"Theorizing that one could jump-start a flagging film career by returning to television, actor Scott Bakula stepped onto the set of the new series Enterprise and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped on UPN, facing a sci-fi fanbase that was not his own, and driven by the scriptwriters to change Star Trek history, for better or worse. His only guide on this journey is the audience, observers from his own time who appear in the form of ratings. And so, Mr. Bakula finds himself leaping from episode to episode, striving to put right what Berman and Braga put wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be back into feature films."
The episode starts with a shot of Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers, frozen in his space shuttle on the way to the 25th century. No, wait, my mistake. It's just a model being painted by our hero as a boy, with his father. As they work, they discuss the sociopolitical ramifications of Earth's relationship with the Vulcans and speculate on the impediments they may have placed in humanity's way, and the consequences and reasons for them. As a father and son are wont to do on a lazy Saturday. Meanwhile, young Mr. Archer selects a particularly unpleasant ochre pigment to paint the warp nacelles, and we learn that Daddy Archer has plans to build a starship which he can't (forgive me) seem to get off the ground.
Thirty years later, in a cornfield outside Smallville, Kansas, an alien spacecraft has crashed to Earth, containing a baby with powers and abilit--no, wrong again. My bad. It's actually Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and the Klingon now running through the corn away from the crash is fully grown. As two other aliens chase the Klingon, firing their (phasers? phase pistols? disruptors?) zap guns at him, Farmer Ted emerges from his prefab house (some things never change) and sees the smoke from the crash and the flash of weapons fire. Faced with mysterious goings-on on his property, Farmer Ted does what folks like him have been doing for hundreds of years: he goes back inside and gets his gun.
Meanwhile, the Klingon finds a grain silo-looking building and rushes into it, followed by two lumpy green guys in purple outfits. Discovering that the Klingon was so uncooperative as to lock the door behind him, one of the Lumpy Bad Guys gets down on the ground, becomes all squishy, oozes under the door, and unlocks it from the inside for the benefit of his less malleable companion. As they enter the ground level, the Klingon leaps out of a hatch higher up, runs far enough away that the entire special effect will be in the shot, and shoots the silo. Now, I don't know whether the building was full of grain dust, or they found Farmer Ted's secret 'shine stash, or Klingon hand weapons have a special "Blow Up Agricultural Structure" setting, but the silo blowed up real good, killing the Lumpy Squishy Green Bad Guys in Ugly Purple Jumpsuits. Just as the debris finishes raining down, Farmer Ted runs onto the scene, sees the only other living thing around, and shoots it.
Opening credits. A lovely set of images I'll be watching muted from now on. I notice Jolene Blalock's credit coincides with film of a Saturn V booster thrusting upward on powerful engines. You don't gotta be Fellini to figure that one out.
Returning from the break, we see a small shuttle ferrying Admiral Kirk to the newly-refurbished NCC 1701 for his inspection--damn it! Ferrying Captain Archer on an inspection of the outer hull of the NX-01 Enterprise, piloted by Sulu--Gah! Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker, whom I've been told bears a striking resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones. Archer gets a call from Admiral FORREST to come down to Starfleet MEDICAL at once.
On Earth, a gaggle of human admirals and Vulcan ambassadors enter an observation room looking in on where doctors are working on the wounded Klingon. There's a lot of protuberance-waving between the two groups over who should be in charge of the situation. The humans claim jurisdiction since he crashed on our planet. The Vulcans claim that if we tried to deal with it on our own, we'd only screw it up and start a war. They have a point, but Our Hero arrives on the scene and convinces the admirals to throw off the chains of Vulcan oppression and let him taxi the Klingon, who we learn is named Klang, to Kronos in his shiny new starship. The emotionless Vulcans do a fair approximation of being peeved when they realize they aren't going to get their way, and logically conclude the time is right to storm out of the room. Archer calls over the doctor who's been working on Klang, and after the scene ends, invites him to do his doctoring on the Enterprise.
