for Plan B : When Trip and Travis see that they can't recover the stolen shuttlepod in time to keep it from the Germans, they go with Plan B: blow it up .
T'Pol shows all the anger a Vulcan can muster when Malcolm reports that their shuttle is being stolen by a Suliban.
Archer barely keeps his hatred of Those Wacky Nazis in check, especially when they harass Alicia. Soldier: Do we make you angry? Archer: You could say that.
Unexplained Recovery : We never learn how Archer was transported from the exploding Xindi weapon to alternate 1944 Earth. Even Daniels thought he was dead.
Ungrateful Bastard : Lampshaded by Archer when he learns that Daniels and his "watchdog buddies" saved the Suliban from Vosk. Archer: Are you saying you owe Daniels' people your lives? Silik: They still oppose us, they're still our enemy. That will never change.
Alicia also wants to know why Archer doesn't just use Enterprise to demolish the Third Reich.
Trip gives T'Pol one when he thinks she's about to deny that they've time-traveled. He apologizes to her after a cooldown moment.
What Year Is This? : Archer asks Alicia this word-for-word.
Worthy Opponent : A dying Silik acknowledges Archer as this.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness : Vosk shoots the Generalmajor when he tries to gain control of his Stuka squadron, right before the time conduit is activated.
Your Favorite : Phlox does to console a despondent Porthos by giving him his favorite: chicken liver with grated cheddar.

Alternative Title(s): Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 01 Storm Front , Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 0102 Storm Front

Star Trek Enterprise S 03 E 24 Zero Hour
Recap/Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 03 Home

Important Links

Action Adventure
Commercials
Crime & Punishment
Professional Wrestling
Speculative Fiction
Sports Story
Animation (Western)
Music And Sound Effects
Print Media
Sequential Art
Tabletop Games
Applied Phlebotinum
Characterization
Characters As Device
Narrative Devices
British Telly
The Contributors
Creator Speak
Derivative Works
Laws And Formulas
Show Business
Split Personality
Truth And Lies
Truth In Television
Fate And Prophecy
Edit Reasons
Isolated Pages
Images List
Recent Videos
Crowner Activity
Un-typed Pages
Recent Page Type Changes
Trope Entry
Character Sheet
Playing With
Creating New Redirects
Cross Wicking
Tips for Editing
Text Formatting Rules
Handling Spoilers
Administrivia
Trope Repair Shop
Image Pickin'

Buy the Book…
Reviews Hub

the m0vie blog

Following Us

Adding Our RSS Feed to Your Gmail
Following our Feed in Internet Explorer
Millennium (Reviews)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Reviews)
Star Trek: Enterprise (Reviews)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Reviews)
Star Trek: The Original Series (Reviews)
Star Trek: Voyager (Reviews)
The X-Files (Reviews)
X-Files Fandom Poll Form

Check out the Archives

Awards & Nominations

Star Trek: Enterprise – Storm Front, Part I (Review)

This May, we’re taking a look at the fourth (and final) season of Star Trek: Enterprise . Check back daily for the latest review.

Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II arrive at a transitory time for Star Trek: Enterprise .

The third season of the show had wrapped on a somewhat unexpected cliffhanger, finding Archer confronted by an evil!alien!space! Nazi in the midst of what looked to be the Second World War. Given that the third season had been written as a single extended dramatic arc about Archer and his crew saving Earth from an alien threat, the twist seemed to come out of nowhere. Instead of allowing Archer and his crew to return home, Zero Hour threw out one final hurdle for the characters; a bump in the road home.

Ship shape.

However, the episodes also marked a transition behind the scenes. This particular iteration of the Star Trek franchise was on borrowed time. There had been warning signs as early as the first season, but the massive reworking of the show in The Expanse suggested that the network had adopted a “do or die” approach to the future of this lucrative science-fiction franchise. The fact that the third season had its episode order cut and there were suggestions that a fourth season was unlikely suggested that the show had not “done.”

Even aside from all that, the start of the fourth season saw Rick Berman and Brannon Braga taking a step back from the franchise and handing the reins to executive producer Manny Coto. In that respect, Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II might be seen as the collective last gasp of the Berman and Braga era. Give or take These Are The Voyages…

Back to the future.

Brannon Braga was, and will likely remain, a controversial figure in Star Trek history. It could be argued that the Star Trek franchise entered a steady decline as soon as the broadcast of All Good Things… ended, but Braga was the writer and executive producer responsible for the day-to-day running of the franchise at the point where its decline. It was Braga who stood over the final seasons of Star Trek: Voyager , as the show ground its formula into the dirt. It was Braga who created the first live-action Star Trek spin-off to be cancelled after less than seven seasons.

To be fair, Braga had somewhat stoked the franchise with iconoclastic interviews about how he had never watched the entirety of the original Star Trek or suggesting that certain segments of the franchise were obsessed with “continuity porn.” There are various accounts of Braga not being a particularly pleasant person to work with ( or pitch to ) during his time on Voyager . It occasionally seemed like Braga was poking the franchise’s hardcore on-line fandom with a sharp stick just to see how it would respond.

Ain’t no party like a Nazi party…

However, Braga received an incredible amount of bile and hatred during his tenure overseeing the Star Trek franchise. It seemed like there were entire communities dedicated to pathologically hating anything with the executive producer’s name attached to it. There were paranoid conspiracies about Braga masterminding the decline and collapse of the franchise; to the point that fandom writers could mine that hatred for (extended) parody and Braga himself has felt the need to publicly decry these accusations as “absurd.”

While there are certainly valid criticisms to be made of Braga as a writer and a showrunner, the volume of hatred he received was incredibly disproportionate. While he certainly deserves a share of the blame for various poor creative decisions made during the runs of Voyager and Enterprise , the decline of the Star Trek franchise during the late nineties and into the new millennium was down to a complex set of factors that reflected a changing media landscape, not all of which were in the control of either Berman or Braga.

The spectre of the gun…

The third season of Enterprise was Braga’s swan song to the franchise. It was a year-long arc focusing on issues and themes that interested the writer, attempting a more ambitious sort of story than UPN would have allowed during the later seasons of Voyager or the early seasons of Enterprise . There were certainly some major mistakes and errors in judgment in mapping out the third season, with a recurring sense that the writing staff where trying to build the storytelling engine while the plane was in midair. But it was ambitious and exciting, and compelling.

In many respects, the third season of Enterprise is overlooked and overshadowed in discussions of the series’ four-season run. Certainly, it made much less of an impression on the fanbase than the fourth season did. However, the third season was in its own way just as bold and ambitious as anything the Star Trek franchise had ever attempted before, and stands to Braga’s credit as a writer and showrunner that it worked as well as it did. Like a lot of Braga’s contributions to the franchise, the third season is definitely worth a reappraisal.

Mapping out the decline.

Still, there was a sense that Braga was somewhat spent. He had poured absolutely everything into the third season, and was creatively exhausted. It should be noted that he had been driving the Star Trek franchise for almost as long as Michael Piller had when he finished up on Voyager . As Braga explained to the documentary Before Her Time :

By the time season three came to an end, Chris Black was moving on to some other network television show. I always knew that Manny would take over the show. I, personally, had to move on. I really liked season three, I was really proud of it – a piece of science-fiction, as a piece of Star Trek science-fiction. And I was done. I couldn’t do anymore. I had to get away from Star Trek, because I really had nothing else to give to it.

There were, to be fair, also other pragmatic concerns at work. Braga knew as well as anybody that the show was on the ropes. It had been a minor miracle that the show had been renewed for a fourth season. It was almost certain that there would not be a fifth season. It was time to start considering life outside of Star Trek .

“You know, if Hitler really wanted to show his respect, he could name a city after me. I like Vladis-Vosk-ok.”

It would be easy to cast this as a mercenary decision. However, Braga had spent the entirety of his adult life working on the Star Trek franchise. He had been assigned to Star Trek: The Next Generation as an intern from the University of California Santa Cruz , and had simply never left. He had worked as a writer on three of the franchise’s television shows, and two of the franchise’s films. Star Trek had very much been the entirety of his creative life, give or take the screenplay to Mission: Impossible II .

On a purely pragmatic level, it made sense for Braga to prepare to move on. The executive producer has worked quite consistently since the end of Enterprise , writing for shows like 24 and Salem while producing on shows like Cosmos . Of course, it is not as if Braga simply stopped showing up to work on Enterprise during its final year. The executive producer remained involved in the running of the show, albeit from a distance. Most notably, Braga did a re-write on the episode Divergence to help the staff out during a tight production crunch .

“This is totally racial profiling.”

One of the more interesting aspects of the fourth season of Enterprise is the myth-making that happens around it, the fan narrative that seems to suggest Manny Coto saved Enterprise from the clutches of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. This is very much one of those pieces of internet folklore that reflects fandom bias a lot more than reality. After all, the same arguments were made about Ira Steven Behr’s work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , constructing the narrative of a feisty producer resisting the oppressive weight of corporate mediocrity.

It is certainly a romantic story. It has the appeal of clear heroes and villains, casting the production of a television series as its own pulpy television drama. However, this narrative is a very simplistic construction that has no understanding of the complexities of television production. It diminishes and reduces the figures at the heart of the story, painting them as crudely-drawn archetypes. If these narratives are to be believed, Coto and Behr are truly visionary artists while Berman and Braga are cynical corporate hacks.

Disappearing act.

The truth is that television is a cooperative medium and does not lend itself to that sort of guerilla warfare. More than that, when such conflict does occur, it is the “truly visionary artist” who tends to lose. Just ask X-Files writer Glen Morgan about the endings of Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man or Never Again . Rick Berman has acknowledged this myth about the production of the fourth season :

Enterprise… the writing staff was run by Brannon. Certainly in both of the last two years of it, Manny was very, very involved. Brannon and I got involved with developing another show, and for part of the fourth season, Manny had a greater hand in developing the storylines. But Manny always worked in concert with Brannon and myself. This whole idea of “Once Manny took over the show…” That never happened. Manny never took over the show. Manny started running story meetings when Brannon and I were involved with other things, but there was nothing Brannon and I didn’t get our input into. So those are just easy potshots, I think, for people to take.

So, as tempting as it might be to build the fourth season of Enterprise into some heroic struggle for the heart and soul of Star Trek , it was nothing of the sort. The transition between Brannon Braga and Manny Coto was very ordered and dignified, without the clear cut that most of fandom seems to read into the show. It is not as if Brannon Braga and Rick Berman stopped going to work.

“This might be a hellish apocalyptic alternate world, but New Jersey still looks the same.”

At the same time, it was quite clear that things were changing. Manny Coto would run Enterprise in a manner that was different from that of Brannon Braga, just like Brannon Braga had run Voyager in a manner that was different from Jeri Taylor. In that respect, Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II form something of a loose barrier between Braga’s vision of Enterprise and Coto’s vision of the show. They serve as something like insulation. In fact, Coto’s work on the fourth season of Enterprise is very clearly sandwiched by Berman and Braga.

The cliffhanger at the end of Zero Hour effectively mean that Coto was not to be afforded a clean break. That closing shot of the evil!alien!space! Nazi pretty much hemmed Coto into opening the season with a particular sort of story focusing on particular sorts of themes. There was some baggage that Coto had to work through, all as a result of a thirty-second bit that certainly didn’t build organically or naturally off the end of Zero Hour . That closing sequence seemed to suggest that the production team were wary of closing the third season without a cliffhanger.

“What? You don’t think I could pull off this cap?”

It should be noted that the fourth season of Enterprise was not a foregone conclusion. As Larry Nemecek explains in Before Her Time , it was a minor miracle the show got a fourth season at all given the network’s antagonism to it:

The series was only brought back by the studio, which had a vested interest long-term in the show, versus the network, which didn’t. The studio agreed to have a lesser license fee from the network. Budgets come down. Fees go down. The studio is upping the ante from its own pocket. Licensing money was flowing directly into the show’s production budget. There were all these stopgap things being done to keep the show on the air. That all won one more year.

This was a sad reversal of fortune for the Star Trek franchise. Paramount had used Voyager to launch UPN, but the network no longer had any real interest in one of the studio’s most prestigious properties.

“No, I told you. Network said to kill the show at the END of the season.”

