In an ancient Tibetan CGI monastery, a bunch of monks are wandering around, lighting candles, and being all serene and stuff while Zamfir, master of the pan flute, plays in the background. There is a banging on the door. Is it Eddie Murphy in the middle of his quest to find the Golden Child? The doors swing open, blowing out the mood lighting and revealing four blue guys with antennae on their heads and futuristic frotz guns at their sides. The monastery has been invaded by militant descendants of the Tick. Spoon! Credits! Fast forward!
“Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like these Vulcan star charts take all the fun out of it,” Trip quips to Archer as he hangs out in his boss’ ready room. Doesn’t he have a ship to maintain? Hey, Jeffery Combs is guest starring in this episode. For those of you playing along at home, Combs has had a number of different roles in various Star Trek shows, most notably Weyoun on Deep Space Nine. He also made a lot of excruciatingly bad movies for the sadly defunct Full Moon production company, movies that I cannot recommend highly enough. He’s not that good an actor, but he’s a great actor, if you know what I mean. I’m glad to see he’s getting work.
Anyway, Trip has a bug up his butt because, by following the map the Vulcans supplied in the pilot, they aren’t actually seeking out new life and new civilizations, but only touring previously discovered life and civilizations. Considering their track record with stuff they knew a thing or two about before going in, I wouldn’t be in such an all-fired hurry to try it without the net. Archer tries to cheer Trip up. “Remember that proto-star we ran across last week? I’m not seeing it here.” Trip is pleased to learn the data their survival may rely on someday is flawed. T’Pol and her breasts enter. Archer asks them about a little planet with nothing to recommend it except a few Vulcans who probably wouldn’t enjoy visitors. “It’s an ancient spiritual retreat, a remote sanctuary for Kohlinar and peaceful meditation.” I think I misspelled it, but note the continuity. Archer thinks Kohlinar sounds keen. “How do you think they’d feel about a visit?” he asks. Vulcans, Archer. Theoretically without feelings. How many times do we have to go over this? T’Pol discourages the field trip. “It’s because Vulcans think we smell bad, isn’t it?” Trip deduces, ever the intuitive one. Interspecies aroma is actually a subplot this episode. Once again proving he only asked for T’Pol’s advice so he could ignore it, Archer decides, “I’d say a stopover is too good to pass up. Unless you disagree.” Is that a glimmer respect for an alien culture I see? Nah, he’s way too happy when T’Pol caves. It was just a formality. Archer contacts the helmsman and tells him to expect a course change. Then, he and Trip giggle at how they humiliated the Vulcan again, as she leaves to perform her assigned tasks. Why don’t they just make her wear a degrading outfit while they’re…um, never mind.
T’Pol is eating a plate of celery with a knife and fork, while Dr. Phlox dispenses some homespun wisdom. Let’s watch! Phlox thinks T’Pol should be excited about going to a place of great Vulcan cultural significance. She isn’t. “You’ll be able to introduce some of your own people to your new crew,” Phlox observes. T’Pol meaningfully says nothing, which Phlox correctly interprets as T’Pol’s misgivings at being seen with a buncha stinky humans, much like a teenager has misgivings about being picked up from school in their parents’ minivan. “It could present a certain awkwardness,” she admits. Phlox ruins the sterility of T’Pol’s plate by snagging one of her celery stalks. She doesn’t stab him in the hand with her fork. Phlox admits to also feeling out of place on the Enterprise sometimes, and awkwardly segues into a Brush with Backstory. “What is that Vulcan motto? ‘Infinite Diversity…” “In Infinite Combinations,” T’Pol completes, seemingly surprised that he’s heard of it. Phlox then gives T’Pol a pop quiz. “Tell me, what our mission on this vessel?” “To seek out what humans would consider new life and civilizations.” She gets a gold star. Phlox finally gets to his point, that humans are following the Vulcan motto by going to visit the Vulcans, and, by implication, she is not by failing to look forward to it. I wonder if they blew the catering budget, so as many scenes have to be shot during meals as they can manage just so everyone gets something to eat.
Archer, Trip, and T’Pol enter the shuttle launch bay. “They don’t even know we’re comin’?” Trip asks, incredulous. T’Pol explains that the monks have no technology. “The monks consider technology a distraction from their spiritual pursuits.” Everybody got that? No technology at the monastery. None, nada, zip, bupkis. Not an electronic sausage. No phones, no lights, no motorcars. Not a single luxury. Okay, as long as we’re all clear. I don’t want any of you in the back suddenly thinking there is technology in the monastery, because there isn’t. T’Pol just said so. “I don’t like dropping in on people unannounced,” Archer claims. But he’s not going to let that stop him. T’Pol gives the others stricter instructions than I got when I went to the museum on a school trip in fourth grade. Don’t touch, don’t talk, don’t take, and for logic’s sake don’t embarrass me!
