Archer explores an alien planet, falls in love, saves the day. Y’know, Captain (Kirk) stuff.
The lightest outing so far. While there’s an attempt to create some stakes, we never get a really good feeling for the aliens suffering from the disease (compare, for instance, with *The Quickening* in DS9). So it’s more of a pure adventure yarn, and not a very good one for all that. We have a pretty good idea of what’s going on from the start (other alien up to no good), and the further revelations add little to it.
It’s really Archer’s first turn to do things other than be the Captain, and as such it’s not well applied. We don’t learn very much about him, other than that he’s setting a template for future generations to follow (*cough* Kirk…).
Callbacks: The Vulcan version of the Prime Directive, which Archer promptly ignores.
646 down, 91 to go.