It does not matter that Enterprise compared rather favourably with the other television shows broadcast by UPN, because the show was so expensive and also because it no longer fit the network’s target demographics. It does not matter that Enterprise did much better in terms of time-shifted viewers than day-and-date broadcast , because television networks had yet to realise how the paradigm was shifting. (In fact, it should be noted that Star Trek arguably already proved adaptable to the twenty-first century media landscape; it is still highly “binged.” )

It should be noted that UPN was already on its last legs at this point. Less than one year after the broadcast of These Are the Voyages… , it would be announced that the WB and UPN were effectively defunct ; they would be replaced by a single network known as “the CW.” The move was seen as a concession that neither network could survive on their own terms, prompting producer Tom Fontana to joke, “This is the first time in my career that I’ve had my network canceled.” Looking at the surrounding facts, Enterprise was as much a victim of larger forces as its own failings.

“The CW, you say? Perhaps I won’t be needing my shirt after all. By the way, do you have a salmon ladder I could use?”

Enterprise would not be officially cancelled until the writing staff were breaking Demons and Terra Prime , and while the cast were filming In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II . Nevertheless, there was a sense that everybody involved in the production knew that the end was near. In Before Her Time , Mike Sussman speculates that this was what prompted Rick Berman and Brannon Braga to end Zero Hour on a cliffhanger:

At the end of season three, I think, Rick and Brannon did something… I think at the time they didn’t realise the trouble they were getting into, but they ended season three on a cliffhanger, if you remember? And I don’t know if the network hadn’t read the script very closely, but by the time they saw the finished cut, they were outraged that we were ending season three on a cliffhanger because they were considering the possibility of not bringing the show back. And they knew all the heat they would get cancelling a Star Trek show on a cliffhanger. They demanded it be changed, but by then the actors were gone, the sets were in mothballs, and they had to air that as is. Now, whether that helped us get a season four… how much it helped, I’m not sure, but I’m sure glad they did it.

Of course, it seems entirely possible that UPN would have been willing to cancel Enterprise on a cliffhanger if they really wanted the show off their books. After all, it wasn’t as if the hardcore fanbase was going to be happy to see it cancelled after four seasons either. Still, it is a reassuring myth, one that suggests the production team had some influence – however small – in getting the series renewed for a fourth year.

An impressive body of work…

Ironically, while cancellation of Enterprise owes to a media model that was becoming increasingly outdated by the twenty-first century, the show’s fourth season renewal is perhaps rooted in similarly old-fashioned production logic. The fourth season of Enterprise bulks up the series’ episode count to ninety-seven episodes, including the double-length pilot. Although just short of the hundred episode threshold that is cited as an ideal for syndication, allowing a fourth season of Enterprise was likely intended to make it more lucrative for syndication.

A shifting home entertainment market would erode that requirement. The advent of streaming and binge-watching meant that viewers could discover classic television series for themselves, rather than relying on a television station to schedule it in daily doses. Netflix could support one-season wonders and cult hits alongside shorter-running British television series for audience to peruse in their own time. One hundred episodes was no longer a barrier for televisual afterlife. If anything, it would be easier for binging viewers to consume shorter runs.

Porthos seems pretty cheesed off.

However the final season of Enterprise came about, it was quite clear that this was the end of the line for the show. That was not the official position, and everybody hoped for a miracle, but the writing was largely on the wall. The Storm Front two-parter largely acknowledges this. The teaser opens with Trip and Mayweather coming under fire in what should be friendly airspace, unable to find a landing port that might offer them shelter. Doom and gloom fills the air. “That patch on your shirt says Enterprise,” Alicia tells Archer. “You must have made it off before it sank.”

There is a sense of defeat in the air. After all, Storm Front, Part I features a vision of a version of the United States that fell to Nazi Germany during the Second World War, with New York itself under occupation by an enemy army. These are powerful images, even in the context of a fairly disposable two-parter, and they undoubtedly speak to the atmosphere on the production, the sense that something has gone horribly and fundamentally wrong. The universe is broken on the most basic of levels.

“Oh boy.”

This sense of defeat and abandonment echoes through the supporting cast. “Damn military,” Sal protests when he discovers that Archer is a military officer. “You cut and run, you leave us at the mercy of these Nazi bastards.” There is a lot of frustration and anger, perhaps reflecting the mindset of a production team that did not want to jump directly from Voyager into Enterprise , but had been forced to do so by a network that was no so eager to cut them loose and watch them die.

The temporal cold war has always served as a metaphor for the trauma of Enterprise , of the looming existential threat hanging over the franchise at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Episodes like Shockwave, Part I suggested that the very fabric of the shared universe was eroding and that it could collapse under the strain. The temporal agents were tinkering with narrative and history, forcing the series to take an unnatural and even grotesque form, perhaps reflecting the demands coming in from the network to reshape the series.

You’d have to be blinds not to realise that something has gone wrong.

As such, it makes sense that Storm Front, Part I would see the temporal cold war escalating. “The temporal cold war has become an all-out conflict,” Daniels confesses to T’Pol. “Each faction is trying to wipe the others out.” The threat is no longer just looming. It has actually arrived. The apocalypse facing Archer in Shockwave, Part II is no longer the loss of a potential future; it is the destruction and distortion of the present. All is lost, paradise is burning. Star Trek is imploding.

“How do we return to our century?” T’Pol demands. Daniels responds, “You can’t. It doesn’t exist. Not the way you know it. Neither does mine. It’s all gone.” Watching Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II , it is quite apparent that the production team were under no allusions about the franchise’s chances of survival. This is a television series that knows it is dead. This is a show that has barely managed to cobble together a present, without any promise of a future.

“… hoping each time that his next leap would be the leap home.”

If Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II represent a changing of the guard for the franchise, then it makes sense that they should wrap up the temporal cold war. The recurring thread had been introduced by Berman and Braga back in Broken Bow , and it closes off here. John Billingsley acknowledged it as a ghost that needed exorcising :

I definitely felt as if there was a dictate on high from the network level, or from the studio level, to end the temporal time war, wrap it up immediately. I tended to concur on the broader point that the temporal time war never really got off the ground, the storytelling was too attenuated, and that it needed to die. At the same time I think the network forced them to tie it all up so abruptly that the way in which they had to do it was not as deft as it needed to be. So I personally sort of thought, and think, that one has to get through those episodes before we hit our stride in episode three.

It is certainly a fair point. The temporal cold war never worked as a recurring story thread, because there was never enough development or explanation. At best, in stories like Cold Front or Future Tense , the temporal cold war served as a backdrop against which the show could construct interesting metaphorical stories.

Smooth as Silik…

However, as a linear narrative, the temporal cold war lacked any strong story elements. Future Guy was a fairly generic antagonist. John Fleck plays a wonderfully slimy villain, but Silik lacks any distinct personality. The Suliban were never developed into more than just two-dimensional baddies. Unlike something like the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine , there is never any sense of forward momentum to the plotting. It never feels like Archer or Silik actually accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps demonstrating this issue, Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II find themselves in the awkward position of having to invent a mythology and then resolve it. The character of Vosk serves as the primary antagonist of the climax of the temporal cold war, but his species is never named and the character had never even been mentioned in earlier episodes. As a result, the big finale of the temporal cold war has to expend a lot of energy explaining who Vosk is and what he wants only to kill the character off. It feels like a narrative cul de sac .

“Boy, The Man in the High Castle really took a sharp left turn…”

It could legitimately be argued that the temporal cold war worked best as a background element to the third season, with the Sphere Builders fitting in the context of an epic battle to determine the future of Star Trek as the television franchise reached its lowest ebb. However, while that plot element fitted quite comfortably with the broader themes of the temporal cold war, it was still relatively vague. The two-parter that opens the fourth season is rather consciously and explicitly intended to draw the shutters down on this misshapen mythology.

Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II are quite candid about their intention to tidy away this lingering plot thread. Both Daniels and Silik are murdered over the course of the two-parter. To be fair, Daniels was introduced with his death in Cold Front and reappears at the episode’s close; the logic of time travel stories means that death is not permanent. Nevertheless, killing off both major recurring guest stars sends a very strong message. This is the last appearance of the Suliban, who were very clearly intended to be the show’s breakout alien species.

Nazi best company, all thing considered…

At the end of Storm Front, Part II , Archer says as much to Daniels. “I want you to leave me and my crew alone,” he advises the time traveller. “We’re done with you and your damn temporal cold war.” Daniels promises, “It’s coming to an end because of what you did.” Daniels seems to be as good as his word. Despite the teasing in Azati Prime , Daniels does not bother to show up for the important “founding of the Federation” milestones in Terra Prime or These Are the Voyages…

Of course, this was not the ending that Braga had envisaged for the multi-season plot thread, later confessing, “We wrapped up the temporal cold war somewhat quickly at the top of season four because we suspected we would be ending the show that year. Otherwise, we would’ve more thoroughly played it out.” In the years since, Braga has playfully teased all manner of absurd future story developments for the misbegotten arc, even falling back on the idea that Future Guy could be revealed to be Jonathan Archer from “corrupt future.”

“Let’s not do the time warp again…”

Tidying away the temporal cold war serves as a transition point. This is no longer the show that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had intended it to be when they launched it with Broken Bow back in October 2001. Enterprise has changed. Maybe it has grown, maybe it has retreated. No matter what, it is not the same show that it was when it first appeared three years early. Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II are very much an orderly transition of power between two administrations, Braga relinquishing the day-to-day running of the show to Coto.

At the same time, it is clear that this is not a clean reboot. Enterprise might launch again from space dock at the start of Borderlands , but there is no clean break to be had. Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II carry over a lot of elements and plot threads from the third season. Most obviously, the two episodes heavily feature MACO crewmembers instead of Starfleet security details; in Storm Front, Part II , Archer is accompanied by armed MACOs when meeting Vosk and the MACOs apprehend Silik after he attempts to escape.

“Sweet ride, huh?”

Of course, the MACOs have not yet had a chance to rotate off their service detail, but Coto makes a conscious decision not to downplay their role as a heavy militarised security detail. Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II suggest that there will be no shift or brutal reversal of the controversial changes that were made in The Expanse . As such, it is no surprise when Archer endorses the MACOs in conversation with Hernandez in Home and when they remain on board from Borderland onwards. The genie is not going back in the bottle.

It is tempting to look at Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II as disposable episodes that eat into the season order before Manny Coto can truly begin to steer his own course with Home . This is a perfectly reasonable observation about a time travel episode featuring evil!alien!space! Nazis that is tied to a recurring plot thread that never really made any sense in the first place. However, there is something strangely appropriate about this otherwise throwaway piece of pulp.

“Why Nazis? Because how would you know we were the bad guys otherwise? Also, they have cooler costumes.”

According to Manny Coto in Before Her Time , the original plan had been to do a full season-long arc set in this alternate version of the Second World War:

Rick and Brannon had kind of at that point decided on the World War II thing and I was looking forward to season four being a season of touchstones on the old canon, of the original series. So when they pitched World War II, I was like, ‘My God! How long are we going to be in World War II?’ Doing time travel stuff is interesting, but for one episode. I think Rick, at that point, was pitching the entire season to take place in World War II, which… you know, fine, it could be an interesting idea… I didn’t think it could sustain twenty-four episodes. I became into it when I came up with the idea of doing an alternate New Jersey which had been invaded by the Reich. That, to me, was interesting. I’d always loved alternate universe stories, and Enterprise doing a dog fight and all of those things. That was just, I thought, a lot of fun.

Coto’s observation is entirely reasonable. It seems hard to imagine an entire season of Star Trek (let alone the final season of Star Trek ) set entirely inside an alternate Second World War.

Food for thought.

Nevertheless, there is a strange resonance to the decision to send Archer and his crew back to the Second World War at the start of what would be the final season of televised Star Trek for over a decade. After all, Star Trek had a long historical connection to the Second World War. As a television show that launched in the late sixties, many members of the production team had been shaped and defined by the Second World War . Gene Roddenberry served as a pilot during the conflict . Gene L. Coon served in the United States Marine Corps.

However, the Second World War informed and shaped the Star Trek universe in a number of more subtle ways. The detonation of the atomic bomb ushered in an era where it seemed like science could accomplish anything, paving the way for the idealised technological future of Star Trek and introducing an anxiety against which the franchise could define its utopian vision . It also firmly established the United States a truly global superpower that could steer the course of global history , to the point that the Federation can be extrapolated from the end of that conflict.

This is no time to argue about time. We don’t have the time.

More to the point, the Second World War was a conflict that could be viewed in romantic and idealised terms, particularly compared to later conflicts like the Vietnam War. The Second World War featured untold destruction on an impossible scale, with the industrialisation of genocide by the Axis Powers. However, it also had a narrative that allowed for an idealistic interpretation as the conflict between a clear good and a clear evil. The reality might be more complex, but the Second World War could be described as “the good war” , one “finer and nobler” than most since.