They arrive at the temple from the last scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and walk its empty halls. They come to a closed door that has been abused. “The temple is 3000 years old, Commander. You can’t expect it to be in pristine condition,” T’Pol surmises as she pulls on a 3000-year-old macramé bell-ringing rope. No one answers, so, naturally, Archer barges in. There is only one Vulcan monk inside, who apparently didn’t hear the director say, “Action.” T’Pol walks over to give him his cue, and we viewers get to see why Archer always has her walk in front. Yowsa. They could have just painted her brown. They did it with those dancing girls in the pilot. Archer pans across the room, and, judging from the huge face he sees on one wall, these monks worship the Big Giant Head, who was played by William Shatner, and I think my references just lapped themselves. T’Pol returns to Archer with bad news. “He says we have arrived at the time of Kohlinar.” They aren’t giving tours, and the gift shop’s closed. Archer is bummed. T’Pol requests a souvenir pet rock, and while the monk goes off to retrieve it, T’Pol notes some minor discrepancies. “The icon in that shrine is perched at an odd angle.” Based on that solid foundation, Archer launches into the first use of a skill that will serve him many times in this episode, blathering on about nothing in particular while sneakily doing something else. In this case, searching the room. Eventually, Archer spots the reflection of a blue guy in some bric-a-brac, and points him out to Trip. Archer and Trip smash through a dividing screen that was probably older than human democracy and tackle the Andorian. As they wrestle the blue meanie to the floor, his three buddies come in and capture everyone.
The prisoners are taken to the back room of the monastery, where all the other monks have been confined. The lead Andorian (Jeffery Combs, ask for him by name) confronts the head monk. “Why didn’t you tell us one of your people was aboard?” Mr. Monk is as flummoxed as anyone by T’Pol’s presence, and yet, he knows the Enterprise comes from Earth. The Andorians have never heard of the place. Archer tries to explain, “It’s where we’re from. It’s our homeworld.” The Andorian leader doesn’t believe the humans just showed up out of curiosity. “Liar! What’s your mission?” I wonder what language everyone is speaking. Let’s just assume human have real-time translators that are really good at Vulcan, and the Andorians are speaking that language to better harass the monks. Five bucks I just put more thought into it than they did. Jeff the Andorian accuses Archer, “Are you a supply ship bringing them more surveillance equipment?” He wasn’t watching earlier in the show. These Vulcans have no technology. Archer denies everything and asks Jeff what the Andorians are doing there. He gets socked in the stomach for his trouble. Looks like he has a glass gut. While Archer lies on the floor gasping for air, Jeff rants about how the humans are working with the Vulcans for some as yet ill-defined nefarious purpose, coming off very paranoid. “This is far more than a sanctuary,” Jeff says, before storming off dramatically. One of the other Andorians feels the need to make a crude, sleazy sexual comment to T’Pol before departing, not quite so dramatically.
Once all the Andorians have made their dramatic exits and locked everyone else in the room, T’Pol tells Archer about Andorians. “They are known for their suspicious and volatile nature.” Archer, suffering from a crushed spleen, is inclined to believe her. The Vulcans and Andorians are bad neighbors, and have been fighting for years. “They resent our superior reasoning, and our technology,” T’Pol explains. According to our Vulcan friends, the Andorians believe the Vulcans are ready to conquer them any minute now, and that the monastery is actually a cover for a “long range sensor array” used to spy on Andor, Andoria, who knows. The head monk assures Archer, “There are no spies here, and no technology.” In case you forgot, no technology whatsoever. Nuh uh. The Andorians have searched this monastery on two previous occasions, found nothing, and left. Thanks to Archer’s curiosity and legendary bad timing, things are worse this time. Vulcan Toady #1 lays the trouble on Archer, where it belongs. “You endangered us all.”
And now, a segment I like to call How It Began. On the Enterprise, Reed and Hoshi are looking at sensor data and bantering. Everything Hoshi says, Reed responds to by saying, “Maybe that should be standard procedure.” The things Hoshi says are, “They went to visit some monks. Why would they scan for alien ships?” and, “You can’t expect them to check in every ten minutes.” Thus ends How It Began. Now, back to our plot.
