Someone slides an energy cell into a phase pistol as if speed-loading a Colt Dragoon. Someone else mounts a disk the size of a dinner plate onto a wall. A button is pushed, and a holographic, yellow, wire-frame sphere appears in midair, projected by the disk. Lieutenant Reed, holding a control pad, says, “You have a ten-second firing window. Ready?” to Hoshi Sato, who is holding the aforementioned phase pistol. She assures him of her readiness, and he touches the pad. For the next ten seconds, Hoshi goes nuts, shooting at anything that moves. The only thing moving is the holo-sphere, doing its best impression of the light saber training scene from Star Wars, but still. Hoshi hits the dancing target something less than half the time. I’ve always wondered why they don’t just hold down the trigger and spray those things like fire hoses. “If those had been live rounds,” Reed notes, “you’d have blown out two or three bulkheads.” Hoshi claims to be a good shot with the old plasma pistols, so Reed explains that, unlike those guns, she doesn’t need to lead her targets with the new ones. Reed stifles a cough. “Are you all right?” asks Hoshi. Reed denies being unwell. Hoshi’s next chance to shoot up the armory is interrupted when the ship unexpectedly slows down. Reed checks his script on his computer, then tells Hoshi, “We’re approaching a gas giant.” Shatner’s guest starring? “So much for target practice,” Hoshi laments.
In a rare case of sticking to the technical bible, Enterprise launches a probe into the gas giant. The picture coming from it as it enters the planet is fuzzy. “There’s a lot of E-M interference,” Hoshi explains. “It sounds very strange.” Archer orders the sound played through the bridge stereo. It sounds like the ghosts of a dozen humpback whales. “Siren calls!” Mayweather proclaims before pretty much disappearing for the rest of the show. Hoshi cuts the noise. T’Pol mentions, “I’m not sure what we expect to accomplish here.” She has a point. You’d think after spending all that time and money building a starship, Starfleet would occasionally send them someplace for a specific reason instead of letting them drift around like a stoner in the mall. Archer’s plot-driven excuse this week is that this gas giant is “Class 9,” unlike our home solar system’s four big beauties, so therefore, “I think this one’s worth a closer look.” Only T’Pol’s remarkable restraint keeps her from rolling her eyes. Something bleeps, and T’Pol looks into her ViewMaster. “I’m reading an anomalous power signature in the lower atmosphere. And several biosigns.” Archer’s chin juts heroically at the very idea. “Move the probe closer,” he commands. The view on the main screen zooms in on the darkened outline of a vessel of unknown origin.
Reed snatches a tissue out of the box and sneezes into it. “We can travel faster than the speed of light. You’d think we could find a cure for the common cold,” he moans to Dr. Phlox, for he is in sickbay. Phlox tries to comfort him with a story about a man with an alien cold so bad, “he almost regurgitated his pineal gland.” Talk about barfing your brains out. Phlox suggests Reed picked up the cold when he opened a sealed container which had been sealed by a guy with a cold. The viruses lurked inside, waiting for their chance to strike. Phlox gives him a shot in the neck and tells him to get some rest. Whatever happened to pretending to inject people in the arm? “That’ll have to wait. The captain wants me on the team investigating that shipwreck.” Phlox offers some homespun advice: “Try not to sneeze in your helmet.”
Hoshi enters Archer’s ready room to speak with him. “Do you have a minute, sir?” Last time she did this, she was begging her way out of an away mission to a derelict ship. Will this continue the pattern or provide counterpoint? She lists several potential problems with the upcoming mission, then makes her pitch. “Are you sure the away team won’t need a translator?” Counterpoint it is. She gives Archer all the reasons she should go that he told her in that prior episode, summing up with, “Sir, I realize that I haven’t always been the first one in line to volunteer for this type of mission, but I want you to know that I am prepared to go.” Archer maintains an aggressively neutral expression throughout her speech. “Your timing couldn’t be better,” Archer tells her. “T’Pol just asked me to assign you to the team.” She seems less than surprised at the revelation, but bounces excitedly out the door and down to the suit-up chamber.