The Second World War has an important place in the American cultural memory, so it makes sense that it would prove important in the context of the fictional Star Trek universe. The penultimate story of the first season of Star Trek , the classic City on the Edge of Forever , even went so far as to suggest that the idealistic future of Star Trek rested entirely upon the legacy of the Second World War. Altering the flow of history and distorting that chain of events would cause the future to simply cease to be. The Second World War is the origin of Star Trek .

Taking flack…

As such, there is a strange symmetry to Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II . The first season of Star Trek almost ended with a story set in New York that threatened the collapse of the franchise’s shared universe by altering the flow of the Second World War. The final season of Enterprise (the almost final Star Trek show) opens with a story set in New York that threatened the collapse of the franchise’s shared universe by altering the flow of the Second World War. There is something approaching poetry to all this.

(Of course, The City on the Edge of Forever was not actually the first season finale. It aired as the second-to-last episode of that first season, with Operation — Annihilate! serving as the final episode of that first broadcast year. However, The City on the Edge of Forever lingers longer in the franchise’s memory. Still, opening the fourth season of Enterprise with a two-parter preserves that sense of symmetry. The second-to-last episode of that first season mirrors the second episode of this last season, for those obsessed with perfect symmetry.)

This sort of thing is old hat to him at this point.

It is a nice (albeit sly) nod that brings the franchise something approaching a full circle. Which turns out to be something of a theme for this final season of Star Trek .

7 Responses

“There is something approaching poetry to all this.”

Neelix is the key to all this, if we get Neelix working. Because he’s a funnier character than we’ve ever had.

I found him more irritating than funny.

I’m not going to live that down, am I?

Love how you analyze the fourth season more than the episode itself. We’ve discussed this before, your case that Braga and Berman are not just these lame hacks is compelling, and I love the whole history you get into.

I will say the “temporal cold war” plot that was forced on them by executives was terrible and was a major, major flaw of the franchise. What’s your take?

Yep. You’ll probably find that happening a bit with the fourth season reviews, seen as they are all multi-episode stories and it’s hard to split a review of a story over three instalments.

(So, for example, my Borderlands trilogy has one article on the form of the season, another on the franchise’s obsession with Khan. My United trilogy review will look at the franchise’s futurism, the use of the Romulans, and the development of the Andorians as well as pulp influences. That sort of thing. I’m not a big fan of plot-point-by-plot-point recaps or interrogations.)

I seem to be the only person who doesn’t mind the Temporal Cold War. Not because it’s a good story, because it’s a terrible story. It makes no sense. But it’s a nice status quo. And I’m a sucker for the whole “war in heaven” trope that was popular at the turn of the millennium. The red and the black in The X-Files, the Last Great Time War in Doctor Who, this notion of a rippling scar on the cultural zietgeist manifesting itself across fiction. (It was undoubtedly tied to fin de seicle anxieties about “the end of history” and apocalyptic uncertainties.)

(Personal fanon? The Temporal Cold War is the Last Great Time War from Doctor Who, possibly even the Civil War from the X-Files and the War in Heaven from Millennium. That ship in Future Tense? It’s a TARDIS destroyed in the Last Great Time War, sent back in time as some weird foreshadowing of the Doctor Who revival in 2005. It’s a coincidence, of course, given that Doctor Who had yet to be confirmed to be coming back and had not been a major cultural force in the United States since the Tom Baker era, but it’s a nice coincidence.)

I also quite like the Temporal Cold War as a metaphor for the trauma and instability of Enterprise itself. Enterprise never fit comfortably in canon, and had a troubled life due to factors outside its own control – whether the network interference that demanded a Temporal Cold War or the horrors of the War on Terror. The Temporal Cold War is essentially a story about how history is not unfolding as it was intended, which is a nice way of approaching Enterprise itself, both in its relation to the established canon and in terms of what the production team originally planned for it.

(And on an episode-to-episode basis Cold Front is one of my favourite episodes of the first season, largely for reasons unrelated to time travel. It’s a great example of the first season’s more relaxed pacing, which was abandoned about half-way through the year. Shockwave, Part I is a genuinely great piece of television, even if Shockwave, Part II ranks as one of the worst second parts in the franchise’s history. Future Tense is one of the strongest episodes in the first two-thirds of the second season, although that’s damning with the faintest of praise. Carpenter Street is spectacularly terrible, but I like the third season’s idea of the Temporal Cold War as the “colonisation” of the franchise by outside actors. In this case, the War on Terror fundamentally changing the tenor and mood of the show.)

As to the fourth season possibly being a season long arc in WW2, all I have to say is the series dodged a bullet there, holy shit what a horrible idea…

Yep. I am hesitant to dismiss an idea out of hand, but that seems like a spectacular disaster waiting to happen.

Recently tweeted…

"I Simply Am Not There": The Existential Horror of Eighties Excess in "American Psycho"...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Necessary Evil (Review)
X-Men: Fatal Attractions (Review/Retrospective)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Reviews)

Available at…

Blogs Well Worth Your Time

1001 Must See Films
Andrew at the Movies
Anomalous Material
Cut the Crap Movie Reviews
Encore Entertainment
Fandango Groovers
FlixChatter
Four of Them
It Rains… You get Wet…
Jameson Cult Film Blog
Jar Watches Films
Let's Go To The Movies
M. Carter at the Movies
Marshall and the Movies
Movie News First
Musings from a Man Lost in La Mancha
Never Mind Pop Film
Paragraph Film Reviews
Roger Ebert's Journal
Ross v. Ross
Scannain.com
Screenwriter (Donald Clarke, Irish Times)
Strange Culture
The Film Cynics
The Pompous Film Snob
The Projection Booth
Things That Don't Suck
Too Busy Thinking About My Comics
Undy a Hundy

Film Nerd Resources

CinemaBlend (News)
Internet Movie Database
Rope of Silicon
The Guardian Film Blog
James Berardinelli
Roger Ebert

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Sign me up!

Blog at WordPress.com. WP Designer.

Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Subscribe Subscribed
Copy shortlink
Report this content
View post in Reader
Manage subscriptions
Collapse this bar

The ‘Star Trek’ Episode That Was Banned Overseas for Nearly 30 Years

The ban would get overturned in 1995.

The Big Picture

Star Trek: The Original Series took on racial controversies, including racism and prejudice, throughout its episodes.
The "Patterns of Force" episode was banned in Germany due to the Nazi symbols and pro-fascist sentiments depicted.
German censorship laws post-World War II led to a ban on the episode due to showcasing Nazi ideology, though it was eventually reinstated.

Star Trek: The Original Series was a groundbreaking show that has since inspired an entire universe of stories and unforgettable characters. It challenged viewers by positing an idealistic future over a dystopian one. By juxtaposing this future against a more primal human history, it showcases the best of what humanity offers. The show was no stranger to racially driven controversy, airing America's first interracial kiss between Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Lt. Nyota Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols ) and exploring the horrors of racism and prejudice in the ever popular half-black-half-white alien race episode. This is why it is so surprising that the 21st episode of its 2nd season, "Patterns of Force," was banned on German television between 1968 and 1995 due to the depiction of Nazi uniforms and the presence of several different Nazi symbols.

Star Trek: The Original Series

*Availability in US

Not available

In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

What Happens In "Patterns of Force"?

The episode sees the crew of the Starship Enterprise investigating the disappearance of a Federation cultural observer, John Gill, on the fascist-like planet of Ekos, overrun with Nazi-like soldiers dressed in SS-type uniforms and bolstered by brown-shirted stormtroopers hell-bent on preserving the soul-crushing status quo. Ekos is at war with Zeon, a peaceful planet that starkly contrasts with the warlike society of Ekos. John Gill, Kirk's history professor at Star Fleet Academy, decides to take the mission. As they orbit the planet, they are suddenly attacked with a thermonuclear weapon, a disturbing "what if the Nazis had the bomb." The technology, Kirk surmises, is far too advanced for Ekos, and the Captain believes that Gill may be responsible for violating the Prime Directive and introducing advanced technology to a fledgling civilization. Kirk, First Science Officer Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ), and Chief Medical Officer Hank McCoy ( DeForest Kelley ) beam to the planet to investigate.

Upon arrival, the landing party soon discovers that Ekos is in the thick of a Nazi-like purge of Zeons, dressed in Nazi regalia and sporting swastika flags. The crew is horrified as a Zeon citizen is dragged off by the Ekos officers. As they continue to explore the planet and acclimate themselves to the hostile environment, Kirk and company come upon an outdoor news-reel-type film portraying a Nazi rally where citizens chant Nazi slogans, wave swastika flags, sport iron crosses and even make mention of a "Final Solution" promising genocide against the Zeon people and their destruction in the occupied city. Some clips from this reel, most notably the ones where Adolph Hitler is driving in his car, were taken from the authentic Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will .

Eventually, the crew finds Gill, drugged up and taken prisoner by the regime, where they learn that Gill had intentionally imposed a type of Nazi-style fascism on the then anarchic and wild citizens of Ekos. Gill posits that the Nazi regime on Earth was "the most efficient society" humanity has created and that it was necessary to bring law and order to the planet, and this did not sit well with German broadcasters at all .

If Every Western Was Put Into a Blender, It Would Make This 'Star Trek: TNG' Episode

Why did germany ban 'star trek's "patterns of force" episode.

German networks decided that the episode was unfit to air and banned it until 1995 , when it would be broadcast in the original English with subtitles on German paid programming. The episode was publicly broadcast on November 4, 2011, on channel ZDFneo. But why did it take so long to get on the air? Why did German censors ban the episode? A disturbing story though it is, the episode culminates with a total condemnation of fascism and, precisely, the Nazi regime. With a peaceful resolution between the two planets, viewers wonder how such a ban could happen and why it has lasted so long. Why is it that you can see swastikas in America but not in Germany ? The answer has everything to do with what happened in Germany post-World War II.

Germany fell on May 7, 1945 , and the Allied Forces quickly took control over the country, where they immediately banned the use of any Nazi symbols (the swastika) and literature ( Mein Kamf ) and the Nazi Party itself. In 1949, the West German government banned legal codification , putting an end to all public displays of Nazism, including but not limited to symbols and language, as well as propaganda , including the famous "Heil Hitler" one-armed salute. Germany, it would appear, had taken a hard line on hate speech. The idea was to stamp out the pernicious Nazi ideology that still existed because hardcore SS Officers and their families still lived in the country. As communism rose in the East, fascism was a tantalizing push-back against another equally authoritarian and murderous regime that was in danger of gaining ground in Germany. The tendency of people to fall into tribalistic political camps was too great, and the risk of a slide back into Nazism was possible, so the government took action.

In 1960, the German government wrote into law a framework which would “make it illegal to incite hatred, to provoke violence, or to insult, ridicule or defame ‘parts of the population’ in a manner apt to breach the peace.” Over time, the framework would extend to writing and, subsequently, screenwriting. So why was the Star Trek episode banned in Germany? It was forbidden because all the symbols, language, and ideology of the Nazi Party were shown. With Gills's pro-fascist sentiments on full display, the German networks could not take the risk of showing an episode of Star Trek that so clearly violated the laws the German parliament had seen fit to enact. So, the episode was pulled and kept from German audiences for years.

Star Trek: The Original Series is streaming on Pluto TV in the U.S.

Watch on Pluto TV

Den of Geek

How Modern Star Trek Gets Khan Wrong

The legacy of Khan looms large over Star Trek, including in Picard and Strange New Worlds. But they keep missing the target.

Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
Share on email (opens in a new tab)

Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek Picard is, unsurprisingly, an absolutely treasure trove of continuity and easter eggs . Sometimes that’s fun, like when Seven of Nine silences the same bus punk that Spock did in Star Trek IV , and sometimes it’s baffling, such as when Guinan mysteriously de-ages and forgets Picard existed some time between the 19 th and 21 st centuries, or Picard’s Hallucination Dad adding a bunch of unnecessary backstory while gloating he kept his hair (despite the fact we already know he didn’t ).

One of the subtler and longer-running threads of this series has been the plot around geneticist Adam Soong, ancestor of Data’s creator and excuse to keep casting Brent Spiner after Data has been killed off.

But Soong’s plotline is more than just “A 400 year-long male line of eerily identical mad scientists” and it ties into a piece of plot arc and worldbuilding that traces back to one of Star Trek ’s earliest and best-loved episodes. It’s also a story that has had its original meaning and message shifted and changed over decades of references and efforts to make it relevant to modern concerns and technology.

Lineage of a Space Seed

Adam Soong’s plot in Picard season 2 revolves around his efforts to cure his daughter’s genetic disease (said daughter is played by Isa Briones, who played Data’s “daughter” Soji Asha in Picard season one, because Data’s family takes family resemblances seriously ). We know that this fascination with genetics is going to stick, because his descendant, Arik Soong (played by Brent Spiner) will be responsible for stealing and rearing to maturity a band of “augmented” embryos leftover from the Eugenics Wars, which are first mentioned in the original series episode and undisputed classic, “Space Seed.”

