Hoshi and Trip are on a planet that is uninhabited now, but has ruins from times gone by. They are speculating on what some hieroglyphics mean and joking that one of a tall guy being admired means "Tall People are Popular". Just then, however, a space storm arrives that is too dangerous to drive a shuttle through, so they'll have to use the transporter. This is both of their first time, and Hoshi is a little nervous, but everything goes fine. Or so it seems.
Afterwards, Hoshi is a little on-edge and the captain gives her the rest of the day off. In the mess hall, some other crew members tease her with ghost stories about a guy named Cyrus Ramsey, who got lost in the transporter. Hoshi, still nervous and believing her birthmark to have moved, goes to see Phlox (who brings up Cyrus Ramsey also despite Hoshi not having heard of him) and he says that it's probably all in her head.
Hoshi goes to bed, uncharacteristically oversleeps, and is awakened by T'Pol telling her that there's an emergency. She goes to the bridge, where Archer says that Trip and Travis have been abducted by aliens whose language can't be translated by the Universal Translator. Hoshi tries to speak to them but she can't, and so Archer tells her to go back to her quarters and replaces her with a guy named Crewman Baird.
In the shower, Hoshi's reflection disappears and the water goes through her body, and then people seem to be noticing her less. Additionally, Baird has deciphered the aliens' language and solved the hostage situation in an hour, and so Archer has replaced Hoshi with him without her permission.
She now can't use the turbolift controls and briefly hears Trip and Reed's disembodied voices, so she goes to sickbay again, but Phlox still thinks it's all in her head. In the gym, Trip tries to cheer Hoshi up but it doesn't work, and she finds she can't use her hands anymore as they go through things, so she has to sleep on the floor.
The next morning, Trip and T'Pol walk in but they can't see Hoshi and report it to Archer. Phlox determines that Hoshi's particles had degraded because of an error in the transporter and believes her to be dead. They go off to look for her remains, while she follows but then hears alien voices and again Trip and Reed's disembodied voices. Phlox and the real Trip find some goo which they believe to be Hoshi's remains, and Hoshi hears the alien voices again and notices two aliens planting bombs on the ship.
While Archer tries to explain the situation to Hoshi's dad, she tries to alert him by making a light spell "SOS" and her name in Morse Code. He and T'Pol recognise it but they don't get the message.
Hoshi then finds some aliens in engineering, observes that most people can't see them either, and manages to deactivate one of their devices. Unfortunately, they reactivate it and make it so she can't do it again. Then, they transport away using another device.
Trip and Reed's disembodied voices call out, telling Hoshi to do something, so she jumps onto the alien transporter pad... and then it's revealed to be a hallucination as she transports back onto the ship.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Alien Abduction: During the hallucination, Trip and Travis get abducted by unintelligible aliens.
- All Just a Dream: Most of the episode takes place in the eight seconds that Hoshi was stuck in the pattern buffer.
- Danger Deadpan: Trip does his best to convince Hoshi that using the complex matter-energy converter that has only been recently approved for bio-matter is completely safe, noting that both Archer and Malcolm have gone through it at least once.
- A Day in the Limelight: One of the few Hoshi-centric episodes.
- Face Your Fears: In order to save the ship, Hoshi steps onto an alien transporter pad.
- Foreshadowing: There are multiple hints dropped that what Hoshi is experiencing isn't real. First, the planet suddenly develops a population out of nowhere and nobody else seems to find this strange. Then, T'Pol explains that the ruins held sacred relics, something which (as Hoshi points out) she had no way of knowing, as they can't understand the aliens' language. Said language is later easily deciphered by a crewmember who knows nothing about linguistics, after Hoshi herself had failed. Trip and Travis are taken hostage on the planet, but this is almost immediately resolved offscreen without any fanfare and casually brushed aside, as though two senior officers being abducted were no big deal.
- Ghost Story: The crew members tell ghost stories about a guy named Cyrus Ramsey who got lost in the transporter and randomly materialises in places.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Whatever the hell Scott Bakula is doing in this scene.T'Pol: Captain, we have another storm.
Archer: Is it a perfect storm? (looks at the aft display console) George! Get off the boat, George. It's going down. Marvin will come and get you out. I swear...George! (starts crying as T'Pol pats his head) George, come back! George!
- Mythology Gag: Phasing through solid objects as a result of a transporter accident? Sounds a lot like what happened to LaForge and Ro in TNG's "The Next Phase".
- Nursery Rhyme: When Hoshi makes a reference to being put back together, Trip says, "All the King's horses and all the King's men."
- Trapped on the Astral Plane: Hoshi Sato is terrified of using the first generation of transporters. When she does use it, her worst fears are realized when she slowly starts to vanish from existence. Eventually, she fades away, still being able to travel the ship but nobody around her being able to hear or see her. Eventually, she discovers that a group of aliens are somehow involved, which all turns out to be subversion when she emerges from the transporter, the entire thing having been a nightmare she experienced in the split second before she rematerialized.
- Worf Had the Flu: Hoshi finds herself unable to translate an alien language during a hostage crisis, and finds herself outdone by a subordinate.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Reed explains that Hoshi was in the transporter beam for about eight seconds, in contrast to the several hours (at least) that elapsed in her hallucination.
