Cold Front

Star Trek: Enterprise  Season 1 Episode 11

Air Date: 11/28/2001

Enterprise navigates into a stellar nursery hoping to make contact with some of the alien vessels detected among the colorful gases and protostars. Finding a transport vessel escorting a group of alien pilgrims to the "Great Plume of Agosoria," a protostar which emits an epic burst of energy every 11 years, Captain Archer decides to caravan with the pilgrimage ship, and invites the group for a social dinner onboard Enterprise. Relations fare well among the starship crew and the pilgrims culminating with Commander Trip Tucker giving a guided tour of the Enterprise engineering bay. As the group listens attentively to Trip's oversimplified explanation of the warp engines, one pilgrim silently slips behind a bulkhead unnoticed. He opens a panel and dislocates his limb in order to disconnect a conduit within — he is a Suliban. After the disguised invader rejoins the group, the entire ship is suddenly rocked by a powerful plasma storm within the stellar nursery. Unsuccessfully attempting to steer clear of the storm, Enterprise is repeatedly hit with plasma lighting, severely damaging the warp manifold and starting a disastrous antimatter cascade traveling towards the reactor. Instead of completely destroying the ship, though, the cascade is suddenly stopped dead at the very console the Suliban tampered with moments before.