Hoshi, T’Pol, and Reed are putting on their “Battlestar Galactica”-surplus space suits, Hoshi twiddling with all the knobs and buttons as she does so. “I thought you were acquainted with the environmental suit,” T’Pol comments. Hoshi explains she was going over the backup systems. “I wouldn’t want the emergency oxygen to fail during a hull breach.” Hey, who would? Reed, ever a ray of sunshine, notifies her, “If there is a hull breach, the pressure will crush you into something about…” as big as the fist he holds up in front of her. T’Pol questions Hoshi’s comfort with the coming mission, but Hoshi assures her she is fine. “I used to find the suits a little claustrophobic, but I’m getting used to them.” Hoshi is the first one out the door to the shuttle bay.
{Insert usual comments about stock shuttle launch footage here}
The shuttle heads into the atmosphere of the gas giant. The derelict ship is 100 kilometers below and sinking further into the planet. By T’Pol’s estimation, “At the rate that vessel is sinking, we’ll have an hour at most,” before the pressure is more than the shuttle can stand. “We’ll be on our way back well before we’re in any danger,” Reed predicts, unaware of the Law of Ironic Hazard. He may as well have said, “Don’t worry. It’s not like giant space-faring eels will eat the warp engines off Enterprise while we’re gone.” It only, and always, happens if you acknowledge and dismiss the possibility. The shuttle starts to shake. T’Pol explains it as “an eddy of liquid helium.” The camera shakes long enough to pad the film, then returns to calm. “That wasn’t so bad,” Hoshi concludes. The shuttle approaches the larger vessel, circles around to spot a hatch, and docks.
They enter the alien ship wearing their sealed pressure suits. T’Pol scans, then reports, “Nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels are high, but nothing’s toxic. It’s breathable.” Reed cracks his visor open, and doesn’t fall over dead. The women follow suit, and retch at the stench that greets them. Unable to smell anything through his cold-blocked nose, Reed asks, “What is it?” He explains his inability. “Count your blessings,” Hoshi quips.
They wander deeper into the ship. Hoshi spots some writing on a wall and alerts the others about it. “What language?” Reed asks. Hoshi tells him, “Klingon.” Everyone pulls their weapons, just in case. Hoshi asks why T’Pol didn’t recognize the ship. “There are many classes of ships. I am not familiar with all of them.” She does, however, spot three weak biosigns nearby.
They open a door and enter a room full of unconscious Klingons. It appears to be the bridge. They survey the area. “We should leave before they regain consciousness,” T’Pol recommends. The others want to render aid. “They don’t want our help,” T’Pol explains. “To die at their posts assures them a path to the afterlife. If we rescued them, they’d be dishonored.” Reed insists on staying to help. “Your compassion is misguided. If they awake and find us on their ship, they’ll kill us.” Right. Back to the shuttle, then?
The camera pans across the Klingon dining room, displaying a selection of stomach-churning cuisine. A big pneumatic noise accompanies the opening of a door, and a female Klingon who resembles Mayim Bialik, TV’s Blossom, steps into the room, chased by refrigerant fog. She glares at nothing in particular and steps out of frame.
The away team is still on the bridge, reporting back to Archer via communicator. Archer asks what did the Klingons in. T’Pol reports, “I’m detecting residual amounts of a carbon dioxide-based neurotoxin, but it seems to have dissipated. There’s not enough to affect us.” That’s good news. Think you could have spotted that before everyone got exposed, hmm? Archer asks Trip, who is on the bridge with him, how much longer the shuttle can take the pressure. “At their present rate of descent, half an hour, give or take.” Archer gives T’Pol 20 minutes to try to find a way to help the Klingons. “I don’t believe there is anything we can do in twenty minutes. I suggest we leave now.” Suddenly, the signal starts breaking up, ending the conversation. As the away team argues about what course of action to take, Blossom sneaks down a hallway near enough to hear them and get a look. She then moves away again, as Hoshi suggests, “What if we carried some of them back to the pod. We could save three or four.” T’Pol reminds her that they may wake up during the trip and kill everyone. Hearing a noise some distance away, Reed springs into action, drawing his weapon and staring in that general direction. He heads off that way, leaving the women vulnerable to a flanking attack that never comes.