Jeff the Andorian punches the camera. It falls over. “Where is the sensor array?” Jeff demands, and the view pulls back to show us that it was actually Archer getting his ass kicked. When Archer denies knowing about one, Jeff asks again, louder, because that always works. Archer denies it more forcefully. “You humans obviously have emotions,” Jeff notices approvingly. He wonders why humans would ally themselves with emotionless Vulcans in that case. The question evolves into why Archer picked a Vulcan science officer. “She was assigned to us by Vulcan High Command.” We don’t take orders from them or anything. They just assign people to fly on our ships. Ship. Archer is about to swallow another blue knuckle sandwich when his communicator chirps, distracting Jeff. Jeff approaches the communicator like an ape confronted with a monolith, and works out how to open it. Reed is on the horn, and Jeff explains that Archer “is a prisoner of the Andorian Imperial Guard.” Jeff threatens to kill the hostages if Enterprise makes any attempt to approach the surface. Then he smashes the communicator with his fist. Reed foolishly tries all the communicators, so they all get smashed. Reed orders a shuttle prepped for launch, because he’s mad with power and wants to keep command of the Enterprise. To Mayweather, who points out the flaw in Reed’s rescue plan, Reed explains, “I don’t take orders from a comm voice, Ensign, not unless that voice is the Captain’s.” He then gets Hoshi to pull up info about the Andorians from the Vulcan files that were proven to be inaccurate earlier in the episode. Will that matter? Watch and see.
At the monastery, the two Andorians who aren’t menacing the hostages haven’t found the hidden sensor array yet. Because there isn’t one, because there is no technology here. The Vulcans said so. The subordinate hostage-menacer suggests, “Perhaps if we decapitate on or two of those monks, he’ll start telling us the truth.” And even if not, it’s fun.
Back in the monk corral, head monk has a chat with T’Pol. She reveals, “I was given a nasal numbing agent,” to combat the stench of humanity. The door opens, and two Andorians throw Archer to the ground, most roughly. Archer tells the monks, “They’re gonna start killing you people if they don’t find what they’re looking for.” Archer expects Reed to mount a rescue mission, but T’Pol is dubious. “I didn’t recruit my tactical officer to sit on his butt when he’s threatened. The Andorians smashed our communicators,” he continues. Oh, if only the Vulcans had a radio. But, alas, they have no technology. “The longer we’re out of contact, the more likely Malcolm will put together a landing party.” Consider the stakes raised. The head monk speaks up. “There is an option. A transmitter. It’s very old.” What?! A radio? But, there’s not supposed to be any technology on this world. I’m sure it was just an oversight, something that got left behind by the construction crew. It turns out there are hidden catacombs under the monastery where they hide their precious relics and dead people. The head monk goes over to a wall and opens the secret passageway. Convenient, it being in the same room like that. Toady #1 leads Trip down to have a look. Oh, no. Please, not that. Anything but that!
Augh! It is! The cave set! Toady #1 leads Trip down a narrow passage. Trip notices a side passage, leading upward, with three lights at the far end, two up high and one lower. They walk past some dead guys standing up against a wall. That’s what I call uptight. Don’t even relax when they’re dead. As the Vulcan veers right, Trip notices another downward passage to the left. “The reliquary. Our most sacred artifacts are kept there.” Trip gets his hands on the radio and starts fiddling with it.
It is night, and two Andorians storm into the hostage storeroom. Do they suspect foul play is afoot? Will Trip’s absence be noticed? However will they get out of this one? Oh, there’s Trip, curled up in the fetal position by the wall. Satisfied, the Andorians leave. Trip leaps up and continues his work on the transmitter. Heh, he snookered ‘em. Over in the corner, Archer and T’Pol argue about who is more likely to freeze to death if they don’t wrap up in the one blanket between them. Archer gives in. Fine, I’ll be comfortable while you suffer, if you insist. Archer asks T’Pol, “Do the Andorians have a transporter?” They don’t. Archer thinks they could beam down an assault team. T’Pol objects, “For what? A firefight in close quarters? With a dozen monks at risk?” Yep, pretty much. Archer tries to convince T’Pol to snuggle up with him under the blanket, but her Humans-Don’t-Smell has worn off, so she doesn’t wanna. Finally, she does, though. “Tensions between Vulcan and Andoria are already high. Any casualties would only make matters worse,” T’Pol reasons. Can matters get any worse? Could be raining. They argue some more. She calls him an Andorian for advocating a violent response. He calls her “So damned enlightened,” just before staring down an eavesdropping monk. He questions her loyalty. She replies, “I have never disobeyed your orders.” Then, she rolls over and steals the covers.
