"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.

The episode begins with Hoshi Sato in Sickbay, making clicking sounds at a slug. No, not Dr. Phlox. She’s looking in on the first bona fide alien life form the Enterprise crew has managed to discover all on their own, a three-inch metaphor slug. It isn’t doing well outside its native environment, and Hoshi is concerned that her bringing it aboard will lead to its death. “She doesn’t look any better, does she?” she asks the doctor. It’s an alien slug in a terrarium. How good can it possibly look? Phlox points out, “She? We haven’t been able to determine its gender, if it has one.” Hoshi, having been touched by the magic of the metaphor slug, is seeing her own life issues in the slug’s predicament. “She wasn’t meant to be in this environment,” Hoshi declares. The doctor promises to do his best to keep it alive, which cheers Hoshi up until Phlox explains in a Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade voice, “I was thinking of my Pyrithian bat. It won’t eat anything once it’s dead, mm-hmm.”

Trip walks into sickbay on a thin pretext, and asks after the slug’s health. “How’s Sluggo?” Hoshi tells him, “She’s barely moved all day.” Again, it’s an alien slug. Given no information to compare to, how much is it supposed to move around? Maybe it evolved to remain motionless when stared at by twitchy comm officers. Trip complains, “We’ve been out here for two weeks, and the only first contact we’ve made is with a dyin’ worm.” Yeah, it’s been two weeks already. Why haven’t they been everywhere and seen everything yet?

After the opening credits, we join Capt. Archer in his ready room, where he is hunting down a phantom squeak under the deckplates, as T’Pol enters with a report. As Archer is on his knees trying to pinpoint the sound, I’m pretty sure T’Pol checks out his ass. She is otherwise completely uninterested in the problem. She gives her report. “A scan of the sectors ahead indicate little chance of finding inhabited planets.” Nor does the Vulcan database point to anything that might be of interest. Archer finds that hard to believe until he remembers that Vulcans never do anything interesting. “My people don’t share your enthusiasm for exploration,” she explains. Makes me wonder why the Vulcans ever bothered to go into space in the first place. To ship off the Romulans, most likely. She then reminds Archer, “Space is vast, Captain.” She’s half right. Last week, space was big. This week, it’s vast. I see she’s getting plenty of use out of her “Learn English in Ten Words a Day” calendar. “Only one out of 43,000 planets supports intelligent life.” The preceding statement in no way affects the plot of this episode. However, it’s going to come up in a trivia contest someday, and I wanted to prepare my readers for it. “There’s gotta be someone out here,” Archer insists, choosing to combat statistics with hopeful zeal. T’Pol is not impressed, near as I can tell.

The door chimes, and Hoshi walks in, standing in exactly the same hands-behind-the-back pose as T’Pol. After a moment of awkward silence, T’Pol wanders away. Another trivia question: Hoshi’s original quarters aboard ship were on E deck, section 5, starboard side. She has come to the captain to complain, “The stars are going the wrong way, sir.” She can’t sleep because the stars outside her window are moving left to right instead of right to left. She’s found someone who will switch with her if the captain approves, which he does with so much speed and so little concern that it probably wasn’t worth his time even to bring it up. The whole thing could’ve been handled with a memo. After receiving his blessing, she makes no move to leave the room, as if she has something else to say. “Is there something else, Hoshi?” Archer asks, snapping her out of her stupor. Whatever it was, she’s saving it for a more dramatically appropriate moment. As she leaves, Archer hears the phantom squeak again. If I were him, I would’ve had Hoshi use her superior listening skills to spot it for him.

We go now to the torpedo room, where Reed and Mayweather are running targeting simulations. They launch a simulated missile at a simulated target and simulate missing it by three meters. Considering the size of most ships, that doesn’t seem to be that big a deal, but Reed is all about putting the missile exactly where he wants it. “All this should’ve been dealt with before we left Earth,” Reed grumbles. The young Starfleet seems to have sent them out on their mission hoping they’d have time to calibrate everything before they needed to shoot anyone. “Have they detected any inhabited planets or vessels?” Reed asks Mayweather. “No.” “Good.” Reed, unlike everyone else on the ship, doesn’t want to come across any aliens until he’s confident he can blow them up. I can’t help but admire his attitude. Archer arrives to check on their progress. Hearing about the simulated failure, he asks, “Are you sure it’s not the simulations that are off?” Reed replies, “There’s only one way to find out.” To Reed’s delight, Archer calls the bridge and tells T’Pol to bring the ship out of warp. “It’s time for a little target practice.”

A torpedo flies through space toward an unsuspecting asteroid. If the torpedo’s purpose was to frighten the asteroid, then it was a perfect shot. Everyone back on the Enterprise seems disappointed as it explodes harmlessly, safely distant from anything that might be a target, so probably it wasn’t. Archer orders another torpedo readied for launch as enthusiastically as if he were paying for them out of his own pocket. There’s a way cool torpedo loading sequence, followed by the launch. This one skims the target asteroid, damaging only itself, and wobbily turns to head back where it came from. The bridge crew starts to worry, but has enough discipline not to start panicking, Hoshi just barely. The torpedo explodes a safe distance away. When Reed explains that the next thing he intends to tinker with will take almost a day to complete, Archer orders the ship underway. “Make your modifications. We’ll run another test first chance we get.” Poor Reed. His first chance to blow something up, and he muffs it.

In the galley, Trip joins Dr. Phlox at a table. Trip asks, “Sluggo any better?” for which Phlox punishes him by making him eat a baby roasted potato Phlox has already bitten into. “Re-sequenced protein,” Trip observes with distaste. Phlox enjoys the flavor, though. Phlox reveals, “On my home world, people would never think of speaking during a meal,” as it would waste time better used for eating. Trip picks up on the segue. “Wastin’ time seems to be all we been doin’.” Apparently, Trip watched all the old Star Trek episodes and saw those crews meeting up with aliens every week, so going two weeks with nothing but an ailing gastropod to show for it is rubbing him the wrong way. Phlox disagrees, claiming “Every moment has been an adventure for me.” He goes on to describe a series of observations he has made about various crewmen which can best be described as stalkerly. “If I am not mistaken, [Crewmen Bennett and Tatum] are preparing to mate. Do you think they might let me watch?”

Back on the bridge, T’Pol has made an extraordinary discovery. Well, she spotted another ship, floating motionless three light years from the closest star system. You don’t see that every day. Every couple of weeks, sure, but not every day. T’Pol, Archer, and Trip all hunch over a display table, looking at the sensor data, and discussing it. Trip suggests, “Maybe we should go and have a look.” Archer is keen on the idea, but T’Pol is as wet a blanket as ever. “If you insist on allowing your curiosity to dictate your actions….” The look on Archer’s face says it before the mouth part of his face verbalizes it, “We insist.”

The Enterprise approaches the other ship, scanning like madmen. No engine power, no weapons, no comm traffic. Archer decides to transmit a greeting to the derelict, which is processed through a “translation matrix.” I’m not sure what good it did without knowing what language to translate the speech into. While Hoshi does comm officer things to make sure the other ship receives the message no matter what kind of space radio they might be using, Trip zooms the viewscreen in on the access hatch, which further scanning shows to have been blown out with, as T’Pol describes it, “a high yield particle impact.” In other words that T’Pol was downright smug about not using, weapons fire. Still receiving no response to his little speech, Archer asks, “Are we close enough to scan for biosigns?” T’Pol warns that scanning the interior of the mystery ship might be seen as an invasion of privacy, and suggests that maybe whoever is over there is just ignoring the Enterprise. Nag, nag, nag. Partly to piss her off, I’m sure, Archer orders the biosign scan, which detects several life signs too faint to be differentiated by the sensors. Then, instead of running through the rest of the “What to do when a derelict ship won’t talk to you” protocols like T’Pol wants to do, Archer orders Reed to prepare a shuttle for launch. Hoshi thinks that T’Pol might have a point and wants to keep trying to contact them, but Archer tells her to, “Suit up, Ensign.” She’s going with.

It just struck me that Hoshi has Uhura’s job. It now seems like a much more interesting line of work than just saying, “Hailing frequencies open,” twice an episode.

Coming back from commercial, Trip catches up with the captain as he’s walking down a hallway and requests to go on the trip to the other ship. “I have a translator and a security officer. Why would I need an engineer?” Archer asks. Trip first lamely tries to justify why an engineer might be needed, “You might need somebody to help you figure out the turbolifts.” Finally, Trip admits he just wants to go exploring. Archer refuses, reasoning that, “This ship’s a little young to be without its chief engineer.”

A short time later, Archer is recording a log entry and enjoying a cheesy snack. I find I prefer the Captain’s Log done as a scene rather than a voiceover. We get to see a little bit of what Archer’s thinking that doesn’t make it into the final report. Also, Porthos the beagle is cute running back and forth on the bed as Archer paces. He’s complaining about T’Pol taking all the fun out of being a space captain. On the other hand, “She’s right. Whoever’s on that ship might not want us nosing around.” I’m happy to see that, despite what he thinks of her personally, or how much “Yay Humans!” bravado he exhibits around her, he is still able to recognize the good points T’Pol makes. Not that he’s going to let her stop him from visiting the other ship. It’s just good that he considered and rejected his first officer’s recommendation rather than rejecting it out of hand.

This week, the log entry is interrupted by a chime at the door. It’s Hoshi, who has come to try to get out of going on the field trip. She suggests that she stay on the Enterprise and telecommute through someone else’s communicator, giving her better access to her linguistic database. Archer explains he “would rather wait a few seconds if it means having you on site,” in case the technical stuff doesn’t work right. He doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to go, and can see there is something else bothering her. She finally spills. “The environmental suits. They make me a little claustrophobic.” “And you took a job on a spaceship.” “You talked me into it!” I love the way she delivers this line. I can’t adequately describe it. It’s sort of nervous, giggly, and frustrated all in one. Archer refuses to let Hoshi out of the mission on those grounds. But there still seems to be something else on her mind. Archer sees it, too. I think she’s in love. When he asks her about it, she says it’s nothing and tries to hurry out of the room. He stops her and says he’ll walk with her to the shuttle bay.

Archer, Reed, and Hoshi are suiting up for their mission. Reed has pulled out every man-portable weapon in the gun locker to take along. “Going to war, Lieutenant?” Archer asks, and then restricts the weapon loadout to one phase pistol each. Reed is disappointed. Archer shows Hoshi the basics of a phase pistol, then slaps one onto her hip, where it sticks. If Hoshi doesn’t have a crush on Archer, I think she has grounds for a sexual harassment suit.

The shuttle docks with the derelict ship, and the away team crowds into the access tunnel. Faced with a locked door with no obvious method of being opened, Reed’s first instinct is to blow it open. I like this guy. Archer stops him, and finds the secret latch mechanism instead. Archer apologizes to Reed for ruining his fun while Hoshi reports back to Enterprise. “We’ve got access. We’re boarding the vessel.” They climb up a ladder into the unlighted ship, and wind up standing on a deck with the hatch above their heads. Two things: at what point did they spin around on the ladder so as not to fall on their heads, and why is there still artificial gravity in an otherwise unpowered ship? Anyway, the first thing Archer sees is a series of blast marks on the walls in the light of his helmet lamps. They discover a small amount of power running through a wall conduit, and green blood splattered all over the walls, like a Vulcan exploded. Eventually, they find the one functioning mechanism on the ship, a huge, wall-mounted slushee machine pumping green liquid. Hoshi is the first one to spot the rows of dead aliens hanging from the ceiling with big straws sticking out of them, running into the slushee machine. In her own words, she “scream[s] like a twelve year old” and starts backing out of the room. Archer: “Hoshi, where are you going?” Hoshi: “I don’t think you need a translator!”

It’s time I admit it. I like Hoshi Sato. I like the way they write her not as a device for finding the clues to lead to the next plot point, but as a person who feels way out of her depth and isn’t afraid to panic at the first sign of trouble. She’s not a hero; she’s an English teacher. (No offense to all the English teachers I ever had.)

Back on Enterprise, the away team is standing in the decontamination chamber as Dr. Phlox announces with great disappointment that they are all uninfested. It is my sad duty to report that no one gets to oil the Vulcan this week. As they exit the chamber and meet up with T’Pol, Archer deduces that whoever strung up the aliens and hooked them to the slushee machine are draining the bodies of something. “My guess is, they’re coming back.” Without batting an eye (literally, she didn’t blink. I checked), T’Pol says, “We should leave,” her logic being that the mission was to provide assistance, and dead people need no help. Therefore, the mission is over. That doesn’t sit well with Archer. He thinks they should do something, even if he can’t think of what just now. T’Pol’s winning argument is, “If we remain here, your crew could be put in jeopardy.” Archer goes over to the wall comm and orders the ship to take off, but he isn’t happy about it.

In sickbay, Phlox tells Hoshi about his first mass casualty experience. It was, “Very disturbing. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” Hoshi is upset that she was the only one to scream at the sight of all the bodies. “I’m a translator. I didn’t come out here to see corpses hanging on hooks.” Ah, c’mon. Everyone loves corpses hanging on hooks! Phlox suggests, “Have you ever considered you might be happier back at the university?” Hoshi explains in great detail why she wants to be out among the stars, boiling down to, “[Archer] needs me here.” Phlox causes discourse whiplash by suddenly mentioning. “If she doesn’t take these nutrients I’m afraid she won’t survive.” He’s talking about the metaphor slug, of course. Hoshi considers asking Archer to stop off at a planet where she can drop off the slug to live out the rest of its sluggy life. “She needs to get back to an environment that is more suited to her.” Phlox responds, “Perhaps someplace where she can teach.” Bad Phlox! You’re not supposed to explicitly point out the workings of the metaphor slug. You’ll ruin everything, you fool!

Captain Archer, T’Pol, and Trip are eating together, pasta of some sort. Archer is distracted and depressed because he knows in his gut that leaving the dead guys to get fluid-sucked was the wrong thing to do. I don’t know what T’Pol’s problem is. Maybe she’s just a bad dinner conversationalist. At any rate, Trip is dominating the small talk, so it isn’t long until he starts asking what the aliens looked like. “They were crewmen, murdered on their own ship.” That pretty much kills the conversation. I guess if they were passengers Archer wouldn’t feel so bad about them. T’Pol suggests stopping to sightsee to get the crew’s mind off the dead guys they abandoned. Archer rants for a while, expressing remorse and guilt over not even trying to let anyone know those people were dead, no matter how difficult it would have been or how much danger the Enterprise would be risking just by being there. Meanwhile, T’Pol interjects with some of the most wooden line reading I’ve ever seen. Jolene! You’re Vulcan. You aren’t dead. The final result is that Archer orders the ship to reverse course back to the derelict.

As they return, Archer gives orders to the new away team and mission-critical people staying on the Enterprise. Phlox is going over to examine the bodies, find out who the aliens are, and figure out what is being done to them. Trip is going over to get the comm system up and running on the theory that it is the easiest way to contact their home planet. Hoshi is going back over to translate enough of the alien language to compose a distress call. Reed is to stay on the Enterprise and keep working on the torpedo targeting system so he can shoot the people who did this if they come back.

They arrive at the derelict and head over in the shuttle. In the meat locker, Phlox outlines to Archer how each of the aliens was killed. “This fellow hasn’t suffered as much cellular decay. He’s our best candidate for a post mortem. Care to assist?” On the bridge, Trip gets the computer running, which starts spewing alien lingo. It sounds like these aliens are from eastern Europe. Trip makes sure the transceiver is functional, and then hooks what might be a battery or a data collection box into the system. “Ship!” What did Hoshi just say? Oh, “ship”. Not what I heard the first time. My best guess is that the device she’s talking into listens to the alien language and somehow works out which words mean what when she says the human equivalent. Hey, kind of like a translator.

“Whoever did this is trying to collect triglobulin.” That is Phlox’s conclusion after examining the corpse he selected earlier. It turns out these aliens produce a chemical that is useful as a medicine, vaccine or aphrodisiac. Poor dopes. “It’s worth noting that triglobulin is very similar to human lymphatic fluid.” Poor us. I’ve got a funny feeling that fact will become important before the episode is over. Don’t ask me why.

Trip is loving the away mission. “I can’t get enough of this! An alien spaceship, sending a message off to who knows where.” Hoshi just wants to get it done and get back to the Enterprise as quickly as possible. She tells Trip, “I’m going to ask the captain to take me home.” She still hasn’t gotten over her reaction during the previous visit. She feels she’s not cut out to be a bold explorer. She does, however, manage to work out how to say, “Ship in distress,” in alienese. “Tuk tom dul gunat seela.” Maybe it’s Navaho.

T’Pol contacts Archer, telling him there is a ship incoming. “Its power signatures match the scans you took of the biopumps.” The bad guys have finally shown up. Archer orders everyone off the derelict. Then he shoots the slushee machine so that even if they lose, the bad guys don’t get what they were after. Good man.

T’Pol contacts the armory, where Reed is still working on the targeting scanners. “If you want me to hit a stationary dairy barn, then I could accommodate you, but not a moving vessel.” Despite this less than stellar progress report, T’Pol orders Reed to the bridge in five minutes.

Archer contacts T’Pol to have the Enterprise’s docking arm extended for the shuttle’s arrival. As the shuttle docks, the bad guys are not responding to T’Pol’s friendly greeting, but are coming ever closer. They fire on the Enterprise, blowing out one warp engine and knocking the shuttle off the docking arm. Seeing the weapon fire outside pummeling the Enterprise, Hoshi reaches over and closes the blind on her window. The shuttle reconnects and is pulled inside. The shuttle hatch is a hinged roof panel that meets up with a matching ladder to provide entry and exit to the vehicle. I like it. Nice and primitive. I do wonder why they don’t just go out the side door we saw last week. I would think it had something to do with pressurization and keeping the airlock cycle to a minimum, if going out the top made any difference at all as far as those things were concerned. Still, it’s got style. When Archer learns that the ship is unable to go to warp, he orders, “Have Malcolm arm the torpedoes!” No namby-pamby diplomacy for him.

The bad guys stop firing long enough for the away team to change clothes and get to their stations. They do not stop closing in, however. “Both forward tubes loaded and ready, sir,” Reed reports, giddy with anticipation. The first torpedo bounces off the other ship’s shields and explodes. Hey, they got shields! Unfair! They’re evil and they’re cheaters. I hope they lose. The second torpedo gets shot out of the sky by the other ship’s point defenses. I think the Enterprise is out of torpedo tubes. Reload, man! Archer contacts Trip to see if they can leave yet. “The entire nacelle’s been completely depolarized. I’m afraid we’re stuck here a while.” Or maybe not so long.

A sheet of energy pans through the ship. Phlox identifies it as, “a sub-molecular bioscan. We’ve all been probed.” That doesn’t sound so bad, Dr. Phlox. “They have, no doubt, discovered your lymphatic systems contain some useful compounds.” Oh, yeah. Uh oh. Archer orders Reed to the armory. “Start distributing hand weapons.” Already he’s better at defending the ship than Picard ever was.

Just then, Mayweather spots another ship arriving on the scene. Reed decides to ignore the order he was just given and returns to his station. Good news! The ship belongs to the same people as the derelict. Bad news! No one understands a word he’s saying. Archer tells Hoshi to explain the situation, so she types the words into her translator, which then appear on the alien ship, perfectly translated. The day is saved! No, wait, not even the people on the show are buying that one. Hoshi is confident that she screwed it up. “This isn’t Spanish we’re dealing with here. I’d be lucky if I’m getting half the vocabulary right.”

Meanwhile, the bad guy ship grabs the Enterprise in “a stabilizing beam,” which I suppose is like a tractor beam except is doesn’t pull things closer. It does do a number on ship’s systems, though. Everything breaks. I’ve just made a bet with myself that I can use that phrase in every one of these I write. The alien on the viewscreen has finished puzzling out what Hoshi sent, and now believes that the Enterprise killed the crew of the derelict. They try to explain, everyone shouting suggestions at Hoshi, but the translator program doesn’t have enough of a grasp on the language to get their meaning across. Hoshi herself is doing slightly better, understanding some of what the alien is saying before the translator decodes it, and correcting some of its mistakes.

Archer has an idea. “Tell them to run scans on the biopumps that are hooked up to the corpses.” If the Enterprise could tell who the bad guys were with that method, it stands to reason the other aliens could do the same. Meanwhile, the bad guys extend what are probably boarding tubes from the bottom of their ship, latching onto the Enterprise. There goes the paintjob. Hoshi can’t get the machine to string together the right words to make the alien captain understand, so Archer orders her, “Do it yourself. Talk to him.” She claims she hasn’t picked up enough of the basics to say anything intelligible. It isn’t so much that she can’t do it as that she is deathly afraid of doing it wrong and getting everyone killed and hooked up to alien slushee machines. As the bad guys start drilling into the hull, Archer takes Hoshi by both shoulders and tells her, “I need you to do this. We all do. That’s why you’re here.”

Emboldened by the touch of his hand and his soothing words, Hoshi steps forward into view. Slowly, haltingly, she starts. The alien captain, glad to be speaking to a sentient at last, seems willing to be more patient. Speaking loud and slow, because everyone understands you if you speak loud and slow, ask any American tourist, she repeats her greeting, then launches into a spiel that would impress any Dadaist poet. She apparently explains the situation, because the other ship breaks off and starts attacking the ship that is currently trying to mount the Enterprise. They give the Enterprise a chance to move away, and then blow the bad guys to kingdom come. Reed gets a chance to fire a token torpedo, using the targeting scanners he managed to finally get aligned in all that free time he had during the attack and Hoshi’s Life Lesson.

After the battle, repairs, incidents, allegations, embarrassments, and recriminations, Archer detours the ship to a planet where Hoshi and Phlox land to release the metaphor slug. They put the poor thing on a rock in the middle of a desert. She explains (to, I feel I must remind you, an alien slug) that while this not its own planet, it’s close, and, “It’s not that hard to adapt. You’re gonna do just fine here.” Message for you, sir!

Next week, the Slugmen of Omicron Theta 4 hunt down the Enterprise and demand the return of their emperor.

It’s morning on the Enterprise, and Nameless Female Ensign is in the galley enjoying a bowl of Vulcan Veggie Breakfast Broth and catching up on some light reading, Termites of Loracis Prime. I’ll bet she’s tons of fun at parties. Nameless Male Ensign (no relation) walks over to her table and sits down, bringing possibly eggs and sausage with him. He derides her culinary choice. “I guess it just takes a more discriminating palette to appreciate Vulcan cuisine,” she retorts. Ooh, what a burn. I’m going to rename her, Vulcan Groupie Girl. I got a hunch. Vulcan Groupie Girl starts telling Nameless Male Ensign all about termites in an obvious ploy to drive him away, when he gets distracted by a shiny object. They both head over to a porthole, and discover a blue-green planet has snuck up on the ship. Vulcan Groupie Girl asks the room at large, “Anyone hear about this?” Ensign Bit Part replies, “Not a word.” They spend a few moments pondering the possibilities of a first contact situation while their food gets cold.

Up on the bridge, everyone waits anxiously while T’Pol scans the planet through her ViewMaster™. It’s a lot like Earth, except with no pesky indigenous population to muck it up. Archer has Reed scan for any sign that someone else has laid claim to the planet. “None in range, sir. It looks like no one’s planted a flag just yet.” That’s all Archer needed to hear. “Prep a shuttle pod, Mr. Tucker.” I was counting the seconds until T’Pol threw cold water on the idea. Two seconds. “Captain, there are a number of protocols you may want to consider.” But I don’t wanna consider protocols! I wanna go to the planet naaaooowww! All the probing and analyzing she recommends will take a week. Trip, whom I am increasingly convinced suffers from ADD, whines, “You expect us to sit up here for a week while probes have all the fun?” No, Mr. Tucker, I expect you to die. Archer belittles T’Pol’s caution, saying, “We didn’t come out here to tiptoe around.” He then heaps on an extra helping of humiliation by asking/ordering her to organize the survey team. Is she even in the chain of command? She accepts the command with pouty-lipped stoicism, but I can sense a tiny fuse burning deep down inside her. Someday, Archer’s head is going to wind up on the pointy end of one of those pon farr fighting spears.