Reed stalks down the hall, looking left and right at every opportunity, but never up. As he approaches the galley, Blossom leaps off the ceiling and tackles him. She beats the crap out of him before the other two can arrive to help. She triggers a door mechanism and goes through, the re-closing door blocking Hoshi and T’Pol’s phase pistol fire. There’s a hiss and a thump from behind the door just as everyone gets back together. “What’s that?” Hoshi quavers. “Our shuttle pod launching,” T’Pol responds. They share an expression that translates verbally as, “Just fucking spiffy.”
Trip fiddles with some controls in T’Pol’s Enterprise bridge workstation, then suggests that Archer try to contact the away team again. “Archer to T’Pol. What’s your status?” Nothing but static answers. Why doesn’t it sound like the whalesong from earlier? The back of Mayweather’s head sees the shuttle streaking out of the planet toward them at an oblique angle. Archer tries to make contact, to no avail. Mayweather reports, “Sir, they’re heading into open space.” Then, Trip, who has moved over to Hoshi’s station, starts receiving a broadcast in Klingon. This ship desperately needs backup bridge officers. Trip manages to get the transmission translated into English. “We’ve been attacked by an unknown ship, designation: Enterprise, NX-01. Any warships in range, respond.” Archer wastes no time setting off after the shuttle. “Bring the grappler online,” Archer commands Trip, who has to run across the bridge to where Reed usually sits to comply.
The grapples fire, and find their targets. The cables fail to snap as they jerk the fleeing shuttle to a stop. Archer orders a security team to Launch Bay One and leaves Mayweather in charge while he and Trip go to meet the Klingon.
Archer, Trip, and the security team enter the launch bay, straight-arming their phase pistols. They do lots of hand signals and spread out. The recovered shuttle is parked, with its hatch open, next to its twin. Blossom must have gotten out of the shuttle and hidden somewhere in the room. There’s no chance whatsoever that she is still hiding inside, waiting for some unwary fool to blunder past. Oops, my mistake. A security guy blunders past the open shuttle hatch, and Blossom leaps out to attack him. Trip stuns her once, but she’s still able to pick up a dropped phase pistol and turn to face him. So, Archer shoots her again. They both shot her in the back, I’d like to point out. Not heroic, but smart. She collapses. It’s a good thing they brought that security team, or our heroes might have gotten their asses kicked instead. Archer calls the bridge. “Transfer the coordinates [of the shipwreck] to the launch bay. I’m going back for the boarding party.” One tiny flaw with that plan. “The alien ship’s sunk another 2000 meters. It’s below the shuttle’s safety limits.” The music goes all dramatic. “Then polarize the hull plating. We’ll take Enterprise down.”
Back on the Klingon ship, they’re considering their options. “What about escape pods?” Hoshi suggests. Reed thinks it would be safer to stay in the ship. T’Pol chimes in, “Klingons don’t use escape pods. It would be considered an act of cowardice to abandon ship.” They consider and reject trying the radio before T’Pol reveals her master plan. “If we can access their helm controls we might be able to put this vessel into a stable orbit.” Reed thinks it is a low-probability plan, but T’Pol reminds him it is their only choice. “Start translating those consoles,” she instructs Hoshi. “Look for anything marked, ‘Helm,’ ‘Propulsion,’ ‘Navigation.’” The language expert doesn’t promise success, but agrees to try. Hoshi starts working. She finds a console with the words, “Photon torpedo” on it. Reed teleports to her side to check it out. She explains that it is the weapons control station. Across the room, T’Pol points to another screen. “What about this one?” Hoshi has a look. “I recognize ‘Pressure,’” she begins. “This could mean ‘Wall’ or ‘Barrier.” “Or ‘Hull?’” T’Pol asks. It’s the hull pressure gauge, and it doesn’t look good. Reed surmises, “If I’m reading this correctly, then we’ve got a few hours at most.” T’Pol points out yet another console. They paid for the set, and they’re gonna show us all of it. “This appears to be the helm station,” she says, and Hoshi agrees. I think the steering wheel mounted on it was her first clue. Reed tries to start her up, and sets off the car alarm. Hoshi translates the error message. “It says pressure’s failing in the fusion manifold. Do you know what that means?” It means, as Reed says, doing his Trip impression, “We’re dead in the water.” I wonder why English people can do American accents better than Americans can do British accents?
