Instead of starting this episode in the mess hall, they opt to begin in the situation room, where the main cast has gathered for the morning “What kind of trouble can we get into?” meeting. Archer enters and asks what looks promising. T’Pol tells him, “We have detected several phenomena.” Doot Doo, dee dee doo. Phenomena. Doot Doo Deedoo. Phenomena. Doot Doo, dee dee doo, dee dee doo, dee dee doo, dah-di-dah-do dit doo doo doodoodoo. Anyway, T’Pol lists off a few of the options: a supernova, a cluster of three neutron stars, and, oh yeah, an inhabited planet. All the non-Vulcans are giddy at the prospect of going to the strange new world. No, wait, that was the one with the LSD pollen. This is “Civilization.” How long until we see episodes titled, “New Life,” “To Boldly Go,” or “Five Year Mission”? Referring to the planet where the rest of the episode is set, Archer smugs to T’Pol, “You might have put that at the top of the list.”

They approach the planet and go into orbit 500 kilometers high. Reed fails to spot any ships or satellites. Hoshi detects “dozens of cities on each continent.” Archer stops to think for once and realizes they shouldn’t hail the planet until they know a thing or two, like whether they have radios, what language to speak, fiddly details like that. T’Pol has one answer for him. “I’m not detecting any EM transmissions.” That’s radio waves, folks. No waves means no radios. “Pre-industrial?” Trip asks. I can’t tell if he’s excited or shocked. Archer has Hoshi zoom in the main screen on one of the population centers. They spot one of the sailboats the aliens use. Archer has a Moment of Melodrama. “It’s almost like going back in time,” he muses. Yeah, because traveling across space and discovering aliens is so dull. It turns out Trip is excited after all. He can’t wait to get down there and break something. “I’d advise against that,” T’Pol advises, as sure as entropy. “It’s standard protocol to wait until a society develops warp drive before initiating first contact.” Trip, speaking for humanity as a whole, rejects the notion based purely on its Vulcan origin. “There’s no way to know how our arrival would affect their society.” Here it is folks. It only took eight episodes to discover the origin of the Prime Directive. I’m starting to think that, sometime between this show and the original series, the Vulcans got fed up and conquered humanity, set up the Federation, then lied to everyone about what happened so the humans would think all the Vulcan rules were really their idea. Still, maybe this episode will be about how humanity ignored the wisdom of the PD and caused such a tragedy as to drive them to accept it. T’Pol wants to study the planet using ship’s sensors only. Archer has Hoshi zoom in the view from the CGI landscape to the crane shot of the pre-industrial alien city street set. She zooms in close enough to see the aliens’ faces. “They don’t look so different,” Archer points out to Trip. Archer gives a little speech to T’Pol about how humans directly exploring a planet is better than just probing. “You’d be recognized immediately as outsiders,” she argues. “Not if we look like them,” Archer replies. Things were easier in the old days when all the aliens looked human.

Hoshi is at her station listening to the speech of the aliens. “The acoustic relay is picking up dozens of languages,” she tells Archer. “I could spend the next ten years studying this place.” Realistically, she’d have to. Of course, realistically, they couldn’t pick up sound waves from orbit anyway. She plays Archer a snippet. It’s like Esperanto and Klingon had a dozen kids, all of whom are talking at the same time. Hoshi has only one useful word translated so far. “Acale. It’s the name of their species.”

In Archer’s ready room, T’Pol proposes the away team land at a farm, to minimize cultural contamination. “This must be why aliens are always landing in corn fields,” Archer jokes. But how does that explain crop circles? They leave the room wondering whom they should send first.

We go now to sickbay, where Dr. Phlox is applying alien head bump makeup to Hoshi while Archer haunts the background. Doesn’t he have a ship to run? “It should stand up to scrutiny, as long as you don’t look too close.” True to character, Hoshi worries. “Are you sure I’m the right person for this?” she asks Archer. She looks good with her hair down, by the way. Archer explains that her natural ability with language will be useful when the universal translator breaks. If. Did I say when? If. Phlox’s artistic temperament is unsatisfied with the asymmetry of Hoshi’s head, but Archer won’t let him fix it. T’Pol calls from the bridge.