T’Pol is overseeing the loading of a shuttle by staring at a data pad and standing in flattering light. Vulcan Groupie Girl, who is to be part of the survey team, tells T’Pol about her breakfast. Even if T’Pol could care about things, she couldn’t care less. By way of conversation, Vulcan Groupie Girl thanks T’Pol for choosing her to go on the mission. “You were selected because your specialty is entomology,” T’Pol explains, shattering Vulcan Groupie Girl’s fragile ego, which derives entirely from the approval of others. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Entomology is the study of bugs, by the way. As Vulcan Groupie Girl loads her bug-studying equipment into the shuttle, Trip consoles her. “You’d have better luck making friends with a housefly.”

The shuttle launches, Mayweather at the wheel, Archer and Trip both standing, leaning on the back of the pilot’s seat. What, weren’t there enough chairs on board? They land in beautiful southern Califor- that is, an Earthlike yet totally alien world. The shuttle door opens, and the first Earthling to set foot on the “Strange New World” is…Porthos, the wonder dog. Who, in his first act as a planetary explorer, whizzes on a tree. He has been stuck on the ship for three weeks, after all. T’Pol starts scanning the environment with her proto-tricorder, as she was brought to the planet to do, until Archer tells her to “Put that thing away,” and simply enjoy being there for a minute. I don’t think Archer gets the whole emotionless Vulcan thing. Some small talk is exchanged, and Trip reveals that his hand scanner dealie is also a digital camera when he takes a snapshot of the rest of the team with it. T’Pol orders the extras to disperse and go about their phony-baloney jobs until sevenish. On every Starfleet uniform, there is a stripe of varying color outlining the shoulder region. I looked carefully, and none of the extras has a red stripe. I can’t tell who’s going to die first. If I had to guess, though, I’d pick the one we’ve never seen until this scene. Or was he Ensign Bit Part? As they wander off, T’Pol turns her attention back to the steamy Vulcan romance novel loaded into her data pad. “The day of Slock and T’Ring’s arranged marriage had arrived. As Slock waited at the altar for T’Ring to arrive after her meditation session, he once again analyzed their genetic structures in his thoughts, noting several potential reinforcements of useful genetic traits. Truly, the offspring of this pair-bonding would be at a minor advantage. His parents had chosen wisely.” Hot stuff.

We are treated to a montage of Exploration! Vulcan Groupie Girl scanning for eels in a stream; Trip, Archer, Mayweather, and Porthos walking across a field under two crescent moons; Nameless Male Ensign, the sensitive explorer, sniffing some yellow flowers; T’Pol sitting on a rock. As the captain and friends sit by a babbling brook, T’Pol calls them to find out what has made them fifteen minutes late for rendezvous. “We lost track of time,” he explains, amused by the Vulcan’s insistence on a modicum of discipline while visiting a place with possible unknown dangers. Then, they head back to the boat.

Back at the shuttle, T’Pol asks Archer if she can keep Ensigns Cutler and Navokovich on the planet overnight because they’ve “discovered several nocturnal marsupials” that she wants to study. I don’t know which two ensigns those are, but I’d guess they’re the ones that have had lines in this episode. Archer agrees. “I’m glad to see you’re getting into the spirit of things.” Trip requests that he and Mayweather also be allowed to stay on the planet overnight for no really good reason. “This isn’t shore leave. This is a research mission,” T’Pol points out. I honestly don’t know why she still bothers. Archer undercuts her yet again. “Why can’t it be a little bit of both?” He agrees to let them stay. I tell you, one night Archer’s going to wake up with T’Pol standing over his bed with a phase pistol. Sure, she’ll claim she was possessed by an incorporeal alien at the time, but no one will ever be sure. And, it looks like the ensign I marked for death is getting away unscathed.

That night, sitting around the campfire, Mayweather tells a ghost story while Vulcan Groupie Girl, the entomologist, swats at fireflies she should be studying. T’Pol sits off to the side reading her novel. I think Mayweather’s story was an original series episode plot. And there, on the airlock handle, was a hook! Vulcan Groupie Girl notices that all the fireflies have gone away. That’s just the kind of insightful observation they brought her along for. Suddenly, the wind kicks up and threatens to blow out the campfire. “A front is approaching from the southwest,” T’Pol explains. Thank you, Willard Scott. In response to the gusting winds and lightning, everyone goes into their Gore-Tex tents for a nap. While Trip and Mayweather compete in an “I’ve been in worse storms than this,” contest in one tent, Nameless Male Ensign thinks he hears someone outside the tent he shares with Vulcan Groupie Girl. T’Pol, alone, tries to keep her tent from blowing away.

Suddenly, Trip feels something moving around in his sleeping bag. As T’Pol is in a different tent, neither of the other two alternatives appeals to him. He jumps up and sees a scorpion-like bug in his bag. “Gimme your boot…so I can squash it!” Mayweather responds, “Are we allowed to squash alien life forms?” Stymied by this philosophical and procedural conundrum, Trip decides he wants to get a phase pistol and stun the bug. T’Pol, seeing the commotion in the other tent but unwilling to go outside and get her hair mussed by the wind, calls Trip on her communicator to find out what all the fuss is about. Just then, the wind starts blowing even harder, ripping the tent pegs out of the ground. They decide to evacuate to a nearby cave T’Pol located earlier but never had reason to mention on screen until now.

On board ship, Reed heads to Archer’s quarters to tell him about the windstorm. Reed recommends bringing the survey team off the planet. “I’ve got a shuttle on standby.” Archer contacts T’Pol, who is in the cave with the others. The cave has the traditional perfectly flat floor. She points out, “A landing under these conditions might be difficult.” Everyone agrees that the away team will be safe in the cave until the storm ends, at which point the shuttle can come get them. Archer has the shuttle remain on standby, just in case.

Going through their supplies, the away team realizes they’ve left their food packs back at the campsite. I would have expected them to be blown away by the same wind that drove the people underground, but Mayweather volunteers to go back and get them. Meanwhile, Nameless Male Ensign thinks he hears movement in the back of the cave.

Out in the storm, Mayweather spots an MRE on the ground. He leaps for it just as a gust of wind blows it away. Hey, I was right. He catches it, though, and as he clutches his trophy to his chest, he sees the vague shape of someone moving among the trees. He calls out to the shape, “Hello?” but gets no response.

Mayweather returns to the cave and asks, “Was anybody outside just now?” No one was. Mayweather tells them he saw other people out there. “I think we’ve had enough ghost stories for one night,” Trip admonishes. T’Pol insists that no one else is on the planet, while Mayweather insists he saw three people. T’Pol scans the area with her Palm Pilot. “Other than ourselves, there are no humanoid life forms here.” Nameless Male Ensign, who gets the first name Ethan in this scene, hears the voices in the back of the cave again, and tells the others about it. “Are you going to tell me I’m imagining things, too?” Yes. Yes, I am. Trying to calm Ensign Ethan down, Trip suggests, “They could be friendly.” “Then why are they hiding?” Ethan is too clever for Trip’s head games. He wants to leave the cave. “And where do you propose we go?” asks T’Pol. “Back out into the storm?” Ethan thinks that is a pretty good idea, and runs out of the cave to implement his cunning plan. Trip orders Vulcan Groupie Girl, apparently the only one here he has any authority over, to stay in the cave while he and Mayweather hunt down Ethan, phase pistols in hand. Meanwhile, T’Pol grabs a gun and heads into the back of the cave. “There’s someone back there. I intend to find them.”

While T’Pol scans stalagmites, Mayweather and Trip search the woods for Ethan’s body. I mean Ethan. As they pass a rock outcropping, Trip sees a humanoid form coming out of the stone. He calls to Mayweather, but it’s gone by the time he gets there. “It came right out of the rock like it was a part of it.” “That could explain why they’re not showing up on our scanners.” Uh, it would? If you say so.

Poor Vulcan Groupie Girl is stranded all alone in the cave with only a phase pistol and a 1000-Watt lantern to protect her. She decides to go see what T’Pol is doing.

Trip and Mayweather continue to search. Having set their scanners for, “Find Crazy Crewman,” they almost fall into the infinitely deep, 10-foot wide chasm before spotting it. How is it that T’Pol can stand inside a cave and determine with her scanner that there no humanoids anywhere close to being nearby, but these two can’t find the only guy within walking distance?

Vulcan Groupie Girl sneaks up on T’Pol and sees her having a conversation with two aliens in an alien language. She approaches T’Pol and asks, “Who were you talking to?” T’Pol denies everything. “Talking to? There’s no one here.”

Archer is on the bridge, listening to Trip’s report. “We’ve lost Navokovich, and we’re apparently not alone.” Navokovich! Ethan Navokovich. That means Vulcan Groupie Girl is named Cutler. Twenty minutes into the episode, and finally I know all the characters’ names. Thank goodness. That extra typing was becoming tedious.

Trip and Mayweather return to the cave and tell the others that the captain is coming down in a shuttle to get them away from the dangerous rock-dwelling people. T’Pol once again attempts to use reason. “The rocks are composed of limestone and cormolite, nothing more.” Cutler jumps in to contradict T’Pol. “She’s lying, commander. I saw her talking to them.” It’s a good thing I finally worked out her name. I don’t think Vulcan Groupie Girl applies anymore. Cutler confronts T’Pol. “Why don’t you tell us what they want?”

Archer and Reed are descending through the stormy atmosphere in a shuttle pod. Archer manages to contact Ethan via communicator and orders him back to the cave for pickup. The response is less than satisfactory. “Go to hell!” Mr. Reed, is this thing armed? No? Damn.

In the cave, Trip confronts T’Pol. “I have no reason to deceive you,” she insists. “I can’t explain what you’ve seen, but I assure you I didn’t speak to anyone.” In counterpoint, Trip says, “I’d like to believe you, but you Vulcans don’t exactly have a spotless track record when it come to being honest with us.” Oh, boy. Here it comes. Yet another “Vulcans Bad” speech. This one is mercifully cut short by Archer calling to tell them where to meet the shuttle.

Archer tries to land the shuttle, but there’s “a lot of wind shear near the surface.” He scrapes the right wing against a rock face, damaging some thrusters and causing a coolant leak. Why is the captain flying the shuttle under the very hazardous conditions? Why don’t they have people specifically for that, so the captain or main helmsman doesn’t have to pilot every mission? Reed reminds Archer, “We can’t safely land in this wind with a thruster out.” Archer aborts the rescue, ordering the away team to make do until after the storm. “If you run across any more of these aliens, try to make contact.” Good idea, captain. Give them something to do while they await their deaths.

The survey team retreats to the cave, where Trip quickly summarizes the situation. “We’re stuck down here for God knows how long with a bunch of rock people who, for all we know, are staring at us from these walls right now.” Trip, did you hear what you just said? Maybe you should listen when T’Pol calls you irrational in a few seconds. “You’ve never seen me irrational.” Whatever, man. Just trying to help. Mayweather notices that the water supply is running low. T’Pol says, “I detected water about 60 meters in that direction.” “That direction” being deeper into the cave. Everyone believes she really wants to go talk to her rock-people buddies. She offers to Trip, “Join me if you like.” Now everyone believes she’s trying to lure Trip away to do him. Harm. To do him harm. Trip whips out his phase pistol and tells T’Pol, “Sit down.”

On the Enterprise, Hoshi is trying to get Ensign Ethan, down on the planet, to say anything coherent. All she’s getting is a lot of tortured wailing. Archer orders Reed, down in the transporter room, to bring Ethan aboard. Reed pulls the three sliders to beam Ethan’s red, green, and blue bits aboard, but there’s a problem. “There are contaminants in the matter stream. The phase discriminator can’t seem to isolate the debris.” In short, Ethan materializes with wind-blown leaves and twigs embedded in him. Ew. On the upside, he didn’t explode.

Back in the cave, Trip asks what T’Pol is doing with her data pad/scanner just as she’s getting to the good part about the muscular stable boy and the Vulcan noblewoman enjoying a good romp at the 3-D chessboard. “Slowly, deliberately, his hand moved to his rook. He lifted it, and she could see in his eyes how he considered the many different moves available to him. Suddenly, with unexpected swiftness, he thrust his hand up onto the third tier, placing his rook to pin her queen between it and his king’s knight. She raised her eyebrow in new appreciation of the commoner’s skill. She was two moves from checkmate. It was inevitable. After so many years of growing accustomed to her husband’s playing style, this new challenger was fascinating. T’Ring was unsure if she would ever be satisfied playing with Slock ever again.”

Sorry. Got carried away. T’Pol claims to be studying the scans she’d made of the planet earlier in the day. “There’s nothing of scientific interest on this planet. Our mission here was a waste of time.” Trip, who is slurring his words, does not believe her. He clumsily grabs the doohickey from her, and plans to get Hoshi to translate it from Vulcan to English for him. “This could be evidence…[of] your little conspiracy.” T’Pol tells Trip she has learned something about humans on this mission. “You’re a far more dangerous species than I previously believed.” And don’t you forget it, sister. Trip’s paranoia has evolved to include a secret agreement between the Vulcans and the rock people to kill off the Enterprise crew as a way of getting humanity back under Vulcan’s thumb by proving we aren’t ready to be away from Earth by ourselves yet. T’Pol makes a mental note to bring the idea up at the next High Command meeting. Cutler and Mayweather, meanwhile, are sitting, leaned against a cave wall, nearly unconscious, not contributing much. I mention them in case you were wondering where they went. Trip continues to rant, and T’Pol tries to get him to see reason until she, too, snaps. Trip: “Did you see that?” T’Pol (with feeling): “All I see is a delusional engineer!” Whatever is making the others crazy is also affecting Little Miss Perfect. Mayweather spots a hallucinatory critter running along the cave ceiling, which Trip blasts.

In sickbay, Ethan has had all the debris surgically removed. It only went skin deep. If they’re going to have more transporter accidents in the future, I hope they’re more lasting. Gruesome, even. Dr. Phlox also discovers a hallucinogenic flower pollen in Ethan’s bloodstream, which is what caused the freaky behavior and his current unconsciousness. “He should be all right in three or four hours.” Remember that flower Ethan smelled during the montage? It was actually relevant. Phlox has no idea if the pollen will affect T’Pol more or less than the humans. Archer calls T’Pol and learns that she is being held captive. Trip explains his theory. Archer tells Trip about the pollen. “It causes heightened anxiety, hallucinations….” Trip refuses to believe Archer despite his Starfleet training on, “What to do when the Captain says you’re unhinged.” He does, however, relax for a moment, taking T’Pol out of immediate danger of being deep fat fried. Archer sends Reed to the bridge to work out how much longer the storm will last. Because meteorology is what security and armory officers do.

Planetside, Trip tries to rouse Mayweather from his drugged stupor to help defend against the rock people. Mayweather is so far gone he can’t even speak. Trip continues on his anti-Vulcan rant. T’Pol seems to have reverted to speaking Vulcan. Whether that’s voluntary or not is unclear. Trip tries to reason with the imaginary rock people. “Tell you what. Come out, and we’ll settle this peacefully. Whatever she told you about humans, it’s not true. You can see for yourself. Say something!” He then shoots the nearest rock face, severely undercutting his own credibility. T’Pol spots an unattended phase pistol and awaits her chance to grab it. She gets that chance when Trip decides one of the rock formations is someone called Mr. Velik and starts explaining himself to it. T’Pol reaches the pistol just as Trip notices the action, and the two end up in a Mexican standoff.

After receiving the news that the storm isn’t likely to end for another nine hours, Archer gets called to sickbay for another punch to the gut. Dr. Phlox spouts some mumbo jumbo, the practical upshot of which is that when the pollen breaks down in the blood, it becomes a poison. There is an antidote, but Phlox doesn’t think he caught the problem in time for it to do much good. He’s really very upset about the whole thing. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Captain.” I’m finding that in every episode there has been one scene or snippet of dialog that nails who one character or other is and what they’re about. This is that scene. Anyway, Archer asks about the others’ prognoses. “I’ve got four people down on the surface, Doctor. I need to know if they’re going to be dead when we get there in the morning.” Phlox doesn’t have an answer.

Back in the cave, Trip and T’Pol are still mutually threatening. Cutler and Mayweather are effectively out of the picture, but for some reason Trip is not about to pass out like the others. Archer calls, and warns them about the poisonous effects of the pollen. He explains that they are sending down a batch of the antidote via transporter, and that, “it’s imperative that you inoculate yourselves as soon as possible,” to maximize the chance of recovery. Trip, still convinced that T’Pol is up to something, insists, “An injection isn’t going to change a damn thing.” T’Pol, speaking Vulcan, warns Archer that she believes Trip is going to kill her. Hearing that language almost sets Trip off again, until Archer, frankly, bullshits him, “You’ve heard of people suffering from dementia who revert to their native language. She can’t help it.” Considering that Trip isn’t buying the pollen story in the first place, maybe not the best way to go, but at least it’s consistent. Finally, Archer appeals to Trip’s loyalty. “Trust me now. Take the injection. Then we’ll deal with these rock people.” It might have worked, but Trip chooses this moment to dream up two Rock People forming behind T’Pol. “I’m not gonna die with a hypospray in my hand!”

At the transporter, Phlox places the antidote on the pad, and Reed sends it down.

Subtle manipulation having failed, Archer resorts to bald-faced lying. “Starfleet sent us here to make contact with a silicon-based life form. T’Pol was the only person granted clearance to speak with them.” Trip brings up some valid holes in the story, like why anyone besides T’Pol was allowed on the planet in the first place, but Archer patches them pretty well. The only way T’Pol can do what she came for is if Trip is not pointing a gun at her. Also, if she fails, Enterprise will destroy the rock people’s cave before they have a chance to destroy Enterprise. Hoshi then explains to T’Pol, in Vulcan, what they want her to do, cleverly keeping the big surprise from the viewers. Hoshi translates T’Pol’s reply, “Play-acting isn’t exactly a Vulcan tradition, but she’ll do her best.”

On the planet, T’Pol gets her chance to talk to the walls. Vulcan is a nice language to listen to, really, when you don’t know what it’s saying. She says something into the communicator along the lines of, “Was that enough?” As Archer waits for the hammer to fall, he comments to Hoshi, “I hope she knows the difference between stun and kill.” Hmm, maybe next time he ought to wait until after the transmission is ended before making pithy comments.

Here goes nothing. Archer tells Trip, “They’ve agreed to talk to her, Trip. So, lower your weapon and act real friendly.” Hesitantly, he does it, and T’Pol shoots him dead square in the chest. Was it stun or kill? Will we ever know? Did they actually mean for this to be suspenseful?

T’Pol fetches the antidote container from the cave entrance and juices everyone up. Mayweather still has enough strength to resist, so T’Pol gives him a good, old-fashioned Vulcan Nerve Pinch. I guess they do all learn how to do it. Can she mind meld, too? Is there any chance we won’t find out, one way or the other, before the end of the season?

Morning breaks, clear and calm, on the planet. The storm has passed. Trip wakes up to find T’Pol offering him a drink of water. “You didn’t shoot me last night, did ya?” All the humans wonder where the rock people went. “There were no rock people,” T’Pol tells them. “You were all hallucinating.” I told you so. Nanny nanny. Boo boo. T’Pol then explains that her speech to the walls was simply a ruse to get Trip to lower his weapon. “You were growing increasingly illogical and violent. Something about splitting me in two.” Maybe it’s because I’ve had these two pegged for a shipboard romance since their first scene together, but the way she says, “splitting me in two,” sounds like she’s not entirely opposed to the idea under the right circumstances. Innuendo and out the other. Anyway, they bond. Meanwhile, Mayweather has a neck ache from the nerve pinch. I don’t think they know Vulcans can do that. Also, it turns out that Ethan is going to survive after all. The shuttle arrives, and everyone heads toward it to leave this place. From the edge of the woods, the rock people wave goodbye. Not really, but they should have.

The episode begins with Archer in the shower when the artificial gravity quits. Wackiness and an artful display of clever camera angles ensue.

After the credits, it’s breakfast time. T’Pol is ladling out a bowl of Vulcan Breakfast Broth (continuity from last episode) while Phlox chides her for not being adventurous enough to eat the human food laid out on the buffet for everyone else. “I sampled human food on several occasions. It didn’t agree with me.” Phlox encourages her to try it again anyway, in hopes that she’ll get used to it. She goes over to the drinks dispenser and orders a glass of fizzy water. What comes out is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike fizzy water.

In Engineering, Trip is fielding multiple malfunction reports. Archer shows up to check on his progress. I’m thinking that shower thing made this a personal issue for him. “We know it’s got something to do with the plasma exhaust,” Trip explains to Archer. “The flow’s been restricted for some reason and it’s screwing up half the systems on the ship.” Hmm. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to run the toilets and vending machines through the warp core after all. Despite the effects of the mystery problem on the warp engines, Trip thinks he can fix whatever is wrong without coming out of warp. That is, until a panel blows open, fire billowing forth, right next to captain. As Archer puts out the fire with a handy extinguisher, Trip calls the bridge. “It might be a good idea to drop out of warp.” WAH Wah wah waaaah.

Up on the bridge, T’Pol spots the problem, which she explains to Reed, Archer, and Trip around the display table at the back of the bridge. “Something’s distorting our wake pattern,” she says, doing a game show model hand wave over the image on the screen. Something has hosed their warp field, which has corked the plasma exhaust like a potato in a tail pipe. Don’t ask me; I only write what I see. They discuss, and conclude that nothing on board ship could be causing it. Archer asks Reed what negative effects igniting the plasma exhaust would have on the ship. “If we polarize the hull plating, it should be all right, as long as we maintain half impulse.” Archer orders the protection and the speed, gets all the sensors looking backwards, and has Reed fire a torpedo to explode behind them. There’s a big blue cloud of an explosion, which didn’t seem to accomplish much. Archer then runs the tape back and forth, trying to spot details of interest. I have no idea what that might be like. Eventually, he spots the silhouette of an invisible ship. Trip comments, “Looks like we got ourselves a hitchhiker.” T’Pol analyzes, “They must be using some sort of stealth technology.” Hoshi ponders, “I wonder how long they’ve been there.” Archer cuts through the crap, “Long enough to throw half our systems out of whack.” How often do you hear about things being “in whack?”

Archer has Hoshi hail the other ship. Only the audio is working. Archer tells them to back off. Hoshi’s translator converts their reply from alien gibberish to English in five passes. “We are complying with your request. We ask you not to harm us.” Having worked out those 13 words, the translator is now fully fluent in the aliens’ language. “I wouldn’t mind an explanation,” Archer requests. The alien on the other end of the phone explains that their engine is busted, and they’ve been surfing the Enterprise’s wake while they tried to fix it. T’Pol’s sensors confirm that the other ship is broken. Archer asks the aliens to de-stealth (de-cloak sounds better, but it isn’t being called a cloaking device yet), which they do.

In sickbay, Phlox shoots Trip up with some drug that “should shorten the decompression process by half.” It seems Trip is going to go over to the alien ship and try to fix the engine of the so very much more advanced ship than the Enterprise. Naturally, since he’s better qualified to do the work than the actual alien engineers on board. “Three hours of decompression each direction, it makes more sense to stay until the job’s done,” is Archer’s explanation why Trip won’t be coming home every night. I’m going to be generous and assume they’re using the word “decompression” as shorthand for whatever process Trip has to go through to enter and leave the alien ship. If it were actually a pressure change, he would need to compress one direction and decompress coming back. And as long as it’s a gaseous atmosphere at a temperature humans can survive, the pressure difference can’t be that much anyway. Whatever. It’s just an excuse for Trip to stay on the other ship long enough to get knocked up anyway. I’ll give them credit for using the idea that not every species exists under the same ideal conditions. Then, there’s the food question. T’Pol explains, “They claim to have the ability to synthesize protein and carbohydrates. But there’s no telling what it may taste like. Try to be…diplomatic.” As a final bit of advice, Archer tells him, “Remember to mind your manners.” Oh, the foreshadowing, (a sign of great literature).