Back up in spacedock, armory officer Lt. Malcolm Reed and helmsman Ensign Travis Mayweather are watching the single transporter pad in operation, bringing up materials and supplies. Even though this pad has been "improved for bio-transport," meaning it can transport living people and keep them that way, everyone is about as enthusiastic about trying it as Doctor McCoy was in the original Star Trek series. The package for which these two were waiting materializes, and Lt. Reed is lack of shocked to discover they sent the wrong techno-do-jobbers. As they head down to Engineering to complain, we learn that Lt. Reed does a mean southern accent and Mayweather grew up someplace off Earth where the gravity was adjustable.
Next, we head off to Klingon language summer camp to meet communications officer Hoshi Sato. Um, that is, a very serious and progressive alien language educational seminar in Brazil. It seems Hoshi has a uniquely keen ear for languages. Hoshi is reluctant to leave her campers, um, students until Archer bribes her with the opportunity to learn a new alien language before anyone else. We also learn that Star Fleet had to make some concessions to the Vulcans in return for the language sample. What kind of concessions? Hmm, I wonder.
Back once more to the ship, where Archer and Trip are walking so we can see lots of different locations. They're discussing how Star Fleet accepted having a Vulcan on board as science officer in return for star charts showing where Kronos is. Trip sees the Vulcan as a spy, while Archer tells him to consider her a "chaperone." They both want her off the ship as soon as the mission is over. They enter the captain's ready room/quarters, I'm not sure which, where we meet Porthos, Archer's beagle. I can only hope there isn't an episode ahead of us where Porthos saves the ship by anything but accident. I mean literally having an accident and peeing on the enemy. Cute doggie, though. T'Pol slinks into the room and officially reports for duty. There's more introductions and plenty of good natured ribbing. It turns out T'Pol doesn't want to be there either. Still, Porthos likes her. Likes her leg, anyway.
It's the launching ceremony for the Enterprise. Some admiral gives a speech, and all the humans applaud while the Vulcans in the room trade meaningful looks, disgusted by the admiral's weak swimming metaphor. From the speech, we learn that Captain Archer's dad worked directly with the exalted Zephram Cochrane himself on warp technology, and that the Enterprise is the first ship to use the engine the elder Archer and Cochrane designed. This is presumably the ship mentioned in the first scene, which would mean the Vulcans kept it out of production for thirty years. No wonder humans don't like them very much. Sadly, it also means no one has made any technological advances in warp engine design in three decades. As the crew boards the Enterprise and prepares to leave, we get a voiceover of Cochrane reading a dedication speech which closely follows the "Space: the final frontier" speech from the original series. Bored by the speech, Archer flashes back to the first scene, where it is somewhat later in the day and he's installing the antigrav generator in his model rocket. Estes has come a long way since 2001. Archer snaps out of it in time to give Mr. Mayweather the Go command. Maybe I watched Galaxy Quest too many times, but I was just waiting for the ship to scrape against the side of the spacedock on the way out. It didn't, though. Mayweather lays in a course for Kronos, which T'Pol criticizes (way to inspire confidence in the crew when heading out in a largely untested vehicle, babe), and off they go.
Elsewhere, a Lumpy Green Guy enters a chamber to speak with the hologram of Emperor Palpat-- that is, the shadowy faceless image of the man giving the Lumpies their orders. Lumpy reports that two of his sub-lumpies were killed and asks if their deaths can be prevented. Shadowy Guy says no, but it's still obvious that whoever this is has some ability to fiddle with time. It seems the rumors of a time travel overarc are true.
Well, so far so good. What am I, about half way through? Oh man, that's just the first commercial? What have I gotten myself into?
Back to the show. Archer is in sick bay, helping Dr. Neelix, oops, Phlox unpack and inquiring about the odds of the Klingon being able to leave the ship under his own power when they reach Kronos. Phlox, despite being pulled off a cushy 9 to 5 job on Earth as part of the Vulcan-instituted medical exchange program, is excited about having the chance to study human biology under field conditions, as it were. Phlox tells Archer there's a chance the Klingon will wake, and a chance he won't, so stay optimistic. Then he smiles this CGI-enhanced Joker smile, giving me a first class case of the heebie jeebies. I can only hope they won't have the budget to do that every week.