When Archer arrives, T’Pol explains. “I’m detecting neutrino emissions from a city on the eastern continent.” She supposes an antimatter reactor is to blame. “Those people don’t even have indoor plumbing yet,” Trip exclaims, having left his post to check out Hoshi’s peasant duds. “Maybe we’re not the first visitors,” Archer deduces. So much for seeing what happens the first time Starfleet interferes with a virgin society. T’Pol scans for “non-indigenous bio-signs,” or, aliens other than the other aliens. She doesn’t see any, because the sensors that picked Archer out of a Suliban-populated space station and located Reed amongst a cave full of Terra Novans suddenly don’t have the definition to spot one third party alien at a range of 500 kilometers. Archer decides he, Trip, and T’Pol now need to join Hoshi on her planetary tour.

The shuttle launches. Inside, Hoshi hands out forged ID papers to everyone. Trip notices T’Pol’s pointy ear sticking out through her hair extensions, and, rather than saying, “Hey, I can see your ear,” he mimes it at her, spinning his finger at the side of his head in the “cuckoo” motion. She works it out and carefully moves the one prosthetic over the other. They land at night in a field.

Have you noticed in the Shallow Hal commercials you never see the fat woman’s face? And I’m really sick of those “Truth” ads about tobacco. They make me want to smoke just to spite them.

The away team walks in on a Renaissance Festival. Huzzah! Actually, I don’t think these folks have had a Renaissance yet. Hoshi has a hood on. Why didn’t they give T’Pol the hood to hide her ears? Hoshi and T’Pol sneak into an out of the way alley so T’Pol can scan the area without notice. I’d have been suspicious just seeing them sneak into the alley. Hoshi peeks around a corner and comes face to mottled, pockmarked face with one of the natives. Just to be clear, he’s ugly in a new way, on top of his alien ugliness. The ladies decide to relocate.

Elsewhere, Archer and Trip are skulking down the alien street set, wearing hoods to hide the makeup they went to so much trouble to apply. The only one not to get a hood was the only one who needs it. Okay, I’m obsessing. I’ll stop. Archer’s hand scanner picks up something. They find the place they’re looking for. “The reactor’s about eight meters under this building,” Trip describes. Archer identifies the building as a curio shop and the door as being locked. In the middle of the night. Go figure. A citizen walks by to add false tension. Archer concludes, “I guess we’ll have to wait until morning.” Trip has a better idea. He produces some sort of lockpick and sets to work, Archer keeping lookout. From an alley across the street, a shadowy figure watches them. Trip opens the door just as someone else shows up to walk past. They hurry inside and wait for the footsteps to recede before ransacking the place. Before looking around, anyway. My way’s more fun. As they snoop, Archer calls T’Pol. “I think we found what we’re looking for.” T’Pol and Hoshi head that way. Trip calls Archer into the back room. Just as he leaves, the front door opens again and a shadowy figure enters. Is this the same shadowy figure, or a new one? The figure turns, and his face is exposed to light. Hey, it’s a hot alien babe! I wonder whether she’ll be the good person who mistakenly thinks the heroes are villains until she realizes her error and becomes the love interest and/or staunch ally, or the bad person who uses her feminine wiles to entrap Captain Virtue until her love for him forces her to abandon her evil ways and give her life in some stupidly romantic-for-TV way.