The shuttle pod approaches the alien ship, and docks. The pilot, Mayweather, reminds us that no one has seen the aliens yet because of the comm system problems. Trip reports to Archer that he is ready to board the other ship, then heads out the shuttle’s top hatch. Once Trip is sealed inside, Mayweather heads back to Enterprise. Trip is inside a copper cylinder about four feet across. As he calls out, “Hello?” a white gas is released into the chamber. Trip starts to panic and cough. A voice tells him, “Try to maintain your normal rate of respiration.” Which turns out not to be so easy when you’re being gassed in a small chamber on an alien spacecraft. “The discomfort will subside,” the voice assures him.

A couple of hours pass over the course of a commercial break. As Archer prepares lunch for Porthos the wonder dog, T’Pol interrupts him with an anxious call from Tucker, who has apparently forgotten his watch, and has therefore been calling Archer every five minutes. “How long’s it been, sir?” He’s not enjoying the “decompression” process, although his discomfort from before the break has subsided. The voice didn’t lie. Not the least bit concerned that anything harmful might be happening to his crewman, Archer tells Trip, “Be patient,” and cuts off communication to play with his dog.

Trip is watching lights flash on a display board inside the gas chamber. He recites color and number of flashes, until they speed up to a rate faster than he can follow. When he stops playing their little game, a door opens and he enters the main body of the ship. It’s got flashing lights, weird angles, and aliens walking around in it. Trip’s tripping. He’s seeing everything in slow motion at Batman-cam angles. They offer him food and rest, both of which he refuses. “I think…I’d like to take a look at that engine room of yours.” A female alien in a shiny silver catsuit leads Trip across the room. Along the way, he sees one of the aliens pass his hand over some contraption, sparks jumping between it and his hand. They pass windows beyond which is a tank full of giant eels swimming around in some transparent liquid. I would say water, but I’ve seen a later scene.

In the engine room, Trip and the alien babe are under the warp core giving it an oil change. Trip is still disoriented by the flashing lights and weird noises. She tries to show him the problem with the engine. “I’m sorry. You lost me. I’m having trouble concentrating.” She asks him if he’d like to take a rest after all.

On the Enterprise, Archer is enjoying a good book when Trip calls. “I don’t think I’m gonna be much help over here. I’m having a little more trouble adjusting than I thought I would.” Archer leaves Trip hanging and contacts the alien ship’s captain, who explains to Archer that Trip needs to rest to finish acclimating. “I strongly suggest he lie down for a while.” Archer believes the alien and orders Trip to take a nap. “Just one hour. If you’re not feeling better we’ll bring you back.” Trip doesn’t think it will help. The alien babe offers to show him to his sleeping quarters. Bucka-chicka-wow.

Trip wakes up some time later in a 60’s-style ergo-bed to the sound of ocean waves and the sight of the alien babe standing over him. I’ve had worse mornings. Every day of my life. “Your captain sent over the recording.” Trip asks about the stuff growing on the walls. “Our food. It grows all over the ship.” They must be a race of grazers. She offers Trip a bowl filled with clear, smooth stones. “This is the closest we could come to water,” she says. We call it, “Ice”. She puts the bowl down on Trip’s area and pops a water-rock into his mouth. He is not displeased. With the second one, sparks fly between Trip and the alien. Literally, they jump from her hand to his lips. “Did that hurt?’ she asks. “It’s kinda nice,” he replies. With each chunk of water she feeds him, she lets the sparks linger longer. Eventually, she decides it is time to get back to work on the engine. Pointing at the bowl of water-rocks, Trip asks, “Can we take some of those with us?”

T’Pol is on the Enterprise bridge, running down a checklist with Trip by radio. He keeps injecting fun factoids about the aliens and their ship. “They’ve got grass growing on the floor. Real grass. It’s even green.” She’s not having any of it. The engine is almost repaired. Archer observes that Trip sounds better, and Mayweather responds, “Before you know it, he’ll have that engine room running like a well-oiled machine.” Isn’t it a well-oiled machine already? The moving parts, anyway? The alien babe, whom I suppose I should have mentioned is an alien engineer babe, tells Trip, “It will take a while for the coils to regenerate. Come with me.” Only if we time it right. Sorry. I’ve been wanting to use that joke ever since I first heard it in 1982.

Trip and the alien babe enter an iridescent room. She walks over to a wall and picks up a remote control. She tells Trip, “Watch this,” and pushes some buttons. The room disappears and is replaced with an alien landscape. “This is Thera, where I come from.” Trip is suitably impressed. “It’s not like any hologram I’ve ever seen.” She scoops up some of the holographic dirt and pours it through his hands. Trip asks how it is possible. She explains, “Re-sequenced photons.” Oh, magic. Makes about as much sense. She points off into the virtual distance. “Come with me.” Again, so soon? After a short walk, she changes the scene to a rowboat on a calm lake somewhere. Trip is still impressed. “If we had one of these on Enterprise, I’d never ask for shore leave.” She asks him a couple, “You aliens are strange,” questions. She touches his cheek to feel his stubble, giving him a facial joy buzzer in the process. He likes it. In the race to see who can score with an alien chick first, Trip pulls into the lead previously held by Archer. She uses the remote to create a box full of white pebbles. “More water?” Trip asks. She tells him, “This is a game we play,” and sticks one hand into the pebbles. They and her arm start to glow. Trip follows suit, and before long they each have both hands in the mix, all purple and glowy. “Your favorite food is ‘cat fish’,” she announces, to Trip’s surprise. “What’s mine?” When he discovers he knows, she is pleased. “I wasn’t certain the granules would work with your species.” That’s not all that works with his species. They flirt until another voice breaks in. “Reactor room to A’Lenn.” Once again, like last week, no names until absolutely necessary. It’s time for them to go back to work. A’Lenn turns off the room.

Trip boards the shuttle back to the Enterprise, ready to tell some stories. Mayweather asks, “What are the Zerillians like?” “Oh, a little shorter than us, weird scales on their faces, but otherwise pretty much like you and me.” The Roddenberry Alien Design Policy, ladies and gents. Trip’s glad he went, but just as glad to be coming back.

On the bridge, the Zerillians are on the main screen thanking Archer for the help and apologizing for delaying the Enterprise’s mission. Hoshi got the video fixed. “Getting a chance to meet other species is our mission,” Archer assures them. Trip arrives on the bridge, and the aliens thank him, too, for all the trouble he went through. “It was worth every minute,” he tells them. The aliens warp away. Feeling all self-congratulatory, our heroes head off back where they were going before all this started.

Another morning, and Trip is in the galley scarfing down about five scrambled eggs as Reed sits down at his table. Reed is interested in the hologram room, which Trip goes on about. “If we had one of those on board, I can only imagine what it would be used for,” Reed observes, keenly aware of the human capacity to turn anything it gets its hands on into a sex toy given half a chance. Trip catches his drift. “I don’t know if they can recreate people with it, but it sure did a hell of a job on landscapes.” Reed then asks if Trip made any friends, and tries to turn that into a sex thing too. If the Internet rumors about Reed being gay are true, he’s deep in the closet, back with the old report cards and shoes from the Age of Disco. Trip’s wrist itches, and as he scratches it, he notices a little bump on it. Reed asks if Trip might be allergic to something, and suggests he have Dr. Phlox take a look.

“I don’t believe you’re having an allergic reaction,” Phlox tells Trip as he examines the wrist-bump. “Did your trip to the Zerillian ship involve any…romance?” Trip denies touching anything that didn’t generate a warp field, but Phlox knows biology doesn’t lie. Indicating the bump on Trip’s wrist, Phlox tells Trip, “This is a nipple.” He scans Trip and locates the embryo. “I‘m not quite sure if congratulations are in order, Commander, but you’re pregnant.” The look of puzzled disbelief on Trip’s face is a sight to behold.

Trip comes sliding out of the wall-mounted MRI machine to face Archer, Phlox, and T’Pol. Phlox points out the little bundle of joy on the scanner screen. “I assume you’ll be happy to know it is not, technically, your child.” It turns out Zerillians only pass along their mother’s genetic info to their young. The men are just incubators. Makes me wonder where the next generation of Zerillian men come from. Trip wants to know, “How the hell’d I get knocked up?” Phlox doesn’t know enough about Zerillian sex, “but I wouldn’t think it would be that difficult for you to recollect a…sexual encounter.” Trip vehemently denies screwing anything besides threaded fasteners. “I was a complete gentlemen the entire time.” T’Pol disapproves of Trip’s presumed behavior. I think she’s jealous. No, wait. That’s an emotion. Discussing A’Lenn, Trip claims, “I didn’t lay a hand on her.” He seems to have forgotten the sparky hands that got laid on him. Trip asks Phlox if there’s any way to remove the little bastard without hurting it. Phlox makes an impossible biological claim that translates as “Tough noogies.” Somehow, taking it out without worrying about hurting it never came up. Considering Trip’s ride in the holographic chamber to see A’Lenn’s home planet, T’Pol suggests, “Perhaps the next step would have been to meet her holographic parents. If I’m not mistaken, on some planets that’s a precursor to marriage.” Archer does all he can not to crack up when she says this. Who says Vulcans don’t have a sense of humor? Finally, Trip remembers the box of holographic telepathy pebbles. Phlox speculates wildly that maybe that had something to do with it. I’ve heard of the holodeck safety protocols going offline, but that’s ridiculous. T’Pol chides, “One of the first things a diplomat learns is not to stick his fingers where they don’t belong.” Archer orders T’Pol to track down the Zerillians to see if they can fix the trouble Trip’s gotten himself into. Trip is cleared to return to duty, but only if he sees Phlox once a day, because, “That nipple may not be the only surprise your body has in store for you.” Archer’s self-restraint is amazing. I know he’s going to leave sickbay, go back to his quarters, and gut-laugh until his kidneys shoot out his nose. Trip asks if his delicate condition can be kept among the four of them. “Of course,” Archer agrees, meaning, “Of course, until I can transmit a letter to the Reader’s Digest people.”

In Engineering, Trip is getting all maternal. As he’s getting off the little one-man person lifter, he notices that the guardrail around the shaft would offer no protection to “a short alien, a child.” He points this out to a passing subordinate, who has no idea what his boss is going on about. Trip also notices that if someone inside the elevator had his hands on the handrail, “it’ll take your fingers right off.” This is a real safety concern, the kind of thing I’m surprised the set designers got away with, but Engineer Lackey just doesn’t get it. Trip realizes how weird he just got and tells the other guy, “Never mind.”

It’s eight days later, and still no sign of the Zerillians. Trip, in his civvies (untucked shirt pulling duty as a maternity dress), walks through the galley on his way to the captain’s mess. He looks over the gathered crewmen and, in his shame over his love child, paranoidly (is that a word?) believes they are all talking about him. He enters the captain’s mess, where Archer and Phlox are already eating. I thought T’Pol ate with the captain. Maybe she and Phlox alternate, since there doesn’t seem to be a fourth chair at the table. “I thought we all promised to keep this under wraps,” Trip says by way of a question. When the other two deny saying anything, Trip concludes T’Pol must have told. “She probably let it slip the minute she left sickbay.” Phlox reminds Trip she also promised to keep the secret. “Where I’m from, Vulcans aren’t known for keeping promises.” I’m starting to think there’s more to his anti-Vulcanism than the usual dislike and distrust all humans have. Either that or it’s the only character trait they’ve nailed down for him yet. As Trip is laying claim to an entire pan of chicken tetrazini, Archer notices a bandage on Trip’s wrist. “Did you cut yourself?” Trip has put a bandage on his wrist to cover both the nipple from the earlier scene and a new one, complete with areola. “Just how many of these am I gonna grow, and, while we’re on the subject, are they gonna go away afterward?” Phlox, speaking from a confident ignorance, assures Trip that they probably ought to go away, eventually, at some point, maybe. When Archer points out that maybe they won’t be able to find the Zerillians, Trip takes the first logical step. “Are you saying I’m gonna deliver this baby?” Phlox nudges him to take the second step. “Once the child is born, it may well rely on you, in some way, to care for it.” He hasn’t gotten it yet. “I never had any intention of becoming a working mother.” As Archer suffers the torment of laughter contained, Phlox tells Trip he can expect various changes over the next five weeks, “hormonal changes, mostly.” Archer suggests Trip stick with the civvies “to help hide the bulge.” Trip, having inhaled his food, calls in the steward to bring him another serving. Archer orders Trip to start seeing the doctor every eight hours so he can “start figuring out what your post-natal responsibilities might be.” Trip finally lifts his metaphorical foot to take that second step when Phlox pushes him over. “You may very well be putting those nipples to work before you know it.” Of course, this is the exact moment the steward returns with Trip’s second helping. Trip yanks the food from his hand, and the poor guy staggers away, uncomprehending, but determined to become an officer one day. Archer tells Trip to look at the bright side. “This is the first interspecies pregnancy involving a…human.” Trip is not brightened.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, Reed spots the Zerillians with the sensors. T’Pol orders the course change and informs the captain. Oh, there she is. Now I wonder who drives the ship on the nights when she eats with Archer. Trip, hearing the announcement, is suitably relieved. Looking toward Heaven, or up anyway, he gushes, “Thank you!” They rush out of the mess toward the bridge, Trip grabbing a handful of breadsticks on the way.

They arrive at the location their sensors say the Zerillian ship is, but instead they discover a ship their Vulcan database tells them is a Klingon battlecruiser. It has the design of the original series ships, but the detail of modern special effects. It looks good. Bigger than I thought, too.

T’Pol has a theory, which she uses as an opportunity to insult Trip. “It appears your repairs didn’t last very long. If I’m correct, they’re hiding in the Klingons’ plasma wake.” I also have a theory. The Zerillians go around getting aliens to come on board by pretending to be disabled, then impregnate them with their demonic seed and send them away to spread their malefic influence across the galaxy. My other theory is that Zerillians are sluts with a bad quality control department in their space program. Archer decides he has to deal with the Klingons in order to get in touch with the Zerillians. He hails them, and they start firing photon torpedoes. Typical. While T’Pol convinces Archer that that’s just the Klingon way of saying “Howdy,” Trip scans the Klingons. “Sir, look at their starboard nacelle. The power’s fluctuating just like ours did.” Looks like the Klingons have a nasty case of Zerillian barnacles.

The Klingons finally respond. “What gives you the right to approach a Klingon warship?” It’s a good mixture of threatening and prideful. Very in character. Archer starts by apologizing. Rookie mistake. He asks them, “Have you been experiencing any unusual malfunctions? The Klingon assumes Enterprise has been following them. Archer digs the hole deeper by explaining, “Your problems are being caused by a small stealth vessel that’s been riding in your wake.” Good going, Archie. The Klingons do the same ignite-the-plasma trick and catch the Zerillians in a tractor beam. “Bring their captain to me, and execute the others,” orders the Klingon-in-charge. Apparently, plasma-surfing in an invisible ship and making a Klingon ship veer right in the process is an act of war against Klingons. Of course, surrendering while lying face down in the blood of your own family is an act of war against a Klingon. Archer tries to convince the Klingons not to kill anybody, and gets nowhere at warp 6. T’Pol steps forward. “Less than one month ago, Captain Archer stood in the High Council Chamber in Kronos.” She summarizes the pilot episode at them, ending by basically saying, “You owe him one.” That gets them thinking. Trip throws in a bribe. “They have some amazing technology. If you don’t kill ‘em I’m sure they’d share it with you.” Or you can kill them, take the ship, and retro-engineer it yourselves. Trip specifically recommends the holodeck tech. The Klingons are intrigued. “If you agree to enter their vessel, I’d appreciate it if you took my chief engineer with you,” Archer requests. They aren’t that intrigued. Captain Klingon sees no benefit to himself in taking Trip along. Archer and Trip try to explain why Trip needs to go to the Zerillian ship without revealing the bun in Trip’s oven, but eventually, they have no choice. “Show him,” Archer orders. Trip raises his shirt to show the bulge to the Klingons. They laugh. That’s good, right?

Must be. The next scene starts with two Klingons and Trip stepping out of the “decompression” chamber. Trip explains to the Zerillian captain. “[The Klingons have] agreed to consider releasing your ship in exchange for one or two of your holographic simulators. It would be a good idea to cooperate.” One Klingon holds up a data chip thingy. “This is a topographical survey of our capital.” The Zerillian takes the Klingons off to demonstrate the holodeck, leaving Trip with A’Lenn. She claims the reactor broke after six days. I still say they wanted to sow their dark seed in the Klingons. She asks Trip why the Enterprise tracked them down, and he shows her the baby bulge. She acts surprised. “I had no idea this could happen with another species.” So, she admits tricking Trip into having alien sex with her. “I would be real appreciative if you could get this out of me. Assuming it’s safe.” She points her TV remote at it and declares, “It’s still early enough to transfer the embryo to another host.” Oh, and it’s a girl.

The Klingons are impressed with the holographic representation of their homeworld. “I can see my house from here.” Oh, my God, I laughed and laughed. The Klingons get a holodeck and agree to release the Zerillians. But don’t think that means the Klingons are going to be all buddy-buddy now. “Listen carefully to me,” the Klingon captain tells Archer. “Our debt is repaid. We have no interest in meeting you again. And if we do, I promise you’ll regret it.”

Denouement: Archer, Trip, and T’Pol are eating dinner. Trip is good-naturedly griping about decompressing with the Klingons. “I smelled things in there I hope I never smell again.” Archer, without prompting, tells Trip that the Zerillians will get home in a month under their own power rather than risking hitching with anyone else. He then asks T’Pol if all the nice things she said about him when she was talking to the Klingons are true. “Klingons are known to exaggerate. I saw nothing wrong with doing the same,” she tells him, bursting is ego-bubble. Then, not having made enough people feel bad that day, she tells Trip, “You might be pleased to know that this is the first recorded incident of a human male becoming pregnant.” “Just how I always wanted to get into the history books.”

We open to find Mayweather at his post on the Enterprise bridge, surfing the Internet instead of steering the ship. Hoshi is looking over his shoulder, so, instead of porn, he’s looking at heaping piles of data about a lost human colony called Terra Nova. Archer saunters onto the bridge. “Are we there yet?” he asks. What, is he four? Mayweather is amazed at the volume of information amassed. Gee, it’s almost like the trip was documented or something. Hoshi wonders if any of the colonists are still alive. “I’ll let you know, in about three hours,” Archer replies.

Archer, T’Pol, and Trip are in the captain’s mess trying to swallow a huge load of exposition. Under the pretense of telling T’Pol about early human colonization, they lay out the backstory for us. Here’s the gist. Eighty-five or so years ago, having colonized all the good spots in the home solar system, humanity decided to launch its first extra-solar colony ship, to the only habitable planet they’d found within twenty light-years of Earth. It took nine years to get there. After five years on the ground, the colony learned that Earth was going to send another boatload of deportees, that is, colonists. The colony wanted neither the extra mouths to feed nor the genetic diversity. Angry transmissions were traded until one day the colony on Bossa Nova stopped talking. This so spooked the guys back on Earth that they not only didn’t send the new colony ship like they planned, but also never sent any ship to find out what happened. They also never asked the Vulcans to look into it for them because humans are prideful dinks. Thus, potentially due to the breakdown of a six-dollar transmitter coil, humanity gave up on its first ever settlement and sat on their thumbs for the next seventy years. Until this episode. Hearing the story, T’Pol reasons, “Terra Nova may still be there, Captain.” Y’think?

They arrive, and Archer has the ship go into orbit. Archer hails the colony, Hoshi remembering to push the Talk button about halfway through. “Terra Nova colony: This is Captain Jonathan Archer of the starship Enterprise. We’ve come from Earth. Please respond.” When no one answers, Archer asks T’Pol if there are any life signs on the planet. Me, I would’ve done that first. She finds no life signs, but the colony buildings are still intact. She also notices a low level of radiation in the area. Viewing it on the big screen, they see a dozen oddly shaped buildings. Archer asks how bad the radiation is. T’Pol tells him, “A few hours of exposure shouldn’t pose a risk.” You weren’t planning on having any children, right? Archer gives Trip command of the ship and drags Reed, T’Pol, and Mayweather to their dooms. The spider is caught in her own web.

The shuttle lands next to an assortment of prefab buildings, and the away team rushes in, scanners blazing. They kind of mosey, actually. Reed discovers a bicycle. Mayweather, a welcome mat. I guess synthetic rubber really isn’t biodegradable. T’Pol locates no seventy year old, weathered, washed out weapons fire residue. “Whatever happened, I gotta believe they tried to let Earth know about it,” Archer figures. He orders Mayweather to find the communications shack and, “See if the data buffer’s intact. We might be able to access their last transmission logs.” My VCR forgets its channels if I unplug it for 20 seconds, and some frontier ham radio is going to hold its data for a lifetime? Granted, it’s a ham radio OF THE FUTURE! but it still seems to be fetched from the middle distance at least. After Archer sends Reed to “check the perimeter,” T’Pol tells Archer that, “seventy years ago radiation levels would have been lethal.” Did someone nuke humanity’s first colony? Was it Earth, secretly trying to deal with unruly settlers? Archer wonders where the bleached bones of the settlers went. T’Pol suggests they left the planet before the radiation killed them. “That would have been kind of difficult,” Archer quips. Pointing to the buildings around him, he explains that the colonists’ ship was dismantled and used to build the structures. “It was a one-way trip.”

Walking the perimeter, Reed spots a figure skulking through the trees. After checking to make sure there are no hallucinogenic flowers about, he informs the captain. “We’re not alone, sir. There’s someone in the forest.” Everyone comes a-running toward the danger.

Reed chases the grey-faced beast-man over hill and dale, and a couple of felled trees, eventually coming to a cave entrance. Archer and T’Pol conveniently show up from a completely different direction. As they poke their heads into the cave, Reed gives a description. “Appears to be a couple of meters tall, biped, odd looking scales.” T’Pol’s scanner tells her there are hundreds of meters of caves. Couldn’t they leave her home and just bring her scanner? Archer calls Mayweather, whom they left alone and unprotected in the colony, and tells him bring over some flashlights. They paid a lot of money for that cave set, and, by god, they’re gonna use it every chance they get.

They go snooping into the caveman’s lair, and immediately come to a dead end. Then they spot the crawl-hole near the floor, I mean ground. As Archer crouches to stick his head into the lion’s mouth, Reed does his job as security guy. “It’s best if I go first, sir.” I am wearing the red stripe. Archer sees the wisdom of it and lets Reed go first, following soon after. They poke around with no apparent goal, spotting a space armadillo digging through a rock wall, which, out of nervousness, they both almost shoot. Meanwhile, T’Pol and Mayweather are being all tense and guardlike outside the cave.

The invasion of the cave goes smoothly, at first. They find a chamber with a combination of stone-age bone tools and modern-era cast iron pots and pans. Archer finds a folding pocketknife. Reed finds a bunch of grayish-blue faces staring down at them from a rock shelf near the ceiling. Archer tries to talk to them. “My name is Archer. We’re looking for some people. I was hoping you could help us.” How many years did he go to diplomacy school to learn to be that smooth? “We’re not going to hurt you,” Archer promises. One of the cave people comes into view pointing a gun. Reed stuns him. So much for diplomacy. Other cave people run in and start shooting their machine pistols at them, firing primitive projectiles that transfer energy in the form of momentum, i.e. bullets. Archer and Reed scram. And quickly get lost. T’Pol calls Archer, having heard the gunfire, and uses her scanner to guide her spelunking superior toward the cave mouth. “In approximately three meters, a tunnel will branch off to your left.” “I don’t see a tunnel.” “Correction: ten meters.” Great, she’s got the thing set for the wrong units again. She thought she was reading in feet and was doing conversions in her head. They get to the cave mouth, and Archer leaps through the ground-level hole to safety. Reed gets shot in the leg and falls over. Before Archer realizes it, a cave guy jumps on Reed and drags him away. Archer turns back to see what happened, but gets fired on as he tries to crawl back in.

Outside, one of the cave people jumps out of the cave onto Mayweather. They struggle until T’Pol shoots him in the back. Not Mayweather, the other guy. Archer comes running out of the cave right behind, bullets ricocheting after him. If there was a cave guy between Archer and the exit, why did he run out to attack instead of pinning down Archer inside the cave? Look! Over there! A distracting thing! T’Pol scans the cave guy, and then they all book for the shuttle. As they prepare for liftoff, Mayweather observes, “If those aliens killed the colonists, they could kill Malcolm [Reed], too.” T’Pol begs to differ. “Those weren’t aliens. They’re human.” Dun dun DAAHHH!