Enterprise, flying through the gas giant, is finally close enough to re-establish communications, so Archer does. “What’s your status?” T’Pol summarizes their predicament. “Don’t worry about it,” Archer soothes. “We’re coming to get you.” He requests a progress update from Mayweather. They’re ten kilometers away, but, “I’m having a hard time getting a fix on them. Too much interference.” Archer suggests that Trip use the still-functioning probe “to triangulate their position.” Which is precisely the moment the probe explodes. The ship begins creaking and groaning like a WWII-era submarine in way over its depth, as the hull plating starts to fail. Archer calls the away team back. “I’m afraid we’ve got a hitch in our rescue plan. We’ll be back for you as soon as we can. In the meantime, sit tight.” Communication is broken again as the Enterprise rushes to save its own skin.
In sickbay, Blossom the captured Klingon struggles against the straps tying her to a gurney. Phlox reports to Archer and his attendees, “T’Pol was right. There’s a neurotoxin in her bloodstream. Untreated, it could kill her in a day or two.” Trip wonders, “T’Pol said the Klingons were unconscious. Why’s this one so lively?” Phlox deduces that since she hid in the freezer, the cold slowed down the poison. “I demand to speak to your captain!” Blossom demands. Archer approaches. “You have made an enemy of the Klingon Empire!” she snarls. Archer retorts, “From what I noticed that’s not hard to do.” She accuses Archer of infecting the other Klingons, which he denies. Archer reminds her that her ship has a date with implosion. “Better that than to fall into your hands!” She’s being generally uncooperative. “When our birds of prey arrive, your ship will be destroyed.” They always say that.
Mayweather shows Archer the schematics of the Klingon ship that he found in the Vulcan database. “Its hull is about twice as thick as ours, reinforced with some kind of coherent molecular alloy.” I have no idea what that means. But, it gives Trip an idea. “What if we use duratanium braces to reinforce a shuttle pod?” He thinks it just might work. At least, it has a better chance than a Vulcan diplomat, a communication officer, and a gunner have of fixing an impulse engine. Archer greenlights the idea.
Reed is on the deck, looking under a console at some wiring. “The one time we need our chief engineer, and it’s the one time we leave him behind,” he complains. “Come look at this,” calls out Hoshi, who has stripped down to a skintight grey catsuit. Hubba hubba. That isn’t what she wants to show them. She has managed to access and translate the Klingon captain’s log. “We destroyed their ship, but we’ve sustained damage in our port fusion injector. We’ve descended into the outer atmosphere of a K’Tal class planet to make repairs in case there are other Xarantine ships in the area.” The image pauses to swig some booze. “My crew has fallen ill, and I have been unable to determine why. If we had died when the Xarantine attacked, our honor would be secure. To fall victim to some disease, to be crushed into nothing in the depths of this miserable planet…” Reed realizes they need to look at the port fusion injector. Hoshi leads him to the proper video display. “It’s in the ‘reactor pit.’” Off they go.
They enter the reactor pit, which is equivalent to Engineering, and discover a scattering of Klingons, all of whom are alive but out of it. Hoshi peruses the workstations, and discovers the port fusion injector control panel, draped with a burly Klingon. T’Pol and Reed manhandle him off of it.
On Enterprise, Reed and Archer are welding the reinforcement structures onto the shuttle. Don’t they have people to do that kind of thing either? Archer makes an admission. “I think I might’ve made a tactical error dealing with the Klingon woman. I asked her for help. She could see that as a sign of weakness.” Trip is impressed with Archer’s psychoanalysis. Archer proves he’s been paying attention. “We’ve run into them three times, and, every time, they’ve wanted to destroy us.” To be fair, most everyone they meet wants to destroy them. Archer thinks if he can get through to Blossom, she can save his crewmen. “But she’s got a thousand generations of instinct telling her not to trust me.” Trip recommends, “Maybe it’s time you started thinking like a Klingon.”
