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

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Darren

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 fourth season was almost certain to be the end of the show, with Brannon Braga stepping back from the writers’ room to allow Manny Coto the chance to the take the reins. Coto would use the opportunity to more firmly connect the show to its franchise roots, constructing a final season that would serve as something of a bridge between this prequel series and the rest of the canon. However, there was just one problem. Coto inherited a cliffhanger from Zero Hour, the third season finale that stranded Archer in the past with some evil!alien!space!Nazis.

Into the sunset…

Although the fourth season of Enterprise is widely praised by the few fans who remained watching until the bitter end, Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II are often overlooked in discussions of the season. Much like These Are the Voyages… at the very end of the season, the opening two-parter is largely treated as a story foisted upon an incoming executive producer that does not reflect his own plans or desires for the season ahead. There is typically a sense of obligation to discussions of the two-parter as little more than a speed bump into the season.

This is a shame. Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II were both written by Manny Coto. Although the producer inherited the basic premise and the brief from his direct predecessors, how Coto chose to approach the material is quite insightful and informative. In that respect, Storm Front, Part I and Storm Front, Part II might be seen as an introduction to the Manny Coto era before it properly begins in Home.

“It’s been a long road, gettin’ from there to here…
It’s been a long time, but my time is finally near…”

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Filed under: Enterprise | Tagged: alternate history, hitler, Manny Coto, nazis, pulp, racism, star trek, star trek: enterprise | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC, 1989) Annual #1 – The Gift (Review)

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films.

You can see why DC comics jumped at the chance to publish The Gift. After all, a comic about Q written by the actor playing Q is a hell of a hook. The publisher had already done something similar, with actor Walter Koenig providing a script for the nineteenth issue of DC’s first Star Trek comic book series. At the same time that The Gift was published, George Takei collaborated with Peter David on a Star Trek annual story, So Near the Touch.

John deLancie isn’t a bad storyteller. Indeed, his published tie-in novel – I, Q written with Peter David – is quite enjoyable. However, The Gift is just an absolute mess of a story, with a couple of interesting high concepts buried beneath two horrible clichés tied together to create a rather unfortunate narrative. The Gift is a disappointment on just about every level.

Cue Q!

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Filed under: Comics, The Next Generation | Tagged: borg, dc comics, godwin's law of time travel, hitler, jean-luc picard, john delancie, let's kill hitler, Michael Jan Friedman, picard, q, Q Continuum, star trek | 1 Comment »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 25 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Darren

DC have done a tremendous job with their Spirit Archives collection. Twenty-four volumes collecting the twelve years of the Sunday strip is quite an accomplishment, and they’d be forgiven for stopping there. No other character in DC’s back catalogue has such a consistent collection of their early years. (Batman and Superman might have similar volumes of material collected, but somewhat haphazardly.) It’s to the company’s credit that they decided to close out their collections of Eisner’s work on the character with what might be considered two appendices. The next collection will include most of Eisner’s post-1952 work on the character, but this hardcover collects each and every daily Spirit strip published between 1941 and 1942. While it might not be the most essential collection every published (whether in terms of the character or in the history of daily newspaper strips), but it’s still nice to see it collected with the rest of Eisner’s work.

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adolf Hitler, comic strip, dc comics, Eisner, germany, history, hitler, Lou Fine, Nazism, Newspaper, Sphinx, Spirit, Sunday strip, Third Reich, Twentieth Century, United States, Wars and Conflicts, Will Eisner, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Going Nutz Over Nazis…

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Darren

Ah, Nazis. The most typical of Hollywood villains. It seems that whenever you want the audience to cheer at what your morally ambiguous hero is up to, just stick his opponent in a Nazi uniform and you can guaruntee that the viewers will know which side they’re on. It used to be in the old days that simply putting a villain in a Nazi uniform was a regular past time for any big director. You didn’t need characterisation or complexity. If they’re German between 1941 and 1945, they’re a bad guy. Well, at least that used to be the way. In recent years it seems that we have accepted that things may be slightly more complex than those black and grey uniforms that they wore. There are many shades. So much so that the ‘thoughtful Nazi flick’ has pretty much become guarunteed Oscar bait. Given the minor furore which surrounded the release of Inglourious Basterds, is the time of the one-dimensional cardboard cutout passed into history? And has political correctness gone too far?

Don't make a song and dance about it...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: films, germany, good, history, hitler, indiana jones, inglourious basterds, national socialism, nazis, political correctness, quentin tarantino, schindler's list, sterotypes, the holocaust, the reader, the sound of music | 1 Comment »

What a Basterdly Ending…

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Darren

Alright, since the entire point of this post is spoilers, consider yourselves duly warned. I don’t like spoiling films, but I also really think that there is a lot of discussion to be had about the end of Inglourious Basterds. Only read on if you have seen the film, or know you won’t. Because there’s no going back. Seriously. It’s something you should really see for yourself before you make up your mind on it. Anyway, those disclaimers out of the way, here we go…

Shoshanna's got an axe to grind...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cinema, climax, ending, films, history, hitler, inglorious bastards, inglourious basterds, Movies, nazis, quentin tarantino, spoilers, subtext, tarantino, themes | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Valkyrie

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Darren

We caught Valkyrie at the weekend. It’s a movie that Dad had been quite looking forward to and I’d heard good things from friends and family. I’m a big fan of Bryan Singer and was more than a bit excited to see him reteam with Christopher McQuarrie. The pair had given us one of the best neo-noir films ever in The Usual Suspects, but how do they deliver on historical epics?