Back on board, Archer’s pissed and Mayweather’s confused. Archer calls the bridge from the turbolift. “What have you found?” A good map of the cave system, that’s what. There are 52 human biosigns wandering around in there, but the ship’s sensors are able to identify the British one. Archer orders Phlox to the situation room, then starts wondering if this was his fault. “They’re never seen other humans before. Maybe we looked as strange to them as they did to us.”

The entire main cast except Reed (who says they have bad continuity?) is gathered around the display table in the situation room, a.k.a. an alcove in the back of the bridge. I still wonder why they don’t put this kind of thing up on the main viewscreen. T’Pol supposes that the colonists were driven underground by the radiation. The cause of the radiation is still unknown. Phlox thinks they’ve lived on mushrooms and bugs all this time. Thanks, but if you think you still need to justify the premise at this point in the game, maybe you shouldn’t have gone this way in the first place. Mayweather suggests using the transporter to nab Reed, who is under guard, but, according to Trip, there’s too much rock in the way. At least they remembered to consider it. T’Pol suggests somehow getting into a nearby collapsed tunnel, and phasering their way out to get close to Reed. Trip suggests using a stun grenade to take out the guards. Archer is against the whole notion. “We’ve got to find some way to talk to them.” “They didn’t seem too eager to talk,” Mayweather points out. “If I can’t make first contact with other humans, I don’t have any business being out here.” Where did that come from? Archer’s had crewmen captured by hostile forces on alien worlds before. Every episode involving a planet, in fact. He’s never wigged out like this before. He orders Phlox to come with him, T’Pol to discover what caused the radiation, and Hoshi and Mayweather to get something useful out of the colony’s comm system.

Archer and Phlox go down to the planet and walk through the woods looking to get captured. Archer holds up his hands and shouts at the trees, “I’m unarmed!” Phlox also holds up his hands, looking like he doesn’t quite understand why. Very, very dirty people come out of the woods holding guns and grant Archer his wish. They drag them back to the cave.

They are led to the chamber with Reed, and Archer goes over to check on him. “I’ve lost a bit of blood, sir, but I don’t think it’s too serious.” Two new people walk into the scene, one a tall bald man who looks like he had a spill while chugging his woad, and a little old woman who had a similar experience with mustard. He identifies Archer as a human, but can’t place Phlox. “I am a Denobulan. I’m Captain Archer’s physician.” He asks Archer if he came from Earth. When Archer confirms it, he gets in Archer’s face. I imagine the stench to be quite powerful. “[You came] to do what? Gut the rest of us?” These folks have an odd vocabulary, no doubt derived from their primitive, underground experiences. I wonder what Hoshi’s translator would do with it. Archer explains he is there to help. “Novans have had enough ‘help’ from you,” spouts a yellowish extra. Despite the animosity, the Novans (actually confused humans, just so we’re all clear) give Archer permission to take Reed and skedaddle. Phlox is allowed his medical equipment to aid in the skedaddlation process by fixing Reed’s leg. While the patching commences, Archer can’t keep his mouth shut. “What makes you think we’re here to hurt you?” “Humans hurt Novans.” Well, that explains it. The old lady with mustard on her chin elaborates. “Poison rain. I was no taller than a digger, but I can still see back. We lived on the Overside. Then the humans dropped the poison, burned our skin, gutted the grown ones. There was no place to go but here.” Let me translate: When she was a kid, she lived above ground. Humans dropped a radioactive substance that caused burns and killed all the grups, I mean adults. They had to move into the caves to survive. The woman is silenced by an internal disturbance of some sort. Archer denies that humans had anything to do with irradiating the surface. Phlox declares Reed ready to move. Archer tells the Novans that they are an offshoot of humanity. “I don’t know what happened, but maybe we can work together and find out.” The Novans don’t believe it. “He speaks in shale!” While Archer continues to try to convince the Novans that he’s a good guy, Phlox surreptitiously scans the old woman. He tells the bald one with the blue chin, “Are you aware that your…mother, hmm?…is sick?” The Novans are shocked and frightened. “She has an illness that we call lung cancer. But, it’s easily cured.” Archer offers to take the old woman to the ship and cure her as a show of good faith. Blue-chin agrees, but only if he gets to go too. And if Reed stays as collateral. Reed is surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

On the shuttle, Archer tries to get the old woman, whom we’re eventually going to learn is named Nadette so I’m going to start calling her that now, to admit/remember she is human, but it’s not working. “My parents were Novans.”

They’ve reached sickbay and stuffed Nadette into the wall-mounted MRI. For a member of a cave-dwelling people, she’s awfully panicky inside the tube. Her son, Blue-Chin, claws on the tube door to try to dig her out. The door opens on its own and Nadette slides out. “My apologies for any discomfort,” Phlox apologizes. He looks at the results of the medical scan, and comes up with the cure. If only it were that easy. Archer uses the time Phlox needs to mix the medicine to show the Novans the pictures that Mayweather dug up in the first scene. “They might help you remember what it was like living on the Overside, before the poison rain.” Nadette seems confused, but Blue-Chin still thinks the human is lying to him. Archer tries to ram the truth down Blue-Chin’s throat. “Whether you want to believe it or not, we’re both human.” The Novans refuse to look at any more pictures.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, T’Pol discovers an impact crater 500 kilometers north of the colony site. T’pol exposits, “The [asteroid impact] would have created a radioactive cloud that probably covered the northern hemisphere for more than a year.” Trip is struck by the irony of it. “They spent all those years getting here, and for what?” Heavy, man.

Down on the planet, Reed tries to strike up a conversation with his guard by talking about his favorite subject: guns. When that goes nowhere, he asks to use the bathroom. I remind you that in England, this actor was a sitcom star. Reed hungrily eyes the unnamed food item his guard picks up and starts eating. “Is your belly hollow?” the guard asks. “It depends. What’s for dinner?” It’s space armadillo on the half shell. Reed is hungry enough to actually eat it. Throughout the caves, the Novans take to their primitive bone flutes and fill the space with breathy, tuneless Yanni music. I think they were shooting for a “cultured savage” moment.

On the ship, Hoshi and Mayweather have managed to get the last transmission out of the colony’s radio. Hoshi pops a disk into the captain’s stereo and hits Play. “No matter how angry Logan’s threats may have seemed, there had to have been a way of dealing with this other than attacking us. Nearly half the adults are dead, including Dr. Tracy, and everyone else is getting sick, except for the younger children.” He goes on, but those are the plot points. The colonists died thinking Earth bombed them, and that has colored the Novans’ view of humans ever since. The message never made it out of the atmosphere because of the debris from the impact. Phlox calls Archer down to sickbay. Last time this happened, one of his crewmen was pregnant, which was a hoot, so Archer hurries up to get down there in case it’s another amusing medical moment.

The good news is, Phlox has cured Nadette’s cancer. The bad news is, “Both she and her son are showing signs of micro-cellular decay in their endocrine systems.” Phlox guesses that their ground water has started poisoning them, and, even though he can cure cancer within hours, he can’t fix this. And it’s going to kill them. “Would bringing them to the surface help?” Nope. Phlox reports that T’Pol claims the surface will still be lethal for another decade. Archer tells Phlox, “Bring them to the situation room.”

In the situation room, the Novans refuse to leave. The planet, not the room. Archer reiterates, “It is not safe for you anymore.” He explains the asteroid theory, including this whopper regarding the radiation that killed most everybody. “When the asteroid hit, the fallout contained certain poisons. Humans under four or five can usually build up an immunity to them.” Yes, if I expose my nephew to hard gamma rays just a little bit every day, he’ll become immune to their effects. Just don’t get him angry or outraged. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Those stubborn Novans still don’t buy that they are humans and think Archer wants to kill them. I wouldn’t blame him at this point. T’pol points out that, having just saved Nadette’s life, maybe the humans are owed the benefit of the doubt just this once. No go. Archer whips out a photo pulled from the archives of a Terra Cotta family. He asks Nadette, “Look familiar?” She recognizes, “the Overside before the poison rain,” but will only admit that the people in the photo are humans, rather than relatives. Archer asks her, “What were humans doing in your colony before it was destroyed?” Don’t have an answer for that one, do ya? Blue-Chin becomes concerned that Nadette is starting to fall for the human’s shale. Archer zooms the picture in on a mom and daughter. The girl is Bernadette Fuller. The mom is Vera. “You say this is me?” she exclaims, pointing at the image. Her son is trying to convince her to ignore what Archer is saying and go back home to the cave. Nadette doesn’t know what to think. Blue-Chin eventually wins. “If we’re not back by day your crewman will be gutted,” he reminds Archer. Frustrated, Archer agrees to get them back to their hole in the ground. Then he walks out, calling T’Pol after him.

In the captain’s quarters, he rattles off a synopsis of the episode so far, and T’Pol makes an eminently pragmatic suggestion. “Stun grenades.” She suggests beaming grenades into the caves, stunning the Novans, and hauling them up to the Enterprise in shuttles, not to mention in chains. Archer is shocked at the suggestion. “What do you think this is, a slave ship?” He tries to make sure T’Pol understands the goal. “We have to convince them that returning to Earth is the right thing. We can’t take them by force.” T’Pol points out Archer’s unspoken assumption. “Are you certain it is the right thing?” She asks him if he really thinks they could be assimilated back into human culture. “You’re damn straight! They’re human beings. It’s their birthright.” The attitude that spawned the Federation. T’Pol argues, “You can’t just pluck them up and bring them to a strange world and hope they’ll learn to conform.” Hey, I think she was kidding about the stun grenades. She claims that by saving the Novans’ lives, Archer would be destroying the Novan culture. Like colored mud on the chin and bone-flutes is such a great culture to preserve. It’s a good thing there’s not some all-encompassing regulation preventing Archer from doing what he thinks is most morally right on a situational basis by restricting his range of actions with respect to a primitive, effectively alien society. That’d be too much hassle. Archer calls Trip to come to him with his maps of the planet.

Studying Trip’s maps of fallout distribution and wind patterns, Archer realizes Terra Vista’s southern hemisphere was unaffected by the radiation that screwed everything up for the colony. Archer realizes, “There’s got to be similar underground topography on one of these southern continents. Caves, caverns….” Um, caves are caverns, Captain, sir. Archer heads off to escort the Novans back to their planet.

On the shuttle ride down, Archer makes his sales pitch for the move to the southern continents. Suspicion still abounds. “If our tunnels are infected, you wouldn’t want them so badly,” Blue-Chin concludes. Mayweather, piloting, explodes. “We don’t! We only want to help you.” Try to contain yourself, man. And don’t look away from where you’re going while performing re-entry, for your passengers’ sake if not your own. “You’re human. So am I,” Archer tries again. “Humans help each other.” The Novans have all the stubbornness of a people who have not yet reached the fourth act. Archer retreats to his fallback position. “Would you at least talk to your people, tell them what I propose?”

The shuttle lands just outside the abandoned colony. The sun is up, so Reed must be dead, right? As they touch down, the ground starts to shake, and the shuttle gets eaten up by a sinkhole. No one is hurt, but the shuttle is stuck eight meters underground. Blue-Chin starts to panic on account of being locked inside the shuttle. Archer checks with Trip to see if it is safe to go outside, and then tells him, “You’re going to have to build a rig to get this pod back on the surface.” Archer pushes open the side door and everyone piles out. They landed right next to a perfectly cubical boulder. “We’re in the downslope passage,” Blue-Chin notes, recognizing the area. “If you want to see your human alive, you’ll give me your pistol.” That came outta nowhere, but what the hey. Archer hands over his phase pistol, and orders Mayweather to stay behind with the shuttle.

Archer and the two Novans are wandering through badly-lit caves when they hear someone shouting. Nadette recognizes the voice. “It’s Akkarine!” (phonetic spelling) They rush off to find him. Which they do, at the bottom of a deep pit, pinned under a fallen, possibly petrified tree. Did I mention the pit is filling with water and the guy will drown soon? “Will you risk your life to save a Novan?” Blue-Chin asks Archer. Archer doesn’t think he can make the climb down the pit. Blue-Chin offers to lead the way. “We’ll track together, but you’ll need to trust me.” The contrivance fairy’s been a-visitin’, it looks like. Archer slips almost immediately after starting down the wall of the pit, and dangles precariously by one hand. What a cliffhanger! (I’m gonna hear about that one.) Blue-Chin holds out his hand and helps Archer back up onto the wall. They reach the bottom, and find the log far too heavy for them to lift. I could’ve told them that back at the top of the pit. The keep trying anyway, and the pinned Novan is in ever more danger of having his face washed for once in his life. “I need you to give me my phase pistol,” Archer says. Drowning is far too slow. “It’s your turn to trust me.” Ah, the old turnabout switcheroo. Gets ‘em every time. Blue-Chin hands over the gun. Archer sets it for “Slice ‘n’ Dice” and cuts through the log like a laser beam through a block of wood. He doesn’t pay much attention to what is on the far side of where he is cutting, so it is sheer coincidence that he doesn’t bisect the guy he’s rescuing. Archer and Blue-Chin are able to lift a section of the log far enough for the guy to slip out from underneath. I betcha they wrote this scene right after attending one of those trust-building management seminars.

Everyone makes it back to the Novans’ home cave, where Archer checks on Reed’s status. He’s not dead. I guess underground people measure sunrise differently from you and me. Archer asks after his health. “Not badly, all things considered, but I really wouldn’t mind getting this bullet out of my leg.” Insistently, Nadette orders Blue-Chin, “Tell them. Tell them what Archer said about the islands to the south.” Aw, mom. I don’ wanna. “I’ve seen back,” she explains, meaning, “I remembered.” Vera Fuller was my mother. That girl in the picture was me, a human girl.” Yay, breakthrough!

Everything must have worked out okay. The Enterprise is flying through space toward its next thrilling adventure. The people on board are eating. They must go through a good five, six meals a day. We see Archer, Trip, T’Pol, and special guest Mayweather wedged into a fourth seat between the table and the window in the captain’s mess. Mayweather is grilling T’Pol about other famous human missing persons cases she has no reason to know about. “And neither of those mysteries holds a candle to Terra Nova. And we solved it.” He’s positively giddy. Trip points out the side effect. “We didn’t just find them. We saved their lives.” Archer has an idea. “Tell you what, Travis. Why don’t you put together the report for Starfleet?” That’s what happens. You hang out with the boss in a social situation, and he winds up giving you an assignment. This is why I don’t go to the birthday lunches at my office.

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.

In this week’s thrilling episode:

SEE! Mayweather play in the snow!

SEE! T’Pol get mail!

SEE! a visiting Vulcan refuse a meal!

The episode opens, big surprise, in the galley of the Enterprise, where Trip is showing Phlox a series of drawings sent by Trip’s nephew’s fourth grade class depicting the Enterprise, aliens, and whatnot. Phlox spots T’Pol walking past and, as part of his ongoing campaign to drive her mad, calls to her. She trundles over, and, looking at one drawing, remarks, “This rendering is crude, yet surprisingly accurate.” She is made to pay for her feigned interest by Trip, who offers her a crudely rendered depiction of either a seasick Vulcan or some sort of half-elf, half-ogre. She is saved from having to come up with a logical reason to go “Ew!” when the ship drops out of warp. Archer’s voice comes over the ship’s public address system. “For those of you who aren’t near a window, you might want to find one. There’s something pretty amazing off starboard.” Then, instead of following anyone to the window to look out, the scene switches to the bridge, where there is a comet trailing across the main viewscreen. Reed, having checked the borrowed Vulcan star charts, whose completeness and accuracy have been questioned previously, by me if not the characters, tells Archer that the comet isn’t listed. “That means we discovered it,” Hoshi points out, justifying her paycheck for the week. Feeling proud of himself, Archer orders Mayweather to fly closer to the comet while the credits roll.

Trip and T’Pol finish migrating to the bridge as the program returns. Trip gawks at the pretty picture on the TeeVee while T’Pol squeezes in a little scientific investigation. The comet is about 83 kilometers across, which is about 52 miles for those of us still holding out from switching to the metric system. “I always wanted to chase a comet. Maybe we should spend a few days following this one,” Archer decides. Being a starship captain is easy. Just do whatever the hell you feel like and make it sound good in the reports. Hearing Archer’s plan, T’Pol objects on account of comets not being all that interesting. Archer’s counter-argument is that this one is rilly big, so there.

Disgusted, T’Pol leaves the bridge and goes to her quarters, massaging her stiff neck. I’m sure Trip would help her massage her other stiff parts, if she would reciprocate. She sits at her desk and checks her email. She has a message, written in vertical Vulcan so we can’t read it. But, you can just tell by the look on her face that…well…um…that her eyes are open. She doesn’t blink, so it must be serious.

Once more in the galley, Trip snags himself a big honkin’ slice o’ pecan pie from the automat just as T’Pol enters, carrying a book. “I came for tea,” she explains when Trip calls her on it. She orders hot green tea because, “Caffeine has little effect on Vulcan physiology.” Trip offers the other seat at his table to her, which she accepts for no reason I can discern except to prolong the scene. Trip rambles to her about what a rotten day he had. “Then somebody told me Chef made a pecan pie, and my life brightened,” Trip drawls. Throughout the incredible lack of anything substantive occurring in this episode, several mentions are made of the ship’s cook. In every single instance, they refer to him simply as “Chef.” I can’t help but think that in the kitchen there is a fat, black, singing Scientologist with a red shirt dispensing advice to Ensigns Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman, and making sweet love down by the warp core with every female crew member. Trip offers some pie to T’Pol. She refuses. “It’s mostly sugar.” Trip waxes philosophic, “It may not be good for the body, but it’s good for the soul.” He really enjoys that pie. Finally, he notices that T’Pol isn’t actually listening to him, but is instead reading something. He asks her if anything is wrong. “I’m fine, Commander,” she tells him. We know she’s not, because the last scene was suspicious, but Trip has no reason to doubt her, yet. T’Pol excuses herself and leaves, taking her glass of tea with her. I wonder if the ship has a guy whose sole job is to run around collecting everyone’s dirty dishes.

Later, in the situation room, T’Pol tells the captain that the comet is full of “Eisilium,” pronounced “I-silly-am,” a mineral they made up. “It’s an extremely rare mineral,” she explains. So rare that the Vulcans have never had enough to study. Thus, it has no value except as a curiosity. So, Archer decides to expend ship’s resources and time to collect some. The deposits are too deep for the transporter to work. Reed suggests, “We’ve got the portable drilling rig, sir.” Mayweather adds, “The comet’s certainly big enough to land on.” Following the ancient tradition, “You thought of it; you do it,” Archer assigns Reed and Mayweather to take the trip and get the rocks.

At the front of the bridge, Hoshi’s sensors spot something. “I’m detecting a vessel closing on our position,” she informs Archer. “It’s Vulcan.” Archer orders them hailed. Cool ship design, by the way. It’s a ring with a sort of wedge stuck through it. The Vulcan captain, who looks like he’s been dead for a week, acts snotty. “You’re a long way from Earth, Captain. Are you lost?” Archer tells him they’re having a look at this comet, and is surprised to hear the Vulcans are also interested. “My science officer tells me that Vulcans aren’t very interested in comets.” The Vulcan, Captain Vannik, elaborates, “Actually, it’s your interest in the comet we’re investigating.” Archer, his own attitude starting to exude a bit of mucus, tells Vannik about the drilling team and offers to let the Vulcans join. “If you have no objection, we’d like to remain here and observe.” Archer agrees, and communication ends. Irked, Archer calls T’Pol into his ready room.

“I’d love to know what they’re really doing here,” Archer tells T’Pol once they’re alone. T’Pol suggests they just happened by as they claimed, but Archer doesn’t buy it. “This isn’t the first time we’ve caught them lurking around,” Archer reminds her and tells us. “I’m starting to get the feeling they’re looking over our shoulder a little too often.” T’Pol doubts there is anything amiss afoot. Archer takes the bold step of deciding, “If Vannik is the kind of guy who likes to watch, let him.”

The shuttle pod launches and heads for the comet. Inside, putting on his space suit, Reed reflects, “I’ve never stood on a comet before.” Mayweather asks, “Has anyone?” “Good question.” Because this will be Mayweather’s third time ever to see a snowy landscape, the two decide they need to commemorate the occasion, but can’t decide how just yet. I know! Why don’t you foolishly endanger yourselves so that you need to be rescued by the end of the show? They find a nice spot to land next to the gravestones of previous explorers of this comet. They get out and look around, wearing their 2001-surplus space suits.

In Engineering, Hoshi arrives at Trip’s beckoning. “I found some kind of power surge in the transceiver array,” he explains. She diagnoses it instantly. “It looks like an encrypted transmission.” She pushes some buttons and determines, “It came from the Vulcan ship.” Trip asks, “Who was it sent to?” How many guesses do you want?

Trip goes to the captain with the news. Archer is more disappointed than anything. “We had an agreement. She promised not to speak to the Vulcans without telling me.” Trip is not surprised T’Pol broke her promise. He asks if Archer wants Hoshi to decrypt the message. “Tell her it’s top priority,” Archer orders wearily.

A short time later, Archer is on the bridge with Trip, Hoshi, and Dr. Phlox. The mood is very serious. Obviously, something vital is in the works. Oh, I can’t go on. Archer is recording a message to send back to Trip’s nephew’s fourth grade class, wherein he answers the kids’ questions. It’s a very long scene that answers many insignificant questions and chews up several minutes of airtime. I don’t have the patience to outline the whole scene, so let me sum up. What do you eat? Food, grown in hydroponic gardens, and also re-sequenced protein. Do you date? We can, but it’s kinda cramped. How do you talk to aliens? The universal translator and Hoshi’s language skills. When you flush, where does it go? It gets recycled into boxes and shoes. Trip is forced to answer this question, and he isn’t happy about it. People who know me personally can understand my sympathy for Trip at this moment. Can germs live in space? Short answer, yes. Long answer, the hundred-word essay Dr. Phlox recites, which boils down to, yes. Once the recording is finished, Archer worries about how well it came out, as well he should.

On the comet, while Reed scans things in preparation for setting explosive charges, Mayweather builds a model of Devil’s Tower, Wyoming out of snow. He saw the movie and is hoping to get abducted off the show so he can meet Richard Dreyfus. Reed takes a plasma torch and burns a couple of eyes and a smiley mouth onto the top part of the snow sculpture, because it would be too simple to do it with his finger. He then jabs the torch into the snowman’s head as a nose, making a distinctly Styrofoam-crunching noise as it enters. Just then, Archer calls Reed from the ship to check in. Moving to the ship’s bridge, we see an overhead shot of the fearless comet explorers on the viewscreen. Busted! “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you we’re being observed,” Archer reminds them. Realizing they’ve been caught, Reed promises, “It won’t be there long, sir.”

Hoshi shows up in Engineering with the decrypted message T’Pol received. “It’s in Vulcan. You’ll have to run it through the translation matrix,” she tells Trip as she hands over the disk. Trip asks if she read it. “I didn’t feel it’d be right,” she explains before wandering off. Trip puts the disk in his desktop computer and translates it. He sighs at what he sees.

Archer is fiddling with some files in his ready room. He hurries to close the cabinet door as Trip enters. “Well, we decrypted the message.” Trip explains that it was a letter, a personal message and not anything espionage-related. “Very personal,” Trip emphasizes. They both feel rotten for violating T’Pol’s privacy. “All they had to do was send it through regular channels, mark it ‘Personal,’ and we’d’ve left it alone,” Trip exposits. Trip is particularly upset that, by trying to hide the message, the Vulcans forced him to find out what it said. “I gotta tell her,” Trip decides. Archer doesn’t think that’s such a hot idea, but doesn’t stop him. “You might want to take a phase pistol with you,” Archer offers.

Trip interrupts T’Pol and Crewman Jarhead as they work on the bridge. Jarhead leaves, and Trip beats around the bush until T’Pol tells him to get to “Your point, Commander.” Trip tells her he read her letter and asks why it wasn’t sent through channels. “That takes time. The letter was important.” She then offers, “I have more letters in my quarters. Would you like to read those as well?” Getting kind of snippy, there, ain’t ya? She asks him, “Has anyone else read the letter?” He tells her no. “Good, then I’ll only have to kill you.” She didn’t say that, but she was thinking it. I can tell. Instead, she makes him promise to continue not telling anyone. Then, she goes to answer a summons from Archer.

