Enterprise Episode 5 Summary:
Unexpected
Caution: May contain spoilers!
Strange things start happening aboard the ship, replicators not giving out what they should, systems failing, and generally Bad Things. After a bit of investigation the crew discovers another ship hiding, cloaked (though they refer to it as "stealth technology") sitting in their warp exaust. After making contact they discover the aliens have problems aboard their ship and are trying to recharge their engines.
In a gesture of goodwill, Archer sends his chief engineer Trip across to see if he can help. The process of getting aboard the alien ship involves 3 hours of compression/decompression (no fun for Trip that's for sure). After some initial disorientation, and with a bit of help from the aliens scaley but sexy engineer, he does ok. Along with getting their engines up and going he is also introduced to many interesting and very 'alien' aspects of their ship. Their food grows on the walls and grass grows on the floors. The closest they can replicate to water is what appears to be a jello-like ice substance. The alien (with whom there is definately sexual tension) also shows him to a room that uses a technology to reassemble photons to simulate other places. In laymans terms, a holodeck. While in there the alien shows him a game where they each put their hands into a box of crystals and they can tell each others thoughts and memorys.
Trip returns to the Enterprise and in the process a strange growth is discovered on his hand. Further examination by Dr. Phlox discovers this to be a nipple! An alien fetus is also discovered growing in him! In other words, Trip got pregnant!
The ship of course heads out in search of the alien vessel again, and eventually finds them hiding in the exaust wake of a Klingon ship. The Klingons are not nearly as happy about this as Archer was, and threaten to destroy both ships. After some posturing by T'Pol, the situation is resolved, but only if the aliens hand over their holographic technology. Amidst this, Trip manages to get the fetus transferred out of him.
Personal Commentary
Wow, another episode, another technology that was reserved for many years later in the timeline revealed. It was done in a way to explain how the Klingons got cloaking technology, but it sort of pissed me off. They could have had a decent story just involving the interaction with the alien species, and have one of the crew get it on with a hot scaley babe, but they had to mix in holodecks, cloaking and another run in with the Klingons.
Personally the only way that myself or my geek friends figure that they'll be able to explain this all away is the temporal civil war that was mentioned in the first episode is changing the future, so the known Star Trek Timeline doesn't apply anymore, or have the NX-01 never contact home again to tell them off all this (maybe blow them up at the end of the series?).