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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.
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