Archer tells T’Pol he has decided to invite Captain Vannik over from the Vulcan ship. “If he’s so interested in how we do things, he might as well come see for himself. Once he realizes we’re not going to blow up the galaxy, maybe he’ll leave us alone.” I doubt both the premise and the conclusion. T’Pol thinks Archer has had a good idea for once. Archer asks her to give Chef some Vulcan recipes. If he’d done that when she first came aboard, maybe T’Pol wouldn’t be so snippy now. “A little food, a little wine,” Archer thinks will warm human-Vulcan relations right up. “Vulcans don’t drink...wine,” T’Pol reminds Archer. He’s unmoved by her Bela Lugosi impression.

We now find T’Pol in sickbay, getting her neck examined by Dr. Phlox. She’s had a headache and hasn’t slept for two days. Maybe it’s all that caffeine she’s been guzzling. “Is something on your mind?” Phlox asks her. “You know anything said between us is strictly confidential.” She doesn’t want to talk about it. Phlox suggests that if there is anyone she feels she can talk to, she should do so just to get it off her chest. It’s crowded enough there as it is. Meanwhile, she gets an aspirin in the neck.

On the comet, the snowman has evolved into a giant troll with pointy ears higher than the top of its head. Reed casually puts something on the ground at its base, probably an explosive. Reed contacts the ship. “Charges are set.” Archer tells Hoshi, “Inform the Vulcans we’re about to make a very loud noise,” then orders Reed to “Blast away.” Reed and Mayweather hide behind an ice pillar. Reed pushes the button, causing what was undoubtedly a disappointing explosion. “Where’s the kaboom? There’s supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!”

Reed and Mayweather survey their destruction. “I was hoping for a bit more symmetry,” Reed grumbles. Mayweather walks off to get a drill while Reed climbs down into the crater. It’s a hard climb considering the local gravity should be negligible. Maybe this rare mineral is super-dense, causing Earth-like gravity on such a small rock.

Meanwhile, on the ship, guess who’s come to dinner? Archer, Trip, T’Pol, and Cap’n Vannik are in the Captain’s mess. Archer is trying painfully hard to make small talk with the visitor, who is answering Archer’s questions but not elaborating at all. It hurts to watch. Archer discusses how much he enjoyed a mission on a Vulcan ship once and how great Vulcan EVA suits are. Vannik tells Archer, “You are easily impressed.” Vannik is not eating. Archer asks him why, his diplomatic veneer wearing thin. “I have already eaten,” Vannik reveals, and I’m ready to shoot this guy out a torpedo tube. Archer offers Vannik a tour of the ship. He refuses. Archer offers him iced tea. He refuses. Archer offers to pull the yardstick out of his ass. Not really. Instead, he briefly rants about the ubiquity of Vulcans. “For a people who claim not to be explorers you sure do get around.” Vannik acts as if he doesn’t know what Archer means. “It’s good to know that no matter how big the universe is, there’s always a Vulcan ship nearby.” Trip tries to defuse things with more small talk. T’Pol has to explain the concept. “On Earth, it’s customary to exchange personal information with someone you’ve just met.” Vannik rattles off a couple details. Archer, having just barely regained his composure, offers to answer any questions Vannik might have. “I have none. Humans have never held much interest for me.” Well, that tears it. Archer all but opens the window to throw Vannik out manually, pausing only to ask, “How long do you plan on spying on us?” “If we were spying, Captain, you never would have detected our presence.” As Vannik is being escorted out of the room and off the ship, he pauses to say something in Vulcan to T’Pol. Trip asks her what he said, but she won’t translate.

As Archer sulks onto the bridge, Hoshi calls him over to look at a meaningless graphic of the comet. On the comet, drilling to collect the core sample is proceeding apace. Archer calls with bad news. “The comet’s rotational axis shifted when you set off those charges. In about two hours, the shuttle pod will be facing the star.” Things will melt around it, which would be bad. In other words, there’s a deadline. “We’ll be done with time to spare,” Reed assures Archer.

T’Pol is in her room, meditating, when the door chimes. Trip enters, and T’Pol asks him to sit, on the floor pretty much. T’Pol explains why she called him here. “Doctor Phlox believes that it might help if I was to discuss my problem with someone I felt comfortable confiding in.” Trip is surprised she picked him. She explains that the only reason for her choice was to keep the number of people aware of her problem to a minimum. It seems T’Pol must make a choice. “Unless I leave Enterprise immediately, my wedding plans will be cancelled.” When T’Pol joined the Enterprise crew, she asked the parents of her betrothed to delay the wedding. This upset them enough that they sent her the mystery letter, saying come now or never. Trip offers some suggestions, but T’Pol shoots each one down with some detail of the Vulcan arranged marriage tradition that she neglected to mention the first time around. Running out of ideas, Trip finally asks her, “What do you want to do?” This leads to a retread of the Needs of the Many vs. the Needs of the Few argument, personal choice vs. social obligation, and so on. “People change!” “Vulcans don’t. My obligation is to my culture, my heritage. It has to take precedence.” “Sounds to me like you already made up your mind. Why did you ask me here?” You fool! Can’t you see that she loves you?

Reed and Mayweather are packing up to get off the comet. As Mayweather climbs out of the crater where they were drilling, he slips and falls in the freakishly high gravity, twisting his knee. Reed helps him up. “Let’s get you to the pod. I’ll come back for the gear if there’s time.” Man’s got his priorities straight. Mayweather insists, “At least take the core sample. We shouldn’t go back to the ship empty-handed.” Reed won’t be empty-handed. He’ll be carrying a klutzy helmsman. Reed agrees to Mayweather’s condition. They limp across the ice, walking toward the threatening sun. Under their feet, the ice begins to crack around them.

Reed and Mayweather continue to hurry along as best they can, three-legging it over the collapsing tundra. I have to believe Reed at least considered ditching Mayweather and claiming it was an accident later. They reach the pod, and after the collapsing-ice equivalent of a cat jumping out of the shadows in a horror movie, they clamber in. Lucky they remembered the keys. Mayweather starts up the engines, melting the ice around them and plummeting the shuttle into an icy crevasse. We know from “Terra Nova” that shuttles can’t lift straight up, so they’re doomed. Mayweather blames himself for the fall, and rightly so.

The Enterprise noticed the fall, and contacts the shuttle to make sure no one died yet. Archer orders, “Bring the grappler on line.” If you recall, the grappler is a dual action harpoon gun with magnetic grabby things on the ends that Enterprise uses because humanity hasn’t invented the tractor beam yet. Because the shuttle is at the bottom of a deep hole, Trip has to bullseye the hole to have a chance at snaring the shuttle. Archer takes over the helm and carefully positions the ship as Trip directs. The Vulcan ship calls, offering assistance. “Tell him we’ve got everything under control,” Archer growls through clenched teeth. The ship moves into position, and the grapplers fire! One misses, but the other hits right on the roof, shaking and startling the occupants. “One’ll be fine,” Archer hopes when he hears the news. Trip begins reeling the shuttle in, but “The pod’s hit an outcropping. It’s wedged in.” Archer tries to maneuver the ship to yank it loose, but the grappler magnet fails due to the Plotdevicium in the comet, dropping the shuttle even deeper into the hole. To make things worse, T’Pol reports, “They’re moving out of the sunlight. The surface ice is re-crystallizing.” Trip picks up his cue. “In less than an hour, that cavern will be sealed up again.” Archer’s brilliant plan is to work faster, not harder. T’Pol has an alternative suggestion: the Vulcan ship. “His ship has a tractor beam.” Archer resists the idea, because he doesn’t want to ask Vulcans for help if human stick-to-it-iveness can get the job done. I wonder how the imperiled pair would vote. T’Pol deduces that it is time to be emphatic. “Vannik offered to assist us. There’s no shame in accepting.” Trip agrees with her. “I don’t like ‘em any more than you do, Cap’n, but a tractor beam sounds pretty good right now.” T’Pol uses Archer’s prejudice against him. “Vannik expects you to refuse his offer. He sees humans as arrogant, prideful.” Mr. Kettle, there’s a call for you from a Mr. Pot. “Why not prove him wrong? You can save them, or you can let your pride stand in the way. You’re human. You’re free to choose.” See how it all ties together? T’Pol’s big decision, Archer’s big decision, both colored by their cultural biases, both having to turn against those biases to make the “right” decision. Man, them writers is clever.

The two in the shuttle hear a funny woogawooga noise as the shuttle shakes slightly and begins to lift. Reed answers the incoming call and is surprised to hear, “This is Captain Vannik of the Vulcan ship T*cough*. Stand by to ignite your engines and return to your ship.” Outside, we see the shuttle in the grip of a tractor beam.

After the rescue, Archer and the gang are on the bridge. Archer is talking to Vannik via the videophone. “I thought you might want to take a look at the data we’ve collected. You helped us bring it back.” He refuses. Trip asks to see the technical specs for the tractor beam. He refuses. At least he’s consistent. Archer can’t let him go without giving a little attitude first. “You’ve done more than enough. See you around.” Trip steps over to T’Pol and asks her if she’s packed to leave for her Vulcan nuptials yet. As a sort-of response, she asks Archer, “With your permission, I’d like to transmit a message to the T*a-choo* to send to Vulcan.” She glares at Trip defiantly, and he smirks. She leaves the bridge to compose the message.

In her room, T’Pol sits in her mediation pose, contemplating a piece of pecan pie. Does it signify her newfound appreciation of human individuality, a new willingness to adapt to her human circumstances, or a connection of a more personal nature with Chief Engineer Tucker? Or has she always secretly liked pie? Hmm....

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.

An unknown ship flies through space. It has several large semi-cylindrical pods along its length. Inside, a pair of hands catch a football. The hands belong to a tough-guy type who throws the ball again. It sails through a large empty enclosed space, its trajectory and speed indicating a low gravity environment. An older man on the other end of the room catches it, and jokingly claims to have made a touchdown. With raised voices to indicate just how far they are from each other, they trade pointless banter. An explosion rocks the ship. “Bridge to Captain Keane! We’re under attack!” announces the intercom. “It’s the Nausicans.” The older man responds, but before he can give many orders, the ship rocks again, knocking him over and making the other one drop the football. Outside, a small vessel scores several hits during its attack run along the length of the cargo ship.

Porthos is awakened by the intercom chime on the first ring. Archer responds after the second. Admiral Forrest from Starfleet Command has called in the middle of the night, so you know it’s important. Archer gets up and gets decent before answering. I think the need to get dressed is the main reason videophones haven’t caught on yet. That and lazy housekeeping. The signal is choppy, which Archer explains. “We’re getting ready to deploy the first subspace amplifier. It should clear up reception a bit.” Niceties over, Forrest explains that Starfleet received a distress call from a ship called the Fortunate, which Enterprise can reach in a day and a half. The next closest ship is three weeks away. Enterprise is ordered to go see what happened and why no one is responding to communications anymore.

T’Pol gives a briefing about the Fortunate. It can only go Warp 1.8, and has a crew of 23. Mayweather pipes up, “Not including newborn babies.” In his youth, Mayweather was a “boomer,” someone who lived his life riding a cargo ship among the stars rather than on a planet. As such, he is able to provide much-needed sociological background during this episode. Also, according to the preview, he’s going to disagree with Archer’s handling of the situation soon to unfold and become insubordinate. That should be interesting. Whether it actually will be is another matter entirely. Anyway, Mayweather explains that on the long trips between worlds, folks have a lot of time on their hands and not much to do besides each other. T’Pol inquires of him, “Do you have any *helpful* information on this vessel?” Reed specifically asks about the weapons. Mayweather explains that a plasma cannon comes standard, but any captain worth his space salt would upgrade at the first opportunity for anti-pirate defense. Enough with the backstory already.

Enterprise pulls up beside the Fortunate, which is broken in fourteen important ways. It is not, however, blown into bite sized portions as the teaser suggested. Archer hails them, to no effect. Hoshi suggests that their radio is busted. T’Pol scans the ship and detects 24 life signs. But the crew complement is only 23. Looks like someone’s been getting busy. Archer, Mayweather, Reed, and Phlox head for the shuttles.

Roddenberry invented the transporter because it was too expensive to film a shuttle launch and landing sequence. In this tradition, they show the same shuttle launch sequence we’ve seen every time they’ve ever gone anywhere. You’ve come a long way, baby. Inside, everyone is busy scanning the debris hanging around the ship. Reed describes, “Some of it doesn’t appear to be from the Fortunate.” Phlox adds, “On the bright side, I’m only picking up inorganic material.” No bodies. Which means whatever left the debris either got away or was manned by robots. The main hatch is ruined, so Mayweather suggests they use the auxiliary hatch that he knows is there because he grew up on cargo ships, unlike everyone else who knew because they saw the schematics two scenes ago. He pilots them over and docks.

The away team enters the Fortunate and are met by a grubby group of men led by the young tough from the football-tossing scene. His name is Matthew Ryan. He explains what happened. “Nausicans. They tried to board us. We managed to fight them off, but not before we took a few bruises.” Archer, who slept through remedial alienology, has never heard of Nausicans, a species other humans have obviously come into contact with. Even Mayweather has heard of them. The big-lipped leader of the traders is interested in Mayweather’s boomer past. Archer offers to help patch up the Fortunate, but Ryan tries to refuse. “We can handle this ourselves, Captain.” Reed asks why they sent a distress call if they didn’t need help. Ryan explains that one of their newbies set off the emergency beacon in a panic and they couldn’t countermand it because their radio is broken. He goes on to say that the Fortunate’s captain was wounded in the attack, and that he’s temporarily in charge. This was a mistake on his part, what with Fix-Anything Phlox standing there. “If your captain or anyone else is hurt, it wouldn’t be right for me to leave without seeing them.” The others say, “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” Archer adds that as long as the Enterprise came all this way, they might as well help. Ryan flares his lips at his visitors in an attempt to scare them away, then reluctantly accepts their interference, I mean assistance.

In the Fortunate’s sickbay, Phlox declares the captain alive. “The Nausican weapon disrupted his neural pathways.” It’s going to take two or three days to reformat him and reload the operating system. Archer repeats his offer of technical help, which Ryan rejects. Archer makes a speech. “I understand you’re used to doing things on your own. But we’re here. Use us.” He offers to upgrade the hull plating, add glass packs and a turbocharger, paint flames on the sides, really cherry the whole thing out. Ryan lets Archer badger him into accepting this.

Ryan and some other crewman enter Place Number 4, I guess a cargo pod. Ryan explains to the other guy that he’s only agreed to let a few engineers come over. “We can’t have people crawling all over the place,” the other guy says. “What if they find him?” Find whom? Are these guys hiding something? “What do you want me to do, throw him off the ship?” Ryan asks in reply as they navigate the barrels stacked all higgledy piggledy across the room. They turn a corner to reveal an ugly alien tied to a girder, with a couple of humans standing over him. This must be a Nausican. Why wouldn’t he want to throw the pirate off his ship? A brisk walk in the vacuum would do wonders toward reforming his criminal ways. Ryan leans in close to a face that could bite you without opening its mouth and snarls, “I want those codes.”

Mayweather walks with Ryan along the corridors of the Enterprise, carrying a piece of equipment so old no one builds it anymore. He assures Ryan that they’ll be able to fabricate a new one. “We’ve got our own machine shop,” Ryan points out, meaning, “We don’t need your help.” They walk past the transporter, which turns out to be in an alcove on one side of the hallway rather than any sort of secured location. Ryan asks if Mayweather has taken the ride yet. “Most of the crew’s afraid, but I’m kinda curious to try it out.” He’s looking forward to the thrill of bi-location. Ryan asks why Mayweather left the cargo ship he was born on to join Starfleet. “I had to figure out where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on the Dralax-Vega run.”

In Engineering, Trip examines the part it took both Ryan and Mayweather to deliver. He suggests Ryan take a tour of the ship while he fixes it. Ryan claims to have seen it. “You missed the best part,” Trip says with pride. “The only Warp 5 engine in the fleet.” Mayweather points out that once the faster engines are commonplace, freighter runs will take months instead of years. Ryan counters, “[The slower speed] works just fine for us. Any faster, and there’d be no time to enjoy the trip.” So, being able to do six cargo runs in the time it now takes to do one, and making six times the cash, doesn’t appeal? Must be a cultural thing.

Ryan and Mayweather stop off at the cafeteria for lunch. Ryan gets a steak as big as a dinner plate while Mayweather reminds us that a chef cooked this food, not a replicator. Ryan hasn’t had a steak in 18 months. “All we have left are hydroponics and nutripacks.” They bond over memories of bad food. Ryan reveals that his parents were aboard the North Star, whose fate was unpleasant and ill defined. Ryan was one of the survivors of that horrible, nebulous event. Mayweather asks him, “You ever think about doing something else?” Mayweather makes a pitch for Ryan to join Starfleet, which he instantly suspects was the whole purpose for their outing. Mayweather denies premeditation, but points out that, “There are three more NX class ships on the drawing board. They’re going to need experienced people.” Ryan asks who’ll be left to run freighters if everyone joins Starfleet, using Mayweather as a handy example. “You think leaving the Horizon was easy for me?” Mayweather snaps in his first real show of emotion ever. Ryan presses him, “Why did you abandon your family?” I don’t think they’re bonded anymore. Mayweather insists his family supported his decision to leave the freighter life. Ryan suggests they were just saying that. He then gets up and walks out, leaving Mayweather clutching the table and flaring his nostrils in controlled rage.

Meanwhile, on the Fortunate, some kids come out of a room and run down a corridor past T’Pol, who is working on some wall-mounted circuitry. She walks over to a freighter crewman and asks, “Why is power being re-routed from internal sensors to the weapon systems?” Crewguy tells her it was done during the battle and never reversed. She offers to undo it, but he tells her not to worry about it. T’Pol walks over to a panel and opens it, finding, to her surprise, a kid installed there. As that girl gives T’Pol the “Hush” sign, another kid runs down the hall asking if anyone has seen Nadine. T’Pol tells him, “I’m sorry, I don’t know which child is named Nadine.” Which is true, but misleading. T’Pol scans some more and finds something that makes her eyes widen. She calls Archer, telling him repairs are almost complete, “but there is something I need to talk to you about. In private.”

Later, T’Pol and Ryan are gathered with Archer in his office. Archer quizzes him to see if everything is satisfactory, which Ryan agrees is the case. Ryan then rushes to get out of the room. Before he can make it, Archer hits him with the big one. “Are there only humans on board your ship?” Ryan tries to claim an alien pet as the only exception, but he’s busted. “T’Pol’s scanner picked up a Nausican biosign.” Ryan’s Plan B is to claim the Nausican as an unknown stowaway. I hope his Plan C is better. T’Pol reveals, “My bioscans indicated this Nausican was injured.” Ryan decides to come clean. “There is a Nausican aboard. He’s my prisoner.” Archer wants to see the prisoner. “What are you going to do, take him back to Nausica? They’d probably give him a medal.” Ryan refuses to tell what his plans for the alien are. “Starfleet doesn’t have any jurisdiction over what goes on aboard my ship.” Yeah, but Starfleet does own all those new parts you just had put in. Archer calls Trip and orders him to remove all the stuff they just installed. “You wouldn’t do that,” Ryan growls. “Watch me,” Archer growls louder.

Next thing we know, Ryan is leading Archer and his gang into Cargo Pod 8. Earlier, the Nausican was in Pod 4. Could this be a trick or trap? Archer, T’Pol, Reed, and Phlox all saunter in like the trusting lambs they are and let Ryan lead them into an ambush. As Ryan’s clever ploy of having a guy hiding in there with a gun is revealed, Archer begs for his life. Reed then preemptively opens fire and starts the action sequence. There’s lots of ducking, bobbing, weaving, and shooting. Reed and Archer try to move to forward positions flanking the ambushers, but their foes head for the door. Ryan stops just short of the exit and blasts a small hole in the bulkhead, through which air starts escaping. Ryan then steps out of the cargo pod, seals the hatch, and shoots the door controls. As Archer futilely attempts to open the door anyway, there is a loud thump of docking clamps de-clamping followed by motion outside what should be a stationary window. The cargo pod has been jettisoned!

On the Enterprise bridge, they see the cargo pod drifting away and are understandably confused. Hoshi scans it and finds the away team inside. Trip calls the captain, who tells him they’re okay for now, and “I don’t want the Fortunate leaving.” Trip tries to hail the Fortunate to tell them not to leave, and gets fired on in response. Trip orders the Fortunate’s engines targeted even as they prepare to warp away. The torpedoes are launched and almost reach the target before the Fortunate does that zip away into infinity thing that ships do when the warp drive kicks in. They were nice enough to drop off the Enterprise’s shuttle before they left. Archer orders Trip to chase after the Fortunate, until T’Pol reminds him that they are in a leaky can and will die soon. He then requests a shuttle to pick them up. Good thing they carry a spare.

Having made the save, Enterprise is off to the chase sequence. They have a rough idea what direction the Fortunate was going when it left, but the long-range sensors were blown out when Fortunate shot them, so they can’t pinpoint them now. Mayweather shocks everyone by making a relevant observation. “We know who they’re looking for. The Nausicans. Ryan’s after revenge, sir.” T’Pol claims revenge is irrational, but Mayweather asserts it is the only rational course of action from Ryan’s point of view. “If we want to find the Fortunate, we need to find the Nausicans.” Not knowing where either one is, I’d think both options to be equally difficult.

On the Fortunate, Ryan has gone back to talk to the Nausican again. “What are the frequencies?” he demands. First it was codes, now it’s frequencies. Make up your mind. The Nausican derides Ryan’s interrogation technique, and gets a boot in the chest. “You know my shipmates will come for me,” the Nausican warns. “I’m counting on it,” Ryan retorts. As Ryan proceeds to beat the living crap out of the prisoner, Ryan’s number one lackey looks on, ashamed and a little grossed out.

Ryan and the lackey walk down a hallway, Ryan pleased with himself for pounding the information he wanted out of the Nausican. “Remodulate the weapons,” Ryan orders. Ryan decides to keep the Nausican around in case they need other information, but the lackey wants him off the ship as soon as possible. “How?” Ryan asks him. You got an airlock? These guys are on their way to blow up a whole heap of Nausicans, but they don’t want to space just one of them. Lackey wants to shoot him off in an escape pod. He is generally uncomfortable with the whole taking hostages concept. “If we don’t show them that we’re serious, they’re never going to leave us alone,” Ryan explains, using emphasis in place of reason. Lackey asks him, “How would the captain want us to handle this?” Ryan reminds him that he’s in charge now and is doing what is best for his ship and all freighters everywhere.

On the Enterprise, they’ve picked up a warp trail, but can’t yet tell if it belongs to the Fortunate because the sensors are still broken. For some reason, Mayweather has been transferred from the bridge to Engineering to help Trip fix them. As they work, they chat. Trip points out that by firing on a Starfleet ship the Fortunate bought itself a whole new world of trouble. Mayweather explains that on a freighter, self-sufficiency is the rule. “You took care of your own. If Starfleet suddenly showed up and started telling my father what he could and couldn’t do on his own ship…” “Times are changing,” Trip replies. “Ryan’s just gonna have to figure that out.” Mayweather thinks he already has, and that that’s the problem. The sensors suddenly get better, and as Trip walks off, Mayweather stares thoughtfully at nothing.

Mayweather walks into Archer’s office and asks to speak to him. This is it! The big insubordination scene. The defining moment in Mayweather’s young character development. I can just taste the impending drama. “I’m worried that we’re not handling the situation the right way.” A little slow to start. He’s probably building up slowly. Archer turns suddenly stern, knowing the powder keg is about to go off in his face. “Maybe Ryan’s right. Maybe this isn’t any of our business.” Bam! He slams headfirst straight into his point. Archer asks, “So you think we should just let Ryan take on the Nausicans?” Mayweather agrees with that assessment. “What happens to the Nausicans?” Archer continues. He asks Mayweather what the Fortunate would do if they found the Nausican ship. “Blow them out of the sky,” Mayweather concludes. Archer doesn’t like that idea, because humans aren’t supposed to act that way. “You’re right, sir,” Mayweather relents. “Thank you, sir.” Thank you for overturning all my long-standing beliefs with a two-minute speech, sir.