Trip and Archer are standing at a door. “It’s gotta be through here,” Trip says. “Neutrino emissions are off the scale.” He reaches for the handle, but a sheet of blue energy blocks his hand. “There’s some kind of magnetic barrier,” he diagnoses. The formerly shadowy figure sees the discharge from the other room, and is taken aback. As Archer asks Trip to disable the field, she raises a collapsible hand crossbow. They hear the door creak as she enters the room and gets the drop on them. “Who are you?” she asks. Fair question. Archer tries a lie. “We’re collectors. We’re picking up an antique,” he says, pulling back his hood to confront her with the full force of his captainly good looks. She doesn’t buy it or him. “I’ve been watching the shop for weeks. I know all about your ‘evening deliveries’.” Ah-ha! Mistaken villainy. “People are getting sick. Some are even dying because of what’s going on in here. Did you know that?” she explains, apropos of nothing. With no other way to end the scene, T’Pol arrives and stuns Mystery Babe from behind. Probably thought she was hitting on Trip. “Try not to shoot anyone else while we’re here,” Archer admonishes her. Archer catches the women up on the plot, and T’Pol recommends they leave before the sun comes up. “What about her?” Trip asks, earning a dirty look from T’Pol. Archer pulls Mystery Babe’s ID papers off her body and has Hoshi translate it. “Her name is Riann. She’s an apothecary.” Armed with this knowledge, Archer orders the others back to the shuttle while he takes care of business, if you know what I mean. Actually, I don’t even know what I mean.

It’s morning, and Riann wakes with a start, apparently in her own bed. Archer must have carried her to 1 Apothecary Lane. “What did you do to me?” she accuses Archer, who’s standing on the far side of the room. She’s awfully calm for someone who fell unconscious and woke up with a strange, potentially evil man in her room. Archer tells her she “just collapsed.” Again she doesn’t believe him. Has Archer ever told a convincing lie? I’ll have to check my notes. She asks him, “Did Garos tell you to [bring me home]?” Archer knows no Garos. That, she believes. She tells him Garos owns the curio shop. Archer insists, “I just wanted to make sure you got home all right.” He moves as if to leave, but she stops him. Classic maneuver. She asks him why he was in the shop if not on henchman duty. “There’s something strange going on in that shop. I don’t know what, exactly, but I’m trying to figure it out.” Having laid down a foundation of almost-truth, he builds a house of not-quite-lies. “I’m an investigator. From another city.” Finally, he found a line that works on her. He mentions that she mentioned a sickness. “I wanted to came back tomorrow and talk to you about it. Will you be here?” Looking more than ready to move on to the love interest part of her character arc, she nods agreement. He tells her his name is John. “How far away is this city?” she asks in reply. Because John isn’t a common name here. Because they’re aliens. And she seems to be quite the clever one.

From the surface, Archer is asking Reed for options. Torpedoes won’t dent the force field, and ship’s sensors can’t penetrate it. The area underneath the shop is equally scan-resistant. Having struck out with the ship’s resources, the away team starts looking for other ways to fill out the hour. “Riann said something about people getting sick,” Archer recalls. He keeps bringing that up. Hoshi identifies the extra-ugly aliens as the diseased ones. Trip has a simple idea. “If we could get one of these people to the ship, Dr. Phlox might be able to tell us what’s wrong with them.” T’Pol objects to performing an alien abduction. “Maybe we should talk to the shopkeeper first.”

Archer and Trip enter the curio shop and are greeted by a salesman. Archer sticks it to Trip. “My friend here is an amateur collector.” I always get embarrassed watching people try to be something they aren’t, so I’ll skip ahead. While Trip has the shopkeeper distracted, Archer scans him and discovers he is, in fact, not native to this planet. The shopkeeper whips out his own scanner doodad and discovers smarmily that Archer ain’t from around here neither.

There’s a contest to win a walk-on role on a future episode of Enterprise, if anyone’s interested.

Still in the shop, Garos the shopkeeper asks Archer who he is. Archer gives his name, rank, and planet of origin. “Earth? I never heard of it.” Yeah, it’s new. Garos explains himself to them. “I’m an explorer as well. At least I used to be. I’m from the Mellurian system. Two years ago I led a survey mission to study the Acale. We had no plans to remain here, but after a few months I found myself quite taken with these people. So, I decided to stay.” I recommend you pick 5 words from that to believe and disregard the rest. Side note: The Mellurians are one of the species destroyed by Nomad in the Original Series episode in which it appears. Archer, quite reasonably I think, asks him, “Why do you have an antimatter reactor in your basement?” Garos claims, “The reactor powers a fabrication device. It allows me to make food and clothing.” He doesn’t explain why he can’t buy off the rack like everyone else. Our heroes don’t buy it. Archer mentions the mystery illness. “Some people seem to think you’re the cause of it.” Garos instantly know it was Riann who told them. “She’s been making baseless accusations against me for months.” Garos claims a virus is causing the illness, but due to the local ignorance of germ theory they blame the outsider, him, instead. Archer asks to look at the reactor, but another customer walks into the shop just then, giving Garos an excuse to refuse.

