Suliban soldiers board Enterprise under orders from their Temporal Cold War ally from the future. They hold the crew captive as they search for Captain Archer -- but he is trapped in a far future, a wasteland paradoxically formed by his own absence from the present time. Can Archer get back home, and drive the Suliban from his ship?
Television cliffhanger wrap-ups are rarely as good as their setups. Star Trek is seldom different in this, and this episode is no exception. We've seen enough time travel on Star Trek that the "rules" here feel pretty suspect. Here, someone time traveling to the future instantaneously kicks off a divergent time by the simple fact of their absence, which seems to contradict previous Trek time adventures. The writers are clearly aware of this, since they have time-traveling Daniels dismissively tell Archer (and the audience, by proxy) that "this isn't anything you would understand," and then refuse to answer any questions. Well, I guess okay then.
Except not all the holes in the storytelling are limited to the nits you might pick with the time travel. The Suliban board Enterprise, but apparently don't find the locked room that was formerly Daniels' quarters, where all his future intel and gadgets are stored. And there seems to be a lot of unnecessary scenes for an episode that's barely 40 minutes after the commercial breaks. A lot of time is spent on Silik's torture of T'Pol -- an uncomfortable enough scene to begin with, and narratively awkward when the point seems to be her stalwartly maintaining that time travel is impossible, even though we all know it isn't. An early argument back on Earth between Admiral Forrest and ambassador Soval is included only to justify bringing those guest stars in for more than just the one scene at the end of the episode.
But as is often the case for Enterprise, there are some good elements scattered throughout. The imprisoned crew, contriving a way to cooperate right under the Sulibans' collective noses, each get a nice hero moment. Reed voluntarily catches a beating to help the cause, T'Pol whips out a Vulcan nerve pinch. A warp core breach contrived by Trip fool the Suliban into abandoning ship. And Hoshi? Well... she "crawls" on her fully extended arms through a space that's supposed to be too small for anyone else, then gratuitously has her top ripped off when it snags on something. (I guess not everyone gets a good moment.)
Production is a bit hit and miss. CG is used bring scope to the apocalyptic future Archer is trapped in... though it doesn't always look entirely credible. Archer's huge holographic head, calling from the future, could be silly, but stays on the right side of serious. On the other hand, Daniels has a wild costume: bondage ropes wrapped over a sparkly rainbow body suit.
Other observation:
- We get a closeup on the lock on Daniels' quarters, and the user interface is incomprehensible. It has a block of 20 buttons, each with a 3 digit-number on it. How do you make a sensible passcode out of that?
If you try not to understand any of this, as Daniels advises, you can derive some action pleasures from "Shockwave, Part II." Enough, I'd say, to just barely score a B-. Still, it's a bit weak for a season premiere.
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