Back on the Fortunate, they’ve picked up the hull signature, whatever that is, of the Nausican ship they’ve been hunting. Ryan orders the ship to combat ready status as they drop out of warp. The target ship is 100 kilometers away next to an asteroid. As they watch, the other ship starts accelerating away. Ryan orders the Fortunate to intercept them. At 20 kilometers, the Nausicans start shooting. Just as the Fortunate gets close enough to shoot back, the Nausicans go behind the asteroid. The Fortunate chases them, and as they come around to the far side of the asteroid, a large artificial structure is revealed built on and into the rock. That’s no asteroid; it’s a space station! “I’m getting us out of here,” says Lackey, in the first smart move he’s made all episode. Ryan orders him not to do that, thinking their knowledge of the enemy’s shield frequencies will be enough of an advantage to win the day. Lackey fires. “No effect,” he announces. Gee, y’think maybe the Nausican prisoner lied? Two more Nausican ships launch from the station and open fire on the Fortunate. “Go to warp!” Ryan orders, but it’s too late. All the engines are broken. Instead of giving the freighter the death it so richly deserves, a Nausican hails them. “Our scans show you have one of our crewmen aboard. I assume you’re here to return him.” I guess Ryan was right about not jettisoning him after all. When Ryan refuses to hand him over, the Nausican ship latches on to the Fortunate in preparation for boarding.

The Enterprise closes in on the unfortunate Fortunate. “Long range scans are detecting weapons fire.” They set course toward the violence.

Two Nausican ships circle the Fortunate while the third invades her. Lackey lists all the decks where the aliens are while Ryan paces behind him, wondering precisely how screwed he is. “Pass out weapons,” Ryan finally orders. Lackey grows a spine. “We know what they’re after. Why not just let them have him?” Um, because he’s the only reason you aren’t orbital debris right now? Ryan is committed to his “repelling the boarders” plan.

Four freighter crewmen set themselves up at one end of a long hallway at the other end of which a group of Nausicans is scheduled to appear. If you ever saw Star Wars you know what’s about to happen, and about how well it works out for the ambushers. The aliens stroll around the corner and get shot at, badly. They return fire as they duck behind cover, stunning one of the defenders. This breaks the morale of the others, and they all flee back the way they came. One wonders why they thought that was such a spiffy spot to fight from in the first place. Wait, my mistake. The humans were making a last stand to keep the invaders from entering the cargo pod with the prisoner inside. That makes slightly more sense. The Nausicans advance and, unable to operate the door-opening button, proceed to burn their way through with their laser guns.

The Enterprise arrives, detecting the Fortunate and the three Nausican ships. They drop out of warp too far away to be immediately useful. T’Pol reports, “There are four Nausican biosigns aboard the Fortunate.” They couldn’t spot one Nausican when parked right next to the Fortunate for three days, but can see four from 200,000 kilometers distance within seconds. Sounds like T’Pol’s getting a little lax with the initial scans. T’Pol also detects the discharge of the weapons the Nausicans are using to cut into Cargo Pod 4, but she doesn’t know they aren’t shooting people. “Hail the Nausicans,” Archer commands. Which ones? Any of them.

Ryan, Lackey, two other crewmen, and the prisoner are all crouched near the door of Cargo Pod 4, listening to the guys outside burning their way in. The Nausican laughs at them, and Ryan threatens to flash-fry his head.

“We are involved in a rescue operation,” the Nausican on the screen explains to Archer. “We want our crewman back.” Mayweather makes an ill-timed but valid point. “He wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t attacked them in the first place.” After an awkward pause, Archer tries to BS his way out of this. “Perhaps we have an opportunity here to improve relations between your people and mine.” The Nausican likes their relations the way they are. Archer proposes that if he can get the prisoner off the Fortunate, then the Nausicans will let the freighter go on its merry way. The Nausican isn’t interested until he hears Reed’s back-of-the-envelope tactical analysis. “Fore and aft plasma cannons. I doubt those shields of theirs would hold up to our torpedoes.” Archer presses the point. “You’re not sneaking up on an old freighter this time. This is an NX-class starship. Take a good look, because you’re going to be seeing more of them. Now, you can reconsider my offer, or you can take your chances.” Tough call. The Nausican decides to let Archer try it his way, but not for long.

The Nausicans on the Fortunate cut through the cargo pod hatchway, and more shooting ensues. Just then, Archer calls. “Why don’t you think about what’s best for your crew and let us help you?” Ryan is cynical. “What a relief,” he stage whispers. “Starfleet’s come to save the day.” Archer explains the deal he cut with the Nausicans. “What about next time?” Ryan asks. Archer avoids the question. The Nausicans start targeting the Enterprise. “This has gone on long enough,” Archer declares. “Now you’re putting my crew in danger.” Meanwhile, the shooting continues. Mayweather breaks into the conversation. “What are you going to do? Kill him?” Ryan is not pleased to hear Mayweather’s voice. Mayweather asks Archer’s permission to tear Ryan a new one. “Just shut up and listen to me. I don’t give a damn about you anymore. I’m just thinking about my family.” Mayweather claims that every other freighter is going to pay for the harm Ryan is doing right now, as Archer stands to the side and nods as if to say, “That’s that I was gonna tell him.” Ryan claims he’s doing all this for their benefit. “The hell you are! This isn’t about protecting cargo ships…. This is about revenge, nothing else.” The Nausicans start shooting at the Enterprise, so they shoot back. There’s good chance lots of people are about to die. “If you don’t let your hostage go,” Mayweather says, having to resort to small words and simple sentences, “the Nausicans are going to kill you. And your crew.” Which would help erode the cargo hauler way of life, which is what Ryan is fighting for in the first place. Ryan sees the light. The tosses the prisoner at the invaders and tells them, “Take him!” The humans all stand ready to shoot back if they need to. The Nausicans retreat. The other Nausican ships stop shooting at the Enterprise and fly away. Mayweather sits back at his post, strangely somber for a guy who just saved the day.

Later, Archer visits the now-recovered Captain Keane. Keane offers Archer a drink, which he refuses. “I’m reducing Mr. Ryan’s rank to Able Crewman,” Keane tells Archer. Archer offers to take Ryan off his hands, but Keane refuses. “We take care of our own.” Isn’t that the attitude that started this whole mess? Keane explains the boomer mentality for those who weren’t paying attention for the last hour. “The ones who grew up out here feel they have some special claim, that this particular stretch of space is theirs. They see another ship within ten light-years, they get jumpy.” Archer replies, “They’re going to start seeing a lot more ships than they’re used to.” The times, they are a-changing. Keane muses wistfully, “I’m going to need at least a warp 3 engine just to stay in business.” Archer points out, “At warp 3, help’s a lot closer then before. You won’t have to go it alone.” “Going it alone is all we’ve ever done…. We’ll adapt. But things won’t be the same.” Which is why you need to adapt.

This week’s episode involves time travel. For instance, I’ve traveled forward about three weeks since the show aired. It is the first time since the pilot that we get to see the Suliban or hear any mention of the Temporal Cold War. So if anything all wacky and paradoxy happens, I’ll do my best to walk you through it. Oh, also, this week it is revealed that a member of the crew is actually an agent from another time. Aren’t you just aquiver with anticipation to find out who? Oh, the dramatic possibilities! Let’s begin.

A Sulibanana is strapped down to a table with tubes sticking into his face, pumping varicolored fluids in and out of him. “This wasn’t part of our agreement,” he complains, his voice chock full of reverb. We pull back to see that Mister Lumpy and Grumpy is in the presence of a tube of laser light with a Shadowy Future Guy inside, overlooking the procedure. “You failed in your last mission. The Klingon Empire is intact.” As punishment, Suli is getting his eyes ripped out. Actually, he’s just having a previous genetic enhancement to his vision forcibly removed. If you’re gonna have minions, make sure they’re modular. Makes upgrades a snap. Future Guy promises to give him his eyes back if he succeeds at his next mission. Another Suliban steps up to the table in wobbly weird time fashion and prepares to stick a foot-long needle into the restrained one’s eye. The rest of us have to watch the opening credits. Lucky bastard.

Hoshi gets onto a turbolift aboard the Enterprise. Before she can get the door closed, Mayweather runs up and jumps in with her. They banter about a bad movie, which he saw last night and she skipped out on, called “Night of the Killer Androids.” I can tell by the title and their reactions that neither of them has properly developed their bad movie appreciation skills. As Mayweather complains, Hoshi stares longingly at his jugular vein, attempting to squeeze it shut with her mind. Or maybe that was me. As the elevator reaches the bridge, she chides him, “You could read a book.” Once on the bridge, Reed, somehow sensing that they had been talking about the bad movie, agrees with how bad it was.

The whole first part of this episode is day in the life stuff like this. I’m trying to keep it brief until the killing starts.

Archer is in his dining room, waiting to be served his breakfast. The waiter walks in, and Archer greets him. “Hello, Daniels. I thought this was Taylor’s shift.” The waiter explains that they switched shifts, then questions Archer’s recent decision to change the ship’s course. He’s kind of uppity for a guy who carries plates for a living. “There’s a stellar nursery not far from here. We detected several ships inside.” So we’re going to go see how big a mess we can make of things. Daniels approves Archer’s orders and leaves while Archer oversalts his eggs.

The Enterprise approaches the stellar nursery, which, by the way, is a large cloud of gas which has started having parts of itself collapse to form new stars. Archer bounces onto the bridge just as Mayweather locates one of the alien ships floating around inside the nebula. T’Pol identifies it as a transport vessel using her magic powers, and Hoshi hails it. The translator has no trouble with the language of the alien whose species we’ve never seen before. Archer introduces himself and his ship. The alien captain is not impressed. They get that a lot, I notice. “Nice to meet you. What do you want?” Just to say howdy, it turns out. The alien must get this a lot. “What brings you out here?” Archer asks. “A job,” the alien replies matter-of-factly. At least he isn’t shooting yet. “I’m escorting a group of spiritually-minded men on a pilgrimage to the Great Plume of Aggasoria.” He explains that one of the local shiny things shoots a flare of neutrons every eleven years, and he’s got a shipload of people who worship the event. It’s due to blow tomorrow. Archer asks to tag along. “It’s your time to waste.” Not having filled his nuisance quota for the week, Archer offers to let the captain and his pilgrims come aboard for no particular reason. “I’ll ask them if they’re interested. I prefer to stay with my ship.” The captain identifies himself as Fraddick just before he loses interest entirely and cuts communication. Feeling smug, Archer swaggers to his chair, ordering no one in particular, “Looks like we could be having guests. Tell Chef to prepare…something.”

Fraddick’s ship docks onto the side of the Enterprise’s main disk. Apparently they have universal docking mechanisms. Archer and Trip are waiting at the hatch. The door opens and a batch of wide-eyed men in ill-fitting robes and a variety of head bumps wanders onto the ship. Archer offers his hand to the one who turns out to be the leader of the group, then has to explain what a handshake is. “I am Prah Mantous. May Aggasori embrace you into his cycle of renewal.” Uh, thanks. Mantous gives Archer the gift of a cheap desk clock. “It charts time from the beginning of the universe.” You ask one of these guys what time it is, and he takes ten minutes to answer. Another pilgrim offers Trip a glass cylinder filled with red booze to be drunk during the plume. “You’ll find it enhances the effect.” I can smell the colors! Archer offers them a meal. “Normally we fast during the time of Aggasoria.” D’oh! “But in this case I suppose we can break with tradition.” As Archer leads the pilgrims off to violate their religious tenets, one of them hangs back and poses while ominous music plays.

In the mess hall, crew and pilgrims are mingling. Daniels, the waiter from the earlier scene, is serving. I’m sure you’re wondering why I keep mentioning him. As Doctor Phlox listens in the background, Mantous hits the highlights of his belief system, namely that this particular location is where the universe began, and the Plume is symbolic of the cycle of life. If you assume that the universe started as a single point at the Big Bang, then every point in the universe was at the place of creation at the moment of creation. Therefore, these people are being silly. But, it gets them out of the house. Phlox compares the pilgrims’ beliefs to Hinduism, to Archer’s surprise. Phlox explains he studied as many of Earth’s religions as he could squeeze into his schedule while he was there. The pilgrim who was ominous previously asks T’Pol if Vulcans are spiritual people. “Our beliefs are based on logic, and the pursuit of clarity.” He then tries to pin down Archer’s faith of choice, but he dodges. “I like to keep an open mind.”

Hoshi walks onto the bridge, where Reed and Mayweather are the only two others on duty. She tells them that the pilgrims are taking a tour of the ship. Reed mutters, “I hope he’s not planning to show them the armory.” Reed suggests tactical systems should be off limits to tour groups. I wonder why they aren’t already. A thing on Reed’s console beeps, telling him a targeting sensor is out of alignment. “I’ll take care of it. It’ll only take a moment.” He tells Mayweather, “You have the bridge, Ensign,” and leaves the room. Mayweather goes about his business until Hoshi prods him. “Aren’t you going to take the chair?” Mayweather caves in to peer pressure and sits in the captain’s chair. Then he starts pushing buttons. “Think anyone would mind if I fired a torpedo?” Reed walks back in and puts an end to Mayweather’s mad grab for power. Mayweather shamefacedly sulks back to his usual seat.

Down in Engineering, Trip is giving the visitors his “Big Book of Warp Drives” tour. Matter hits antimatter to make the swirly light, and the energy is sent out some conduits to the warp nacelles. Ominous Pilgrim breaks in, “Which contain warp coils that generate the subspace displacement field.” Trip realizes he assumed they didn’t know technical stuff on account of their being religious fanatics, and tries to recover. “Well, that about covers the basics. Any questions?” One of the other pilgrims asks a technical question. “I’ll bring up a schematic of the reactor assembly, and you can see for yourself,” Trip replies, more comfortable now that he knows he doesn’t need to dumb it down. He leads the tour group over to a display area. Ominous Pilgrim separates from the group, goes around to the other side of the warp core, and opens a panel. He reaches in and his arm gets bendy, twisting into the mechanism until he gets to some item which he yanks on, separating it from what it was attached to, accompanied by a small shower of sparks. Hey, he must be that Suliban guy. They can bend like that. He closes the panel and rejoins the tour.

Enterprise and Fraddick’s ship fly onward into the nebula. Fraddick calls to the Enterprise. “You might want to focus your sensors on that plasma lightning up ahead.” T’Pol assures him they are aware of it. “I suggest we try to go around it,” Fraddick suggests, which T’Pol has no problem with.

In sickbay, Phlox is giving the pilgrims rides in his MRI. He declares the alien on the slab is in perfect health. Just then, the ship shakes. Archer feels the need to break away from the tour to maybe find out what’s going on around him for once. From the bridge, T’Pol explains that it’s “just turbulence from the outer edge” of the plasma storm. The ship gets struck again, harder this time, knocking out power on some decks. “The storm’s moving in our direction,” Mayweather foreshadows. “I’m having trouble getting around it.” Another strike by the lightning, and stuff starts to break.

Down in Engineering, where some of the tourists are still hanging about, Trip diagnoses, “We’ve got a power surge in the impulse relays.” He wastes time telling the pilgrims how he intends to fix it instead of going ahead and fixing it. In sickbay, Archer excuses himself from the tour and heads for the bridge. In the mess hall, Daniels is interrupted while bussing a table and gets a look of concern on his face. Another massive shock of energy hits Enterprise. Reed reports to Archer on the bridge, “We’re losing main power.” Back in Engineering is where the real trouble is. Trip reports, “We’ve got an antimatter cascade! If it reaches the warp reactor we’re gonna—“ We don’t hear what it’s gonna do because it starts doing it. Small explosions of sparks run along the wall, then turn to head down the conduit into the warp core. They’re doomed! No, wait! Just as the cascade is about to enter the core, it fizzles out, to everyone’s relief. In fact, if memory serves, the cascade stopped just about at the place where the Suliban had reached in and disconnected something. That means…he saved the ship. Isn’t he supposed to be the bad guy?

So, Enterprise was about to explode, but the Suliban, and by extension Future Guy, prevented it from happening. That means everything that Enterprise does from now on, good or bad, isn’t supposed to happen. They’re totally off-script. They are disrupting the timeline by their very existence. It’s the ol’ Edith Keeler Effect. And we know how that turned out.

Archer escorts the leader of the pilgrims back to the docking area. He offers, “If any of your group would like to watch the Great Plume from our mess hall, they’re welcome to come back tomorrow.” Phlox is standing in among the pilgrims. “Thank you for letting me spend the night with these people.” Oh, that madcap Phlox and his comparative theology. As the hatch seals on the airlock, Trip calls Archer down to Engineering.

“Take a look at this,” Trip says, leading Archer over to the Suliban-sabotaged panel. He points out a conduit. “Somebody got in here and disconnected it from the primary antimatter feed. If they hadn’t, that cascade would’ve continued right into the reactor core.” Which means Boom. None of Trip’s staff are taking the credit for the save. Archer tells Trip to find out who did it. “Whoever it was deserves a commendation.” Trip thinks it was a pilgrim.

In Archer’s ready room, Fraddick claims that none of the pilgrims admit to doing anything commendable. “If I told you I did it,” Fraddick asks, “would there be some kind of reward?” Nope, just praise.

As Archer walks down a hallway, Daniels swoops in behind him. “Sir, I need to speak to you.” Archer tries to brush him off, until he says the secret word, “Suliban.” Archer stops in his tracks. Daniels continues. “I have reason to believe one of the pilgrims who came on board today is a Suliban soldier. His name is Silik.” That’s the same bad guy who almost killed Archer in the pilot. Daniels requests a private place to talk. Specifically, Daniels’ quarters. Archer agrees reluctantly.

When they reach Daniels’ quarters, he first tidies up a bit for his slob roommate, then pulls a metal briefcase out of his locker. “That doesn’t look like Starfleet issue,” Archer notices, ever the sharp one. Daniels deflects Archer’s questions and asks, “Did Silik mention the temporal cold war?” Archer is taken aback. There’s a lot of information here, so let me sum up. Daniels isn’t Starfleet; he’s Timefleet, although he doesn’t call it that. He’s a time traveler from the 31st century. He has a device he calls a “temporal observatory,” which projects into the air around the user a 3-D display of history. The people Silik works for are from some earlier time still in Archer’s future, and cannot physically move into the past. They can only project data. Most of the people who have the secret of time travel are decent folks who don’t try to change things. They are “at war” with the other type, trying to keep them from screwing things up. Like, by saving starships that were supposed to be blown up by an antimatter cascade, for instance. Daniels is on Enterprise to capture Silik. “And I need you to help me capture him.” He wants to hook his futuristic sensors up to the Enterprise so as to overcome the Suliban’s ability to avoid detection. “I’ll need access to Main Engineering and your command codes.” Whoa there, Hoss. I smell a rat. A big, Commie rat. Daniels hard-sells Archer. “I need to inform some of my crew,” Archer insists. He then asks why he should trust Daniels over the guy who just saved his ship. Daniels’ answer is too stupid to repeat.

Archer decided to tell Trip and T’Pol. By the time we see them again, he’s pouring them glasses of the pilgrims’ Plume-watching concoction. T’Pol relays the Vulcan position on the idea of time travel, “They found no evidence that it exists, or that it can exist.” Archer tries several arguments. Daniels used the phrase “temporal cold war” just like the Suliban woman in the pilot episode. The Suliban genetic engineering is beyond their technical capacity to perform at this time. Daniels’ device had a holodeck-like effect. Between them, T’Pol and Trip counter-argue that none of those facts requires time travel to be true. There’s a ring on the intercom. Hoshi informs Archer that the pilgrim ship wants to dock again so that some of them can watch the Plume from Enterprise. Archer allows it. As usual, Archer ignores all the points made by his advisors, and orders them, “I want you to help Daniels.”

In the turbolift, Trip and T’Pol chat. “I always knew I’d be meeting people from other planets, but other centuries?” Trip leads off. Seeing the look of skepticism on T’Pol’s face, he continues, “You’re not buying any of this, are you?” She isn’t. “He could be trying to conceal his true intentions” with that cockamamie story, she theorizes. She also thinks Archer believes Daniels more because he wants to than because he has reason to.

Archer enters the mess hall where some of the pilgrims have gathered, as has Phlox, who greets him with a traditional Plume-worshipper saying. Phlox had a great time hanging with the zealots. Archer is too preoccupied looking over the pilgrims for a familiar face to be properly happy for him. Archer grills Phlox. “Did any of them seem out of place?” Phlox has no idea. Finally satisfied that none of the pilgrims present are the sneaky Suliban Silik, he stomps off to greener pastures.

In Engineering, Daniels is cracking the whip while Trip and T’Pol dance to his music, if I may be allowed that two-car pileup of a metaphor. He needs more power, but “one of the power relays is offline,” according to T’Pol. Daniels asks which relay, which turns out to be three meters behind the nearest bulkhead. “I’ll take care of it,” Daniels says, putting a device on his hand. He points his hand at the wall and walks right through it. A few seconds later, he walks out again. “Try it now.” It works. I wonder if they don’t have some sort of access path to the circuitry for those times when men from the future with their magic passwall devices aren’t around.

v
In Archer’s quarters, Porthos the wonder dog is barking as Archer enters. He continues to bark while facing away from the door and at a right angle to Archer as Archer pours the puppy chow. Porthos even refuses to eat when Archer sets the kibble in front of him, and starts growling. Despite his genetic inability to catch a clue, Archer starts looking at the area toward which Porthos was barking. That’s when he notices the discarded robes on the side table. He moves to the intercom, but a voice stops him. “If you’re thinking of calling for help, I’d advise against it,” says the voice, as the body behind it de-cloaks and steps forward. It’s Silik the Suliban, back in his lumpy green skin and purple Danskin. “I’m not the one you should be worried about, John.” Silik fishes for a “Thank you” for saving the Enterprise, then settles for trying to use it to coerce a favor from Archer. “There’s someone here trying to find me. I need to know who it is.” Archer plays dumb. Easy role. Silik tries to confuse Archer’s morality. “Did they tell you about their noble efforts to protect history? The great temporal accord? They’re lying to you, John.” He tries to convince Archer that any other time traveler Archer might have met is just trying to change history like everyone else. Archer asks why Silik saved the ship when he tried to destroy it previously. “I saved your ship because I was instructed to.” He seems proud of his ignorant order-following. Silik pulls out the trump card that works on any captain. “Whoever is looking for me is a danger to your crew.” Via intercom, T’Pol interrupts the “Join me on the Dark Side” conversation. “We’ve finished the modifications. Mr. Daniels is eager to get started.” And thus did the jig become up. “You’ve been very helpful, John,” Silik says just before shooting Archer. At least he’s polite. Silik leaves, and Porthos starts licking Archer’s face to try to wake him up.

The star that gives off the Plume of Aggesoria starts to writhe. In the mess hall, Phlox is anxious for the show the start. “How long before we see the plume?” “That’s hard to predict,” the leader explains. “Every cycle is unique.” Phlox is given the honor of leading the group chant for the sun-worshippers. The rhythm is roughly, “The people, united, can never be defeated,” but the words are all alien. I just wanted to be clear on that. They aren’t picketing the star. Phlox derives great personal satisfaction from a mantra well done.

In Engineering, the supercharged sensors are activated. Daniels’ handheld device immediately picks up something. “Suliban biosigns. He’s somewhere on this deck.” Daniels orders T’Pol to seal off C-Deck, and she hops to it. Trip spots a blur up on the walkway and points it out to the others. “What’s that?” “You two should go,” Daniels decides. “Go. Bring help.” As Engineering is evacuated, Silik un-invisibles himself and gets the drop on Daniels. “Did they tell you that the 22nd century was gong to be your final resting place?” Silik evils at Daniels. Then he shoots him. The beam was the same yellow that Silik shot Archer with, which I assume was a stun. What it does here is make Daniels’ outline go fuzzy, as if he were in the Suliban’s weird time room. With the second shot, something uniform-colored explodes outward while a vague humanoid energy form fades away to nothing. Is Daniels dead? Did he get pulled back to his own time at the last instant? Will we ever find out? Will we care?

