So maybe that Nazi guy at the end of Enterprise Season Three was just a joke, right? Maybe it was some kind of Sliders Meets Quantum Leap It's All A Dream deal and the Franchise would laugh it off and finally let us get back to the business of saving the Alpha Quadrant from the Romulans?

Sorry, fans. Enterprise Season Four's opener, Storm Front, was still more frowning lock-jawed big yawn serious Enterprise melodrama.

The Enterprise Nazi bit is suspiciously similar to what avid science fiction fans already saw plenty of in Sliders Season Four.

The Sliders Nazis were dimension-hopping, superior technology-toting Kromaggs. I guess Berman never watched Sliders. In any case, Storm Front was certainly not as pertinent as the good old TOS Nazi episode or anywhere as exciting as the 1998 Voyager two-parter The Killing Game.

Yes, Ensign, Star Trek: Voyager fought the Germans too. In Season Four (that seems to be the season for Nazi clichés), Nazi Hirogen trapped Janeway and her crew in a WW II holodeck simulation. Janeway finds herself in the French Resistance and Seven is a possible Nazi informant. By the end of Part 1, WW II has moved out of the holodeck into the ship. In Part 2, Janeway calls up holographic Klingons, Seven sets off an anti-holo device, and the Hirogen and Janeway negotiate a truce.

Voyager's Killing Game, written by Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga, (Braga co-wrote the Season 3 Enterprise episode that dumped us back into a Nazi plot,) is actually far more complex than that, but you can look it up yourself or catch the episode in reruns.

Enterprise's Nazi tale offers us nothing new, which is Enterprise's biggest failing as a series. The ship and Archer have been transported to an alternate Earth where the real Nazis successfully invaded the US with alien Nazi allies because the Temporal Cold War (a vague concept left over from Enterprise Season One involving baddies who choose to ignore the Temporal Prime Directive) has gotten out of hand while Enterprise was trying to save the world from the Xindi superweapon last season.

But these new temporal bad-guys are apparently not related to the temporal bad-guys who were manipulating Time to get the Xindi to build their superweapon and blow up Earth. No, Mr. Wells, those were different temporal aliens ignoring the Temporal Prime Directive. These new Nazi temporal aliens are, however, being guided by bad-guy Temporal Cold War agents from the future.

Oh and there is a bad-guy Suliban soldier named Silik from the future hiding on board the Enterprise when they show up in Naziworld. The Suliban were working for the bad-guy Temporal Cold War agents from the future when Archer took off to tackle the Xindi.

And Archer is also being advised by Daniels, a good-guy temporal agent from the future. (Not to be confused with Daniel Jackson, who ascended into a being who knew the future in Stargate SG-1.)

At the end of last season, Daniels showed up to tell Archer that he will be one of the founders of the Federation. Unfortunately for us, Daniels didn't show up and tell Archer he and his crew would be transported to 1944 to fight the Nazis. Maybe they would have all mutinied and set sail for Risa.

Daniels does die in Part 1 of Storm Front and leave a final Rosebud warning that Archer must stop the bad-guys.

Had enough? I know I have. You can probably guess what will happen next week. I know I can. The Nazis will lose. Enterprise will make it back to whatever century they came from (I'm still not too clear on that - is anybody?) And Brent Spiner will show up for a three-episode arc that hopefully has nothing to do with Nazis or bad-guy Temporal Cold War agents from the future.

Unless, of course, UPN just says the hell with it before then and cancels Enterprise. Ratings for the first show of the season dropped again from last year, not that UPN seemed to care much. UPN pre-empted the Enterprise October 8 premiere in some places with a baseball game.

William Shatner was right when he said the Star Trek franchise needed new blood. Berman may not be helming the ship this year, but that's obviously not enough.

Enterprise has good actors and directors but Trek lost all of its seasoned writers by the time Voyager ended. Most notably writer-creator-producer Michael Piller, who went on to helm The Dead Zone for USA Network and ace writers like Joe Menosky and Ronald D. Moore (Roswell and Battlestar Galactica.)

Star Trek fans want the legacy to continue, to be sure, but if Star Trek producers don't get savvy to what else the fans want soon, all will be lost.

Forget the Xindi and the Nazis! We want Klingons and Romulans and Vulcans and Bajorans! Forget prequels! We want a DS9 movie and a Voyager reunion mini-series!

We want Worf! We want Seven of Nine! We want Quark! We want Sulu! We want Major Kira and Jake Sisko!

I'm afraid that time is running out for the crew of the starship Enterprise, Ensign. It's a dark day for the Federation, indeed.

Star Trek - http://www.startrek.com

[Not surprisingly, the Franchise is defending Enterprise rather than changing it. A recent story on the Trek Today site quotes Scott Bakula as saying he is tired of Enterprise critics. "Why are you spending energy and time on 'Enterprise'? Move on to other shows," Bakula said. Unfortunately, a quarter of last year's Enterprise audience appear to have done just that. Mediaweek reports a 26% drop in fan attendance for the premiere. My final advice on the subject goes back to my very first criticism of Enterprise: lose that awful theme song! Ed.]

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