On the ship, Hoshi picks up a weak communication from the surface. It’s Trip. He tells Reed what’s what, and passes along Archer’s order to sit tight until a plan reveals itself. Reed doesn’t like it. He’s been in space nine weeks already and he’s hardly gotten to invade anything.
The monks have laid out a map of the catacombs with Go chips, and Archer is quizzing them about it. There’s no way out of the monastery through them. The reliquary is off limits. “To enter would be blasphemy.” So, is faith an emotion or not? This being a Vulcan business is confuzzilating. Trip remembers the side tunnel with the lights from his journey onto the cave set. By use of a dissolve, the lights Trip saw at the end of the tunnel are implied to be the openings in the Big Giant Head statue in the room where the Andorians are based.
In the Head room, the subordinate Andorians are starting to think maybe there isn’t a sensor array here after all. Jeff remains convinced. “Vulcans are very deceptive. It’s here. I’m sure of it.” Oh those zany, mixed up, paranoid Andorians. If only they could see how utterly wrong they are. From the other room, Archer calls out to attract the Andorians’ attention. They come running. Waiting beside the door, Archer slips a little green figure into his sleeve. When Jeff enters, Archer steps in close and whispers, “I need to speak with you alone. I have some information for you.” None of the Vulcans could possibly think Archer is doing anything underhanded, what with his hollering and stage whispering and all. I think the Andorians should trust that Archer is on the level and listen to what he has to say. What have they got to lose?
All four Andorians haul Archer into the Head room and wait for him to start talking. That was their first mistake. Archer uses his rant and ramble ability again, and the Andorians have the good sense to start beating him for it. Archer proves his firm grasp on a wide variety of useless information while he lets himself get kicked and punched across the room to the Big Giant Head. He chucks the little figurine he had hidden in his sleeve into the mouth of the Big Giant Head just as the Andorians get fed up and drag him back to the holding chamber. Jeff looks at the camera, a “What the hell was that all about?” look on his face.
Down in the catacombs, Trip goes into the tunnel with the lights and finds the green figurine. Thus proving that the tunnel did indeed lead to the back of the Big Giant Head. And I’m sure there was a perfectly valid reason why they couldn’t just sneak up the tunnel and peek out the mouth. Like, the script was four minutes short. Trip comes back out of the tunnel and shows the figure to T’Pol’s pelvis and Archer, who is nursing his latest in a long series of bloody facial injuries. “You know what to do, Commander,” Archer orders without giving away the plan to the audience. “I don’t have to tell you, Captain, that we don’t condone the actions you are about to take,” the head monk says. “Then shut up,” I wish Archer had said. He actually says, “Just try to stay out of the way and everything’ll work out fine.” A hint of Meaningful Glance passes between head monk and Toady #1.
On the ship, Hoshi, Reed, and two cannon fodder walk up to the transporter pad. Reed and one of the extras get on the pad. I thought the thing was only certified for one person at a time, max. The other extra hesitates to get into the transporter. “We’ve heard stories, sir. It might not be safe.” Reed orders him to throw away his life in the hazardous machine. Reed gives the command, “Energize, before we change our minds.” Unfortunately, the three of them do not arrive as some huge, amorphous, six-armed, six-legged, protoplasmic blob. They probably don’t have the budget for that.
On the planet, the Andorian working the sensor board detects “some kind of energy distortion,” i.e. the transporter beam. In the prisoners’ room, Reed and the extras are hustled into the secret passage before the Andorians can arrive to find out what just happened. “We detected an energy surge,” Jeff accuses. “Perhaps you have faulty equipment,” suggests T’Pol, who has no faulty equipment. Jeff leaves one Andorian in the room while he goes back outside to work on paperwork or whatever. It’s about time these people invented the guard.
In the tunnel, Reed and his merry band of demolitionists make their way to the Big Giant Head tunnel. Meanwhile, the Andorian guard tries to hit on T’Pol again, and blows up when Trip makes a snide aside. “Did you say something, pink-skin?” Trip denies even having vocal cords. Reed, in a move he’s been waiting six episodes to pull off, plants plastic explosives on the back face of the, um, face. Also meanwhile, the Andorian running the sensors detects three new humans, but can’t tell exactly where they are.
