Episode Review - Terra Nova
Reviewed by Andy Taylor

Synopsis
At a mission debrief, Archer informs the crew of the first human colony started outside of their solar system. It was over 75 years ago that a ship called the Conestoga left Earth for a nine-year trip that would lead to the setting up of a colony on Terra Nova. This new colony thrived on the beautiful planet, and as the project was deemed successful, the Earth Space Agency decided to send another vessel out to them. However, this caused uproar at Terra Nova – the colonists protested against the agency’s decisions, and several angry messages were exchanged, until communications from Terra Nova ceased one day. Mayweather asks why the agency never bothered to attempt an investigation before, to which Archer says that nine years there and back was too much time to contribute to see if anyone was alive on not. It is now that Starfleet has a warp capable ship out on a mission of exploration that they have decided to order the Enterprise to investigate the mystery posed.

After entering orbit at the planet, Archer’s hails go unanswered, and scans for bio-signs come up negative, whilst low levels of some sort of radiation are detected instead. It is determined that a few hours of exposure to the radiation on the planet’s surface will not harm the crew, which motivates  Archer to lead an away team down there. Once on the surface, where the original colony structures still are, T’Pol finds that the radiation levels would have been lethal 70 years ago, yet there are no signs of bodies. Reed, however, then detects a humanoid’s movement in a nearby forest, and the away team tracks its movements to an opening in a rock formation, leading to a series of small caverns. Archer and Reed decide to explore, leaving T’Pol and Mayweather to guard the entrance.

Archer and Reed then come across a group of cave dwellers with odd facial markings and scaly body armour. The captain tries to communicate their good intentions of hopefully finding out what happened to the colonists, but gunfire is the only response they achieve. The two try to escape, but en route they become a little lost. It takes T’Pol’s help to determine their route, but this costly delay results in a bullet in Reed’s thigh. The oncoming charge of the dwellers forces Archer to go on alone and leave Reed behind, but to his surprise as they take off, T’Pol calmly informs him that her scans show that their attackers are actually human.

Back on the Enterprise, further scans show that there are 52 bio-signs underground, which are all human. However, Archer’s primary concern at the moment is the rescue of Reed. Whilst they look more closely at the geology of the caverns, Archer and T’Pol both conjecture that the dwellers are descendents of the original colonists, and that the radiation that now exists on the planet was the reason that they were forced underground.  Archer then takes Phlox down to the planet, and they allow themselves to be captured so that they can give Reed medical treatment.

The dwellers speak to the two in an offshoot of English, and call themselves Novans. One of the Novans, Jamin and his mother Nadet both show their bitter hatred of humans, whom they describe of as the people who caused ‘poison rain’ to fall from their sky years ago. Archer tries to convince them that they are descendants of the humans that founded the Terra Nova colony years ago, and that he actually wants to help them find the cause of the radiation that is making the ‘other side’ of the Novans’ home uninhabitable. Phlox then also diagnoses Nadet with lung cancer, which he says can be easily cured. Archer offers to take her aboard his ‘sky ship,’ to which Jamin consents as long as he is allowed to travel with her, as well as Reed having to further his stay on the planet.

Nadet experiences great displeasure when she is being properly diagnosed, and Jamin demands that she be ‘released,’ but Phlox determines a series of treatments for his patient. As he synthesises the medicine, Archer attempts to show the two picture archives from the beginnings of the Terra Nova colony, but Jamin accuses him of lying and trying to confuse them. Meanwhile, T’Pol discovers that a large asteroid impact about 70 years ago was probably the cause of an impact crater on the planet’s surface, which would have led to the cause of a radioactive cloud that enveloped the entire northern hemisphere where the colony was located.

As well as this, Sato and Mayweather find an old colony communication, determined to be the last one ever sent by Terra Nova residents. In it, the colonists accuse Earth of making an attack. Archer proposes that only the colony’s children must somehow have survived the radiation and began to live underground, the current location of the Novans. Phlox then informs the captain that, despite curing Nadet of her cancer, she as well as her son, is still ill, as well as probably the rest of the Novans – they are suffering from micro-cellular decay caused by their water supply being contaminated by radiation that has spread. He tells Archer that he cannot treat it, and that the situation will only get worse.