Outside the shop, Trip and Archer voice their doubts. “His reactor’s got an awful lot of power for a fabrication device,” Archer observes. Trip adds, “He could probably feed and clothe half the continent with it.” They know this because of their long experience with antimatter-powered fabrication devices. Archer calls T’Pol to leave the shuttle and meet him in town.

Riann is sitting at her table when a knock at the door interrupts her. Archer comes in at her call, T’Pol in tow. Archer makes introductions. “You have a lot in common. T’Pol’s a scientist as well.” While Archer keeps Riann distracted, T’Pol surreptitiously scans various things in Riann’s lab. Meanwhile, Riann is working on something with a large chemistry set sprawled all over her kitchen table. Archer tries to get Riann to tell him more about the illness, but she gets him to tell her why he is interested in Garos instead. “We were trying to get into [Garos’] basement. We think there’s some kind of machine there, something he’s not supposed to have…. It may be indirectly related to this epidemic.” She agrees to talk. “At first I thought it was some kind of airborne contagion, but it never spread beyond this part of the city. I’ve sampled the soil, the water, I can’t find anything out of the ordinary.” In other words, Garos’ story is a crock. T’Pol dips a paper wick into Riann’s water sample while no one is looking. Riann shows Archer a map of all the sick people. They all live within a few hundred meters of Garos’ shop. That’s gotta run down property values. Archer moves on to the subject of late night deliveries, which Riann had mentioned in her first scene. “Every few nights, someone carries crates from the shop to various places outside the city,” which disappear by morning. Archer finally asks Riann what she’s making with all the science gear. “Tea,” she explains. “Would you like some?” T’Pol pulls Archer aside and tells him she’s ready to go. Archer orders the rest back to the ship. Meanwhile, he’s staying on the planet to check out Garos more thoroughly. T’Pol warns him about causing cultural contamination by staying too long. I think actual contamination is the bigger problem at the moment, as does Archer. As she leaves, T’Pol tells Archer, “Enjoy your tea.” And A.

On the ship, Phlox is impressed by the level of advancement of Riann’s forensic science techniques, and tells T’Pol so. “Had this woman been born on Vulcan, or Earth, I’m sure she would have made a fine physician.” Phlox scans the water sample T’Pol brought back. The water’s full of tetracyanate-622. The worst kind. It’s a highly toxic industrial lubricant. Phlox judges that if this gunk has made it into the groundwater, it could easily be the cause of the illness. That would mean people are pulling their water straight up out of the ground in the vicinity of the shop, instead of some sort of common well system. Maybe Trip was wrong and they do have indoor plumbing.

It’s night on the planet again, and two shadowy figures lurk in the alley across from the curio shop. Except we can see they are Archer and Riann. She is writing in a book and mumbling. They make small talk until Archer’s universal translator breaks. The actress is quite adept at making gibberish sound like she’s saying something. To hide his attempt to repair his translator, which is apparently built into his communicator, Archer leans in and lays a big wet one on Riann. He can only hope that that is one way the locals show affection. How universal is the smooch? He finally gets it fixed, to his own disappointment. “Someone was walking this way, but he turned,” he claims. “I thought, if we pretended to be….” She accepts, but is disappointed by his explanation. Of course, she’s always known when he lies, so maybe she’s only pretending to believe him. Suddenly, a man comes out of the back door of the curio shop, carrying a crate. He loads it onto a wagon, followed by two more. He wheels the wagon away, and Archer and Riann follow him out of town.