Trip crawls through a Jeffries tube and discovers Mayweather sitting upside down on the ceiling of a room with no obvious function. Mayweather explains that this location is the "sweet spot," a place where the artificial gravity goes all wonky. He tells Trip to grab both sides of the hatch and push off, which Trip misunderstands as an invitation. He launches himself up into the room, bonking his head on the ceiling/floor. Somehow, the starship's chief engineer was totally unaware that such gravity inversions occurred, or that they could be used as cheap excuses for wire work. What follows is a classic "We're not gay. No, really," conversation, starting with the tip-off line, "Have you ever slept in zero gee?" "Do you like gladiator movies?"
T'Pol and Archer are in the captain's mess, making small talk while waiting for Trip to arrive. I'm starting to think Bakula is a diversion to keep us from realizing we're watching The Trip Show. Vulcans aren't a touristy bunch, all their recreational needs being satisfied within the confines of the Vulcan compound in Sausalito. I have mental images of Vulcans playing volleyball and tennis, trying to body surf in the wave pool, and discoing until the break of dawn. Anyway, Trip arrives, and the steward brings T'Pol her vegetarian plate, and huge steaks for the other two. It looks like real, honest to God meat, too. None of that syntho-protien crap they eat in the 24th century. T'Pol disapproves, and uses it as a springboard to launch yet another offensive against the barbarity of humanity, while she cuts a hard breadstick in half with knife and fork because Vulcans are too civilized to come in contact with their food. I figure they keep it suspended inside their digestive tract with their mental powers until their highly trained stomach acid artillery can bombard it into its component molecules.
One ship flyby later, everyone is on the bridge as they push the ship to the upper end of its speed limit. Hoshi gets increasingly nervous as the speed increases, thinking she feels tremors in the ship. T'Pol suggests that maybe Hoshi would like to have a good lie down, to which Hoshi responds, in Vulcan, expressing a sentiment that I never would have guessed the Vulcan language had words for. Dr. Phlem calls the bridge to tell the captain that the Klingon has awoken.
Down in sick bay, Klang is ranting in Klingonese, and Hoshi is nervously trying to get a handle on what he's saying, using both a language translator and her own ability. The Klingon's aggressiveness has her spooked. Once the doctor confirms that Klang is out of his mind, Hoshi regains some self-assurance. She must feel better about not making sense of what he's saying once she knows he's not making sense in the first place. Suddenly, everything breaks.
We are shown a group of Lumpy Green Guys skulking down a hallway with the lights out. Up on the bridge, Reed thinks he saw something on the sensors just as the power went out, but he can't be sure. Down in sickbay, they've broken out the MagLites. Klang is ranting again. Across the room, one of the light beams illuminates the quickly fading form of a Lumpy in a stairwell. They look more closely, then search the entire room, eventually finding Spider-Lumpy crawling across the ceiling. Someone shoots first without asking questions. As they're killing that Lumpy, they completely miss seeing a second one leap off the ceiling onto the exam table with the Klingon. Soon, the lights come back up and they discover that Klang's gone missing.
On a side note, it's been a bad day for Hoshi. The ship's all creaky, T'Pol was snide at her, a Klingon yelled at her, she saw a spooky half-invisible alien, then saw it fall dead right in front of her. I just know she's thinking, "I could be back in Brazil, sucking down fruity drinks and conga-ing with muscular tanned beach bums. It's Carnival. But no, I had to learn Klingon. Stupid, stupid!"
On the bridge some time later, T'Pol and Archer discuss whether or not to continue the mission now that the Klingon is gone. Specifically, Archer wants to go find him and get him back, while T'Pol wants to write the whole delivery mission off simply because they no longer have anything to deliver or any way to find him. Archer isn't convinced, and calls T'Pol into a side room for a private chat. In what must be Archer's ready room, backed by some delightful art of previous ships named Enterprise, Archer vents about how the Vulcans have spent the last hundred years pretending to help humanity while actually holding us back, and how he won't have it on his ship. He orders her to go out and help try to find Klang instead of just standing there saying it can't be done.