I keep hoping this will be the misunderstanding that leads to the first Human-Klingon War, but I know it won’t be. In my heart, I know.
Reed is doing technical things and appearing to be in some distress. He stands, stumbles, and catches himself by putting his hand against a hot pipe. His gream (half groan, half scream) brings the others. “I seem to be getting a little light-headed,” he self-diagnoses. T’Pol scans him. “You are dehydrated. You need some water.” Hoshi volunteers to go find some. T’Pol decides, “You shouldn’t go alone.” So, Hoshi and T’Pol leave Reed alone instead. Because alone and wandering around is more dangerous than alone, dizzy, and in a place full of hot and electric things.
Hoshi and T’Pol enter the galley, the same room where Blossom first appeared. Hoshi gets grossed out when T’Pol tells her what g’hakh is (big purple worms). Hoshi stirs a bowl of soup and ladles up something’s skull, spooking her. Reacting to a sound effect I cannot hear, they draw their guns and approach a door. Now, thumping can be heard on the other side. T’Pol swings the door wide, revealing a room full of leashed targs, a sort of wild boar kind of critter. She quickly closes the door again, as Hoshi starts to exhibit the initial symptoms of a freakout. T’Pol identifies the animals. “Klingons prefer their food freshly slaughtered.” Hoshi sits down and tries to regain her composure. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.” T’Pol reminds her that anxiety is only human nature. “I envy you sometimes,” Hoshi admits. “There are times when I wish I could ignore my feelings, bury them the way that Vulcans do.” T’Pol, out of what might be considered compassion in a human, leads Hoshi through a directed visualization exercise to calm her nerves. Hoshi likes it. “When we get back to the ship, I’ll teach you how to do it on your own.” Aw, they’re bonding. How sweet. Anyone remember the guy dying of thirst upstairs?
The ship starts to shake. T’Pol calls Reed to find out why. “The hull pressure‘s approaching critical. This ship’s about to be crushed.”
“It’ll work,” Reed insists to T’Pol between gulps from his canteen. “If you’re wrong, you could destroy the ship,” she replies. I have no clue what they’re talking about. Hoshi explains in the course of agreeing with Reed. “I say we try the weapons.” Try what, they don’t specify. T’Pol doubts Reed can even activate the weapons. He disagrees. “If there’s one thing on this ship I should be able to figure out, it’s the torpedoes.”
Trip has finished modifying the shuttle, and reports as much to Archer. Archer responds, “K’Plah!” Gesundheit. That’s “Success!” in Klingon. Archer’s been brushing up. He describes to Trip, “They‘re driven by a warrior mentality. They tend to view anyone the meet as a potential enemy. They also have a strong sense of duty.” He translates one of their common phrases as “Death Before Dishonor,” which gives him an idea. Archer heads off to sickbay to talk to Blossom.
Phlox injects Blossom with something that wakes her up. Apparently, they had to knock her out previously. Archer explains to her, “Doctor Phlox has developed an antidote to the neurotoxin in your system.” She thinks the cure is a trick to gain her trust. Archer ignores that, preferring to tell her that the toxin was introduced into her crew by being consumed. Phlox clarifies, “The toxin was bonded to a molecule unique to Xarantine ale.” Blossom admits the Klingons did perform a raid. In bits and pieces, it comes out that she was part of a raid on a Xarantine outpost, at which they acquired the ale, and which everyone drank as part of the post-raid rave. She never explains why she wound up in the freezer. Archer starts bringing things together. “It was that ale that infected you, not us.” She doesn’t believe it. He has that effect on women. “How do you feel?” he asks her. “Better or worse since the injection?” He offers to cure her entire crew. “What if we’re telling the truth? You could be letting your crew die a very dishonorable death when you could have saved them. Can you live with that?” See, he’s using the death before dishonor argument. They don’t just make this up as they go along. Honest.