The man pushes the wagon out of town into a wooded area where, as his followers watch, he unloads it. He pulls out a strange device and speaks into it in an unintelligible language. Then, he pushes his empty wagon away. Archer and Riann move forward to look inside a crate, but a light from above interrupts them. A shuttle of unknown but presumably Mellurian origin hovers over the boxes, opens its cargo doors, and lifts the crates into itself with a tractor beam, all in full sight of Riann. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” she asks Archer, awestruck. “Actually,” he replies, “I have.” The elaboration will have to wait. It’s time for a gun battle. A blast from nowhere startles them, and they hide in a bush. Archer pulls out his phase pistol, tells Riann to stay put, and goes after the bad guy. She can’t help but peek, though, which turns out to be a good thing. She sees the shooter and warns Archer, who didn’t. It quickly becomes a fistfight as both guys try to recover the guns they dropped when they tackled each other. Archer wins, of course, knocking the bad guy over a boulder, face first, onto the ground. As Archer moves to pound the guy’s head into the dirt, he notices the other guy’s skin is loose and shiny, like a badly applied latex mask. Archer peels back the fake face to reveal a scaly, lizard-like visage beneath. Hey, it’s the aliens from the groundbreaking NBC TV miniseries V! He wakes up and starts to skitter away, but Archer reaches his phase pistol and stuns him. Riann walks up and sees the half-torn face of the alien. “It’s all right,” Archer assures her. “He’s not dead.” If I were her, that wouldn’t be reassuring. As Archer loots the body, Riann asks him, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, John?”

As Archer and Riann head back to town, he fills her in on who and what he really is. She knows everything by the time they break back into Garos’ shop. She takes the news surprisingly well. Mostly, she doesn’t understand why anyone able to travel from one star to another would come to her jerkwater little one-horse planet. Archer can’t give her a good answer, but he thinks he does. He uses one of the doodads he stole from the Mellurian in the woods to disable the force field on the door so they can get into the basement. They walk in and discover yet another use for the Cave Set: Secret Mellurian Mining Operation. They come to another door, which Archer’s stolen remote opens, and find the antimatter reactor just sitting there in the middle of the room, next to a console. Through a window, he overlooks the rest of the highly mechanized mine.

T’Pol, in command of the Enterprise, is receiving Archer’s report. “They’re mining some kind of Viridium isotope,” he says. The main use for the stuff is explosives. Archer adds, “The drill bits are saturated in [tetracyanate].” Deciding that taking out the reactor will end all the problems, Archer runs through his options. “I can’t use my phase pistol. I’d risk blowing up half the city.” Trip volunteers to come down and try to disable it. “I doubt that we have that much time. Our best shot is the transporter.” However, the shield preventing Enterprise’s sensors from seeing into the area is still intact, and will need to be shut off first.

Archer and Riann start looking at the console next to the reactor, trying to find anything that might turn off the energy shield. Not being able to read the language is a hindrance. Riann spots a display showing the streets and buildings above them, with a circle around the curio shop. There are two possible buttons they can push, either of which might turn off the shield. Unfortunately, neither one is labeled, “Off.” Archer and Riann argue over which button to push before Archer goes ahead and pushes the button he wanted to push in the first place. Alarms go off and all the doors to the room slam shut. Archer frantically and repeatedly pushes the other button, to no effect.

On the Enterprise, Mayweather spots a new ship. “It must have been in a geosynchronous orbit on the other side of the planet.” Not quite, but it’ll do. Immediately, they get hailed from the planet. It’s Garos. “I suggest you leave this system at once, or my ship will open fire.” Not too clear on the concept of suggestion, is he? He also claims Archer is dead. The Mellurian ship fires on the Enterprise, breaking one of the main steam lines behind the science station. Garos threatens to do worse, then breaks communication.