Ad – content continues below

For those who haven’t seen the episode, which is likely a small number if you have got this far into the article, “Space Seed” concerns the Enterprise discovering an ancient spaceship from the year 1996 floating dead in deep space. On board that ship is an army of cryogenically frozen soldiers from the “Eugenics Wars,” the “last of your world wars” according to Spock (a matter of some continuity confusion by itself , even if you ignore that these wars supposedly took place during the Clinton administration). Their leader, Khan Noonien Singh, is woken up, then he proceeds to wake up the rest of his people who go on to take over the Enterprise until Kirk stops him.

It is the kind of high concept, one-off science fiction morality tale that Star Trek excels at, and that would have been that, if Harve Bennett hadn’t seen it and realized Khan was the perfect villain for his sequel to Star Trek: The Motion Picture .

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan became an instant classic, and the benchmark all future Star Trek movies were measured by, and so the Eugenics Wars became a cemented piece of Trek lore, even as the actual ‘90s came and went.

Khan would next be mentioned quite a while later, in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, “Dr Bashir, I Presume?” In that episode, Rear Admiral Bennett (named after Harve?) says, “Two hundred years ago, we tried to improve the species through DNA resequencing. And what did we get for our troubles? The Eugenics Wars. For every Julian Bashir that can be created, there’s a Khan Singh waiting in the wings – a superhuman whose ambition and thirst for power have been enhanced along with his intellect. The law against genetic engineering provides a firewall against such men. And it’s my job to keep that firewall intact.”

The plot is continued through “Statistical Possibilities” and “Chrysalis” where we learn what happens to other genetically augmented humans in the 24 th century.

The next time Khan would come up was in Star Trek: Enterprise ’s trilogy of episodes, “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “Augments” where Brent Spiner returns to play Data’s creator’s ancestor, Arik Soong who has stolen frozen embryos that survived the Eugenics Wars and allowed them to grow to term. A later two-parter story reveals that Soong’s research was stolen by the Klingons, leading to a viral epidemic that gives them all flat foreheads in time for The Original Series to start.

And finally, back in the movies Star Trek Into Darkness brings Khan back, played by Benedict Cumberbatch with magic blood that can raise the dead. We won’t dwell on that more than necessary.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

From Eugenics to Genetic Engineering

But across all these stories there is a subtle change. The words “Eugenics Wars” keep getting namechecked, but nobody really mentions eugenics itself anymore. It was always “genetic augmentation” or “gene resequencing.”

These are different things. Eugenics is an act of selective breeding – in the same way we breed fatter cows and faster race horses, eugenics argues we can breed stronger, smarter, healthier humans. Soong’s daughter in Picard would not be helped by eugenics- rather than seeking to cure her, it would argue she should be sterilized (at best) to prevent her disorder being passed on.

Now, you could argue that this is simply a result of our understanding of technology increasing and the stories reflecting that. After all, in one original Star Trek episode, Spock refers to a “black star,” an entity that for all its description sounds identical to a black hole, but we are happy to use the updated terminology in Star Trek today.

But watching “Space Seed” again it is clear the language the characters are using is precise and deliberate. Khan and his crew are the result of efforts to “improve the species through selective breeding,” resulting in “an improved breed of human.” Khan himself is described as “a product of selected breeding.”

Now, there are logical problems here, such as the fact that selective breeding takes many generations to work, and assuming Khan is the same age as Ricardo Montalbán when he played him, he must have been born no later than 1950 — 17 years before “Space Seed” aired, but that’s not an insurmountable problem.

More important than continuity tangles is what “Space Seed” was actually about , because like most of the best Star Trek stories, it is a story with very real moral and political issues at its core.

A Better Kind of Nazi

To understand “Space Seed” you need to understand when it was written. For the episode’s first audiences, World War II was as recent a memory as 9/11 is today. The Nazis had been rightfully vilified, but that certainly hadn’t (and still hasn’t) meant an end to racism or other ideas that the Nazis stood for.

The thought experiment at the heart of “Space Seed” is “Okay, the Nazis were bad, racism is evil, but what about the ideas underlying Naziism? If you can breed better horses, why can’t you breed better people?”

So, with Khan and his crew, Star Trek gives us Nazis with the “bad” bits taken out. Khan’s crew is ethnically diverse (even if that’s not exactly shown on the screen). Scotty describes them as “mixed types. Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental.” Khan himself is from North India, and a Sikh, although this raises questions as Ricardo Montalbán is a Mexican actor descended from Spanish immigrants, and is completely clean-shaven.

Khan’s band are driven by science, not nationalism, and they have dropped any ideas of white supremacy. They seize power in 40 nations, uniting people “like a team of animals under one whip,” but even Kirk and his human colleagues express admiration for Khan as the “best of dictators” to tease Spock, because even in the 23 rd century being an edgelord is a still a thing.

But ultimately the episode shows Khan remains a villain, that if you strip out all the “problematic” elements of Naziism its underlying ideas are still toxic, resulting in a strata of people who think they’re better than other people and entitled to rule over them. The problem with the Nazis was not that they did it wrong, it’s their fundamental premises.

By the time of the actual ‘90s and the early ‘00s, Nazis seemed far more like something from the history books, and our concerns were far more technological. Enterprise tried so hard to reconcile and namecheck its own continuity, it never really stopped to think about what the Khan story was actually about. This leads to weird situations like Archer being told the research that led to the augments could have cured his dad’s “Clarke’s Syndrome” while Soong’s plans to “liberate” a lab full of frozen embryos seems weirdly anti-abortion rather than anything to do with science. The whole plot ends up echoing movies like Deep Blue Sea or Rise of the Planet of the Apes , where the moral, intentionally or not, is “trying to cure Alzheimer’s is wrong.”

Star Trek is going back to its roots with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , a show following Captain Pike and the Enterprise on more planet of the week type morality plays. One of the new crewmembers of this version of the Enterprise is Chief Security Officer La’an Noonien Singh , who appears to be related to Khan despite not appearing to be of Mexican or North Indian descent. So “Space Seed” is not a story Trek is planning to leave alone any time soon. One does wonder why Spock, Uhura, and Nurse Chapel never mentioned working alongside one of Khan’s relations when they met, but that is a problem for another day.

But at the same time, eugenics hasn’t gone away either.

In February 2020 once-respected scientist Richard Dawkins tweeted a lengthy thread defending the scientific efficacy of eugenics as a British political advisor was fired over espousing eugenic ideas. The response to the firing, across the press, was various right-wing commentators saying, “Well, yes, obviously Nazis are bad but…”

Not long after the world was overrun by a pandemic which multiple countries responded to with policies that led disproportionately to deaths among disabled people .

Maybe “Space Seed”’s message doesn’t need updating. Maybe we just need reminding of it.

Latest TV reviews

Star trek: discovery season 5 episode 6 review – whistlespeak, shardlake review: sinister and satisfying tudor-set murder mystery, star trek: discovery season 5 episode 5 review – mirrors.

Perhaps the best episode Star Trek has done about eugenics or genetic engineering, other than “Space Seed,” didn’t reference Khan at all. In Star Trek: the Next Generation ’ s “The Masterpiece Society,” the Enterprise encounters a human colony where everyone has been bred and engineered for their role in society, and all illness and disability has been genetically removed.

When the colony faces destruction at the hands of stellar core fragment, the solution is found in the engineer, Geordi La Forge’s visor. The world is saved thanks to a tool that was designed to help a blind person see. La Forge himself points out that in this world, he never would have been born. Star Trek ’s vision, sometimes called “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” where we provide visual aids and wheelchairs rather than trying to make disabled people not exist, means that it can come up with solutions less diverse societies can’t.

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell is a freelance writer and the author of a novel, an anthology, a Doctor Who themed joke book and some supplementary RPG material. He…

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

The Fall Guy Link to The Fall Guy
I Saw the TV Glow Link to I Saw the TV Glow
The Idea of You Link to The Idea of You

New TV Tonight

Hacks: Season 3
Star Wars: Tales of the Empire: Season 1
Shardlake: Season 1
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: Season 1
A Man in Full: Season 1
The Veil: Season 1
Acapulco: Season 3
Welcome to Wrexham: Season 3
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA: Season 1
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Season 4.2

Star Trek: Enterprise – Season 4, Episode 1

Storm front, where to watch, star trek: enterprise — season 4, episode 1.

Watch Star Trek: Enterprise — Season 4, Episode 1 with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

More Like This

Cast & crew.

Scott Bakula

Capt. Jonathan Archer

Connor Trinneer

Cmdr. Charles "Trip" Tucker III

Jolene Blalock

Cmdr. T'Pol

Dominic Keating

Lt. Malcolm Reed

Anthony Montgomery

Ensign Travis Mayweather

Ensign Hoshi Sato

Episode Info

Star Trek: Enterprise Ending Explained: Those Were The Voyages...

"Star Trek: Enterprise" — originally just called "Enterprise," – was once considered by many Trekkies to be the black sheep of the pre-Abrams era. While it still had many of the same creative people working behind the scenes (the show was created by longtime Trek honchos Rick Berman and Brannon Braga) it deliberately struck a different tone, exploring the early, raucous days of Starfleet: before the formation of the United Federation of Planets, before the writing of The Prime Directive, way back when there was only one Earth ship trekking through the cosmos. The goal was to create a Trek show that was less anodyne than its predecessors, recapturing some of the frontier spirit occasionally seen in the original 1966 TV series.

Other changes included an wholly updated aesthetic; the Enterprise looked a lot more like a submarine than a cruise ship, and the crew wore uniforms that looked a little bit like NASA jumpsuits. There were only two alien species aboard this time: Vulcan first officer T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) and the genial Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley), playing the previously unseen species of Denobulan. Additionally, the traditional orchestral opening of the previous five Trek TV shows was replaced by a truly, truly awful Rod Stewart ballad called "Faith of the Heart" a.k.a. "Where My Heart Will Take Me," sung by Russell "The Voice" Watson , written by Diane Warren, and originally included on the soundtrack to "Patch Adams."

"Enterprise" debuted in 2001 and was met with mixed reactions. Some critics, if recall is to be trusted, positively praised its production value and novelty, while others missed the reliable Trek iconography.

It's Been a Long Road...

When it debuted in September of 2001, "Enterprise" struggled almost immediately. Fans weren't taking to the show in the same way they took to "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" or "Star Trek: Voyager" as it was set in a new time frame which required a new push for audiences to refamiliarize themselves. What's more, it was the only Trek show on the air at the time, with "Voyager" having ended its run in May of the same year. Previous Trek shows had been doubling up, and it was the first time since 1993 there weren't at least two "Star Trek" shows on the air at the same time. "Enterprise" had a lot to prove.

Some of the early story arcs didn't play well to mythos-minded fans, and the Temporal Cold War story, featuring an evil species called the Suliban , is rarely brought up in conversation I have with other Trekkies. A little more attention is given to the Xindi who, in a story arc beginning in season 3, destroyed Florida in what was very clearly a 9/11 metaphor. Yes, check again the month and year of "Enterprise's" debut.

"Star Trek: Enterprise" season 4 introduced more multiple-episode arcs, and "Star Trek," along with most TV shows at the time, began to evolve into longer-form stories and season-long arcs rather than stand-alone mini moral dilemmas that had been Trek's stock in trade for decades. But the change was too little, too late, and "Enterprise" was canceled after an inauspicious four seasons. For comparison, "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," and "Voyager" all ran for seven years each.

A pity, really, as some have said (anecdotally) that the show was just finding its feet.

Getting from There to Here

The final episode of "Enterprise" was ... Well, it was an interesting choice. A big part of the appeal of "Enterprise" was its placement as a prequel to the original "Star Trek" series, meaning there was a mild thrill in seeing how certain things would come to be. This was, of course, after the same thing was being done with "Star Wars" starting with "The Phantom Menace" in 1999, but before "Batman Begins" pretty much popularized the "reimagined origin story" as a dominant storytelling trope throughout pop media. All of this is to say that "Enterprise" was meant to tie into what good Trekkies knew was coming in the future.

As such, the final episode of "Enterprise," titled "These Are the Voyages..." (originally aired on May 15th, 2005), had to rush to finally connect series back to the Treks were knew and loved. Enter Jonathan Frakes, Will Riker from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a series that was set about 200 years after the events of "Enterprise." Rather than merely recite the official denouements of Capt. Jonathan Archer , T'Pol , Trip Tucker , Malcolm Reed , Hoshi Sato , Dr. Phlox , and the memorable, memorable character of Ensign Mayweather , we were given a broader view of "Enterprise" history as seen by William Riker, who was recreating life on the original "Enterprise" via a holodeck some 200 years after the fact.

