#temporal cold war

Let's talk about the second part of this first, and maybe I'll come back for the rest in a Part 2 or Part 3 later. So for now, authority figures who try to enforce some conduct of time travel as their jurisdiction, and/or try to preserve the timeline from negative/excessive interference.

There aren't as many as you might think by looking at how many things the BronzeRealms covers! That's bc I've consolidated a lot of them. Rip Hunter, Jack Harkness, and Bruce G. Braxton of the USS Relativity all went rogue from the same organization. They were all Captains of Federation Timeships from the Federation Time Agency in the 3360s through 3540s. Colloquially, Time Agents.

Time Agents are by far the most likely temporal enforcers or protectors for any given would-be time criminal to have to evade. It was a whole fleet that operated basically unchallenged for almost 200 years, and that's just before the Temporal Cold War started taking up most of their schedule. They were technically still active as far as the 3620s, albeit stretched much, much thinner.

The Legion of Superheroes, formed in 4037, has a much lighter touch than the Agents, but will step in when it's most needed. And when they do, they are a force to be reckoned with. And when they're done, few people will even know there was a crisis at all. In the timeline of the BronzeRealms, they are more or less the "Happily Ever After".

The Legion of Doom is the anti-Legion of Superheroes, so despite being a little off-topic I'll bring them up anyway. A coalition of supervillains trying to subvert the timeline for their own personal gain. Vandal Savage, Reverse Flash, Per Degaton, Tempus, Epoch, Abra Kadabra, Chronos, Nimrod, various incarnations of Kang (at different times), and others. The exact roster varies from scheme to scheme due to constant infighting and directly conflicted end-goals as to how exactly they want to change the timelines.

Once, there were Time Lords. That was before the Great Time Wars (sometimes called the Last Great Time War, but... that proved kind of aspirational, kind of like World War 1 being called "the war to end all wars"). However, despite the Time Lords now being sealed inside a painting where they can no longer interfere with the timestream, time travel being time travel, from time to time someone will still encounter pre-War Time Lords who accidentally slipped through the Time Lock and will try to enforce their own long-forgotten law.

The Doctor is still here. That painting is in their study. The Doctor may be only one person (with many faces), and isn't even looking for trouble most of the time, but, they have nothing but time to happen across it and set things right. By pure abyss of age, The Doctor's presence approaches rivaling the Legion's.

Bunnyx is also only one person. But she may wield more power than anyone else here, possibly put together. Her command over the Time Vortex is so deep she can actually just shut down nearly any technological method of time travel, permanently, with a wave of her hand. However, she has sworn to non-interference except in cases of galactic extinction or greater. Her perspective even allows her to see some yet-to-come timestream alterations before they take effect, travel through most Time Locks, or revisit defunct timestreams with less (not none, but less) risk of destabilization or leakage into the current timestream.

The Legends of Tomorrow, founded by Rip Hunter, but very early taken over by White Canary (Sarah Lance), are a team who travel on the stolen Federation Timeship USS Waverider. Despite this shaky, criminal start, their relationship with Agents has progressed into more rivalry than hostility, thanks to many years of doing more good than harm.

The TVA is also a thing that was founded by Kang in one period of his life, and, because it failed, there are multiple versions of the TVA that persist after Kang's departure, all from different timelines that responded differently to the resulting power vacuum, all trying to enforce their own interests and prove themselves as the "true" TVA. You might even get TVA Hunters from competing TVAs responding to the same incidents, or responding to each other. Some of them are reformed, most are diverse shades of bad, and they all look identical on first glance. It's generally a mess and the reason they're not more of a problem for everyone else is because they kind of keep each other busy.

After being attacked by P-51s, Tucker and Mayweather return to Enterprise and determine through Hoshi’s intercepts that they are in fact in 1944…but in a timeline where Nazis (and man, do I hate Nazis) have invaded the United States and hold much of the Northeast. Archer is there, being transported as a POW when the convoy is attacked. He’s captured by the Resistance, who assume he must be Navy based on his uniform.

Enterprise has surprise visitors: the Time Traveling Daniels has appeared, but is a mess with his body all aging at different rates after unsyncing with time. Also, quietly, the Suliban Silik has snuck on board, eventually stealing a shuttlepod.  Daniels reveals that the Temporal Cold War has turned ugly, and one particular time terrorist, Vosk, has escaped with his followers to this Earth. He’s building a time machine and if successful will return to the 29th Century and START THE TEMPORAL COLD WAR. 

