While studying a star in the early stages of going supernova, Enterprise encounters a race called the Vissians. The two crews get along famously, until Trip Tucker gets a little too curious about a member of the species' third gender — a nameless individual called a "cogenitor."
Upon leaving the Enolian homeworld in a shuttlepod, Archer and Tucker are mistakenly arrested and placed on a prisoner transport vessel bound for the penal colony Canamar. Before the error can be rectified, one of the alien inmates engineers a takeover of the transport, leading Archer to engage in a dangerous gambit.
The episode opens at the Arctic Circle, Earth. Three humans - Doctor Moninger, Rooney, and Drake - are crossing the glacial terrain. They encounter a jagged hull fragment, "twenty or thirty feet high," which the script identifies as a "Borg Sphere that crashed in the Arctic Circle almost a century ago." As they examine the fragments of the Borg ship, Rooney uncovers a Borg drone frozen in the ice. "We'd better call Starfleet," Drake says, and the screen fades to black.
Act One begins with the researchers examining two Borg drones they have recovered from the debris. Doctor Moninger has discovered that the two drones are not of the same species, which puzzles him. Meanwhile, Rooney, who has been conducting a metallurgical analysis, has found out that the debris has lain in the Arctic circle for one hundred years. "If their ship hadn't been destroyed, our First Contact might've been with these people," Drake muses.
Enterprise ligger fortfarande preliminärt i sommar. Men mycket kan hända.
Voyager har vi ingen reprisrätt till.
"You have to think that at some point, if we’re around long enough, that there’s going to be another Starship. We’ve had a conversation about it at one point, that there may be more ships in the works. The Vulcan’s are obviously hesitant for us to send any more out. But there’s this sense of progression that’s happening here, and the experience and knowledge that we’re garnering is pointing us toward the beginnings of a Federation. This will be fantastic to be involved in. But [the producers] have not enlightened me as to how, when, or if that will happen."
"We know that he died, but we don’t know how he died. We haven’t heard a thing about my mother yet, or if I have any siblings."
"I think the luxury we have here is that because they feel they have a fair amount of time to get these stories told, they don’t have to do it all in the first season, which gives you stuff to do later…There’s still a lot of good stuff for us to get into."
While Enterprise visits a planet where an Interspecies Medical Exchange conference is taking place, Dr. Phlox tries to obtain research on a terminal disease from the Vulcan contingency there. But he must not reveal that T'Pol has contracted this disease, because that knowledge would forever stigmatize her among her people.
Trip Tucker is alone on a test mission aboard Shuttlepod One when he is fired upon by a territorial alien and forced to land on the night side of a moon. As he tries in vain to contact Enterprise, he discovers his alien foe has also made an emergency landing nearby, and the two nemeses must contend with each other as the extremely hot rising sun threatens their survival.
When Trip rescues an exotic alien woman from her kidnappers, they find themselves on the run from her captors and, in the process, on an unexpected romantic adventure. Meanwhile, Archer holds one of the alien kidnappers captive on Enterprise and devises a scheme with T'Pol's help to pressure the reluctant prisoner to help them locate Trip.
Following her first experience in the transporter, a series of eerie events leads Hoshi to question whether she is the same person. Feeling fearful and helpless, Hoshi becomes unsure of herself wondering if she is losing her mind, or if the transporter has somehow changed her, or if there is an alien threat behind all of these bizarre happenings suddenly taking place.
On a "typical" day on Enterprise, the crew finds their routine tasks turn into uncharacteristically strange obsessions over trivial matters. The crew's increasingly erratic and often humorous behavior includes: Archer's preoccupation with writing the preface of a biography about his dad; Trip's fixation on adjusting the Captain's chair to perfection; Hoshi's obsession with her cooking; and Reed's concern with a Tactical Alert.