On the planet, Archer is not dead. He’s not any better off than when we left him either. He’s still pushing buttons at random. Garos shows up at a window on the far side of the chamber. Archer points out to him that their activities are killing Acale citizens. He replies villainously, “There are 500 million Acale on this planet. A few thousand won’t be missed.” Archer thinks that’s just rude. Garos offers to let Archer go if he promises never to come back. He then lies again, saying, “We’ve instructed your ship to send down a launch vehicle to take you and the woman.” Archer, take the deal. You can’t save them all, so save the hot one who digs you. Archer, meanwhile, keeps fiddling with the controls. Garos tells him to step away from the console, which Archer thinks is significant. He hands Riann his phase pistol and tells her to shoot anyone who tries to enter the room.

In orbit, Enterprise is being chased by a much larger ship. T’Pol orders, “Prepare to leave orbit on my order.” That rubs Trip the wrong way. “Belay that!” T’Pol pulls rank to get Mayweather to continue. Trip calls Engineering, “Prepare to vent the nacelles, on my order!” Trip is determined to stay. Then, T’Pol explains. “I didn’t say ‘Leave orbit,’ I said ‘Prepare to leave orbit.’” She’s just buying time.

Downstairs, Archer finally figures out what buttons to push to turn off everything and open the door. He and Riann head out.

Upstairs, Hoshi notices the energy shield is gone, and Reed gets the coordinates of the reactor. Trip rushes to the transporter room even as the enemy ship fires again, depolarizing the forward hull plating. That’s like the shields being down. It’s bad. T’Pol calls for evasive maneuvers and return fire. The enemy has real shields that absorb the dinky Starfleet torpedoes. Captain Archer calls from the planet to check in. He and Riann are back out on the street. They try to act casual while Archer talks into his hand and the bad guys look over the crowd for them.

On the ship, Trip almost has a transporter lock on the reactor. However, Hoshi brings up a valid point. “Even if we get the reactor, how are we going to keep them from taking it back?” Ever a ray of sunshine, that one. T’Pol gets That Look on her face. “If they want it so badly, perhaps we should give it to them.” No one understands, but T’Pol has A Plan.

In town, the jig is up. A bad guy pulls a gun out of his robes and kills the planter Archer and Riann hid behind when they saw him. The humble villagers are confused and dismayed. They run for their lives. They’re humble, not stupid. Archer stuns the one bad guy just as two more show up from the other direction, pinning them back down.

Trip has finally gotten a lock on the reactor, and is ready to transport it. Reed loads another torpedo, and T’Pol gives Trip his cue to beam his little heart out. The reactor disappears from the underground base and appears on the transporter pad. Before it even gets done sparkling, Trip sends it away again, this time into open space between Enterprise and the enemy ship. Reed fires his torpedo, apparently having gotten that aiming problem from an earlier episode worked out. It hits the reactor just as the enemy ship closes in on it. The explosion knocks out the enemy shields. “Come about, Ensign,” T’Pol orders. “Target their weapons array.”

Riann pokes her head up over the planter she and Archer are hiding behind, sees something important, and comes back down. “The oil lamp,” she tells Archer, shorthand for, “Shoot the oil lamp so it will explode all over the bad guys.” She has to spell it out for him. He shoots, it explodes, and the bad guys fling themselves across the set and play dead. Archer calls the ship and finds out they took care of the reactor and the attacking ship all without his help. Archer decides to let everyone live, as long as they leave. Archer hands the bad guys their guns. Garos pulls his handheld multipurpose device off his belt and uses it to either activate or call for a transporter sequence. They beam away, even the unconscious one halfway down the street. Riann is about to snap from all the weird shit she’s seen in the last two days.

The Enterprise removes the Mellurian mine without alerting any Acale of its existence. Archer is back down on the planet, delivering a cure for the poison, in single serving containers. Riann asks him to wrap up a loose end. “What if Garos comes back?” “I’ve notified T’Pol’s people.” He explains. “They’re going to look in on you from time to time.” Or was it, “Look down on you”? Archer asks her never to mention any of what happened, which she has no problem with. And then they neck. And then they make an obvious joke about the translator being broken again. And then they neck some more.