Returning to sickbay, we get a name for the Lumpy Green Guys: Suliban. Phlox is dissecting the dead one using actual medical tools and cutting open the body to look inside. Keen. He finds all kinds of genetic and anatomical changes, from extra lung capacity to chameleonic skin and clothes, which he points out to Archer with the glee of a man who knows he's grossing someone out. Phlox declares the dead Suliban the recipient of advanced genetic engineering.
Down in engineering, T'Pol is trying to convince Trip that the Enterprise's sensors are woefully inadequate to the task of tracking the plasma trail warp signature thingy of the stealth ship that took Klang away. Trip takes this personally, and we are treated to yet another "Humans good, Vulcans bad" speech. I think we get it, guys. Archer shows up, closely followed by Hoshi, who has translated most of what the Klingon said before he was taken. Using a crowbar and pliers, Archer gets T'Pol to give up some backstory on the Suliban ("Mostly harmless") and to reveal that Rigel Ten was Klang's last stop before hitting Earth, so to speak. They set course and head off.
Somewhere, the Suliban have Klang strapped down and drugged up, and are interrogating him. They learn that he was sent to Rigel Ten to meet a Suliban woman named Sarin. The interrogators think she gave him something, but he doesn't know what they are talking about. The head interrogator leaves, no doubt to do something nefarious.
The Enterprise arrives at Rigel Ten, and a landing party is being briefed. Pretty much every cast member we've met so far is in the party. Which means pretty much the head of every department and all the senior officers. If you wondered where that idea originated, here it is. Their goal is to find the person Klang was sent to meet, and find out what was so dang important. They land on the roof of a trading complex and descend into the city to begin their search. At this point, the broadcast screwed up, so there is a break in the narrative.
When the picture comes back, T'Pol is warning her away team buddy, Trip, not to get involved in some local affair.
Mayweather and Reed, meanwhile, have made their way to a club with multicolored dancing girls with two and a half foot tongues and how did they convince the censors that body paint was an article of clothing? There was something about finding a guy who saw Klang, or a guy showing them where he saw Klang, but I wasn't really paying attention. Well, I was, but not to that. Moving on....
In Down Below, the lurkers gather along the corridors…scratch that. Trip is waiting in a hallway that is filled with various aliens while T'Pol checks in with the local cops. He sees a woman alternately pulling a breather mask off a child's face and putting it back on. T'Pol appears and contacts Archer, telling him about a part of the complex where Klingons are known to gather. Finally, Trip's had all he can stands and he can't stands no more. He yells at the woman to stop torturing the kid, and T'Pol explains that what she's doing is a natural part of that alien species' development. She then goes on to berate humanity for trying to understand alien behavior through the filter of human experience, instead of trying to see it objectively. She should've been a teacher, she likes lecturing so much. Little did they know, a Suliban spy was watching their every move, hidden from them by the clever ruse of facing the other way. I guess he was listening to their every move.
Archer and Hoshi, in the Klingon sector T'Pol told them about, are having a tough time finding anyone to talk to. They get nervous, a feeling only intensified by the soundtrack kicking in with the anticipatory dread theme. Archer pulls out his by-God communicator and tries to call T'Pol, but something is scrambling the signal. Big shock. I think standing too close to a microwave will do that. They realize they are surrounded just as the people surrounding them attack. Aw, no fight music. They are overpowered three to two, depending on how you want to count Hoshi, and dragged away to an uncertain fate. Well, other than knowing they'll live because they're main characters.
Yes! Halfway through. It's all downhill from here.
Hoshi gets thrown into a holding cell along with T'Pol and Trip. No telling what happened to Reed and Mayweather. The Suliban, for it was they who jumped our heroes, drag the captain off to a place where he is confronted, in true Classic Trek fashion, with a hot alien babe. Sarin, in fact, the Suliban that Klang went to Rigel Ten to meet. Except that she is neither lumpy nor green. Archer, being the first human Star Fleet captain, is obviously unaware that all alien babes can somehow sense the fact that he is a captain, and that this knowledge compels them to throw themselves at him. So he is startled and confused when she puts a Suliban liplock on him. Afterwards, she shape shifts back into her Suliban skin tone (another shock, to be sure) and explains that she needed close contact in order to use her Good Guy detector power. She then explains that she is a rebel of sorts, that her species has volunteered to be upgraded in return for service, but she was unwilling to pay the price required anymore. She further revealed that the Suliban were trying to destabilize the Klingon Empire by faking attacks between factions. Klang was bringing proof of that, provided by Sarin, to the Klingon High Council. Her final bit of expository revelation is that the Suliban are acting under orders from the far future as part of "a temporal cold war." Just as she's getting to the practical part of the conversation, what to do next, the nonrebel Suliban attack.