Trip and T’Pol watch the whole thing through a window, and call Archer to report what happened. Archer doesn’t answer. The computer places Archer in his quarters, so they naturally and correctly assume the worst and call for the doctor.

Pudgy fingers jab a hypospray against Archer’s neck, and he groggily regains awareness amidst Trip, T’Pol, and Phlox. “It was Silik. I guess he decided not to try and kill me this time.” Trip tells Archer about Daniels’ explosive discorporation. Archer runs from saddened to determined in about a second and a half. “Have our guests left yet?” They haven’t because the light show’s still in its first act. Archer stumbles over to the videocom and calls Capt. Fraddick. “I’m looking for one of your passengers. Have any of the ones who were here returned in the last hour?” None have. Next, Archer calls Reed and tells him to seal every possible way to exit the ship and to post guards on every deck. He asks Trip, “Do you think you can find him using Daniels’ sensors?” Trip isn’t sure, but he’ll give it a shot. Archer and T’Pol head off to Daniels’ room.

Archer opens Daniels’ locker and takes out the case where he kept the temporal observatory. It’s missing, of course. Hoshi calls with more bad news. “Someone just used our comm system to transmit a message.” Encrypted, of course. Archer storms out, T’Pol trailing behind.

In Engineering, Trip is having more trouble reading the sensors than he thought. “I’m sorry, Captain. I can’t make heads or tails out of most of this.” Meanwhile and elsewhere, Silik opens up a wall panel, and squeezes between the foremost components into the inner workings of the ship, using his unnatural malleability to go where no vertebrate could follow. Whatever he’s doing gets noticed back in Engineering. “B-Deck, service junction 59. Someone’s trying to bypass the lockout codes for launch bay 2.” Archer starts heading that way, telling Trip to have Reed meet him there. Trip stops him. “Captain, I’ve got something that might give you a leg up.”

Reed and his security team are already there when Archer arrives. “It looks like he slipped through here,” Reed points out. “We could remove these conduits, but it would take time.” Archer looks thoughtfully at the gadget he is wearing on his right hand. It’s the walk-through-walls device Daniels used earlier. Archer activates it and tries it out by sticking his hand through the wall. “Stay here,” Archer tells Reed unnecessarily. He takes a deep breath, and with heroic resolve walks into the wall and freaks out the redshirts.

Silik has found himself a gap in the machinery where he can stand up straight, and is fiddling with something he probably ought not be fiddling with. He hears Archer come out of the wall behind him. “Very clever,” Silik comments, but doesn’t stop what he’s doing. “Put the device on the floor,” Archer orders, referring to the stolen observatory. “It would be in your best interest to let me take it,” Silik replies. Archer: “I can’t help wondering what kind of genetic enhancement you’ll get for bringing back that prize.” Silik: “That’s a cynical attitude, John.” A snappy comeback; this guy’s bucking for supervillain status. The ship is buffeted by something that glows really brightly, knocking Archer and Silik over and triggering the fight sequence. Silik wins the fisticuffs portion of the bout, but managed to drop his gun in the process. So, instead of killing Archer, he runs away through the hatch that really had to be there, making the whole squishy guy/immaterializer sequence extraneous.

Mayweather announces to the bridge, “There’s a ship approaching. No bigger than a shuttle pod. It’s Suliban.”

Silik pops out of a wall one airlock away from the shuttle bay. He fumbles with the door-opening buttons, giving Archer time to catch up. Pointing a phase pistol, Archer says, “I’m not going to ask you again. Put it down.” Silik doesn’t put it down. “You’re going to kill me after I saved your life?” In response, Archer retargets and shoots the stolen futuretech out of Silik’s hand, frying it in the process. Silik snarls, “You may have endangered your future, John,” and continues out into the shuttle bay. Archer follows, with a “Hey, I’m pointing a gun at you, you can’t just walk away!” look on his face. Silik is nowhere to be seen by the time Archer starts looking. He walks out onto a catwalk, looking every direction he can. That’s when the klaxons sound and a pair of shuttle bay launch doors start to swing open. Archer stupidly leans over the rails in shock, and almost gets bowled over by the rush of escaping air all around him. He falls over the railing, hanging on with both hands, and tries to climb back up. The hand holding the passwall device slips off the railing, and the device slips off his hand and gets blown out into space. In a few million years, when planets form here, some civilization will find that thing and probably start worshipping it. The wind dies down as the last of the air escapes, leaving Archer breathing hard vacuum. He’s got about 30 seconds to live, and they won’t be fun. Silik becomes visible over by the launch bay door control panel, looks up at Archer, and falls out of the open doors. There’s artificial gravity, so we’ll give him that one. Archer, remembering he’s about to die, runs for the airlock and opens it. He fights the air rushing out of that space and gets inside. A few button pushes later, and he’s desperately gasping for air, safe and far more sound than he really ought to be. At the very least, he should be a giant bruise, is what I mean. But that’s not good TV.

Meanwhile, Silik plummets through the vacuum toward his strategically-located waiting escape pod and freedom.

T’Pol calls Archer and tells him the Suliban ship just warped away. “Let him go,” Archer orders. She doesn’t question why he’s breathing like an obscene phone caller who just ran a marathon in Colorado.

Later, Archer sits at his desk, contemplating the clock the pilgrims gave him. T’Pol enters, giving Archer a springboard to express his befuddlement. “Starfleet’s in store for one hell of a report. Not quite sure where to begin.” T’Pol offers to help. They agree to wait until tomorrow.

On the bridge, Archer wearily gives Reed new orders. “Assign new quarters to Daniels’ roommate, and seal off cabin E-14. It’s off limits until further notice. God knows what else is in there.” Uncertainly, Archer orders the ship off to its next thrilling adventure. Elsewhere, a security team puts a huge magnetic lock on the door to cabin E-14.

A cylindrical doohickey pops out of the bottom of the Enterprise and unfolds itself to become a satellite. “Echo 2 is away, sir,” Reed announces to Captain Archer, who then strolls across the bridge to comm officer Hoshi Sato. “How long until subspace is online?” he asks her. About an hour. Echo 2 is sister to Echo 1, a pair of transceiver/amplifier satellites that broadcast communication signals between Earth and wherever the Enterprise is. They were just about to deploy the first one on an earlier episode, so there is continuity at work here. Reed’s sensors pick up a ship asserting itself on reality 12 kilometers away. It is a vessel design unfamiliar to everyone, even Know-it-all T’Pol. Armed with equal amounts of ignorance and optimism, Archer orders, “Hail them.” He gives his usual, “Hi! Here’s more than probably wanted to know about who we are. Please teach us the value of paranoia,” speech. They hear him, but don’t respond. When Archer points out that, since they approached Enterprise, it’s their own fault they’re listening to him prattle on right now, the take the hint and zip-dang out of the area. “Was it something I said?” Archer jokes. Odd thing, though. Reed notices the alien ship utterly failed to register on the ship’s sensors. Other than as a volume of non-zero mass, that is. Plus, they could see it. So it’s not a cloaking device in the traditional sense. It’s just freaky.

Archer gathers everyone around the map table in the strategy alcove to justify them all getting paid this week. He wants someone to explain to him why the aliens refused his generous offer of chit-chat. “Maybe they got our signal, but it didn’t make any sense to them,” Hoshi offers. “The universal translator is far from perfect.” She then offers to commit seppuku for the failure with a phase pistol, but Archer wrestles it out of her hand. Okay, not really. I was just trying to inject a little action into the first act. “Not every species has motives that can be understood in human terms,” T’Pol points out. It’s a good point, but not likely to be something they’d hang an episode on, so let’s dispose of that theory now. Mayweather thinks the aliens thought we were too dull to meet. Reed takes mock offense at the idea. “Let’s calibrate the subspace amplifier,” Archer decides, having run out of ideas for pursuing the A plot. “At least the people back home want to talk to us.” As the meeting breaks up, Hoshi attracts Archer’s attention. “Sir? I tracked them down.” Something sneaky is afoot. I’m sure it’ll turn out to be of little or no real consequence. I’ve been watching Braga Trek for too long. Whatever Hoshi has tracked down, it’s in Malaysia. “Let’s break in that new amplifier,” he tells her.

Archer sits in his ready room, facing a video monitor. On the screen are two wrinkly English people, whom we quickly learn are Reed’s parents. Mom is the same actress who played Londo Mollari’s last remaining wife on Babylon 5, and also the group leader/therapist on NBC’s “Dear John” many years ago. Dad is one of those actors I see all over, but can’t place in any particular role. I hate that. I’m going to feel like an idiot when I finally think of where I’ve seen him. Archer mentions Reed’s impending birthday, which prompts the folks to reveal that they rarely see him on that occasion, and that they haven’t heard a peep from him since Enterprise left Earth. Dad asks, “What are Malcolm’s duties on your ship, Captain?” It seems Reed never mentioned to them exactly what he’s been up to. There’s some implied disappointment that Reed went into space instead of joining the Wet Navy on Earth. With such a loving, nurturing home life as is displayed here, Reed’s personality begins to make a lot more sense. Archer explains to them that he wants to make a special birthday dinner for Reed, and, “I was hoping you could tell me what he likes to eat.” A simple question, easily shot down. “He always ate whatever was put in front of him,” Dad explains. It seems Malcolm never once indicated any preference, good or bad, for anything in his entire youth. I’m getting a serious beating-with-a-leather-strap vibe from Dad, while Mom is begging, in her uptight repressed British way, for any sort of emotional connection with her son. Tragic.

I know I just spent a lot of words on what should be a very trivial characterization matter. This is because they spend more time on this B plot than they do on the alien menace. What the hell. It’s the closest Reed’s gotten to a him-centric episode, and it gives Hoshi something to do besides pretending to push buttons and looking pretty, as you will see.

All right, I’m page two and scene four. I talk too much. Archer enters the bridge and walks with a deliberate lack of chalance over to Hoshi. After summing up the disaster that was the phone call, Archer orders her, “I want you to find out what he likes to eat, but don’t let Malcolm know.” Hoshi tries to get out of it, but Archer insists. “Sir, I’m running a diagnostic on our subspace transceiver array.” Forget it! I never listen to anyone anyway! He really says, “Make this top priority. That’s an order.” Hoshi, wondering what she did to deserve this, finally relents.

Archer runs into Trip walking down a hallway. Archer asks why Trip missed dinner. “Now that they’ve got the amplifier workin’, I wanted to answer a few letters.” Some guy named Duval got assigned to be captain of the Shenandoah, which they both find amusing and disturbing. And Trip got a letter from Natalie, from Pensacola. I think I know a Natalie from Pensacola. The one I’m thinking of is a lesbian, so it probably isn’t the same girl. “They say long-distance relationships never work. Well, this is about as long distance as it gets,” Trip philosophizes. He takes it very well, upset only that he wasn’t there to have her dump him to his face. Which she wouldn’t have done if he were there. As you can see, he’s pretty messed up inside. If I were Archer, I’d keep him away from antimatter for about a week.

Archer, who’s out of uniform, by the way (It’s casual Friday in space), continues to follow Trip around and prevent him from concentrating fully on his job. Porthos the wonder dog trails along behind them. Archer starts digging for information about Reed. “I was in the armory yesterday [with Reed] for a few hours, swapping out some power relays.” “Talk about anything interesting?” Archer inquires. “Power relays,” Trip replies. Now that’s a Starfleet engineer. Archer asks Trip if his parents know what his favorite food is. He just can’t get past that. Trip guarantees that they could. Archer explains Reed’s parents’ lack of Malcolm-related data, then muses, “We don’t know that much about Malcolm, do we?” Archer is then pulled away from this, his most pressing duty, by the ill-timed return of the mystery aliens.

Archer arrives on the bridge, still in his sweats. The alien ship is 500 kilometers dead ahead. Archer tries talking to them again. You’d think he’d notice by now that every time he tries that, he gets shot at. “I was hoping we’d have an opportunity to meet again.” He assures the aliens that the Enterprise’s intentions are peaceful. In response, they scan the Enterprise with a beam so powerful it is painfully audible. Just accept it and move on. The alien ship then moves in and starts blasting. See?! After one pass they warp away. Their incredible streak of luck continuing for its eleventh straight episode, no one was killed in the assault. On the upside, Reed was able to scan the other ship while they were pummeling Enterprise. On the downside, “I doubt very much our torpedoes could have penetrated their shielding.” Irked, Archer orders T’Pol to follow him off the bridge for a little logical lovin’. To go survey the damage and talk to Trip, I mean.

Archer and T’Pol show up where Trip and a work crew are patching up some damage. Archer asks for a report. “If that last shot had been half a meter higher, we’d be looking at stars.” Thirteen people would have died, including Trip, if that had happened.

Stomping down the halls back toward the …someplace, Archer asks T’Pol, “Did your people run into as many hostile aliens when they first went into deep space?” No, because, “There were fewer warp-capable species.” Archer finally realizes, “This ship just isn’t equipped to deal with some of the threats we’ve been coming up against. It’s time we did something about that.” Namely, hook up the phase cannons Enterprise was designed to carry, but never had installed because they had to leave spacedock early, and never made it back because they were in such a rush to get exploring. “We should head back to Earth,” Archer decides.

“Just give us two weeks, Captain,” Reed requests. He and Trip are in the armory trying to convince Archer to let them install the guns instead of heading back to take advantage of the factory warranty. Archer wants certified mechanics on the job and doesn’t want to pull the ship’s engineering crew off all the other jobs they have to do to keep that bucket afloat. “Look at the bright side,” Archer consoles Trip. “At least you’ll get a chance to say goodbye to Natalie.” Reed tries Plan B. “Sir, with your permission we could at least begin the work, get a few things started for Jupiter Station.” Archer agrees, then walks over to the wall intercom and orders Mayweather to head for home.

Standing before a group of engineers and technicians in the armory, Reed begins his presentation. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is a phase modulated energy weapon,” he says, indicating a diagram on the screen behind him. A testosterone haze visibly rises off him as his voice quavers with an anticipation bordering on lust. “Enterprise was built to carry three of them. We have one.” Trip takes over from the emotionally spent Reed. “Our job is to get it running, and build two more from scratch.” Using only those items found in a normal American kitchen. Trip continues with a pep talk, Reed joining back in after his refractory period. “When we reach Jupiter Station, I don’t want their engineers to have a thing to do but give us a wash and a wax.” The crew is nervous at first, but eventually come around.

A blonde British woman on a viewscreen says to Hoshi, “He once told me that he loved to eat octopus.” It’s Reed’s sister, who isn’t sure if Reed was joking when he said that. “You can never tell when my brother’s joking. Can I talk to him?” Hoshi refuses. Probably the first time anyone in that family ever reached out to anyone, and Miss Communication blocks it. This is why they eventually decided to have therapists on board. Sis relates the tale of the time Reed went a week without eating as some sort of self-imposed survival training. There’s your answer, Hosh: nothing. Give Reed a big platter of nada and get back to your real job. Someone walks onto the bridge, and Hoshi has the presence of mind to look over her shoulder to make sure isn’t Reed. It’s such a nice touch I’m going to pretend it wasn’t scripted and Linda Park was really that into her character. “Malcolm isn’t the easiest person to get to know,” Sis reflects. “I’m figuring that out,” Hoshi responds.

Next, Hoshi calls someone Reed went through Starfleet with. Here’s the short form. He liked to go to this place on the Embarcadero (A cool place I recommend, by the way. Visit the chocolate factory), but only because he dug a waitress there. After a quick trip through the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch, with fish, this guy decides he remembers that Reed hates fish. Even Hoshi’s getting sick of this plot. Mayweather comes over and asks, “How’s your secret mission coming?” “The most anyone seems to know about his eating habits is that he, occasionally, eats.” T’Pol, eavesdropping with those big pointy…uh, ears of hers, suggests that if she wants to know something about Reed, she should ask him directly. Hoshi rushes off to implement this mad scheme.

Reed is minding his own business in the mess hall, eating unidentifiable multicolored things and reading a book, not bothering anyone, when Hoshi walks up and asks to join him at his table. He allows it. She tries to strike up a food-related conversation, but Reed is too busy to pay attention. Watch her put her foot in it. “I used to love to cook, but I never get the chance to anymore. And the way the chef protects the galley. One of these nights, I should fix something myself. You’d love my enchiladas.” Reed contributes, “Enchiladas?” Enchiladas. You know, oral sex. “If you don’t like them I could fix something else. What’s your favorite food?” Reed looks as uncomfortable as an emotionally stunted man can be. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s not necessary.” She continues, oblivious to her derailment. “Dinner in the mess hall can lack a certain… personal touch. I have a hot plate in my quarters.” Reed handles himself with remarkable aplomb, considering what he thinks she’s offering him. “That’s very flattering. I’m just not sure it would be appropriate.” He turns her down so gently it takes her a minute to understand what he’s turning her down about. Once she realizes what she’s done, they fall over each other trying to apologize and get apart as quickly as possible.

As the Enterprise warps for Earth, the A plot follows along behind them. T’Pol detects it 8 kilometers astern. And closing fast. Archer polarizes the hull, just as a shot from the foe impacts. From the mess hall, Reed tries to contact the bridge and the armory, but no one is answering. He orders everyone in earshot to their stations and heads off himself.

I haven’t said it in a while. Everything breaks. As the lights go out on the Enterprise, a landing pod launches from the alien ship. An ensign breaks out the MagLites and starts passing them around the bridge. I wonder why they don’t have those battery powered lights that charge up when the power is on and come on when the power is out? Power probably goes out too often for them to collect a charge. Or maybe Trip keeps rerouting them to the warp engines. The alien ship docks.

A pair of crewmen are pulling a motherboard out of its wall socket when they hear footsteps running nearby. They shine their flashlights down the hall and see two CGI aliens run past, down an intersecting hall. They foolishly investigate. They get jumped, of course, and their flashlights go off before we get to see what got them.

Archer and his merry retinue of searchers walk down the halls and shine their lights on things. I’m pretty sure there’s a crisis in progress that needs the captain on the bridge, but it’s his show so I’ll let it pass this time. They spot one of the errant flashlights of the poor saps in the last scene, and round the corner to find two aliens crouched over them scanning their heads. Archer commands, “Get away from those men!” One alien says, “Ack ack! Ack! Ack ackack ack! Ack!” so Archer shoots him. The CGI artists never programmed in a “Respond to phaser” animation, so the alien just stands there. Then, he and his alien buddy lope clumsily away before Archer can set his phase pistol to “Slim Whitman.” Archer sends the security team after the aliens while he calls Dr. Phlox to come fix the hurt people. Security reports that the aliens got back to their shuttle and took off. After the aliens return to their ship, the ship swooshes in and blows the hell out of the Enterprise’s port warp engine.

Archer and T’Pol march into sickbay for a report from Phlox. “I’ve stabilized them, but they were subjected to some rather invasive scans.” Archer waves his hand over the eyes of one of the deathscanned crewmen, who is staring unblinking at the ceiling. “There could be some residual neurological damage,” Phlox warns. Archer accuses T’Pol of holding back information on the enemy by way of asking if the Vulcans ever heard of anything like these aliens. She claims not to know anything she hasn’t said. Trip calls from Engineering, the good news being that impulse propulsion is almost working, and the bad news being that the busted warp engine will take two days to fix.

On the bridge, T’Pol reports to Archer, “No Vulcan ships are within scanning range.” Mayweather suggests that they contact the Vulcan High Command for help, which, if you’ve been watching, is something Archer would rather almost die than lower himself to do. Since there’s no “almost” about it, he tells Hoshi to make the call. I’d love to be Starfleet’s long distance carrier. However, there’s a glitch. Echo 2 isn’t functioning. “That’s because it isn’t there,” T’Pol announces. “There’s nothing but debris.” Somehow, she’s able to scan Echo 1 from here and determine that it, too, is toast. That makes me wonder why they can scan so much farther than they can broadcast, but that way lies insanity, so I’ll ignore it.

In the armory, people are working feverishly on the phase cannons. Reed bites the head off an underling for misreporting some progress. Reed and Trip pop a hatch off the wall and enter what is not yet called a Jeffries tube to fiddle with the electronics within. Reed gets zapped touching an active circuit. Trip asks why he was messing with it. “Bypassing the EPS grid,” Reed explains. “We can draw power for the cannons directly from the impulse engines.” Screw safety! Gimme power! Trip does not like the idea. “We’ve got to do this by the book, or we’ll end up blowing a bigger hole in ourselves than the bad guys.” Reed’s getting frustrated. “It’s an acceptable risk.” Trip pulls rank. “Why don’t you let the chief engineer decide what’s an acceptable risk.” It’s the classic struggle between Doing It Fast and Doing It Right. Mythic, really.

Archer saunters into Engineering. Did I mention the lights were back on? Have been for the last three paragraphs. “I can’t sleep without the warp engines on line,” Trip tells him. “I hope you get them fixed soon because you look like hell,” Archer points out. Trip asks Archer to help him align the dilithium in the warp core. Dilithium is a real substance, by the way. Two lithium atoms bound together. Has no use in the area of high-energy physics that I’m aware of. This has been another Useless Fact. Archer admits to Trip that he tried to call the Vulcans for help. They chat about seeing Earth again. Archer says, “This time, we won’t be leaving before we’re ready.” Trip thinks Archer sounds like a Vulcan. Archer has started to realize that his “humans are always right”, strong jaw and good intentions attitude has been putting a great many people into a great deal of danger many times in the last six months. Unlike Kirk, he’s starting to regret and reconsider it. Trip gives Archer a pep talk of dubious efficacy on the subject of risks and rewards. Archer walks away with plenty to think about.

Trip comes up behind Reed in the Jeffries tube where he is installing a phase cannon. “Have you still got those guns of yours hooked up to the impulse engines?” “I’m just disconnecting them now, sir,” Reed explains. “Hang on a minute. You’re sure this will work?” Trip asks. When Reed confirms it, Trip decides the risk is worth it.

Two days pass without incident. Enterprise approaches a lifeless planetoid as Archer records his starlog, praising the crew’s ability to manufacture and install the phase cannons so quickly.

The ship orbits the planetoid, the main screen focused on a mountain in the center of a crater. Archer contacts Reed to start the weapons test. “Let’s start small. Shave a couple of meters off the top of that peak.” Reed fires. The mountain disintegrates, along with the crater wall and a couple other craters that happened to be in the neighborhood. Things start overloading. Alarms sound. “I just asked for a little off the top!” Archer shouts over the pandemonium. One nice thing about writing is that you get to use the word “pandemonium” in a sentence once in a while. Amidst all the damage reports, T’Pol’s quiet announcement, “I’m getting an anomalous reading from Launch Bay Two,” is noticeable for its calmness. Archer orders Trip and T’Pol to come with him to check it out.

Reed and a supply of phase pistols meet up with the others by the time they reach Launch Bay 2. They threaten the empty room with their guns while T’Pol scans things. Together, she and Trip spot a spherical object mounted to one wall near the ceiling. “It’s putting out a tremendous amount of energy,” T’Pol reports. “They’re toying with us,” Reed concludes. “They want us to know they can destroy us whenever they want, even with our own weapons.” T’Pol continues, “Whatever it is, it’s tapped into most of our systems, including internal sensors and communications on every deck.” Archer walks over to a wall panel and tells it to start watching him. Here’s what he says. “I assume you planted that device because you wanted to learn more about us. I’ll give you a quick lesson. We’re not here to make enemies, but just because we’re not looking for a fight doesn’t mean we’ll run away from one. You may think you’ve left us defenseless, but let me tell you something about humans. We don’t give up easily. We’ll protect Enterprise, any way we can.” Then Archer shoots the spyball with his phase pistol and the picture, an alien-eye-view of the launch bay from that wall panel, goes black.

