| Over
75 years ago the spaceship Conestoga left Earth on a nine-year one-way mission
to establish the first human colony outside the solar system, called Terra
Nova. The colony thrived on their beautiful new planet, and was such a success
the Space Agency on Earth decided to send another vessel. The colonists
protested and angry messages were traded, then one day all transmissions
from Terra Nova ceased. Decades later the Warp 5-capable Enterprise NX-01
is dispatched to find out what happened to that lost colony. After the ship
enters orbit over Terra Nova, Captain Archer's hails go unanswered and scans
show no bio-signs, but low levels of mysterious radiation are detected.
Archer leads an away team to the surface and finds the colony structures
deserted and rusting. T'Pol determines that the radiation levels 70 years
ago would have been lethal, but no bodies are found. But then Lt. Reed detects
a humanoid moving through the forest, and the away team tracks the figure
to the mouth of a network of caverns. Archer and Reed go in to explore and
encounter a society of cave dwellers wearing scaly body armor. Attempts
at friendly communication are met with gunfire, and Reed takes a bullet
in the thigh. Archer has no choice but to escape the barrage and retreat
with the other crewmen, leaving Reed behind. While they take off in the
shuttlepod, T'Pol's scans indicate the attackers are human. Back on Enterprise,
new scans reveal 52 bio-signs underground, all human, but right now Archer
is only interested in the injured Reed. As they examine the cavern geology
to plan a rescue, Archer and T'Pol conjecture that the cave dwellers are
descendents of the original colonists, driven underground by the radiation.
Archer takes Dr. Phlox with him back to the surface and they let themselves
be captured. The cave dwellers speak to them in an odd dialect of English,
calling themselves Novans. The aged Jamin and his sickly mother Nadet express
their resentment toward humans, whom they blame for the "poison rain" many
years ago. Archer tries to convince the Novans that they're descended from
humans, and wants to help them determine the true cause of the radiation.
And after Phlox diagnoses Nadet with lung cancer, Archer offers to treat
her aboard his "sky ship." Jamin consents, on the condition that Reed stay
behind despite his injury, and he and Nadet ride the shuttlepod with Archer
and Phlox to Enterprise. Although Nadet is a troublesome patient, Phlox
is able to determine a treatment for her. While he synthesizes medicine,
Archer shows the guests archived pictures from the early days of the Terra
Nova colony, but Jamin accuses Archer of lying and trying to confuse them.
Meanwhile T'Pol discovers an impact crater on the surface indicating that
an asteroid collision caused a radioactive cloud about 70 years ago that
enveloped the northern hemisphere where the colony was located. Also, ensigns
Sato and Mayweather unearth from the colony's communications tower a transmission
still in the data buffer, from a colony leader accusing Earth of making
an attack. Archer surmises that only the colony's young children survived
the radiation and began living underground, and their last memories were
of their parents blaming humans for destroying the colony. Dr. Phlox then
informs Archer that the Novans are suffering from micro-cellular decay caused
by contaminated groundwater, which he cannot treat. Archer attempts to explain
the situation to the Jamin and Nadet and convince them the Novans need to
leave the planet and come to Earth. They are resistant and accusatory as
usual, so Archer shows Nadet another archived photo that he found, one that
includes her mother and herself as a child. It sparks her memory, but Jamin
insists on returning to the surface, threatening that Reed will be "gutted"
if they are not back before daybreak. Since Archer refuses to take the Novans
by force, T'Pol offers an alternative that won't destroy their unique culture:
relocate them to the southern hemisphere, which is unaffected by the asteroid.
On the shuttlepod ride back, Archer appeals to Jamin and Nadet to consider
that proposal and talk to their people about it. When the shuttlepod lands,
the ground collapses beneath them and they fall into the underground caverns.
They escape the shuttle unhurt, and Jamin sets out to guide Archer back
to where Reed is, but then they hear the cries of a Novan man who has become
trapped by a large fallen root in a deep pit rapidly filling with water.
In order to save him, Jamin and Archer have to work together, and Jamin
decides to trust Archer to use his phase-pistol to cut the root in half
so they can pry it off the injured man. Later, though, it is Nadet who appeals
to the other Novans to listen to the humans, finally acknowledging that
she was the little girl in that picture and that she is herself human. After
the Enterprise crew helps the Novans relocate, thus saving them from extinction,
Archer gives Mayweather the honor of writing the report for Starfleet describing
how the Terra Nova puzzle was solved at last. |