After a while, one of the cyborgs comes to life. Moninger screams and the other two enter to find the lab trashed and Moninger turning into a cyborg because he was injected with nanoprobes. Three days later, Admiral Forrest is notified that the scientists haven't been heard from in a while, so he and others go to look for them, only to find them gone.
Forrest informs Archer, who tells his senior staff in the situation room. Forrest apparently believe the scientists were abducted, and that their ship left at warp 3.9, faster than their transport is meant to be able to go. Malcolm asks what's expected of them, and Archer reveals that the ship appears to be headed towards where Enteprise is, so they've been ordered to intercept it and save the scientists. They head off, and Phlox does some research and finds no evidence of weapons, worrying Malcolm, since how could those aliens have overpowered the scientists with no weapons?
They then get a distress call from a Tarkalean freighter, but when they arrive to answer it, it's dead. They find the transport the scientists were in, but it's been altered, and it starts piercing the freighter with a beam. Archer hails the transport, threatening to attack, but it attacks instead. T'Pol detects nine humans (but with "erratic" life signs) on the transport. Malcolm then attempts to attack the transport, but the Enterprise is forced to retreat when it attacks back.
They take two survivors — a man and a woman — to sickbay, but they've been injected with nanoprobes too. Archer asks if the nanoprobes can be removed, but Phlox responds in the negative. T'Pol suggests putting them in decon, but Phlox won't be able to work there, so Archer has Malcolm put a guard around sickbay instead.
T'Pol contacts Tarkalea about the situation and tells Archer, who is reading a speech by Zefram Cochrane, explaining that a group of cybernetic aliens (the Borg) went back in time to enslave humanity but were stopped by time-travelers. T'Pol isn't sure and reminds Archer that Cochrane was a drunk and imaginative, but Archer still wonders if they're dealing with the same creatures.
The two Tarkaleans wake up and the man freaks out. Phlox goes to get him a sedative, and then the woman throws the guard across the room and the man injects Phlox with the nanoprobes, who passes out. The Tarkaleans leave and Phlox hears voices in his head, then is woken by Archer, Malcolm, and a group of other security officers. Archer orders Malcolm to track down the escaped Tarkaleans and subdue them.
Trip shows Archer scans of the modified transport, then T'Pol detects it, so Archer orders Travis to intercept it. Malcolm and his group find the Tarkalean woman changing some of the computers around her. Malcolm orders her to stop, but she ignores him, so they try firing at her, but she produces a shield which protects her. They try to escape, only to run into the Tarkalean man, who attacks, but they manage to stun him. Feeling like he has no choice, Archer opens a hatch and sends the two Tarkaleans out into space.
Hoshi feeds Phlox and his pets and wants to keep him company, but he says no for her safety. Trip and Malcolm look over the alterations to the technology but can't make heads or tails of them, and T'Pol suggests destroying the transport (but Archer isn't ready). Phlox, now looking very worse for wear, reveals that the nanoprobes are taking a while to transform him due to his immune system but are persistent. However, he has a solution— either exposure to a lot of omicron particles, or euthanasia. Meanwhile, Malcolm finds a way to upgrade the weapons so they can penetrate the shield.
They chase down the transport, but then Enterprise's systems start failing, which Archer guesses is due to sabotage on the Tarkaleans' part. The transport hails them with a Creepy Monotone voice saying, "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile", proving that these are indeed the Borg.
While Phlox starts the omicron treatment and Trip tries to undo the sabotage, the Borg attack the Enterprise and Archer and Malcolm beam aboard the transport. They come across two drones, one of whom used to be Rooney, and give up on trying to save them. Trip makes progress in engineering, but unfortunately, six drones beam aboard Enterprise. The transport begins cutting Enterprise's hull, but Archer and Malcolm manage to place charges in the EPS conduit and disrupt the power. Then, when the power starts returning, they destroy the transport.
Phlox recovers, but gives them data that he heard via the voices in his head; a message to the Delta Quadrant containing Earth's location. And it'll take two hundred years to reach the quadrant...
Tropes:
- Agent Scully: T'Pol doesn't believe the story Cochrane gave about "cybernetic beings from the future," and also suggests that Phlox imagined having a connection with the aliens. That said, once it's clear how much of a threat the Borg are, she takes it seriously and advises Archer to destroy the transport rather than rescue the researchers.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Phlox has a neurotoxin standing by so that if his radiation treatment fails to de-assimilate him, he can be quickly and painlessly killed.
- Call-Back: To Star Trek: First Contact. Turns out that even though the Enterprise-E destroyed the Borg sphere, much of the debris landed on Earth, including two drones.
- Call-Forward:
- "That shielding of theirs was impressive. We may as well have been firing holographic bullets."
- Archer recounts Zefram Cochrane's story of cybernetic beings from the future trying to disrupt First Contact and being defeated by a group of humans also from the future. No one took him seriously at the time.