Archer is questioning the resistance about why he’s saw an alien when he woke up, and they lead him to an informant who has been providing information to one of the aliens posing as a Nazi. As they capture and question him, he reveals to Archer Enterprise is in orbit; but the mobsters turned freedom fighters are more than a bit taken aback by the alien and kill him, which alerts the patrols. Archer takes the alien’s communication device and with a young woman who’s been helping him named Alicia is able to beam up before they are shot or captured by Nazis. 

Beaming up he finds that Silik has stolen a shuttle. Trip and Mayweather went down and blew it up, but were captured. Archer briefly questions Daniels and resolves to stop Vosk. 

Vosk meanwhile, sees an opportunity. He offers to trade back Trip and Travis for Archer to consider helping him. Vosk promises to restore the timeline Archer knows in the 22nd Century if he does. Phlox realizes the Trip they have brought back is really Silik who has left poor Tucker in a closet in the Nazi HQ.

Silik offers to help Archer though in a plan to sneak into the compound to lower their shields so Enterprise can destroy the time machine. Archer also reaches out to Alicia and the Mobsters again to help put together a distraction. As the Resistance breeches the gate, Archer and Silik sneak in.

  Silik is killed in the process, but Archer finds Trip and lowers the shields.  They all get out as Enterprise fights its way through laser-equipped Stukkas to drop a couple of photonic torpedoes on the Nazi base (good riddance) just as Vosk is trying to return to the future. 

An again healthy Daniels shows Archer the timeline reasserting itself and tells him the Temporal Cold War is over, and the 22nd Century will never be troubled by it again. Enterprise phases back into 2154 near Earth where they are met by a fleet of Earth and Vulcan ships.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these episodes per se, but I’m still griping about not getting a proper finish to the Xindi storyline before taking this little diversion. Nice to see the Suliban back, and indeed, I would like to see them get some more mention elsewhere in Trek; is Silik dead, or will the timeline reset restore him? Indeed, has the war ending meant Future Guy will never modify the Suliban in the first place? Is Future Guy connected to the Romulan temporal agents we see operating on Earth in the 21st Century in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” on Strange New Worlds?  Come on, New Trek- we need a little more Enterprise love.

One big question I do have here…these dozens of ships that fly out to meet the NX-01 when they come home; where were they when the Xindi weapon was about to blow up Earth and the NX-01 and Shran’s Andorian cruiser had to fight it alone?

I suppose we can say the timeline was already shifting when that happened, but the episode doesn’t say that. I think I would have preferred the idea that Vosk and the Space Nazis were unleashed by the Sphere Builders after their network was destroyed by Trip and T’Pol, but no one mentions it.  I’d say considering how good the rest of Season 4 is we should wonder why this one doesn’t quite connect, but it’s a Berman and Braga story, and their other contribution to season 4 is “These Are the Voyages.”

So, since we STILL don’t quite have the Xindi arc resolved, looks like I have one more review to do.

NEXT VOYAGE: The Xindi Arc FINALLY gets its close when the NX-01 makes it “Home.”

Beginning to warm up to the enterprise crew as of early s2, not loving some of the temporal cold war shenanigans but it has its moments.... the cheesy intro music, it's still cheesy and kinda awful, but damn if I don't sing along

Getting the feeling t'pol and archer could become a thing (don't spoiler me)

It's been a staple of my crossover multiverses for at least fourteen years across more'n one continuity.

At LiveJournal (now at Dreamwidth) there was this short prose piece written in 2007 to be compatible with the continuity of the fanfiction on my original fanfiction site.

At The Hero of Three Faces shortly after the 2013 revelation of the Doctor's war incarnation, this and this were how I worked the War Doctor into my continuity which already had the Shalka Doctor in it, developing the crossover between the Wars to do it, with Doctor War coming after Doctor Shalka.

Then in 2014 at Three Faces I rebooted the site design and the continuity - and the relation of the Shalka Doctor to the primary continuity, with Doctor Shalka coming after Doctor War and on a different fiction-plane. I think this Doctor Who/Enterprise crossover is the only Three Faces in the current continuity/on the active archive that connects the Time War to the Star Trek fiction-plane, and it's more about what the Doctor anticipates about the ramifications of the War.

But there are also connections drawn (what the hell, pun intended) in Three Faces between the Time War and the Clone Wars here (the archive cartoon linked from Tumblr yesterday, which I presume is what brought this subject to mind), and between the Time War and Wolfram & Hart here, and between the Time War and the Peacekeeper Wars here. EDIT Oh, and between the Time War and the Anubis War here; and there may be other connections that slip my mind at the moment.