In "These Are the Voyages...," Riker imagined himself as the hardworking galley chef on the original Enterprise, a character that was often talked about but never seen. As Riker envisioned it, the ship's chef served as a personal confidant to the crew, allowing him to have elaborate one-on-one discussion with each character. He also wanted to talk to the crew of the Enterprise shortly before the original ship was to be decommissioned, meaning the episode was also a flash-forward.

In short: "Enterprise" ended with a 200-year-old recreation of the future events of "Enterprise," as interpreted through the eyes of William T. Riker. The final episode of Trek was Mary Sue fanfic written by a Trek character. This is a nerd turducken of the highest order.

This approach, of course, allowed for a great deal of convenient historical fudging on the part of "Enterprise's" writers. If there was any sort of plot or character inconsistency, a viewer could chalk it up to Riker changing history to fit his own holodeck fantasy. More broadly, it was a comment on how we, as a species, tend to romanticize history, altering our past into heroic narratives and easy-to-consume stories rather than a complex timeline of daily events.

It's Been a Long Time

A bit of editorializing, if I may...

Reaction to "These Are the Voyages..." was largely negative. The inclusion of Riker, not to mention the eventual addition of NextGen's Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) robbed the "Enterprise" characters of their moment. While one can easily understand that the show's creators wanted to bring the timeline of "Enterprise" to a meaningful conclusion, skipping ahead in time and treating the show's events like a textbook column for other, different characters makes them feel distant and rarified, rather than exciting and immediate. Mild spoiler : The impersonal and abrupt death of one of the main cast members certainly didn't help either.

If one recalls the ending of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," it was made clear that the adventures of the Enterprise-D would continue — only without us, the audience, being able to see them all. A series needn't definitively conclude if we leave comforted that everything will work out fine for the characters. Perhaps a similar approach would have made for a better final episode of "Enterprise." Please, leave us with comforting send-off that would leave audiences assured that the cast would make it safely into Trek history, even if we don't get to see it.

That second approach would also open up the Trek "expanded universe." That is: Plenty of studio-mandated novels, source books, and speculative fiction writers could fill in any gaps that were left in the narrative. Indeed, given the historical element of "Enterprise," leaving gaps in history would be perfectly appropriate. Sadly, we were left with a final episode of Trek that left a bad taste in our mouths.

Maybe that's why so many audiences embraced the 2009 "Star Trek" feature film. It was an entirely new beverage, but at least it washed away the old one.

Now, where do we rant about the Paramount+ era?

Star Trek: Discovery's Enterprise Plaque Reveals New Mirror Universe History Details

Warning: This Article Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5 - "Mirrors"

Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors", reveals new details about the Mirror Universe's history on the ISS Enterprise.
The dedication plaque on the starship sheds light on events in the late-23rd century after "Mirror, Mirror" from TOS season 2.
Burnham and Booker found the ISS Enterprise in interdimensional space and brought it into the 32nd century Prime Universe.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors", shockingly brought the ISS Enterprise into the 32nd century, and the starship's dedication plaque reveals new details about the Mirror Universe's history. Written by Johanna Lee and Carlos Cisco and directed by Jen McGowan, "Mirrors" brought Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) into interdimensional space in pursuit of the next clue to the ancient treasure of the Progenitors, which was hidden aboard the 23rd century ISS Enterprise from the Mirror Universe.

On his X account, Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49), who was a researcher for Star Trek: Picard season 3 renowned for his attention to detail, posted a clear translation of the ISS Enterprise's dedication plaque from Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5 . The illuminated text reveals what happened in the late-23rd century Mirror Universe after the events of Star Trek: The Original Series season 2's "Mirror, Mirror." Read the post below:

Here is the image in the X post:

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

A timeline of star trek's mirror universe, from the terran empire to the temporal wars.

The Mirror Universe was introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2's "Mirror, Mirror" and its canonical history can be tracked through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: Discovery. The earliest chronological glimpse of the Mirror Universe is on April 5, 2063, when Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell) murdered a Vulcan after making First Contact in Enterprise 's "In A Mirror, Darkly". In the 22nd century of Star Trek: Enterprise 's Mirror Universe , Commander Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) captured the USS Defiant from the 23rd century, but he was betrayed by Hoshi Sato (Linda Park), who declared herself Empress of the Terran Empire.

In the 23rd century of Star Trek: Discovery , the Mirror Universe was ruled by Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). Georgiou jumped to Star Trek 's Prime Universe aboard the USS Discovery after defeating a coup by Gabriel Lorca (Jason Issacs) . The Terran Empire continued unabated, but after Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) briefly switched places with his Mirror Universe counterpart, he convinced the Mirror Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to institute reforms to save the Terran Empire from its inevitable collapse.

Refugees fled the Mirror Universe aboard the stolen ISS Enterprise.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 episode 5 reveals that High Chancellor Spock did change the Terran Empire, but he was assassinated for weakness. Refugees fled the Mirror Universe aboard the stolen ISS Enterprise, thanks to the Mirror Saru (Doug Jones), a rebel leader. The ISS Enterprise's personnel did make it to the Prime Universe. However, in the Mirror Universe, the Terran Empire was conquered by the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance , as detailed in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . By Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century, the Mirror and Prime Universe timelines have split further apart thanks to the Temporal Wars, making crossing over impossible.

Source: Twitter/X

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5 stream Thursdays on Paramount+

Cast Blu del Barrio, Oded Fehr, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Eve Harlow, Mary Wiseman, Callum Keith Rennie

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Alex Kurtzman

Directors Jonathan Frakes, Olatunde Osunsanmi

Showrunner Alex Kurtzman

Where To Watch Paramount+

Star Trek: Discovery's Enterprise Plaque Reveals New Mirror Universe History Details

Star Trek Has Finally Revealed the Evil Enterprise's Weird Fate

Watch out for any goatees.

Today, everyone knows what a multiverse is. But back in 1967, parallel universe stories weren’t nearly as common as they are now, even within the sci-fi genre. A classic Star Trek episode, Jerome Bixby’s “Mirror, Mirror,” helped popularize the alternate universe trope, complete with meaner versions of yourself who may rock an evil little goatee like Mirror Spock.

Star Trek’s Mirror Universe also gave us an alternate version of the USS Enterprise in the ISS Enterprise , a ship that served the Imperial Terran Empire, not the United Federation of Planets. Now, in the Discovery Season 5 episode “Mirrors,” the evil ISS Enterprise is back... as a force for good. Here’s what it all means. Spoilers ahead.

The ISS Enterprise returns

Burnham looks at the ISS Enterprise in 'Discovery' Season 5

Captain Burnham watches the ISS Enterprise warp to Federation HQ.

While pursuing the thieves Moll and L’ak, Book and Burnham take a shuttlecraft into an unstable wormhole and discover the floating, pseudo-derelict ISS Enterprise . One of the clues to the Progenitor’s tech has been hidden on it, but for Burnham, it’s kind of like a bizzaro universe homecoming. Burnham spent a decent amount of time in the Mirror Universe in Discovery Season 1 , and in Season 2 she found herself on the Enterprise with her brother Spock just before jumping from the 23rd century to the 32nd century.

In “Mirrors,” Burnham notes that “crossing between universes has been impossible for centuries,” which means the ISS Enterprise must have crossed over into the Prime Universe well before the 32nd century. Burnham is referencing the events of Discovery Season 3, when we learned that Philippa Georgiou, a resident of the Mirror Universe, couldn’t go back to her home universe because those dimensions had drifted apart. But the ISS Enterprise , which was previously captained by an evil Kirk, crossed over into the Prime Universe well before that moment, and Discovery has now added details connecting The Original Series, Deep Space Nine , and Discovery Season 3.

How evil Spock became good

Mirror Spock talks to Kirk in the 'Star Trek' episode "Mirror, Mirror.'

Spock talking with Kirk in “Mirror, Mirror.”

In the Deep Space Nine episode “Crossover” we learn that after Kirk talked to Mirror Spock and encouraged him to try making the Terran Empire a peaceful power, Mirror Spock did just that. But as Mirror Kira explained, Mirror Spock’s idealism didn’t work out the way he’d hoped:

“Spock rose to Commander in Chief of the Empire by preaching reforms, disarmament, peace. It was quite a remarkable turnabout for his people. Unfortunately for them, when Spock had completed all these reforms, his empire was no longer in any position to defend itself against us [the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance].”

Discovery appears to be referencing this exact event, even if Spock isn’t named outright. When Book learns the ISS Enterprise became a refugee ship for people who’d turned against the Empire, he says, “The Terran High Chancellor was killed for trying to make reforms.”

This likely references Spock, but adds the twist that he was perhaps betrayed by other people within the Terran Empire, even if Earth adopted his reforms. Now, by the end of “Mirrors,” the 23rd-century ISS Enterprise has been moved to the Prime Universe and the 32nd century. It’s an antique by modern standards, but it’s a contemporary of the USS Discovery, so it’s still serviceable. This means that by the end of Discovery Season 5 there will still be a version of the classic Enterprise floating around Federation headquarters, so when the Starfleet Academy series debuts, 32nd-century Starfleet cadets will have access to the classic version of the most famous Enterprise. It may technically be an evil twin, but its historic adventures aren’t over just yet.

Star Trek: Discovery and The Original Series stream on Paramount+.

Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the World

Science Fiction

View history

The Na'kuhl were a humanoid species that, in the 29th century , were a faction in the Temporal Cold War . Vehemently opposed to the Temporal Accord , they were led by Vosk , a dangerous fanatic who viewed time travel as the innate right of his people despite the damage that consequently might be done to the timeline .

1.1 Origins
1.2 Seeking refuge
2 Physiology
3 Science and technology
5.1 Appearances
5.2 Background information
5.3 Apocrypha
5.4 External link

Subjective history [ ]

Origins [ ].

The ancestors of the Na'kuhl under Vosk's leadership worshiped gods , and Vosk once referred to them as having been considerably imaginative but substantially less technologically developed. At another time, a Na'kuhl who Vosk later respectfully described as "our greatest scientist" stated, " Every moment we live, we are moving through time. "

At one point in their history under Vosk's leadership, the Na'kuhl attempted to eradicate the Suliban . They traveled into the past to prevent the Suliban from becoming sentient. However, an opposing faction of temporal agents stopped the Na'kuhl and ensured that the Suliban attained sentience, despite the ongoing enmity between the Temporal Agents and the Suliban. ( ENT : " Storm Front, Part II ")

Seeking refuge [ ]

The Na'kuhl were very nearly defeated and captured by Daniels ' faction , but managed to develop a type of stealth time travel before they could be vanquished. This innovative device had the drawback of allowing only one-way travel. Using the device, the Na'kuhl escaped to Earth in 1944 of an alternate timeline created by multiple temporal incursions from the different factions. In this reality , the assassination of Vladimir Lenin by an unknown faction was the point of divergence. Nazi Germany was able to capture Moscow, was still in Africa in 1944 and invaded north eastern United States , including New York City and Washington, DC . The Na'kuhl were allies to the Nazis and were granted ranks in the SS , complete with the "privilege" to wear SS uniforms as well as several Nazi medals .

