“Storm Front” is episode one of the fourth and final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.
In the season three finale, “Zero Hour”, Enterprise stopped the Xindi weapon, with the crew thinking Captain Archer had died in the process, and returned to Earth. Only to discover something was wrong. Trip and Travis headed down in a shuttlepod and came under fire from prop planes.
Trip is trying to contact anyone, but Travis has recognised the planes as P-51s. The planes break off and Trip says to find a landing site, when they come under AA fire. He tells Travis to get them out of here.
The captain didn’t die, and is also in the same time, but the prisoner of Germans. Including an alien Nazi. he’s now being escorted in a convoy and an SS officer is chatting to the captain about Hollywood films and American actresses when the convoy comes under attack. The captain manages to run off, but gets winged by the attackers and finally captured by someone who looks like a mobster.
On Enterprise, they are listening to a speech by Churchill which Hoshi has recorded live half an hour ago. Reed says they’ve travelled 200 years into the past. Hoshi has intercepted other things too. T’Pol wants a diagnostic, starting with the sensors. Trip tells her that this isn’t a sensor glitch; they’ve removed bullets from the shuttlepod hull. An, as she opens her mouth, tells her to spare them the official Vulcan position on time travel. T’Pol says the first step in getting back is to determine how they got there. Once the diagnostic is complete, scan for anomalies. Travis suggests they are there for a reason. T’Pol cannot rule that out. And Silik is onboard.
One alien Nazi is telling another he should have chosen a different route. Because Archer is more than an American prisoner. His communications device came from the future. The other thinks he must be a temporal agent. The leader wants security increased. And Archer recaptured so they can question him.
Trip finds T’Pol in the captain’s ready room and apologises; he was all set to go home. T’Pol understands; she was looking forward to going home as well. Trip says the captain always looks on the positive side and wonders what he’d say. T’Pol thinks even Archer would be hard pressed to find any positive aspects. But he would nevertheless try. Reed arrives; there are military dispatches about battles in America. Something is very wrong.
Phlox is trying to get Porthos to eat when someone who may be Daniels stumbles into sickbay.
The captain comes around being treated by a woman. She tells him she’s Alicia Travers and he’s in her apartment. What’s left of it. She assumes he’s a sailor, given the Enterprise patch, and that he must have made it off before it sank. Archer looks out a window at German troops and asks the year. 1944. World War II then. He sees a sign in English and asks where they are. Brooklyn.
The White House is draped in Nazi flags and inside one of the aliens is showing a film of energy weapons to a German general. The problem is power; they require a lot of it. He wants a lot of stuff for his projects. The general doesn’t want to divert supplies from the war efforts. The alien says they’re in the White House; the war is going well. The general says that could change. The Americans are preparing a counter attack, there are setbacks in Europe and the Russians are attempting to retake Moscow. Some believe that Germany has advanced too far, too quickly. The alien says his weapons will make them immune to counterattacks. Such as a plague targeting non-Aryans.
In sickbay, Phlox is telling T’Pol it is Daniels. but different parts of his body are different ages, from nearly foetal to over 100 years old. He doubts Daniels will live much longer. T’Pol needs to speak to him; he may be how they got here and their only way back.
Gangsters, part of the resistance, arrive at Alicia’s apartment; there’s a $10K reward on Archer’s head. One, Sal, threatens to shoot the captain unless he talks. He refuses, and another talks Sal down.
Phlox has got Daniels conscious. He asks where Archer is and is told he’s dead. Daniels is responsible for them going back in time. The Temporal Cold War has become all-out conflict. Each faction is trying to wipe the others out. The German invasion has caused paradoxes in the time stream. They can’t return to their century, as it doesn’t exist. Nor does Daniels’. He has to be stopped. Daniels passes out before he can say who he is.
The timeline needs fixing before Enterprise has a home to return to. The story continues in the next episode, “Storm Front, Part II”.