(Not to be confused with the Fox series Terra Nova. No dinosaurs here.)
The crew of the Enterprise is on its way to a planet called Terra Nova to investigate the disappearance of some colonists. At lunch, Archer tells T'Pol that Terra Nova was the first extrastellar human colony, but that it lost contact with Earth after some other humans arrived and attacked them.
Enterprise arrives at the colony and finds an abandoned town built from the remains of the ship that used to transport the colonists and low amounts of dangerous radiation. Archer, T'Pol, Malcolm, and Travis go down to the planet, and Malcolm hears a rustling noise in the forest near a cave. Archer and Malcolm go into the cave, only to be attacked by some humanoids who shoot and kidnap Malcolm. The rest go back to the shuttlepod, where T'Pol reveals that the attackers are human.
Back on Enterprise, Archer calls a meeting. It turns out that they know where Malcolm is, but can't beam him back since he's underground. It also turns out that the geology is unstable and all the humans are forced to live underground and hunt for food. Archer, wanting to communicate with the planet's humans, orders his crew to search for more info.
He and Phlox then go down to the planet again, where the underground humans take them into their cave, in which Malcolm is, injured. The Terra Nova humans, including one who seems to be some sort of leader, accuse the Enterprise people of being hostile, believing that the earlier humans "gutted" the adults and sent "poison rain". They also apparently don't realise they're human. Archer explains that it wasn't the humans that caused the toxic rain, but rather radiation. Phlox offers to cure the lung cancer of an old woman named Nadet (Mary Carver), and the leader agrees, but insists on coming with them and having Malcolm stay, which Malcolm agrees to.
While Phlox works on Nadet, Archer shows her and the leader pictures of the colony before the radiation. However, the leader, a man named Jamin (Erick Avari), accuses Archer of lying and demand he turn the pictures off. Archer leaves and goes to the bridge, where he finds that the radiation was caused by a debris cloud left behind by an asteroid. Back on Terra Nova, Malcolm tries to talk to his guard, but the guard doesn't answer and just begins eating. He offers Malcolm some of the food, which is meat from an animal called a "digger".
In Archer's room, the ensigns playback the last transmission from Captain Mitchell of one of the colony ships. The transmission was meant for Earth but didn't get through due to the debris in the atmosphere. It turns out that when the asteroid hit the planet, the colonists thought that Earth was taking them back by force, and then the radiation killed all the adults, which is why the Novans hate off-worlders.
Phlox then discovers that the Novans' water is now contaminated with potentially-fatal radiation that he can't remove. Archer tries to convince Jamin and Nadet to move, showing Nadet a photo of herself as a child (named Bernadette back then) before the asteroid. Nadet is starting to be swayed, but Jamin, who is revealed to be Nadette's son, thinks Archer is just trying to trick them so that he can have their home himself.
Archer complains to T'Pol, who suggests knocking out the Novans with stun grenades and taking them to live in caves in the Southern Hemisphere, since taking them to Earth and making them live like typical humans would be too tricky. Archer agrees and tells Jamin and Nadet about the new place. He encourages them to talk to their people about it, which they agree to do.
When they return to the planet, Shuttlepod 1 falls down a sinkhole. Jamin demands Archer open the door, then asks for his phase pistol to break through the door. Archer is reluctant, but gives him the phase pistol when Jamin threatens to kill Malcolm. Archer, Jamin, and Nadet then hear another Novan, Akary, screaming. It turns out that he's fallen down a well, so he and Archer climb down to get him. They find that a tree trunk has fallen on his leg and broken it and they can't lift it off. Archer demands his phase pistol back and uses it to cut the tree in half, making Jamin trust him more.
Nadet tells her people the relocation plan and they accept. Finally, Archer, T'Pol, Trip, and Travis eat dinner together and discuss what happened.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Alien Abduction: Subverted. Malcolm is kidnapped by what seem to be natives of Terra Nova, but then they turn out to just be very dirty, culturally-different humans.
- Call-Forward: At the end of the episode, Travis mentions the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. The VOY episode "The 37s", which takes place two hundred years later, would reveal that her disappearance was due to an alien abduction.
- Cassandra Truth: When Archer shows the Novans the pictures of the colony, Jamin thinks he is lying.
- C.A.T. Trap: Nadet suffers a Freak Out in Phlox's imaging chamber.
- Determined Homesteader: The Terra Nova colonists were so determined to keep their colony they refused to have another two hundred colonists join them. Inexplicably, Earth decided to let this slide, despite the fact that Terra Nova was the closest habitable planet available for colonization.
- Distressed Dude: Archer ends up saving a Novan guy named Akary, who fell down a well, broke his leg, and got stuck.
- Famous, Famous, Fictional:Travis: Ever heard of Judge Crater?
T'Pol: Crater?
Travis: Disappeared in the early 20th century. How about Amelia Earhart?
T'Pol: No.
Travis: 1937. Never found a trace of her. A lot of people spent years, decades, trying to figure out what happened to them, but neither of those mysteries holds a candle to Terra Nova. - Lost Colony: Terra Nova, Earth's first extra-solar colony.
- Mistaken for Aliens: The Novans believe they are not human and are native to Terra Nova.
- Name One: When Trip mentions how schoolkids on Earth learn about Vulcan space expeditions, T'Pol tells him to name one.Trip: (Beat) History was never my best subject.
- Only Fatal to Adults: The radioactive poisons released by the meteor killed all the adults. Only the young children survived.
- Planetville: With only 200 colonists, the Conestoga colony would have been this. No explanation is given for why United Earth didn't just send subsequent waves of colonists to other parts of the planet, as the original settlers were in no way numerous enough to hold the entire thing.
- Retcon: The episode seems to retcon out the Post-Atomic Horror that TNG had established after World War III. Instead, humans had already started to colonize the solar system and by 2069, they had sent a vessel to colonize deep space.
- Too Dumb to Live: The independence movement is bizarre. Even in a best case scenario where none of the original 200 colonists were at all closely-related, this is not a large enough gene pool upon which to base a long-term society. Nor did it provide a sufficient safety net in the event of a catastrophe. This is illustrated by the fact that when the meteor hit they sent their children to seek shelter in the caves, seemingly with no adults to guide them. Presumably this is because the adult colonists thought they had to stay on the surface to fight off an invasion from Earth. But the end result was the kids regressing to a primitive hunter-gatherer society of cave-dwellers slowly dying from radiation-induced illness. Had Enterprise not shown up they would have died out completely within another couple of decades.
- The Topic of Cancer: Nadet is suffering from lung cancer when they're found. Fortunately, Phlox is able to easily cure her.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Subverted, fortunately for Malcolm — Phlox knows better than to try removing the bullet from his leg before getting him back to Enterprise.
- Weird World, Weird Food: Digger meat. Malcolm says it's "a little underdone."
- Wham Line: T'Pol surprises everyone with her report on the aliens who attack them on the planet:"Those weren't aliens. They're human."
- The Worf Effect: Malcolm gets shot and captured by the Novans. And only a few episodes into the show. The Trope Namer would be proud.