Under Vosk's supervision, Na'kuhl work on creating a temporal conduit , in an effort to return to the 29th century

The Na'kuhl further offered to provide advanced technological weaponry to the Nazis, but held back from doing so, not trusting the Human forces and being less interested in their war than they were. In exchange, the Nazis provided the Na'kuhl with materials to build a temporal conduit with which to return to the future, so that they would no longer be trapped in the past. In fact, the Na'kuhl were forced to create the conduit exclusively from materials acquired from that time period. The group was eventually successful and, just after Vosk was finally located by the Temporal Agents, the Na'kuhl used the conduit to journey to the 29th century , where they ignited the war they were nearly defeated in. This offensive not only enabled the Na'kuhl to defeat the opposing faction but also ignited the Temporal Cold War into an all-out conflict, resulting in the very same alternate timeline to which the Na'kuhl had escaped in the first place. ( ENT : " Storm Front ", " Storm Front, Part II ")

In a last-ditch effort to restore the timeline and stop the Na'kuhl, Daniels transported Captain Jonathan Archer and Enterprise NX-01 from 2154 to 1944. ( ENT : " Storm Front ", " Storm Front, Part II ") Shortly after a wounded Archer was captured and hospitalized by the Nazis, the Na'kuhl had some involvement in overseeing his recovery. ( ENT : " Zero Hour ", " Storm Front ") However, this degree of supervision was found, by Vosk, to be insufficient; after Archer escaped during an unsuccessful Nazi attempt to transfer him, another Na'kuhl named Ghrath was blamed by Vosk for neglecting to personally supervise Archer's transfer. Having discovered that Archer was from the future, the Na'kuhl time travelers at first came to the incorrect conclusion that he and the crew of Enterprise were Temporal Agents themselves. ( ENT : " Storm Front ")

The physical appearance of the Na'kuhl was generally met with shocked responses from citizens of the era and the unexpected presence of the aliens generated some stories about their existence, rumors that gangster and resistance fighter Sal learned of. The extravagance of these tales caused an associate of his, Alicia Travers , to initially disbelieve the reports. When Archer and the resistance cell traced the tales back to their source, an informant for Ghrath named Joe Prazki claimed that – even though he had only ever glimpsed Ghrath on one occasion – Ghrath's red eyes had been enough to leave Prazki with an unforgettable impression. For one resistance fighter called Carmine , the act of seeing Ghrath's Na'kuhl features caused him to almost utter an expletive in alarm and speculate that they might be simply those of a mask, a theory that was quickly denied by Sal. He referred to Ghrath as a "freak" and shot him to death. A later suggestion from Carmine was that the Na'kuhl had looked like a demon . Somewhat simplifying the group's struggle to identify Ghrath's appearance, Archer revealed that he had been an extraterrestrial. Sal's first instinct was to question whether the alien had originated from Mars , though Archer admitted to being unsure about what planet Ghrath had come from. ( ENT : " Storm Front ") From that point onward, Carmine considered the Na'kuhl to indeed be Martians . ( ENT : " Storm Front, Part II ")

A squadron of Stuka airplanes under Vosk's command were outfitted with hi-tech Na'kuhl weaponry.

The crew of Enterprise was ultimately successful in their mission, managing to destroy the conduit moments before Vosk could enter. This had the effect of eliminating the changes he had made, unraveling this timeline, and bringing the Temporal Cold War to an end. ( ENT : " Storm Front ", " Storm Front, Part II ")

Physiology [ ]

Na'kuhl blood

The Na'kuhl had pale grey or beige skin colors , with bony-looking faces, bright red eyes , and many veins visible on their bald heads. ( ENT : " Storm Front ", " Storm Front, Part II ") They also had yellowish-brown blood . ( ENT : " Storm Front ")

Science and technology [ ]

The Na'kuhl were equipped with extremely powerful plasma rifles . Although these weapons required much power for portable usage, the attainment of such power was apparently very easy for the Na'kuhl in their native time period, where there were – according to an account of uncertain credibility that Vosk once made – energy cells as small as a coin. According to the same account, the Na'kuhl were additionally capable of unleashing a plague that targeted victims based on their genetic profile and could be dispersed throughout an entire country by introducing a few grams of a pathogen into that country's water supply. The Na'kuhl also used a style of hand-held communicator , in addition to the time-traveling technologies they developed at different points of their development. ( ENT : " Storm Front ")

List of unnamed Na'kuhl

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

" Zero Hour "
" Storm Front "
" Storm Front, Part II "

Background information [ ]

The name "Na'kuhl" comes from early story drafts and survived through to call sheets during shooting, and was mentioned in the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 62). It was not used on screen or in the final drafts of the scripts.

Although this species is first glimpsed at the end of " Zero Hour ", the final draft of the script for that third season finale does not include them. Nevertheless, the appearance of an alien in Nazi uniform at the episode's conclusion – looking decidedly out of place in the World War II setting of a Nazi medical tent – was thought up by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga , who wrote the episode's script. ( Star Trek Magazine issue 116 , p. 17) The idea originally started with the members of the series' writing staff often joking amongst themselves that, following the end of the Xindi incident , the crew of Enterprise would finally return home to Earth only to find that the planet had been invaded by giant cockroaches . Certain only that they themselves were uninterested in such a twist ending being "a Xindi cliffhanger" (in Braga's words), the writing team began to seriously consider the possibility of an unexpected conclusion to the year. " We went through a lot of different scenarios about what they would find when they got back home, " offered Braga. " I can't remember who said 'Nazis,' but we just somehow ended up with Nazis. Then that didn't even feel like enough, so we decided to make it alien Nazis. We decided to do something that would just be completely unexpected, yet give us something fun for [the] next year, to kick off the season with something really interesting. So we took a stab at it. " ( Star Trek Magazine issue 117 , pp. 61-62)

Brannon Braga was aware that there had similarly been alien Nazis in both the original Star Trek series ( Ekosians in " Patterns of Force ") and Star Trek: Voyager ( Hirogen in the two-parter " The Killing Game " and " The Killing Game, Part II "), also having been personally involved in the latter instance. ( Star Trek Magazine issue 116 , p. 62) According to Rick Berman, however, no-one on Star Trek: Enterprise 's writing staff worried, upon introducing the Na'kuhl, that they were too similar to Star Trek 's previous Nazi aliens. ( Star Trek Magazine issue 116 , p. 17)

Rick Berman was pleased with the audience reaction to the brief appearance of this species in "Zero Hour". " Well, I think we got a little bit of a shock and surprise, which is what we hoped for, " he said. ( Star Trek Magazine issue 117 , p. 17)

During the lead-up to the debut airing of the fourth season two-parter " Storm Front " and " Storm Front, Part II ", the alien Nazis were repeatedly rumored, on the Internet , to be Remans – who had previously been seen in Star Trek Nemesis – though these incorrect reports were quickly refuted by Rick Berman. ( Star Trek Magazine issue 117 Enterprise Supplement ; Star Trek Magazine issue 117 , p. 7) At the time, he stated, " I have read a lot of interpretations of what it might be but, in fact, we have not seen it before. I have seen people comment that it looked like a Reman, but this is a totally new alien. " ( Star Trek: Communicator issue 151 , p. 13)

In a deleted scene from the episode "Storm Front", Sal privately hypothesizes to Archer that the alien seen by him at the end of "Zero Hour" may have actually been the result of one of numerous experiments that the Nazis were reported to be conducting on Humans, a possibility that Archer says he hadn't considered. ( ENT Season 4 DVD )

Golden Brooks , the actress who played Alicia Travers and thereby appeared with the Na'kuhl in the "Storm Front" two-parter, was awed by the look of the species. " To see the prosthetic make-up on the alien Nazis; it was just out of this world, no pun intended, " she enthused. " It's really, really amazing. " ( Star Trek Magazine issue 119 , p. 98) On the other hand, production illustrator Doug Drexler commented that the two-parter "took some fan heat for 'space Nazis.'" [1] (X)

Apocrypha [ ]

The Department of Temporal Investigations novel Watching the Clock has a faction of Na'kuhl from the 29th century stealing a Deltan time perceptor in 2372 . It is unknown if it was the same faction that eventually fled to 1944.

As revealed in the Star Trek Online mission "Doomsday Device", the Na'kuhl visited the 22nd century in the hopes of enlisting the aid of the Klingon Empire in the Temporal Cold War . They enticed the Klingons with information about the future, including the location of a disabled planet killer , but the Klingons refused them. A small faction within the Empire passed the knowledge down through the generations, culminating in the retrieval and activation of the planet killer by Ambassador B'vat's forces for use against the Federation . Later, the Na'kuhl appear in the mission "Stormbound", where Kal Dano and the player attempt to stop a group of Tholians from destroying the Na'kuhl star in the 25th century. Dano reveals that the Na'kuhl do not have sufficient technology to repel a Tholian invasion at this point in time, but they will soon develop it. Although the mission is unsuccessful, the Na'kuhl survive a harsh cooling of their planet. The Na'kuhl would later blame the Federation for failing to save their sun, leading to their becoming a faction in the Temporal Cold War. Curiously, the Na'kuhl System's star survived its dimming, against all odds.

External link [ ]

Na'kuhl at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

More to Explore
Series & Movies

Published May 2, 2024

It's The (Other) Enterprise! How Discovery's I.S.S. Enterprise Connects Three Eras of Star Trek

The Mirror Enterprise had a long road getting from there to here.

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for Star Trek: Discovery's "Mirrors."

A graphic illustration of the I.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701

StarTrek.com

In the classic 1967 episode, " Mirror, Mirror ," when Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura accidentally beamed across dimensions, and onto another version of the Enterprise , the first clue that this was a parallel universe was the fact that the ship was orbiting around the Halkan homeworld from right-to-left, rather than left-to-right. So, the first glimpse of the I.S.S. Enterprise was simply that it was taking a different path, literally, zagging when it should have been zigging.

Ever since the debut of "Mirror, Mirror," the idea of an evil Enterprise grew in our imaginations, even if we didn't get to actually see it on-screen again. Even as the Mirror Universe expanded in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Enterprise , and Star Trek: Discovery , an on-screen glimpse of the I.S.S. Enterprise — traveling on a very different path from the U.S.S. Enterprise — remained elusive. That is, until now.

In the Discovery episode " Mirrors ," the final destination of this version of the Enterprise has been revealed, and in that revelation, the entire timeline of the Star Trek universe has been traversed. Unlike the classic 1701 of the Prime Universe, the I.S.S. Enterprise 's journey has lasted centuries. Here's how that journey unites at least three different aspects of the larger Star Trek story.

How Discovery Brings Back the Mirror Enterprise

"Mirrors"

In "Mirrors," the fifth episode of Discovery 's fifth season, Book and Burnham take a shuttlecraft into an unstable wormhole, hoping to find a trace of Moll and L'ak and the next piece of the puzzle that can lead them to the Progenitor 's elusive technology. But instead, adrift and displaced by nine centuries, and an entirely different dimension, they find the I.S.S. Enterprise , a ship Burnham never actually encountered while she was in the Mirror Universe in Discovery 's first season, but is nonetheless instantly familiar with.

While aboard, we learn that while this ship was part of the Terran Starfleet. At some point after the events of "Mirror, Mirror," a group of rebellious reformers commandeered this Enterprise , turning it into a ship of hope. Book finds a plaque on the ship which commemorates the ship's journey, pointing out that "The Terran High Chancellor was killed for trying to make reforms." This could reference Mirror Spock, though Burnham and Book would have no way of knowing that.

In "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk challenged Mirror Spock to be better, and try to reform the Empire which, we learned, actually did happen. But, interestingly, Burnham and Book only have one piece of the puzzle, the audience of all of the Star Trek franchise, has the rest.

The Deep Space Nine Connection

"Crossover"

In the 1994 Deep Space Nine episode " Crossover ," Kira and Bashir find themselves in the Mirror Universe after a warp bubble kerfuffle spits them out the Bajorian wormhole and into very unfamiliar territory. They’re in the Mirror Universe all right, but this is the 24th Century version of the Mirror Universe, not the 23rd Century time frame from "Mirror, Mirror." Kira comes face to face with her Mirror self, Intendant Kira, who tells her all about how Spock became the leader of the Empire, and began "preaching reforms" and "peace."

This neatly parallels what Book says in "Mirrors," but now, we learn that some Terrans who believed in peace escaped on the I.S.S. Enterprise . While the DS9 future of the Mirror Universe was bleak for Terrans, we now learn that some survived, and even made it to the Prime Universe thanks to the Enterprise .

The Story of Another Wayward, Vintage Starship

"In A Mirror Darkly, Part 2"

The Constitution -class I.S.S. Enterprise 's journey from the Mirror Universe of the 23rd Century to the 32nd Century is also reminiscent of another TOS Mirror Universe starship crossover. Back in Discovery 's first season, the crew learns everything they need to know about the Mirror Universe thanks to information about the U.S.S. Defiant , a ship, which like the I.S.S. Enterprise , eventually moved across universes and time, as well.

In the 1968 Original Series episode " The Tholian Web ," the U.S.S. Defiant vanishes, only to reappear in the 2005 Enterprise two-parter, " In a Mirror, Darkly ." As Burnham puts it in "Despite Yourself," this journey is unorthodox, "Data suggests that in the future, the Defiant will encounter a phenomenon that'll bring it into this alternative universe's past." This means that not only did the Defiant cross universes, but time-traveled too, from the 23rd Century setting of The Original Series , to the 22nd Century setting of Star Trek: Enterprise .

The I.S.S. Enterprise didn't travel from the 23rd century Mirror Universe straight to the 32nd century Prime Universe. As we learned in Discovery 's third season, crossing over directly between these universes at this point in time is impossible. But, it did crossover sometime before the end of the 24th Century; one of the mysterious 24th Century scientists, Dr. Cho, was Terran. And, that detail, brings the journey of the I.S.S. Enterprise , all the way back to the story of Discovery .

