Last week left NX-01 careening through space, victim of Targment sabotage, unable to slow down lest the engines blow up. A quick call to Columbia and soon starship and sister ship zing along together, hanging only a few meters apart like some strange mirror that shows (sorry) just how unattractive the NX-0X really is. Trip knows he can fix the problem but he's stuck on the wrong ship. Malcolm the traitor gets sprung from the brig because he's had some training transferring personnel from ship to ship at warp speed.

(Now for the life of me I can't figure out why that skill would ever have to be practiced, since it seems a shuttle could hop easily from one ship to another inside the bubble. However, even assuming that it would, why would Reed of all people be the expert? If there's ever a skill that Mayweather should have, that would have been it. It's clearly a meaningless stunt to reset Malcolm since he doesn't even operate a winch, he just opens a door and grabs Trip. This scene, though marvelous in execution, was just a bit too much to expect a fledgling fleet to perform.)

Anyway, action-figure Trip manages to rekindle the engines (one assumes the engines weren't "cold" to dance around the Naked Time issue) and his credibility as an engineer before destroying that bantering with T'Pol in a puerile waste of time. Meanwhile, as Phlox and Schucklingon work on the Targment influenced influenza, a Klingon task force aims to obliterate the colony as a highly effective means of quarantine. The leader of the task force, with a pigtailed beard, was an excellent exemplar of his species, snickering at his lies to the stupid human "section" leader in charge of his stupid section. (I like this guy!) Back in the brig Reed and the captive Targment compare the philosophy of Sun Tzu and Kahless, at least until Reed provides Archer with the location of the med complex containing Phlox.

Archer arrives just in time to play host to Phlox's work on the cure, squirming like a viewer in his chair as he grows furrows. The doctors produce a final four of potential cures, and the gutsy base commander takes his shot, along with some bloodwine to wash it down! The two guards of course get deadly doses, so Phlox is able to save Schucklingon and the commander by giving them smooth TOS-faces. Back on board Reed says he's done with section stupid. Thank God so are we all.