Archer attempts to explain to Jamin and Nadet their situation, and tries to convince them that the Novans should move back to Earth where they would be safe. However, the two are resistant, leading to Archer revealing to Nadet another photo, suggesting that the mother and child in it are Nadet and her mother from the original colony. It does get her memory going, but Jamin threatens Archer with the gutting of Reed if they are not back on the surface soon. As Archer refuses to move the Novans by force, T’Pol suggests an alternative – relocating them to the unaffected southern hemisphere. Archer appeals to Jamin and Nadet to at least consider this new proposal on the shuttlepod ride back.

However, as soon as the pod lands, the ground beneath them collapses and it falls into the caverns beneath them. They escape the shuttle unhurt, and Jamin sets out to guide Archer back to where Reed is being held. However, they hear the cries of a Novan man, trapped by a large fallen root in a pit that is filling with water. The two work together, and Jamin trusts Archer with a phase pistol, which he uses to cut the stump in two to make it easier to move off the man. Later, Nadet is the one who finally appeals to the other Novans to listen to the humans, finally acknowledging her background and that she too is human, like everyone else there. Afterwards, the Enterprise then helps the Novans to relocate, saving them from the threatened extinction. On the Enterprise, Archer allows Mayweather, due to his enthusiasm, to file the report on the now solved mystery of Terra Nova.

Summary
Thankfully, last week’s light relief (if that’s what they called it, at least) episode seemed to be a blip in the schedule.

This week’s episode was an interesting look at humans from an alien perspective, or in other words, taking a break from exploration to root up, and then hopefully solve an old mystery. Though after the introduction we received from Archer at the start, I was half expecting some sort of ‘pirates-in-search-for-treasure’ story. However, the premise held my interest, and after beginning to think that the episode would turn into some sort of alien invasion plot, I was genuinely shocked to find the state that the colonists were actually in.

Afterwards, the plot seemed to go a bit sour – a lot of the time, I felt that Archer should just leave these people to do whatever they want to do and be on his way, à la the Prime Directive or something. OK, that doesn’t exist yet, but the fact that the Novans had developed their own culture and actually had the ability to make their own decisions suggests that Archer could have thought about what he was doing more openly than he did – the episode would have raised many more interesting issues if he’d just left them alone at the end. Anyway, as usual, I digress.

Whilst the plot seemed a bit, well, dull, the script (as always, so far) was very good. Along the course of the hour, we saw how children exposed to certain aspects of something (like in this case, where the only traces of their parents existed in their last communication, specifically addressing their hatred of humans) can be damaging on their own upbringing and future, as well as a look at the direction language, and other general standards of living, took from their childhoods.

Archer’s credentials as a captain improved in this episode. In the past few weeks, he’s always come across as a dominant personality, who was experienced, yet nothing else of his captain qualification shined through (especially when compared to the other characters – Reed is committed to the safety of the ship and its crew and loves his weapons, T’Pol is very Vulcan and knows too much, Trip fixes everything in sight whilst raising a laugh as he goes on… Need I say more?) However, in this episode he was determined to save Reed’s life, and also had an emotional moment when he thought he was failing in his job – wondering how he could do his job if he couldn’t even make First Contact with humans was very touching, and definitely something we hadn’t really seen before from a captain in Star Trek.

The rest of the characters did not seem to be serviced very well though. Mayweather’s enthusiasm for Terra Nova seemed interesting, but we don’t know much else about him anyway as it is, making it irrelevant. We saw Trip in command, which harks back to his disgust at T’Pol taking command in ‘Broken Bow’ (nice continuity, though thinking about it, why would an engineer take command of a ship?) Phlox continued his humanistic doctor role slightly, whilst T’Pol paraded round scanning everything and Sato said, erm, stuff.

It was incredibly fascinating to hear about the lung cancer that Nadet had contracted. I’m not sure if it has been mentioned before in Star Trek (I have a feeling it was in TNG sometime, but for the sake of this, we’ll just ignore that…) but to have a disease ripped from today’s headlines, first of all hit home just what a serious condition these people were living in, but more importantly secondly, showing how ‘easily’ it was cured was very optimistic, and just seemed a very Star Trek thing to do (have I mentioned Star Trek enough times in this review? Oh, heck with it, its not like they use the title much anymore anyway…)

One more niggling point, however (unfortunately.) If an asteroid did hit the planet, what are the chances that anyone would survive? The fact that children survived only raised the issue in my head that if anyone can survive, anyone would survive – therefore, why did only children survive? This part of the episode could have been written differently – an asteroid hitting the planet just seems too much, especially after watching ‘Deep Impact’ a few weeks ago…

Final Opinion
A nice episode with flawed ideas, or a flawed episode with nice ideas?

Rating: 7.5/10