- When Enterprise runs into the Borg ship attacking a Tarkalean freighter, the Borg are slicing circular chunks out of it with a particle beam just like they did to the Enterprise-D in "Q Who?". The Borg later try the same thing with Enterprise, until Archer and Reed shut them down.
- As he's recovering, Phlox tells Archer and T'Pol that he felt a telepathic connection with the other drones and was able to take down a numerical sequence. It turns out those numbers were the coordinates of Earth, and they've been sent to the Borg homeworld deep in the Delta Quadrant. Despite T'Pol's assurances that it would still take two hundred years to be received, provided it's still able to be received, Archer realizes all too well that the invasion has merely been postponed until the 24th Century. This, of course, helps explain why the Borg were practically on the Federation's doorstep by the time of TNG.
- The researchers acquired a fair amount of information about the two Borg drones before things took a turn for the worse. Between that and what the NX-01 crew learn, this might offer an explanation for why the Hansens and Federation had heard of the Borg several years before the Enterprise-D's first encounter with them.
- Phlox tells Malcolm about the Bynars, a species that Picard and his crew will learn a great deal about.
- And speaking of Picard, when Malcolm makes it clear that he wants to keep technology outside of his body, Phlox asks him if he'd accept a synthetic organ if his heart were damaged. Picard winds up with an artificial heart after his fight with the Nausicaans.
- Cassandra Truth: Zefram Cochrane told others of the Borg during a commencement speech at Princeton nearly 90 years ago, but being a known drunk, his story was dismissed as fiction and he recanted it a few years later. In the present, Archer recalls the speech and realizes that his story, despite the more fantastic elements, rings true given the nature of their enemy.
- Continuity Nod: Several to the events of Star Trek: First Contact.
- The Borg never refer to themselves by name, keeping their true identity a mystery until the 2360s.Archer: This is Captain—
Borg: You Will Be Assimilated. Resistance Is Futile.
- The Borg never refer to themselves by name, keeping their true identity a mystery until the 2360s.
- Eerie Arctic Research Station: Although the station isn't half as scary as what they end up researching.
- The End... Or Is It?: The episode has some fun with it after Archer learns about the message. From his perspective, this is only the beginning, and he can only dread what's coming, but viewers already know how it will all work out.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Phlox explains to Archer that he first tried to treat his condition as though it was a biological infection. Then he realized the nanoprobes are mechanical, not biological, and so he had to think like an engineer rather than a doctor. He extracted a number of nanoprobes and subjected them to radiation to see what could destroy them.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Deconstructed. Archer is determined to save the researchers even after what's happened with the Tarkaleans, but T'Pol cautions him that it may be too late and that they should focus on destroying the ship instead. She ends up being right, and he takes it pretty hard.T'Pol: Did you find the research team?
Archer: There isn't anyone on that ship that we can help anymore. - Forgotten Phlebotinum: While the Borg do adapt to Malcolm's modifications to the phase pistols, Phlox devises a treatment to deal with the nanoprobes which involves subjecting the body to Omicron radiation. This is generally Hand Waved with the position that all information of this incident was deeply classified, and in all likelihood, the Borg eventually encountered another species with the same treatment and gave their nanoprobes radiation shielding. Alternatively, the treatment may simply have been far more lethal to other species than it would be to Denobulans, making it situational at best.
- It was discussed briefly in Cogentior that Tucker needed extra protection from Omnicron radiation, but Phlox cured that with a magic hypospray. The sphere debris is most likely from the Queen's Sphere the Enterprise-E destroyed in 2063, so any methods used by this Enterprise's crew should have worked in every previous fight against the Borg, making their effective methods all the more unlikely.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: The Borg turn an unarmed, low-warp transport ship into a warship that can rival Enterprise in less than a day.
- Genre Blindness: The researchers find somewhat menacing cybernetic beings in the ice, dig them out, and let them thaw out even while knowing that their bodies are being repaired by nanoprobes. It's safe to assume that, perhaps with the exception of Moninger (since he showed concern), they had never seen any horror movie ever.
- Godzilla Threshold: After seeing what the assimilated Tarkaleans are capable of and suspecting the same of everyone on the transport, T'Pol tells Archer to destroy it. He doesn't consider doing so, however, until he and Malcolm board the transport and see that everyone is beyond saving.
- Hope Spot: As the drones' equipment suddenly begins reactivating, Moninger suggests putting the drones back in cold storage and wait to examine them under controlled conditions. His superior ignores this request. That was a mistake.
- Mercy Kill: After Archer and Malcolm sabotage the Borg ship, T'Pol asks if any of the crew could be rescued. Archer simply says that they're beyond saving, before ordering the ship destroyed when it starts to come back online.