In the ensuing gun fight, the captive crew members are released, and Sarin doesn't even make it off the first set. She gets blasted just as everyone boards an elevator to the roof. Her dying words are the ever-so-helpful, "Find Klang."
On the roof, we see the incident that led to Star Fleet Regulation 19, first stated in Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home, "Everybody remember where we parked." The landing pod is nowhere to be seen, and each crewman thinks it lies in a different direction. They pick a direction at random, and Archer calls Reed on his communicator to tell him to return to the shuttle. This is when we discover that Reed and Mayweather are already back at the ship and have been trying to call the captain all this time. So, why did these two even have that scene in the strip bar with the alien who said he'd seen Klang? It may be my imagination, but I sense some tension and shame between Reed and Mayweather, like they'd done something they've sworn never to discuss again. They couldn't sit farther apart inside that shuttle if they tried.
The Suliban catch up to the crew on the roof, and another firefight begins. T'Pol locates the shuttle. What happens next is a little confusing. It appears that while the gun battle is going on, another unrelated ship lifts off nearby, and as it flies over T'Pol, its repulsorlift backwash or whatever you want to call it pushes T'Pol out into the middle of the fight. Archer orders Trip to get Hoshi into the ship, then leaps out next to T'Pol in heroic cowboy captain fashion and starts firing twin plasma pistols toward the enemy to cover her retreat, despite her arguing that he was more important than her. On his way to join everyone else on the shuttle, Archer gets shot in the leg. Luckily, no one seems to have invented vaporize-on-contact phasers yet. Archer gets dragged aboard, and the shuttle lifts off. T'Pol calls the Enterprise to get the medical team ready for their arrival, and announces that she'll be taking command.
Meanwhile, Archer flashes back to his youth with that model rocket and his dad, in which he nosedives it right into the sand. His dad tells him he can't be afraid of the wind. I only mention this because there is a callback to it later.
During the commercial, everyone made it back on board the Enterprise, and Dr. Phlox tested everyone for infestation of any sort. Having detected polycystine spores on T'Pol and Trip, his treatment is to have them rub gelatin on each other under black lighting. I'm half convinced he was kidding, and will be selling the video rights next time they stop at a planet. I tried, folks. I watched this scene seven times in a row, twice in slow motion, trying to glean the essence of it, trying to distill the wonder and grandeur of it into mere words, trying to find anything that furthered the plot or developed character. This is all I was able to come up with. It is quite chilly in the decontamination chamber. But not that cold. Archer is driven to finish what he starts, according to Trip. Trip has the self-restraint of an entire Tibetan monastery. If they have a scene like this every week, I think I can overlook that Phlox smiling thing.
On the other side of sickbay, Archer is lying in his undies with an osmotic eel on his Suliban zap gun wound. It's six hours later, and the wound is effectively healed. Having toweled themselves off, T'Pol and Trip walk in to see how Archer is doing. T'Pol reports that she took command of the ship, and Archer immediately assumes the ship is headed back to Earth. It turns out that they are in fact tracking the Suliban ship carrying the aliens that attacked them on Rigel Ten. T'Pol was able to modify the ship's sensors to be able to detect the plasma trail warp dingus. Which makes me wonder: if the sensors were capable of being sensitive enough to detect this kind of thing, why weren't they built to be that sensitive in the first place? When asked why she went after the Suliban, T'Pol explains that she was anticipating Archer's desires. Archer then points out that, while she was in charge, she could have done anything she wanted.
