Strange New World

Caution: May contain spoilers!

The Enterprise comes across a very nice, earth like planet that is unexplored, uninhabited, and of enough interest to send down a shuttle. Another (tired) argument and display of the differences between the way the Vulcans do it and the reckless human method also occurs. Apparently the Vulcans take something like 6 days of unmanned probes and scans before ever setting foot on an alien world.

Of course, they end up going down by shuttle :)

T'Pol is there with some biologists to do research, along with Archer, Trip and Ensign Mayweather. Trip and Mayweather decide to stay and camp out under the stars, and the Captain and his beagle Porthos return to the Enterprise. After some good natured ghost stories around the campfire, the crew bunks down (in very 20th century looking dome tents) for the night.

A violent windstorm in the middle of the night forces the crew to a cave for shelter. Strange things have started happening. Various members of the away team start seeing people who seem to come out from the rocks. T'Pol is even seen talking to them, but afterwards denies it. One of the crew members starts acting very strange... paranoid and erratic, and ends up running back out in the middle of the storm and getting lost. At this point, the second use of a transporter on a human is made by the Enterprise (that we've been made aware of), and the crewman is retrieved, with minor complications. It seems that he has been exposed to a pollen blown off the mountain that has infected him with a hallucinogenic of some type.

Dr. Phlox treats him, but discovers later that when the pollen breaks down, it produces a deadly micro-organism which could be fatal. This of course causes worry about the rest of the away team and they try to get them back. The first attempt by shuttle fails due to the windstorm prevents it. The away team is pretty close to loosing it by now. T'Pol is only slightly affected, Trip is in full conspiracy mode, convinced that this is a Vulcan plot to kill them all and destroy Enterprise, and has a phaser levelled at T'Pol. Mayweather and the other members of the survey team is just out of it. Archer convinces T'Pol (through Hoshi speaking in Vulcan) to play act a negotiation with the "rock people" to get Trip to lower the phaser. When he does she shoots him with a stun setting, and is able to innoculate them all with a vaccine that is beamed down.

Personal Commentary
Not a bad episode all in all. It was nice to see the captain not be on the away mission to save the day on the ground, and we were introduced to (in theory at least, because we all know about it already) the Vulcan nerve pinch. T'Pol uses this to subdue Mayweather when he resists the vaccine. I was a bit dissapointed with the way that this turned out... at the beginning of the episode I was convinced they were getting back to their TOS roots, and were going to go down to a strange world, make contact with aliens, and kick a little ass. This seemed more of a TNG episode in it's turn out.