Effectively crippled after escaping from the Romulan minefield, Enterprise receives coordinates to an automated repair station. The station does this job well, even fixing the squeak in Archer's cabin (and the mine-scar on Malcolm's leg), but things are not as they smell and the ship escapes after barely thwarting a kidnapping. We're left to wonder about the origin of the "Dead Stop" itself, and its purpose for keeping such a grisly memento from each passing crew. (If the Tellarites were there sufficiently recently to relay its location, did I miss a member of this "not the most agreeable" of species hanging on those wires too?)

Memento to wit, subject of a long overdue "He's dead Captain," NX-01 suffers its first fatality (almost). It's hard to believe how little Mayweather actually lived in this episode given that we learned so much about him. The statue of Nomad in his quarters was a nice hint, that he writes his sister was another. Taken and replaced, a changeling, he clearly owes his life to an observant Dr. Phlox. On screen a great deal this week, the dear Denobulan played up his recent absence conducting a variety of personal moments with Reed and Sato among others.

Phlox's suggestion that creating life was beyond an "inanimate" replicator smells like animism, and it's hard to take seriously any suggestion that humanoid brains - all differing races, including Klingon - would be useful in such a "Coma" context as computation substrate. Left hanging this way, the promising intellectual setup soon dissolved to brute force, with Archer and T'Pol blasting away. A credit to logic, T'Pol at least tried the door controls before phasering an entry into the primary data core.

It's still quite the super-station (though even Landru was prepared for that!). Though quiet while refusing hails in its "liquid helium" cold form, after a scan it reconfigures itself to accommodate the shape of the incoming vessel and once docked, addresses them in their own language (shame Hoshi couldn't take a minute with it). The sequence with the hologram identifying damage on ship and crew was cool. The whole thing, capable of conjuring an entire meal from a simple request for "pan-fried catfish," demonstrates impressive super-intelligence. Maybe it just gets lonely and yet all its new friends keep well, dying. Why not choose Mayweather? He's got the most space experience of all in the crew - and the best stories in any case.

As for the not-so-surprising twist of the station's self-repair - perhaps we will hit this stop again!