In the captain's quarters, we get to see the first Captain's Log. Also, he is recording a status report. Put some pants on, Cap'n! They're still using real dates instead of Stardates. As he describes what has been going on, he pauses periodically to make asides and offhand comments to his dog. Mostly, he is troubled that he cannot understand what motivated T'Pol not to end the mission when she had the chance. He cannot decide whether he should trust her or not. He is interrupted by the ship coming out of warp, and contacts the bridge to find out why. In true Trek form, he isn't given any useful information in response, only a suggestion that he come to the bridge to find out.
He arrives to discover the ship in proximity to a gas giant which the Suliban ship flew close enough to to mask whatever it is the Enterprise has been tracking all this time. The trail is lost, and things look grim. But wait! A quick scan of the area locates numerous fragmentary trails, which they quickly realize came from not just one ship, but from fourteen different ships, and quickly track the flight paths of all the ships into the gas giant. They quickly realized that the planet is obviously the location of the secret Suliban base. These people are quick, I'll give them that. Archer orders the weapons armed and hull polarized, which I expect is like shields before they invented shields. They're going in.
In the Suliban Talk-to-the-Leader Room, the head Suliban is talking to the Shadowy Guy from the Future. He reports that the Enterprise has arrived, looking for either Klang or himself, he doesn't know which. Shadowy Future Guy wasn't planning on involving the humans, but if they threaten to get proof of the Klingon manipulation back to the Klingons, they must be stopped.
Entering the planet's atmosphere, the Enterprise gets jostled as it passes through several layers of thick, sensor-jamming gas and liquid. Breaking through to a more sedate layer, they immediately spot the Suliban base and concentrate all their sensors on it, ignoring the rest of the sky around them. Which sprouts nasties that start shooting at them. They retreat into the liquid phosphorus layer that gave them so much trouble coming in.
Given a few seconds to study all that sensor data, T'Pol determines that the base is actually a collection of smaller ships all magnetically bound together, while Hoshi locates a non-Suliban life sign on the base. Reed suggests using the transporter to collect what is hopefully the Klingon, but Archer rejects the idea on grounds that an inside-out Klingon is not an acceptable deliverable. Instead, Archer asks about using the grappler.
The ship dives back out of the phosphorus and attracts the attention of three Suliban pods. They close, and at the right moment the Enterprise fires a pair of magnetic grapples on long tethers. The grapples attach to one of the pods, which is then reeled into the Enterprise. The pilot ejects, without any apparent way to survive not being inside his pod. Happy with their catch, Enterprise returns once more to the phosphorus layer.
Archer, Trip, and Mayweather (get that man a shorter nickname!) are standing around a display table. Mayweather is giving Trip a crash course (once again, my apologies) in flying a Suliban battle pod. I'm not sure how Mayweather knows. Maybe intuitive understanding of ship controls is part of his character. In any event, Trip learns about as well as one might expect of a person whose chosen field is running the engine while somebody else steers. Mayweather insists he can and should fly the pod, but Archer tells him he is needed on the Enterprise. Meanwhile, T'Pol reports that the Suliban are launching depth charges up into the phosphorus layer to try to locate them. And if the ship doesn't move soon, they will succeed.
In the captain's ready room, Archer is giving T'Pol orders for while he is gone with Trip to the Suliban base to rescue Klang. T'Pol argues that attempting the rescue alone is suicide, and points out that there is a Vulcan ship two days away which could provide much needed support. Archer reminds her that the point of the mission is partly to prove that humans don't need to rely on the Vulcans, a point T'Pol thinks could be made just as easily later under less lethal circumstances. Armory officer Reed arrives with two metal cases. One contains a device to reverse the polarity of the magnetic locks holding the base together, while the other holds two phase pistols, precursors to the phaser with two settings: stun and kill.
The pod drops out of the Enterprise, Archer and Trip aboard. As they plummet, a red light flashes on the alien control panel. Concerned, Archer asks Trip what it means. Trip tells him that Mayweather told him not to worry about it.
On the Enterprise, Reed and T'Pol discuss moving the ship after one of the depth charges comes too close for comfort. Reed wants to move to make the Suliban restart their search pattern from scratch, and T'Pol wants to remain where Archer and Trip can find them when they return.
In the pod, they circle the Suliban base looking for a parking space, Archer using what might be a tricorder. What he's using it for, I have no idea. But it works. They find a place and dock. Inside the base, everything is dark and blue. As they search around, they run across a Suliban, whom Archer stuns without a moment's hesitation.