Discovery 's Hopeful Mirror Universe Tale

Book reads the I.S.S. Enterprise plaque in 'Mirrors'

Book reads the journey of the I.S.S. Enterprise to Burnham, mentioning that this crew escaped all thanks to the help of a "Keplian slave turned rebel leader." Instantly, Book and Burnham know this can only mean "Action Saru" himself, from the Mirror Universe.

This detail ties into Season 3's two-parter, " Terra Firma ," in which Georgiou re-entered the Mirror Universe in the 23rd Century, at a point in time prior to Burnham's crossover in Season 1. But, in this version of the Mirror Universe, Georgiou, like Mirror Spock, tried to affect some positive change, which had dire consequences for her. But, at the same time, in this Mirror Universe, Georgiou had also freed Saru, and we did see him leading a rebellion toward the end of the episode. As the Guardian of Forever told Georgiou in " Terra Firma, Part 2 ," her actions in at least one version of the Mirror Universe had a big, positive impact, "You saved a Kelpien. And you didn't have to do that. And he'll save others. A lot of them."

So, thanks to Georgiou, Mirror Spock, and Action Saru, the story of the Mirror Universe in Star Trek: Discovery 's final season has become an optimistic one. Like the idealistic Terran rebels in Deep Space Nine 's " Through the Looking Glass ," not all stories about the darkest dimension in Star Trek have to end in despair. And thanks to crossover between dimensions, the I.S.S. Enterprise has now become a beacon of hope in not one universe, but two.

Get Updates By Email

Ryan Britt is the author of the nonfiction books Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World (2022), The Spice Must Flow: The Journey of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies (2023), and the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (2015). He is a longtime contributor to Star Trek.com and his writing regularly appears with Inverse, Den of Geek!, Esquire and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on TikTok , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , and Twitter .

Stylized and filtered repeating images of Breen soldiers

Original ‘Star Trek’ Enterprise Model Resurfaces Decades After It Went Missing

The model used in the original series’ opening credits is now back with Eugene Roddenberry Jr., the son of the show’s creator

Julia Binswanger

Daily Correspondent

Nearly 50 years after it went missing, the original model of the USS Starship Enterprise from the hit show “ Star Trek ” is finally voyaging home. The 33-inch model—the same one that appears in the opening credits of the original series—is now back with Eugene Roddenberry Jr., the son of the show’s creator.

“After five decades, I’m thrilled that someone happened upon this historic model of the USS Enterprise ,” says Roddenberry, who goes by “Rod,” in a Heritage Auctions statement . “I remember how it used to adorn my dad’s desk.”

The tiny model has been missing since Roddenberry’s father, Gene Roddenberry (who died in 1991), lent it to the makers of 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture , the first Star Trek feature film. Unfortunately, he never got it back. What happened to it at that point is unknown.

Last fall, the spaceship popped up on eBay —with a starting bid of $1,000. The listing was titled “Rare Custom Star Trek USS Enterprise Spaceship by Richard Datin .” Datin, a model maker from the Howard Anderson special-effects company, built the original model out of solid wood. The New York Times ’ Emily Schmall reports that the seller came across the item after discovering it in a storage unit. After receiving many inquiries about the item, the seller contacted Heritage Auctions.

“Once our team of experts concluded it was the real thing, we contacted Rod because we wanted to get the model back to where it belonged,” says Joe Maddalena, executive vice president at Heritage Auctions, in the statement. “We’re thrilled the Enterprise is finally in dry dock.”

The ship’s whereabouts after its disappearance remain a mystery; unfortunately, the missing years aren’t described in a captain’s log. The younger Roddenberry says there had even been rumors that he’d thrown it into a pool as a boy, per Jamie Stengle of the Associated Press (AP).

While the model would “easily” sell for over $1 million at auction, it’s a “priceless” piece of television history, Maddalena tells the AP.

Since Star Trek ’s debut in 1966, the Enterprise has become an instantly recognizable image—and a pioneering design that inspired many other fictional spacecraft.

“We didn’t want the Enterprise to look like something currently planned for our space program,” said Walter Jefferies, the Star Trek art director who designed the fictional craft, in the 1968 book The Making of Star Trek , per the auction house. “We knew that by the time the show got on the air, this type of thing would be old hat. We had to go further than even the most advanced space scientists were thinking.”

The younger Roddenberry rounded up a group of Star Trek production veterans to help authenticate and restore the model. One of them was Gary Kerr, a “Trek x-pert” who worked on the 2016 restoration of an 11-foot model of the Enterprise for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum . Kerr still had old photos of the model sitting on the elder Roddenberry’s desk.

“We spent at least an hour photographing it, inspecting the paint, inspecting the dirt, looking under the base, the patina on the stem, the grain in the wood,” Roddenberry tells the Times . “It was a unanimous ‘This is 100 percent the one.’”

While other models of the Enterprise exist, the newly discovered ship is the original. Looking ahead, Roddenberry wants to ensure that this one-of-a-kind artifact is accessible to the public.

“This is not going home to adorn my shelves,” he tells the AP. “This is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it, and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.”

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.

Cast & crew
User reviews

Episode list

Star trek: enterprise.

S4.E1 ∙ Storm Front

Jack Gwaltney in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E2 ∙ Storm Front, Part II

Joanna Cassidy, Jolene Blalock, and Connor Trinneer in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E3 ∙ Home

S4.E4 ∙ Borderland

Kaj-Erik Eriksen in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E5 ∙ Cold Station 12

Alec Newman and Abby Brammell in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E6 ∙ The Augments

S4.E7 ∙ The Forge

Joanna Cassidy and Kara Zediker in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E8 ∙ Awakening

Jolene Blalock and Kara Zediker in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E9 ∙ Kir'Shara

Bill Cobbs in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E10 ∙ Daedalus

Linda Park in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E11 ∙ Observer Effect

Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E12 ∙ Babel One

Jeffrey Combs in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E13 ∙ United

Alexandra Lydon in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E14 ∙ The Aenar

John Billingsley in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E15 ∙ Affliction

Connor Trinneer in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E16 ∙ Divergence

Cyia Batten in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E17 ∙ Bound

Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E18 ∙ In a Mirror, Darkly

Scott Bakula and Pat Healy in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E19 ∙ In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II

S4.E20 ∙ Demons

Johanna Watts in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E21 ∙ Terra Prime

Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

S4.E22 ∙ These Are the Voyages...

Contribute to this page.

IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
Learn more about contributing

More from this title

More to explore.

Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from ‘Star Trek’ boldly goes home after twisting voyage

The first model of the USS Enterprise is displayed at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

Joe Maddalena, executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, left, and Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, shake hands over the recently recovered first model of the USS Enterprise at the Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

Joe Maddalena, executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, left, and Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, view the recently recovered first model of the USS Enterprise at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

Copy Link copied

DALLAS (AP) — The first model of the USS Enterprise — used in the opening credits of the original “Star Trek” television series — has boldly gone back home, returning to creator Gene Roddenberry’s son decades after it went missing.

The model’s disappearance sometime in the 1970s had become the subject of lore, so it caused a stir when it popped up on eBay last fall. The sellers quickly took it down, and then contacted Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to authenticate it. Last weekend, the auction house facilitated the model’s return.

Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment, said he’s thrilled to have the model that had graced the desk of his father, who died in 1991 at age 70.

“This is not going home to adorn my shelves,” Roddenberry said. “This is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.”

AP AUDIO: Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from ‘Star Trek’ boldly goes home after twisting voyage.

AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on the return of the original model of the USS Enterprise from the TV show “Star Trek.”

Heritage’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena, said the auction house was contacted by people who said they’d discovered it a storage unit, and when it was brought into their Beverly Hills office, he and a colleague “instantly knew that it was the real thing.”

FILE - Actor Robert De Niro attends the Tribeca Festival opening night premiere of "Kiss the Future" at the OKX Theater at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, in New York. On Friday, May 3, 2024, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly claiming De Niro was captured on video yelling at anti-Israel protesters in New York City.(Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)

They reached out to Roddenberry, who said he appreciates that everyone involved agreed returning the model was the right thing to do. He wouldn’t go into details on the agreement reached but said “I felt it important to reward that and show appreciation for that.”

Maddalena said the model vanished in the 1970s after Gene Roddenberry loaned it to makers of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which was released in 1979.

“No one knew what happened to it,” Rod Roddenberry said.

The 3-foot (0.91-meter) model of the USS Enterprise was used in the show’s original pilot episode as well as the opening credits of the resulting TV series, and was the prototype for the 11-foot (3-meter) version featured in the series’ episodes. The larger model is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

The original “Star Trek” television series, which aired in the late 1960s, kicked off an ever-expanding multiverse of cultural phenomena, with TV and movie spinoffs and conventions where a fanbase of zealous and devoted Trekkies can’t get enough of memorabilia.

This USS Enterprise model would easily sell for more than $1 million at auction, but really “it’s priceless,” Maddalena said.

“It could sell for any amount and I wouldn’t be surprised because of what it is,” he said. “It is truly a cultural icon.”

Roddenberry, who was just a young boy when the model went missing, said he has spotty memories of it, “almost a deja vu.” He said it wasn’t something he’d thought much about until people began contacting him after it appeared on eBay.

“I don’t think I really, fully comprehended at first that this was the first Enterprise ever created,” he said.

He said he has no idea if there was something nefarious behind the disappearance all those decades ago or if it was just mistakenly lost, but it would be interesting to find out more about what happened.

“This piece is incredibly important and it has its own story and this would be a great piece of the story,” Roddenberry said.

Thankfully, he said, the discovery has cleared up one rumor: That it was destroyed because as a young boy, he’d thrown it into a pool.

“Finally I’m vindicated after all these years,” he said with a laugh.

Screen Rant

Star trek: discovery’s pilot just joined enterprise’s legacy.

Keyla Detmer hasn't had a lot to do in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, but episode 5 did allow her to become part of the USS Enterprise's legacy.

Warning: This Article Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5 - "Mirrors"

Keyla Detmer piloted the ISS Enterprise in Star TrekL Discovery season 5, joining the ranks of Enterprise helmsman in the process.
The USS Enterprise has had other notable helmsmen like Sulu and Geordi La Forge across different versions.
Discovery provided Detmer with the chance to pilot a version of the Enterprise, filmed on the set of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 enabled the show's pilot, Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts) to join an important legacy for the USS Enterprise. Detmer has been the helmsman of the USS Discovery since season 1, and an integral part of Discovery 's cast of characters up through season 5 . Although she has largely been a supporting character on Discovery , Detmer has still enjoyed some important moments, including a few memorable subplots in both seasons 1 and 3.

Despite Detmer not appearing in Discovery season 5, episode 5 , the show bestowed an important milestone on her off-screen. Episode 5 saw the retrieval of the Mirror Universe's ISS Enterprise after a clue in the search for the Progenitor's technology led Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) to a heated confrontation with L'ak (Elias Toufexis) and Moll (Eve Harlow) on the abandoned ship. Discovery managed to save the Mirror Enterprise from interdimensional space , and Captain Burham assigned Lieutenant Commander Detmer and Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) to take it back to Federation Headquarters.

5 Ways Star Trek: Discovery’s Mirror Enterprise Is Different From USS Enterprise

Star trek: discovery’s pilot commander detmer is the latest enterprise helmsman, detmer flew the iss enterprise in discovery season 5.

Thanks to episode 5, Detmer has joined the ranks of those who had piloted a version of the Enterprise in Star Trek history . Detmer could have had the opportunity to pilot the USS Enterprise during Discovery season 2, especially considering that its Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) , was a main character on the show. Discovery 's time jump to the 32nd century made any further encounters with the Prime Universe's Enterprise impossible, but season 5 finally gave Detmer the chance to be included in the category of legendary Enterprise helmsman.

It seems Discovery has given Detmer the chance to pilot the only Enterprise she will likely ever get to during the rest of the show's run.

Although the ISS Enterprise is different from the Prime Universe's USS Enterprise, the two are similar enough that Discovery filmed episode 5's Enterprise scenes on the set for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , which is set on the USS Enterprise in Discovery 's old time period, the 23rd century. It seems Discovery has given Detmer the chance to pilot the only Enterprise she will likely ever get to during the rest of the show's run. Of course, Detmer piloting any version of the USS Enterprise is still a huge honor, considering which characters she shares the distinction with.

Star Trek’s Enterprise Helmsmen Explained

The uss enterprise has had some notable helmsmen.

