In the first episode of the fourth season of Enterprise, the crew learns how history has been altered by the Temporal Cold War. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
Trigger Warning: For extended discussion of Nazis/nazism, antisemitism, the Holocaust, racism and anti-blackness.
Well, THIS HAPPENED. I know that by the nature of Mark Watches, I don’t always have all of the story, so it’s possible that the second episode of this season will fill in some of the blanks left by the story in “Storm Front, Part I.†There’s also the chance that they won’t be answered, so I’m going to operate with the intention of addressing the flaws I see in the worldbuilding here rather than ignoring them.
This is an ambitious premise, and I know that this could not have been an easy thing to pull off. World War II has been completely reimagined with a new factor: Vosk and his followers, all of whom have insinuated themselves within Nazi Germany and changed the course of the war against the Allies. Here, Germany ostensibly conquered most of Europe, Russia, parts of Africa, and has moved their newest assault to the United States, where all of New England is now under Nazi control. It means that this episode is full of surreal imagery that’s either shown on the screen or suggested through the dialogue. (Like Alicia’s descriptions of tanks rolling down Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, or New Yorkers escaping the invasion of Manhattan by running across the Brooklyn Bridge.)
In some of these respects, Enterprise absolutely succeeds. We get to see bits and pieces of the resistance network, and it harkens back to ways in which early Americans dispelled the British through small, irritating acts of sabotage, subterfuge, and subversion. Anti-blackness and racism is displayed in full view when German soldiers harass Archer and Alicia, though I admit this is a problem, since Alicia is the only person who is on the receiving end of this. (More on that in a second.) The world is completely different from what we knew of it during this time period, and that makes everything unsettling and disturbing. Just how long had Vosk and his people been changing history on Earth? What was going to happen once they returned to their own time?
So the stakes here were clearly huge. This change in history could easily result in humanity’s end (AGAIN, OH MY GOD, THIS POOR CREW CAN’T CATCH A BREAK) and the Temporal Cold War’s completion, with Vosk’s faction reigning supreme. However, as much worldbuilding as we do see here, there’s a ton missing from the story. How exactly did Vosk convince the Germans to accept them? There is a direct and unmistakable moment within “Storm Front†(that name cannot be a coincident, LORD) where Vosk insists that they support Germany’s quest to make the Aryan race the master race, and I still don’t know how that includes aliens. Like… how the hell did that conversation go down? “Hi, we’re from outer space, all your notions of the uniqueness of humanity are bullshit, but we totally hate non-Aryans, too, so let’s join up!†IT MAKES NO SENSE TO ME. Is this a thing where the Nazis decided to ally with these aliens because it was a means to an end? If so, why the fuck would Vosk’s faction even care about the Master Race? THEY AREN’T PART OF IT.
The other major issue I have is far more delicate, at least in the sense that I don’t want to step out of my lane on this one. The only reason I picked up on this is because of the horrifying resurgence of neo-Nazism within American politics and culture in the last few years. I don’t just mean my country’s recent presidential election or things like Richard Spencer or Charlottesville. The same goes for The Man in the High Castle and Secret Empire, where Nazi imagery or alternate histories involving the Nazis were part of popular culture. See, I learned just how damaging it is when stories involving Nazism erase Jews, anti-semitism, and the Holocaust from their narrative. Throughout the entire run time of the first half of the “Storm Front†arc (assuming it is two parts????), there is not one mention of any of these things. Despite that the show does acknowledge the Master Race ideology, and despite that we see the German soldiers occupying Brooklyn while they harass Alicia with anti-blackness, there is not a single moment in which Jewish people are even referred to in any sense. That is a huge problem! Again, not a problem I would have necessarily picked up on if I’d not read so many takedowns and brilliant essays on the importance of acknowledging anti-semitism as the context for the rise of nazism. It literally does not exist without it, and yet, this alternate history appears to complete skip over it. So how did Hitler come to power? Were there no concentration camps? (There must have been, since Vosk references one when talking about getting more supplies.) Did Hitler and the Nazi party not exploit the already-existing hatred for Jews and the Romani in order to build power?
It felt like a glaring oversight, and it’s easily the biggest whole in the worldbuilding for this story. How exactly did Vosk and his followers gain power, and how does this history fit within this new world? I really hope the next part clears this up.
The video for “Storm Front, Part I†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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