On the ship, the depth charges have gotten too close. While there hasn't been any structural damage or loss of life, several control panels have exploded in a shower of sparks, and it's only a matter of time before someone gets hurled violently across the bridge. T'Pol orders the ship moved five kilometers away.
On the base, Archer and Trip saunter into the room where Klang is being held, with no apparent opposition. Must be night shift. As soon as Trip releases the Klingon, he starts going berserk as only a Klingon can, until Archer points his shiny new phase pistol at him. Then he calms down and lets Trip escort him out of the room and into the next gun fight. While the humans are shooting back at the Suliban shooting at them, another Suliban tries to come up behind them. He wasn't expecting the Klingon to be there to knock him silly. Archer orders Trip and Klang (describe what happens when a knight doesn't see the cat underfoot) to get to the pod, then sets the maglock polarity reverser bomb. It goes off, and the place goes to pieces. In a minor tactical error, Archer finds himself on the wrong side of a containment field as the place begins locking itself down in response to the magbomb's disruption. To make things worse, people have also started shooting at him again. Via communicator, Archer orders Trip to take Klang back to the Enterprise, then come back for him. Trip cautions Archer to stay as far from the Suliban as possible so that sensors can more easily locate him.
When the pod carrying Trip and the Klingon arrives at the location where Enterprise used to be, they are understandably upset that the ship isn't there now. Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, the depth charges are getting closer again, and T'Pol is about to move the ship when Hoshi claims to hear Trip talking. Talking at normal volume in the middle of a bombardment at a distance of five kilometers. If they want to claim she has that level of ability, I'm not gonna stop them. Hoshi hears Trip say he's about to "ignite his thruster exhaust," which ship's sensors are able to pick up amidst the maelstrom. They set a course and head to pick up the pod. T'Pol says, "Thank you," to Hoshi in Vulcanese, denoting a closure to their conflict and a new bond between them yadda yadda. As the Enterprise approaches the pod, sensors are able to discern biosigns on the pod well enough to determine only two passengers are aboard, one human, one Klingon.
Archer is wandering around the Suliban base for no particular reason I can think of, scanning things with his proto-tricorder (possibly just a bicorder), when he spots a hallway that makes his tricorder's display go all wiggly. He decides to investigate. At the end of the hall is a set of doors that open at his approach. "What a neat idea," Archer thinks. There is a second set of doors behind these, and as Archer steps past the first set, they close, trapping him in the space between. Lights strobe for few seconds before the other set of doors opens. Archer goes through them, staring intently at his scanning doohickey.
There is some sort of time distortion in the room Archer has just entered. Whenever something moves, it blurs with foreshadows and afterimages. This has happened every time we have seen this room. It just hasn't been important until now. As Archer notices the effect, he experiments with it, doing the visual equivalent of shouting, "Echo" into a canyon.
Back on the ship, Trip and T'Pol are arguing again. Will these two get a room already? Trip insists that when the captain said, "Come back for me," he meant it. T'Pol believes that Archer just said that to prevent Trip from trying to pick him up right then, jeopardizing the Klingon's life further. She thinks he willingly sacrificed himself for the good of the mission. She claims that a logical analysis of the situation clearly indicates the rightness of her position. Trip counters by reminding her that Archer didn't analyze anything when he saved her life on the rooftop on Rigel Ten. She proclaims the comparison to be "specious."
Back in the weird time room, Archer sees the door open again, but does not see anyone enter. He hears him, though. The invisible Suliban leader taunts Archer and warns him not to fire his snazzy new ray gun within the weird time room. Archer tries to get the bad guy to show himself so he can shoot him. I love humans.
Back on the ship, suddenly the plan is to attempt a rescue of the captain. Perhaps there was a scene cut where the convincing argument was made, or maybe that last argument between Trip and T'Pol was more influential than I thought. Anyway, up on the bridge, they're making preparations for an attack run, while Trip is standing behind unidentified machinery, worried about an "annular confinement" error of 2 microns. Gee, let me think. What Trek tech do I know of that is associated with the term "annular confinement" and could be useful in a rescue? Hmm….