In the prisoners’ chamber, the guard just keeps getting sleazier. He says to T’Pol, “I’ve heard about your mating rituals, that Vulcan women force their men to fight each other to the death.” He offers to kill someone for her. How sweet. Archer, his face one solid swollen mass, tries to defend her. “Would you like me to kill him?” Okay, I know we’re supposed to dislike these people, but come on! Get this guy a gold chain and a combover.
Reed sets off the explosives, blowing out the Big Giant Head and bringing to a welcome end the Andorian guard’s chat-up. Trip wrestles the guard for his gun, and gets knocked over. Reed’s assault team leaps out of the face, pistols set on stun, and gun down one of the bad guys. One of the nameless good guys does his job and also gets hit to increase drama without removing any main characters from action. Dunno if he was stunned, but he doesn’t die. Everyone jumps behind cover and trades shots. The Andorians jump into the hole where the face used to be, so the humans head off to release the prisoners.
Archer is still fighting with the guard for control of the gun. I’m still disappointed they don’t have peppier fight music. The guard flips Archer over his shoulder and raises the gun to fire. Just then, by the law of dramatic timing, Reed enters and zaps the bad guy. The head Vulcan takes being rescued kind of badly. “I hope you’re pleased, Captain. You’ve turned a place of solitude into a war zone.” Yep, I’m pretty pleased. Thanks for asking. Archer takes a spare phase pistol from the remaining spare security guy, and T’Pol gets her scanner dingus. It’s round this week. Vulcan Toady #1 stands up, Andorian rifle in hand. “I’m going with you.” Head monk disapproves. Toady insists. “We must protect what is ours.” Everyone piles into the cave set for the big finale.
They search the tunnels for something to shoot. T’Pol’s scanner detects them down the tunnel to the reliquary. Toady #1 tries to prevent them from going in. “Only members of the high order are allowed to go inside.” He volunteers to go in alone to disarm the Andorians. Archer outthinks the Vulcan, “The Andorians have seen your sacred relics. A couple humans won’t make much of a difference,” and steps past him into the tunnel. The others follow.
The two Andorians are in a chamber stacked floor to ceiling with pottery and metalwork of various sorts. They don’t have much time to look around before the shooting starts. Everyone takes defensive positions and starts blowing the holy hell out of the relics. Metal seems to be immune to the Andorians’ weapons. A stray shot from Toady #1 cuts a tapestry half off its curtain rod. Reed is the first to notice an oddly sophisticated metal structure hidden behind the tapestry. With the blue guys shooting at him, Archer pulls the tapestry out of the way so everyone can see the large circular hatch, then he pushes the button to open it. Luckily, Andorians are terrible shots. The gunfight halts as the door rolls open, revealing, to everyone’s shock and dismay, something they don’t want to show us yet. “Hold your fire!” Archer shouts through swollen lips. “You might want to take a look at this.” Everyone steps through the doorway, into what we can now see is a very large, highly technological underground base, presumably the long-range sensor array the Andorians believed was here the whole time. Archer angrily orders T’Pol, “Take all the pictures you can,” of the facility with her scanner. What do you know? Apparently the Vulcans were lying the whole time. Gosh, I never saw that one coming. I am in such complete and utter shock, I don’t know if I can keep going. My entire worldview is in turmoil. Good is evil! Black is white! Rap is music! Aaaahhhh!!!!
Okay, I’m better.
Suddenly, Vulcan Toady #1 has his borrowed gun pointed at the back of Archer’s head. “Place your weapons on the ground. I will kill him if necessary.” Archer’s had enough of this crap. He whips around and cold-cocks the Vulcan before he knew what hit him, so to speak. “They’ve got enough equipment down there to see what any Andorian is having for breakfast,” Reed states, happy to have an active role in the episode. T’Pol finishes photographing the place. Archer tells her, “Give it to him,” referring to the scanner and the Andorian. She doesn’t want to, but she does. Jeff the Andorian suspects a trick, but takes it from her. Archer tells Jeff to leave. “How do we know you won’t attack our ship?” Geez, man, you won, you paranoid blue freak. T’Pol uses Reed’s communicator to contact the Enterprise. “The Andorian ship will be leaving the surface momentarily. They’re free to go.” Unable to think of anything else to get angry about, Jeff turns to leave. Before he goes, he tells Archer, “We’re in your debt.” Oh, and sorry about all the blood loss and fractures. One by one, cast members walk off, leaving T’Pol standing there in what should by rights be her shame. It’s at times like this that I think maybe Vulcans are an offshoot of Romulans, and not the other way around.