A photon torpedo launches from the underside of the Klingon ship. Hoshi counts off as it gains distance from the ship. At 3000 meters, Reed remotely detonates it. A shockwave buffets the ship. “No effect,” Hoshi announces. “We’re still sinking.” T’Pol analyzes, “The shockwave dissipated before reaching us.” So, this is their plan. Detonate torpedoes nearby, in hopes that the shockwave will push them upward to a less crushing depth. Assuming the pressure wave doesn’t crush the ship itself. No plan is perfect. “The blast has to be big, and it has to be close,” Reed concludes. They load two torpedoes this time and prepare to try again.
Archer is in the shuttle with Blossom, descending into the gas giant. “This was your plan?” Blossom says incredulously, “To grope around in the darkness and hope to stumble across my ship?” Archer replies, “That’s how we found it the first time.” Whatever works, I say. The shuttle sensors pick up the weapons fire from the Klingon ship.
Reed and Hoshi study a display of their position. “We’ve moved up, but only two hundred meters,” Hoshi reports. In other news, compartments in the ship are starting to collapse, and they’re down to their last 6 torpedoes. Reed orders two more torpedoes loaded. “It won’t be enough,” Hoshi argues. “We tried. It won’t work.” T’Pol agrees. “We’ll never reach a safe altitude climbing a few hundred meters at a time.” Hoshi has a cunning plan. “Fire them all,” she suggests, the theory being that six times the push will get them farther than six single pushes of one-sixth the force. T’Pol has her own reasons for disliking the plan. “We may gain enough altitude, but I doubt we’d make it in one piece.” Hoshi convinces them that exploding during a physically infeasible escape attempt is preferable to being squeezed into jelly. They load up the torpedoes and fire.
The shuttle sensors detect the explosion, and get knocked around by the shockwave. Through the windshield they see bits of spaceship fly past, upward. No body parts, though. The shuttle flies through the debris and locates the Klingon ship.
No one got killed in the explosion. Hoshi, Reed, and T’Pol are just sorta standing around when T’Pol’s communicator tweets. Reed explains to Archer what they did. “It’s only temporary. We’ll start sinking again unless we can come up with a way to get this ship out of here.” Archer tells them he brought Blossom back to fix things, and docks the shuttle.
Archer and Blossom board the ship, met by the rest of the non-Klingons. “I believe you’ve all met Officer Bu’Kah?” No one’s happy to see her. I’m going to keep calling her Blossom. Archer asks how screwed they are. T’Pol tells him, “The Klingon crew made most of the necessary repairs before they were overcome.” Blossom steps forward. “I will attend to my own ship.” Archer takes that as an invitation to leave so that she can go down with the rest of her crew. He doesn’t like that idea, and informs her that they intend to hang around until the Klingon ship is fixed.
Some time later, Trip is on the bridge, in the captain’s chair, to hear Mayweather report, “Two ships approaching at high warp. I think they’re Klingon.” And they’ll be here in 16 minutes. Just then, Archer hails Enterprise from the now-repaired Klingon ship, Blossom in the big chair. “This is Klingom Raptor Somrah, hailing Enterprise. Request permission to disembark four passengers.” They don’t refuse.
Archer returns to his bridge. The Klingon Raptor captain hails Enterprise. “Prepare to surrender your vessel,” the Klingon captain demands. “You violated our ship, accessed our weapons!” He calls for disruptors to fire on the Enterprise. Luckily, Archer has the skinny on these guys now, and knows how to react. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds in a battle with us. You’ve got multiple hull breaches, your shields are down, and from what I’m told you’re fresh out of torpedoes. If I were you, I’d take what little honor I had left and go home.” I’ve never seen a Klingon look pensive before. He snarls, cuts communication, and orders his ship to move away.
Reed, T’Pol, and Hoshi are lounging in the luxury of the decontamination chamber. The intercom beeps, but no one wants to get up to answer it. T’Pol eventually does. It’s Phlox, informing them that they are done getting cleansed. They aren’t thrilled. “Are you sure, Doctor?” Reed asks. He is. Hoshi and Reed head-bob at T’Pol. Eventually she realizes they want her to help them stay in there a little longer, and goes along with it. “I believe I’m developing a slight headache.” Phlox agrees to run his tests again to make extra sure with sprinkles, buying them half an hour. They sit under the tanning lights together, basking in the doesn’t-smell-like-a-Klingon-ship.