Again, back to the Suliban base, the invisible bad guy tells Archer that he's no real threat because he doesn't really know anything. The only real beef he's got is that Archer is in the weird time room. Archer can walk out and go on his merry way. And yet, when Archer brings up the temporal cold war, the bad guy feels compelled to body slam Archer. Maybe Archer does know enough to be dangerous after all. So, the bad guy picks up the gun he specifically said not to fire in this room and fires it at Archer. Because of the weird time, Archer is able to see where the fatal beam is going to be, and dodges it. When the beam hits the wall, there's some sort of backlash that knocks the bad guy across the room, during which he drops the gun. He finds it again shortly, of course, and fires at the first unusual noise he hears. Unfortunately for him, it was the noise of something Archer threw against the wall as a distraction so he could run out of the room. The backlash helps to push Archer out the door, but the alien also manages to get out before the doors close. They struggle some more while the strobe light effect occurs again.
Outside, the Enterprise is making its attack run, and taking far too much fire to be able to dock and recover the captain with any degree of safety. Having screwed up Plan A within seconds, T'Pol calls Trip and tells him to be ready with secret escape Plan B.
Back inside to the fight. Archer and the bad guy continue to wrestle on the floor, the phase pistol being inconveniently located for either one to reach. No, wait. Let's not forget how bendy these guys are. The bad guy twists his arm in some impossible way and grabs the gun. Archer leaps up and starts running away like a scared little girl-I mean, he stages a hasty retreat. The bad guy stands, aims, and fires. At the same moment, T'Pol orders Trip to activate the transporter and bring the captain aboard. They haven't invented saying, "Beam him up," yet. The first thing Trip does when Archer appears, safe and sound, on the transporter pad, is to apologize for putting him through it. Judging by Archer's reaction to finding himself there, it was the right thing to do. The Enterprise leaves the gas giant without being pursued, and finishes its trip to Kronos.
In the Klingon High Council chamber, the council is in session. Which is to say, many Klingons are standing around shouting at each other. There is a pounding at the door. The sergeants at arms open them up, revealing Klang, flanked by Archer, Hoshi, and T'Pol. They enter the chamber, and Klang announces that he is ready to die. Sheesh, all that trouble for nothing. They could've killed him two hours ago and saved us a whole movie. Wait, it seems to be a ritual greeting. Those wacky Klingons. Someone who may be the Klingon emperor walks up to Klang and slashes Klang's palm open with his palm-slashing knife. Another Klingon gathers the blood in a test tube, takes it over to a wall computer, and pours it onto a scanner. The computer analyzes the blood and finds data stored in a particular gene on a particular chromosome. Dead or alive, the Klingons would have gotten the information if they got the body. Klang appears not to have known he was carrying this information. The Emperor walks up to Archer and says something in Klingon that Hoshi refuses to translate and that he's willing to accept as a thank you.
Epilogue: Archer calls Trip and T'Pol into his ready room to tell them that's he's received new orders from Star Fleet. Since the ship is already out there doing its thing, they are ordered to keep on doing it. The Vulcans are sending a transport to pick up T'Pol. However, Archer has an offer for her. He wants her to stay on as Science Officer, but if he were to ask the Vulcans to allow it, he thinks it would appear he was still dependent on Vulcans for his success. She suggests that if she were to make the request to stay on board, it would avoid that embarrassment.
Back on the bridge, Archer announces the new orders to the bridge crew. Their first task is to investigate an inhabited planet so different from Earthlike conditions that the inhabitants are quite likely to be unlike anything they've ever seen before. Everyone is really looking forward to it. Mayweather notices an ion storm on the path to the planet and informs Archer of it, asking if he should go around it. Recalling what his father said lo, those many years ago, Archer told him, "You can't be afraid of the wind." Of course, Archer has yet to learn that over 86 percent of all free-floating galactic perils, including hyperintelligent hives of microbes, giant paramecia, displaced gods, doomsday devices, spatial anomalies, wormholes, time warps, malfunctioning and/or ancient technology, and energy-based life forms, all register as simple ion storms until you come right up against one. However, I suppose this is an age of discovery.