Hoshi enters sickbay, which is way over-lit. “I see you’ve released your patients,” she notices. Phlox tells her they’ll be fine, despite his earlier dire warnings. She asks him, “Have you ever had a meal with Lt. Reed?” Phlox has no personal idea what foods Reed likes or dislikes, other than peanut butter pancakes. I may have to try that. I, my immediate family, and no one else I’ve ever met, know that peanut butter and jelly on waffles is yummy, but I’ve never tried it on pancakes. Hoshi asks if a medical scan of Reed’s tongue would help. Phlox informs her, “Medically speaking, there’s no accounting for taste.” However, there is something in Reed’s medical file that may be of use. But that’s confidential information. Hoshi bats her eyelashes at him and his scruples fly out the airlock. “Lt. Reed suffers from a number of allergies,” Phlox explains. Including an allergy to bromilin, a plant enzyme. “Over the last several years, he has been taking regular injections so that his body can tolerate bromilin.” Which is commonly found in pineapple. Here’s the logic path. He’s allergic to pineapple. Instead of avoiding the fruit, he goes out of his way to endure a long series of injections just so he can digest it without complications. Which he would only do if he likes pineapple so much as to be worth the trouble. Ta da! Mystery solved. And it only took running up a phone bill they’re still deducting from Picard’s paycheck to pay off and the violation of Reed’s doctor-patient privilege and possibly his basic human rights to do it. Hoshi runs off with her hard-gained information and a spring in her step.

T’Pol tells Archer the aliens have reappeared 20 kilometers behind them and closing fast. “Come about. And hold our position,” Archer orders. Archer alerts Reed in the armory that his target has arrived. “Get a lock and stand by.” At 11 kilometers, the aliens stop and hail the Enterprise. The broadcast is clips from Archer’s speech down in the launch bay, spliced together to form their message, which is this: “You are defenseless. Prepare to surrender your vessel.” Unless I seriously misquoted earlier, many of these words weren’t in Archer’s speech. The alien ship approaches again, and Archer orders Reed to fire the phase cannons. They dance across the enemy’s shields, doing no damage. “Is that the best we can do, Lieutenant?” Archer demands of Reed. Reed claims the cannons are working as well as they can. “What about yesterday? I saw you blow up something the size of Mt. McKinley.” Reed reminds Archer that that was the result of an overload. “Can you overload them again?” Archer asks. Reed thinks he can, but worries that “the plasma recoil could knock out two decks.” Again, I recommend you flow with the babble. Suddenly, Trip has an idea. “I think there’s a way to handle the recoil.” He uses many words to say he’s going to pump the recoil energy into the structural integrity field, making the ship stronger and therefore better able to handle the overload stress. Yes, I simplified that. Meanwhile, the bad guys get closer.

Displays flash, things beep. Reed says, “Stand by.” He and Trip nod at each other. It’s all very tense and exciting. Archer gives the word, and Reed fires, slicing through the enemy shields like a burning column of collimated energetic ionized gas through a protective focused planar energy sheath. T’Pol announces, “Their shields are failing.” Archer orders torpedoes as followup. Two hits, and the bad guys turn and run.

On the Enterprise, some stuff broke, and the guns are dead for good hour at least, but on the whole they’re in better shape than the other guys. Archer says, “I see no reason for us to go back to Jupiter Station now.” Hoshi is happy to get to drop off another subspace amplifier to replace Echo 1 while they are so much closer to Earth. Archer orders Mayweather to “Resume our previous course.” Away from Earth.

Later, in the armory, Archer, Trip, and Reed are enjoying a frosty beverage of the alcoholic variety, toasting the enemy who motivated them into finally strapping some guns on. “Don’t get too used to drinking on duty,” Archer warns. Hoshi walks in, carrying an ungainly case of the type used to carry around awkward and shock-sensitive equipment. Archer opens the case and takes out what is inside. Turning around, he presents it to Reed. It’s a cake. “As long as we have you here, Malcolm, Happy Birthday.” Thank God that song didn’t survive the Eugenics Wars. Reed cuts the cake and serves up the first slice. “Pineapple!” he exclaims, well, as much as he ever exclaims about anything that isn’t normally used to kill people. “That’s my favorite. How on Earth did you know?” Hoshi, so pleased with herself she’s about to pop right out of her boots, tells him, “Oh, we have our sources.” And there was much rejoicing. Yay.

If Reed has any sense, for his birthday present he’ll ask that the rest of the ship be upgraded so that the phase cannons can be fired in overload mode all the time.

I’m doing things a little differently this week, in that I have not yet viewed the episode I am about to recap. I will be seeing it for the first time as I describe it to you. I’m interested to see if there’s any noticeable difference in the result.

Dr. Phlox enters a darkened sickbay, reaches over, and flips on the lights. “Good morning, everyone,” he says, to no one we can see. He heads over to a cabinet and collects some items, which he puts on a tray and carries over to a cage which is making squeaky noises. “Be patient,” he chides the box. Maybe it’s his Zyrithian bat. He feeds whatever it is, then makes the rounds to all the other cages, tanks, and terrariums, giving each its individualized breakfast. He hand-feeds white grub-like things to one critter, pausing to scarf one himself in the process. I bet this is the Phlox-focused episode.

I taped this at the wrong speed, so commercials fly by faster.

Hoshi enters sickbay just as Phlox finishes up with his pets/medical equipment, bearing mail. “People are getting jealous. You get more letters from home than anyone on the ship,” she tells him. Phlox explains he’s a regular correspondent with Dr. Lucas, the human physician who traded places with Phlox in the interspecies medical exchange program that explains why the Enterprise wound up with an alien doctor in the first place. Hoshi relates a little story about how she had a pen pal when she was twelve, then asks, “Are we still on for later?” Phlox assures her that they are. On for what I have no idea. “If you think you’re up to it we can tackle gerunds today,” he tells her. Maybe he’s teaching her Denobulese. Hoshi’s psyched for the gerunds. She leaves and Phlox starts playing the voice recording that passes for a letter in THE FUTURE! It’s mating season on Denobula, which is apparently a complex process compared to human reproduction. Phlox is amused.

As Phlox walks down one of the Enterprise’s hallways, he begins the narrative voiceover I suspect will be following him throughout the episode. Phlox’s voice concurs about the difficulty of Denobirth as the rest of him enters Engineering, where a crewman has been struck down. He got first-degree burns from a blown seal. He shouldn’t have been doing that on duty in the first place. Phlox smears Vaseline™ on the guy while narrating his pleasure that people are getting used to him.

In the mess hall, Phlox sits alone, watching the humans mill about and writing, “I must admit I wasn’t planning to stay this long, but the opportunity to observe your species on their first deep space mission has proven irresistible.” Reed rushes past Phlox’s table, and Phlox invites him to sit, despite the fact that Reed isn’t carrying any food or looking for a seat. Reed begs off, mumbling something about having to dance naked in the armory or something. No one is willing to admit to Phlox that they can’t stomach watching him eat. Disappointed, Phlox begins to eat his meal alone. However, he takes solace in the fact that everyone gets sick eventually and must therefore talk to him. That’s possibly the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.

Back in sickbay, Phlox tells Archer, “It’s just a little gastro-intestinal distress.” Archer, his brow heavy with the burden of command, walks over to the distressed patient. It’s Porthos the wonder dog! Oh, the humor. My sides are like unto bursting with vigorous delight. “You’ve been feeding him cheese again,” Phlox accuses, and tells Archer to knock it off. I can’t see how any of this could possibly evolve into a major plot line, but I can’t help enjoying seeing the pooch. Phlox finds humanity’s emotional attachment to pets fascinating. “I’ve noticed how the captain tends to anthropomorphize his pet. He even talks to the creature.”

It’s movie night on the NX-01. They’ve upgraded the fare from “Night of the Killer Android” to what looks like a Gary Cooper/Ingrid Bergman movie, but I’m not sure. Phlox is seated near the back, next to Ensign Cutler, the female ensign from the previous episode involving the psychotropic pollen. Phlox is spending more time looking around at the gathered crew than at the screen “We can go if you’re bored,” she whispers to him. Apparently, they are there as a unit. Phlox is happy to stay. “I’m sensing a rise in emotional undercurrent in the room. I’m curious to see if it culminates in some kind of group response.” The film is the soup. The audience is the art. Cutler asks if they have movies on Denobula, which they once did, “but they lost their appeal when people realized their real lives were more interesting.” Phlox, enjoying a mouthful of popcorn, leans forward to look at Trip, who is bawling like a little girl a few seats away. “I got something in my eye,” Trip lamely claims, amusing Phlox greatly. It seems Phlox is continually amazed at all the various and sundry things we humans allow ourselves to become emotionally affected by.

After the movie, Phlox and Cutler stroll down yet another hall. A hall is just a fancy cave to these people. Phlox is quizzing her on the circulatory system. Oh, yeah, he’s getting some action tonight. When Cutler makes a romantic, yet scientifically inaccurate, reference to the heart, Phlox asks her, “What could possibly make you people think it is the source of all emotion?” She replies, “You have a lot to learn about the human heart.” They arrive at Cutler’s quarters. Phlox says, “Good night,” and starts to walk away, but she stops him to thank him for a fun evening. “You’re welcome,” he responds and turns away again. She invites him to go see “Sunset Boulevard” next week. Why don’t you kiss him instead of talking him to death? Finally, she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder. She pulls it away quickly and apologizes. “I forgot Denobulans don’t like to be touched.” He pretends it didn’t bother him. “I’m trying to shed some of my cultural inhibitions.” “In that case,…” Cutler says, leans over, and lays a wet one on Phlox’s cheek. She then enters her quarters dreamily, leaving Phlox dazed and confused in the corridor. “Since we were on the subject of mating,” Phlox narrates as he continues on his way, “I think Ensign Cutler may be romantically interested in me. I can’t be certain, however.” Blind, deaf, persistently vegetative people know Cutler is hot for his ridged-for-her-pleasure bod. I thought this guy was a student of human nature.

Enterprise approaches the plot hook, a ship of unknown origin floating in space. On the bridge, Archer asks T’Pol, “Are there any inhabited systems near by?” There’s one. Hoshi can’t get them to talk to her, and Reed determines that the ship has no warp capacity. “Could be unmanned, possibly a probe of some kind,” Reed suggests. However, T’Pol detects two life signs, “very faint.” Archer orders the ship dragged aboard.

Phlox sprays something into the neck of an unconscious alien, dressed in the traditional silver jumpsuit. He awakens, and Phlox and Archer help him sit up. They explain what happened, and he responds in alienese. Luckily, Hoshi is right there with her translator. The alien says about six sentences, after which the translator is able to decipher everything he says. Honestly, the Babel Fish made more technical sense. Pleasantries completed, the alien asks, “Is this a warp ship?” So, he’s aware of warp travel even though his ship couldn’t do it. His and three other ships left his home world a year ago, their crews suffering from an illness affecting their entire species, looking for a more advanced species who might cure them. They know about warp travel because two other warp-capable species have visited his planet in the past, including the Ferengi. I guess Armin Shimmerman could use the work. The other aliens didn’t help. He asks Archer, “Will you allow [Dr. Phlox] to help us?” Archer has to confer with T’Pol. T’Pol thinks the aliens can’t get any more culturally contaminated after having met the Ferengi, so she greenlights the idea. “See what you can do,” Archer tells Phlox.

In a short little scene existing only to provide continuity, Phlox runs the aliens through his MRI. I just noticed my spell-checker doesn’t register “Phlox” anymore.

In the mess hall, Hoshi and Phlox sit opposite each other. She’s practicing speaking his language. It’s subtitled and banal. Switching to Galacticommon (English), Hoshi starts probing Phlox for the dish on Ensign Cutler. I guess Communications Officer is officialese for ship’s gossip. “I’ve noticed you and crewman Cutler spending a lot of time together.” He insists she pry in his tongue. That sounds dirtier than I meant it. “Are you two…mating?” She comes right to the point, don’t she? Phlox thinks she misspoke and corrects her. “I believe you meant ‘dating’.” Phlox can’t be sure if they are, so Hoshi gives him some, “How to know if she’s interested” tips. Remember, this is the same woman who accidentally hit on Lt. Reed last week. It’s in the form of a quiz.

1. Does she want to spend time with you?

2. Does she find little excuses to make physical contact?

And that’s it. All signs point to yes, so Hoshi approves, in Denobulan, “I think you two make a nice washboard.” I think it’s future slang.

Enterprise arrives at the planet of the mauve people, and everyone gathers on the bridge to make sure Mayweather doesn’t slam them into it. Phlox’s externalized internal monologue is “struck by [humanity’s] desire to help others.”

On the planet, which looks like SimCity 2150, Phlox and his entourage of Starfleet types are being given a tour/briefing of a hospital by the clinic director. One in three aliens has the illness, and it keeps evolving to counteract all attempts to cure it. Phlox takes charge, demanding case histories, lab work, the lot. Hoshi strays away from the tour group to check in on the guys Enterprise brought back from space. She stops a local to ask after them, but he speaks a language she hasn’t translated yet.

Meanwhile, it’s time for another command conference. T’Pol recommends to Archer, “We should assign some crewmen to watch Dr. Phlox and his equipment.” Archer, again, trusts in the basic goodness of people. T’Pol reminds him how naïve he is. “You might be surprised what a temptation our technology can be.”

Archer and T’Pol finally notice that Hoshi has run off, and go over to her. “Captain, the UT can’t translate his language,” she explains. The doctor/tour guide walks up. He explains that the non-understandable guy is a Menk, a less-evolved but hard-working separate indigenous species of person. Archer explains his confusion. “On most planets we’ve encountered only one humanoid species survived the evolutionary process.” In return, the tour doc is surprised to learn T’Pol and Archer aren’t from the same planet, to Archer’s amusement and T’Pol’s disgust at the very notion. Phlox asks to see the Menk patients. “They haven’t contracted the disease.” It turns out the Menk and Velochians are biologically different enough that disease doesn’t pass between them. “I’d like to see your data on the Menk,” Phlox requests.

A medical montage ensues while Phlox narrates what boils down to, Time passes, nothing gets better. “I have decided to enlist crewman Cutler’s help in my task,” he adds as segue.

Phlox and Cutler are loading up supplies. He invites her to come along down to the planet, because that worked out so well last time. “A trained exo-biologist? I’d find your assistance in the field invaluable,” he tells her. She reacts like he asked her to the prom. In response to Cutler’s ever more obvious affection for Phlox, he decides to talk to T’Pol about it next chance he gets.

T’Pol is in sickbay, flat on her back. Well, not flat. “That’s impossible,” she insists. It seems she has developed a cavity despite having her teeth capped 23 years ago. Must be all that sweet celery. “I’m sure you have more pressing matters,” T’Pol rationalizes as she tries to escape the horrors of Denobulan dentistry. “It’ll only take a moment to repair,” he assures her, motioning her back onto the table. While he has her at his mercy, he springs the Cutler issue on her. “You’ve lived among humans,” he starts. “Have you ever known them to mate outside their species?” Two minutes with an internet search engine would answer that question right now. The real question is, is there anything humans are known not to have tried to mate with? “Are you asking out of personal interest or scientific curiosity?” she asks him to keep him from shoving another sharp metal object in her mouth. She tells him, “In my opinion, humans lack the emotional maturity for interspecies relationships.” Ouch, sorry, Trip. Disappointed, Phlox get back to work, T’Pol unhinging her jaw to speed things along. He voiceovers, “I admire her logic, although she lacks the instinctiveness a more emotional response can provide.” Oh, God. He’s going to go around asking everyone’s advice, isn’t he?

The doorbell to Archer’s ready room rings. “Come in,” he says. It’s Phlox. I hope he’s here to talk about death and suffering. “You asked to see me, Captain?” Phlox begins. Ah, there may be hope yet. “[The clinic director] is eager to hear if you’ve made any progress.” In that dejected, roly-poly way of his, Phlox explains, “I’ve developed a medication to ease the symptoms of the disease. But…” And it’s a big but. “This epidemic isn’t being caused by a virus or bacteria.” It’s a genetic illness whose rate of incidence has greatly increased recently. “The Velochians will be extinct in two centuries.” Phlox thinks a cure is possible, but not very likely or simple. Archer gives him free reign. “Take all the time you need.” Something troubles Phlox, but he doesn’t explain.

Nighttime on the planet, and Hoshi and Phlox are being brought into a rough campsite kind of place, with torches burning and crude wooden structures, nothing like the shiny steel city they visited before. “Tell them we’d like to run some tests, get samples of their blood. It will be completely painless.” Phlox requests of Hoshi, who can apparently speak Menk even if her doohickey can’t. The animal-skin wearing, thick-skulled locals agree readily. The difference between the two intelligent species on this planet does not escape Phlox’s notice. “It’s their ability to co-exist that intrigues me most.” Cutler helps Phlox collect the samples while Hoshi translates. One of the locals asks what Phlox is doing. “Have you learned enough Menk to explain a molecular bioscan?” Phlox asks Hoshi. She wings it with, “The doctor is looking inside you.” The Menk seem curious and non-threatening. Someone brings food, which the local leader/liaison guy offers by saying, “Food.” They’re picking up English. Looking over the selection, Phlox considers, “I haven’t seen any crops or livestock. I wonder where they get this?” So, Hoshi asks. The alien explains that the Velochians “don’t let them live where the land is fertile.” But, they give the Menk all the food, clothes, and whatever else they need, so it works out.

The scanning continues in the Menk village, while Phlox’s voice outlines his human companions’ views on the Menk situation. “They think the Menk are being exploited by the Velochians, so their first instinct is to rise to their defense.” The Menk liaison, meanwhile, is rearranging the samples in one of the cases. Phlox notices, and has a look. “He’s grouped the samples together by family, cross-referenced by bloodline and marriage.” Okay, they’re smarter than the average bear. We get it. “Their abilities seem to have been underestimated, even by myself,” he adds to his letter.

The sample collection being completed, Hoshi, Cutler, and Phlox are standing around, waiting for the stewards to finish packing up so they can head back to the ship, and enjoying the night air. Hoshi excuses herself on some pretext, leaving the lovebirds alone. “This really doesn’t bother you,” Cutler asks, “the way the Velochians treat them?” “Why should it?” Phlox points out, on the basis that under most circumstances one species would have brought about the extinction of the other, so oppression is a preferable alternative. “The culture is different. It’s their way.” Cutler moralizes, “That doesn’t make it right.” Say, something smells like the Prime Directive around here. Phlox changes the subject. “Are you married, crewman?” She isn’t. “I would have told you.” Recognizing his faux pas, Phlox reveals, “I’m married. Three times.” Cutler is confused. “You have two ex-wives?” “I have three current wives, and they each have two husbands, not counting myself.” Beds must be huge on Denobula. Especially if the two extra husbands don’t have to be married to the same set of wives. Not to mention the greeting card industry. A house with a mother-in-law suite would have an attached apartment complex. It’s par for the course with Phlox’s people. Cutler wants to know why he brought it up. “I’ve been getting certain signals from you that suggest you may be interested in a romantic relationship with me. Unless I misinterpreted those signals.” I would have jumped through that loophole in a second, but Cutler denies nothing. “I still don’t know why you’re telling me this,” she adds. He’s got three wives. What’s one more? Whoops, the dialogue undid my joke. “I don’t want to be wife number four. I just want to be your friend.” Whom I have sex with whenever I want. “What do you mean by ‘friend’?” Phlox asks, sensing the ambiguity of the term. “Let’s just see where it goes,” she replies. So, like I said.

Archer enters the clinic, where there isn’t much activity, but there is one of the astronauts in a sick bed. “I’m glad you could come.” Archer says, “It was no problem.” The alien asked him to come? “The medication you gave us helps with the pain, but my prognosis hasn’t changed.” The dying man thanks Archer for bringing him home. Then he brings out the pathos hammer. “We need warp drive,” he explains, so they can go out and find a cure instead of waiting for other aliens to cruise by. If Phlox fails, so the pitch goes, either they go out in warp-capable ships to seek a cure, or they all die. And the minions of the Shadows will have gotten their revenge. Phlox calls on Archer’s communicator to tell him he’s ready to leave. They arrange to meet at the shuttle. Archer places a compassionate hand on the alien’s shoulder, and, without agreeing to anything, walks away.

Archer walks onto the bridge and asks for a status report. T’Pol informs him, “We’ve received 29 hails in the past two hours.” The rest of the planet has gotten word of the Enterprise’s presence and promise of hope, and are starting to work themselves into a mob frenzy. Archer asks to speak to T’Pol in private.

In the ready room, Archer tells T’Pol his situation. “The Velochians want our warp technology.” Archer has not rejected the idea. T’Pol points out a minor side issue. “Even if you give them our reactor schematics, they don’t have the technical expertise to build a warp engine.” There ya go. Crisis averted. “They’re not ready,” Archer agrees. “Then your decision shouldn’t be difficult.” Archer continues, “We could stay and help them.” Like the Vulcans helped the humans, as T’Pol reminds him. It wasn’t a great bargain for either of them. Archer achieves enlightenment. “I’m beginning to understand how the Vulcans must have felt.”

Phlox is in sickbay looking at DNA under a microscope. He straightens up, and if it were in his character to scream, “Eureka!” I think he would.

It’s nighttime, or the lights have gone out again, and Phlox enters the mess hall. Archer is already there, having a glass of something. “Trouble sleeping, Captain?” “Looks like I’m not the only one.” Phlox explains that, other than a six-day hibernation cycle, Denobulans require little sleep. “Any progress?” Archer asks. Phlox seems reluctant to talk. “Even if I could find [a cure],” Phlox says, “I’m not sure it would be ethical.” Beg pardon? Come again? Phlox doesn’t think he should interfere with the Velochian’s natural evolutionary progress, even if that progress is toward oblivion. Archer argues, “Every time you treat an illness you’re interfering. That’s what doctors do.” Phlox’s dilemma is a result of his study of the Menk. “I’ve seen evidence of increasing intelligence, motor skills, linguistic abilities.” In short, the Menk are evolving toward becoming the dominant species on the planet, but they can’t do it if the Velochians are already dominating. Isn’t that what war is for? Phlox wants to let nature choose which species gets to live at the expense of the other. “To hell with nature!” is Archer’s command decision. “You’re a doctor. You have a moral obligation to help people who are suffering.” Phlox retorts, “I’m also a scientist, and I’m obligated to consider the larger issues.” That’s a Star Trek scientist. A real life scientist wouldn’t be having this crisis of conscience, as long as the funding kept coming. Archer makes a point. “They asked for our help. I’m not prepared to walk away based on theory.” Phlox diagnoses, “I think your compassion for these people is clouding your judgment.” Kirk would have slugged him for that. Archer just says, “My compassion guides my judgment. Can you find a cure?” Phlox informs him, “I already have.”

Phlox explains in his letter that his conflict is between doing what he thinks is right for the peoples of this planet and doing what his captain tells him to do. Now that everyone’s on the same page, Archer walks into sickbay to speak to Phlox. “I’m going down to the Velochian hospital,” Archer tells him. Phlox asks him to reconsider giving them the cure. “I have reconsidered. I spent the whole night reconsidering. And what I’ve decided goes against all my principles.” In other words, no cures will be distributed today. And now, the message so subtly weaved throughout the episode gets hammered into us with the soliloquy I reproduce here. Archer speaks: “Someday, my people going to come up with some sort of a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and can’t do out here, should and shouldn’t do. But until somebody tells me they’ve drafted that DIRECTIVE, I’m going to have to remind myself every day that we didn’t come out here to play God.”

As Archer’s shuttle lands on the planet, Phlox’s voice expresses his shame at ever considering not telling Archer about the cure. Archer meets with the director of the clinic, handing over a supply of medicine. “Phlox tells me this medicine will help ease the symptoms for a decade, maybe more.” Trying to raise hopes, he continues, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you developed a cure on you own.” The clinic director again asks for warp drive technology to improve their odds. Archer wrestles with it, but eventually tells him, “I’m sorry.”

Phlox is perched on a counter in sickbay recording the end of his letter to Dr. Lucas. “I came very close to misjudging Jonathan Archer, but this incident has helped me gain a new respect for him.” The message finished, Phlox turns it over to Hoshi. She notices how down he is, and offers him advice. “Get out of sickbay.” After Hoshi leaves, Phlox heads over to the intercom and calls Cutler. “I know it’s short notice, but I was wondering if you might like to join me for a little snack in the mess hall. I could use a friend right about now.” She agrees, clinching her recurring character status. Finally, to properly bookend this whole sordid little story, Phlox tells his critters, “Sweet dreams,” shuts off the lights, and walks out of sickbay.

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.