- Mr. Imagination: According to T'Pol, Zefram Cochrane had an "overactive imagination".
- Mythology Gag:
- While discussing cybernetic implants, Phlox notes the benefits of an artificial heart, which Picard had.
- Phlox mentions once having encountered the Bynars and recalls witnessing the procedure where they replace part of a newborn's brain with cybernetic components.
- No-Sell: Malcolm and his security team first try to stun the assimilated Tarkaleans. It doesn't work. Then they try the kill setting, and the Borg shielding has already kicked in. And the drone starts to approach them.Malcolm: Fall back!
- Revisiting the Roots: Due to being a type of Forgotten First Meeting with regards to official contact in TNG, no one has any clue who the Borg are or what they are capable of. With some trial and error they start breaking down many of the established Borg concepts (The Assimilator, Hive Mind, adapting to weapons fire) but are a lot more ignorant of what they are really dealing with, whereas in other series any sight the Borg incites immediate terror and a desire to run.
- Oh, Crap!: The situation prompts Archer to recall a refuted story by Zefram Cochrane about "what really happened" during First Contact. When he reads it, he finds that Cochrane had said that the goal of these creatures was "to enslave the human race."
- Pink Elephants: Discussed when T'Pol notes that, since Zefram Cochrane drank a lot, his story about the Borg may have been inaccurate because he was seeing things. She's wrong.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The arctic transport leaves Earth at Warp 3.9. With Enterprise over a hundred lightyears away, it would still take them weeks, if not months, to intercept.
- Sequel Episode: To Star Trek: First Contact and also a prequel episode to TNG's "Q Who" by way of a Stable Time Loop.
- Side Bet: When Drake radios for his team to begin digging, he asks them to contact Starfleet and tell Commander Williams that he owes him a bottle of scotch.
- Stable Time Loop: Before being destroyed, the assimilated freighter sends a subspace message to the Borg homeworld in the Delta Quadrant: the coordinates of Earth. T'Pol and Archer note that if the message were received, it would not be until the 24th century— thus explaining why the Borg were heading for Earth in the first place in The Next Generation.
- Tempting Fate:
- The arctic team leader, re the frozen Borg drones: "There's no reason to assume they're hostile." If only you knew...
- In the same vein, Phlox doesn't think that the assimilated Tarkaleans are dangerous until they attack him and inject him with nanoprobes. Archer, at least, is wary and has security posted as a precaution, not that it helps.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: When the assimilated Tarkaleans prove immune to phaser fire, Archer has Malcolm's team evacuate the section and then vents the whole thing into space, sucking the Tarkaleans out.
- Was Once a Man: During the climax, Archer and Reed shoot a couple of drones. Archer recognizes one of them and scans her.Archer: This was one of the researchers.
Reed: Was?
Archer: Look at these bio-signs. They're not human anymore. - We Have Reserves: Trip wonders why the assimilated Tarkaleans would try to destroy the ship while they're still on it, not knowing that the Borg willingly sacrifice as many drones as they deem necessary to achieve their goals.
- Worf Had the Flu: Borg behavior generally matches what was depicted in previous works, but with the process way slowed down. It's implied this is due to originating from two recently thawed Borg drones who were suffering from the effects of reanimation. Thus this batch of new drones are not operating at peak performance.
- Field assimilation takes far longer, with victims incapacitated long enough to be mistaken for other injuries before turning (akin to zombies). Phlox is even able to develop a countermeasure while saying his Denobulan immune system was throwing the nanoprobes for a loop, though untreated they would eventually take hold of him. One could also imagine that the Tarkaleans are similarly more resistant to the nanoprobes than humans, just not to the same degree that Phlox is. All the other elements of assimilation appear to be right on the money.
- It takes longer for the Borg to adapt to phase pistol fire, possibly due to both the slowed Borg efficiency but also the Borg are used to dealing with highly modular phasers that Starfleet uses in the 24th century rather than the more blunt phase pistols that they use in this timeframe. Several drones go down before others counter it with their Deflector Shields.
- You Did the Right Thing: After Archer reluctantly has the two assimilated Tarkaleans sucked out into space, he's clearly troubled by this action. T'Pol tells him he did what he had to, but Archer clearly isn't sure. It's implied that this drives his determination to rescue everyone else who has been abducted, though by the end he realizes it's already too late.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Turns out that Zefram Cochrane went off-script during a commencement address at Princeton and started talking about "what really happened" during the events of First Contact. Naturally, no one believed him and he eventually recanted the story. Archer thinks that there's something to the story; T'Pol dismissively notes that Cochrane had a reputation for telling "imaginative stories" and was "frequently intoxicated". However, she seems to come around when she reads that the Borg's goal "was to enslave the human race," and reassures Archer that their transmission of Earth's location won't be received for 200 years, if at all, so there's no immediate danger from them.