The various versions of the Enterprise have had some incredible helmsmen, and the ship has the interesting distinction of being piloted by two father-daughter teams at different times . The most famous Enterprise Helmsman is, of course, Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) from Star Trek: The Original Series . Sulu and his other versions, including his Mirror Universe counterpart, faithfully piloted the Enterprise for many years of the franchise's timeline, and Sulu's daughter, Demora (Jacqueline Kim) took on the task years later during Star Trek Generations .

Sulu isn't the only famous character to have been an Enterprise helmsman, however. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) was the initial helmsman for the USS Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation , and like Sulu would share the honor with his daughter, Sidney (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) who took on the role in Star Trek: Picard season 3. More recently, Strange New Worlds introduced Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) as the helmsman under Captain Pike. Ortegas has proved to be one of Star Trek 's best pilots and a memorable addition to the Enterprise pilot ranks , similar to Detmer on Star Trek: Discovery .

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5 stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

*Availability in US

Not available

Star Trek: Discovery is an entry in the legendary Sci-Fi franchise, set ten years before the original Star Trek series events. The show centers around Commander Michael Burnham, assigned to the USS Discovery, where the crew attempts to prevent a Klingon war while traveling through the vast reaches of space.

IMAGES

Nazis-and-NaKuhl-Star-Trek-Enterprise
Die Enterprise-Crew auf dem Nazi-Planeten
Nazi
Raumschiff Enterprise: Free-TV-Premiere der Star-Trek-Nazi-Folge
Star Trek's Nazi Episode Finally Shown In Germany
Interview: Robert Beltran on Geneviève Bujold, ‘Star Trek: Discovery

VIDEO

Star Trek Online: Cold Case Ending
Star Trek Enterprise Staffel 3 Fazit
What Were These in Enterprise Silent Enemy?
Star Trek The original series Star Trek next voyage
Star Trek Online Walkthrough #79
Archer flees the Nazis

COMMENTS

"Star Trek: Enterprise" Storm Front (TV Episode 2004)
Storm Front: Directed by Allan Kroeker. With Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating. Following the destruction of the Xindi weapon, the Enterprise crew discovers that they have been sent back in time to 1944. However, history has been altered, leaving Nazi Germany in control of a large portion of the eastern United States.
Storm Front (Star Trek: Enterprise)
List of episodes. " Storm Front " is the title of the first and second episodes of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise. They were first broadcast on October 8, and October 15, 2004, respectively, on the UPN network within the United States. They were written by executive producer Manny Coto ...
"Star Trek" Patterns of Force (TV Episode 1968)
Patterns of Force: Directed by Vincent McEveety. With William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Richard Evans. Looking for a missing Federation cultural observer, Kirk and Spock find themselves on a planet whose culture has been completely patterned after Nazi Germany.
Patterns of Force (episode)
The Enterprise, searching for a missing Federation historian, discovers that the historian has apparently contaminated the cultural development of the planet where he was assigned as a cultural observer to have it follow the societal path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and '40s. The USS Enterprise heads for the planet Ekos to locate a missing cultural observer, Professor Dr. John Gill, Ph.D., a ...
Storm Front (episode)
With the addition of this episode, Enterprise became the first Star Trek series to start a 4th season without having any change in the cast since its pilot episode. Following "Cold Front", this is the second episode in which Daniels apparently dies. Tom Wright previously portrayed Tuvix in the eponymous episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Storm Front, Part II (episode)
Tucker is puzzled to find Archer alive. Upon Archer's request, Vosk orders an SS officer to bring Tucker and Mayweather out of the Nazi truck. The prisoners seem puzzled to find their captain alive; the crew of Enterprise believed Archer died due to the fact he was aboard the Xindi weapon when it was destroyed.When Tucker indicates that he and Mayweather have been treated harshly by their Nazi ...
Patterns of Force (Star Trek: The Original Series)
"Patterns of Force" is the twenty-first episode of the second season of the American science-fiction television series Star Trek. Written by John Meredyth Lucas and directed by Vincent McEveety, it was first broadcast on February 16, 1968.. In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise tracks down a Federation observer on a planet dominated by a "Naziesque" regime.
"Star Trek: Enterprise" Storm Front, Part II (TV Episode 2004)
Storm Front, Part II: Directed by David Straiton. With Scott Bakula, John Billingsley, Jolene Blalock, Dominic Keating. After Silik attacks Trip, Vosk wants to make a deal with Archer: supplies of the ship for the completion of his time machine in return for a trip to the 22nd Century.
Recap / Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 01 E 02 Storm Front
Final Solution: Vosk proposes using a waterborne pathogen to eliminate non-Aryans. Like his other promises, he likely just thought this up on the spot to appease the Germans. Good Cop/Bad Cop: Archer and Sal, respectively, when dealing with one of Vosk's mooks. Archer has to actively restrain Sal from killing him.
Star Trek: Enterprise
Nazi in the midst of what looked to be the Second World War. Given that the third season had been written as a single extended dramatic arc about Archer and his crew saving Earth from an alien threat, the twist seemed to come out of nowhere. ... The final season of Enterprise (the almost final Star Trek show) opens with a story set in New York ...
"Storm Front, Part I"
Star Trek: Enterprise "Storm Front, Part I" ... This is so much better than the other Nazi episodes of Star Trek. The TOS one wasn't a time travelling episode, just one where a rogue Starfleet officer set up a Nazi regime on another planet and the Voyager one was on the holodeck. This is the only one that was actually during WWII.
The 'Star Trek' Episode That Was Banned Overseas for ...
buy. Not available. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. Release Date. September 8, 1966 ...
Archer flees the Nazis
About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright ...
Germany Prohibited a 'Star Trek' Season 2 Episode Featuring Nazis for
In summary, the episode "Patterns of Force" from "Star Trek" Season 2 sparked controversy by including a portrayal that violated German laws designed to prevent the glorification of Nazism ...
How Modern Star Trek Gets Khan Wrong
The next time Khan would come up was in Star Trek: Enterprise's trilogy of episodes, ... So, with Khan and his crew, Star Trek gives us Nazis with the "bad" bits taken out. Khan's crew is ...
Zero Hour (Star Trek: Enterprise)
Star Trek: Enterprise. ) " Zero Hour " is the twenty-fourth and final episode of the third season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Enterprise; the seventy-seventh episode overall. It first aired on May 26, 2004, on the UPN network within the United States. Set in the 22nd century, the series follows the adventures of ...
Star Trek: Enterprise: Season 4, Episode 1
Watch Star Trek: Enterprise — Season 4, Episode 1 with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV. Archer awakes from destroying the Xindi superweapon to ...
"Star Trek: Enterprise" Storm Front (TV Episode 2004)
Nazis have often been used as convenient evil villains that won't offend (hardly) anyone. But a show like Trek, set in space with Space Aliens doesn't need that. And the original series Trek episode where they used Space Nazis actually had a clever premise built on it. Here, no.
Star Trek: Enterprise Ending Explained: Those Were The Voyages...
Yes, check again the month and year of "Enterprise's" debut. "Star Trek: Enterprise" season 4 introduced more multiple-episode arcs, and "Star Trek," along with most TV shows at the time, began to ...
Star Trek's Most Controversial Spaceship Is Named After a Former Nazi
Throughout its history Star Trek has made a point of creating unique and interesting starships for their crews to explore the galaxy. That starts with the first USS Enterprise, whose distinctive ...
Star Trek: Discovery's Enterprise Plaque Reveals New Mirror Universe
Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors", reveals new details about the Mirror Universe's history on the ISS Enterprise. The dedication plaque on the starship sheds light on events in ...
Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise, originally titled simply Enterprise for its first two seasons, is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.It originally aired from September 26, 2001 to May 13, 2005 on United Paramount Network ().The sixth series in the Star Trek franchise, it is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series.
Star Trek Has Finally Revealed the Evil Enterprise's Weird Fate
Today, everyone knows what a multiverse is. But back in 1967, parallel universe stories weren't nearly as common as they are now, even within the sci-fi genre. A classic Star Trek episode ...
Na'kuhl
62) According to Rick Berman, however, no-one on Star Trek: Enterprise's writing staff worried, upon introducing the Na'kuhl, that they were too similar to Star Trek's previous Nazi aliens. (Star Trek Magazine issue 116, p. 17) Rick Berman was pleased with the audience reaction to the brief appearance of this species in "Zero Hour". "Well, I ...
It's The (Other) Enterprise! How Discovery's I.S.S ...
In the classic 1967 episode, "Mirror, Mirror," when Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura accidentally beamed across dimensions, and onto another version of the Enterprise, the first clue that this was a parallel universe was the fact that the ship was orbiting around the Halkan homeworld from right-to-left, rather than left-to-right.So, the first glimpse of the I.S.S. Enterprise was simply that it ...
Original 'Star Trek' Enterprise Model Resurfaces Decades After It Went
Nearly 50 years after it went missing, the original model of the USS Starship Enterprise from the hit show "Star Trek" is finally voyaging home. The 33-inch model—the same one that appears ...
Star Trek: Enterprise (TV Series 2001-2005)
S4.E1 ∙ Storm Front. Fri, Oct 8, 2004. Following the destruction of the Xindi weapon, the Enterprise crew discovers that they have been sent back in time to 1944. However, history has been altered, leaving Nazi Germany in control of a large portion of the eastern United States. 7.3/10 (1.7K)
Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from 'Star Trek' boldly
1 of 8 | . The first model of the USS Enterprise is displayed at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original "Star Trek" television series — has been returned to Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, the son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, decades after it went missing in the 1970s.
Star Trek: Discovery's Pilot Just Joined Enterprise's Legacy
Thanks to episode 5, Detmer has joined the ranks of those who had piloted a version of the Enterprise in Star Trek history.Detmer could have had the opportunity to pilot the USS Enterprise during Discovery season 2, especially considering that its Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), was a main character on the show. Discovery's time jump to the 32nd century made any further encounters with ...

Recap / Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 01 E 02 Storm Front

Tropes in this episode include:

Alternative Title(s): Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 01 Storm Front , Star Trek Enterprise S 04 E 0102 Storm Front

the m0vie blog

Following Us

Check out the Archives

Awards & Nominations

Star Trek: Enterprise – Storm Front, Part I (Review)

Share this:

7 Responses

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Recent Posts

Recently tweeted…

Available at…

Blogs Well Worth Your Time

Film Nerd Resources

Email Subscription

The ‘Star Trek’ Episode That Was Banned Overseas for Nearly 30 Years

The Big Picture

Star Trek: The Original Series

What Happens In "Patterns of Force"?

If Every Western Was Put Into a Blender, It Would Make This 'Star Trek: TNG' Episode

How Modern Star Trek Gets Khan Wrong

Lineage of a Space Seed

From Eugenics to Genetic Engineering

A Better Kind of Nazi

Latest TV reviews

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Movies / TV

Star Trek: Enterprise – Season 4, Episode 1

More Like This

Episode Info

Star Trek: Enterprise Ending Explained: Those Were The Voyages...

It's Been a Long Road...

Getting from There to Here

It's Been a Long Time

Star Trek: Discovery's Enterprise Plaque Reveals New Mirror Universe History Details

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

Star Trek Has Finally Revealed the Evil Enterprise's Weird Fate

The ISS Enterprise returns

How evil Spock became good

Star Trek: Discovery and The Original Series stream on Paramount+.

Subjective history [ ]

Seeking refuge [ ]

Physiology [ ]

Science and technology [ ]

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ]

Apocrypha [ ]

External link [ ]

It's The (Other) Enterprise! How Discovery's I.S.S. Enterprise Connects Three Eras of Star Trek

How Discovery Brings Back the Mirror Enterprise

The Deep Space Nine Connection

The Story of Another Wayward, Vintage Starship

Discovery 's Hopeful Mirror Universe Tale

Get Updates By Email

Original ‘Star Trek’ Enterprise Model Resurfaces Decades After It Went Missing

Episode list

S4.E1 ∙ Storm Front

S4.E2 ∙ Storm Front, Part II

S4.E3 ∙ Home

S4.E4 ∙ Borderland

S4.E5 ∙ Cold Station 12

S4.E6 ∙ The Augments

S4.E7 ∙ The Forge

S4.E8 ∙ Awakening

S4.E9 ∙ Kir'Shara

S4.E10 ∙ Daedalus

S4.E11 ∙ Observer Effect

S4.E12 ∙ Babel One

S4.E13 ∙ United

S4.E14 ∙ The Aenar

S4.E15 ∙ Affliction

S4.E16 ∙ Divergence

S4.E17 ∙ Bound

S4.E18 ∙ In a Mirror, Darkly

S4.E19 ∙ In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II

S4.E20 ∙ Demons