Archer, Malcolm and Hoshi return to the ship, only for Malcolm to realize that he's lost or had stolen his communicator. He and Archer then return to the planet to retrieve it and avoid cultural contamination, but the trip isn't as easy as they'd hoped.

There's something very wrong about this, which, although it has something to offer in the fact that it's not mechanical devices alone that can cause trouble, doesn't hold up under much scrutiny. For one thing, the people on the planet have plenty of time to copy the communicator and the other things taken from the visitors, or photograph them, study them etc, yet seem to have no inclination to do so, which is good news for Malcolm and Archer. However, these two seem more than happy to get themselves killed all the way through the episode.

Malcolm, after his moaning in Minefield and determined self-sacrifice when it wasn't necessary, is exactly the same here, trying to claim full responsibility for everything that's happened and desperate to be punished for it. As far as we can tell, his communicator was stolen; why is this suddenly his fault? He just seems to be some kind of manic depressive who falls apart at the slightest sign of pressure and just waits for the inevitable, surely not traits in the kind of officer you want to think on his feet and provide escape options or tactical advice. If I were Archer, I'd promote someone else to Malcolm's post and leave him to mope about the cargo hold somewhere. For someone so gung ho in season one, he now seems to lose hope at the first possible opportunity.

That said, the same seems to be true of Archer. It's not quite to the same extent, but he seems certain that the Enterprise will just leave without them. Now, firstly the Enterprise crew still have to retrieve this technology, and secondly, have they not proved their loyalty to him yet? Why does he assume they'll just leave him to die? On top of this, he keeps making the most insane decisions that bring he and Malcolm closer to death. He claims he can't tell them the truth as they won't believe it, but once the pair of them are found to be aliens, he suddenly starts spinning a story about working with another faction of people on the planet, and Malcolm claims that they're genetically modified. What's the point of this plan? Claiming to be spies will get them executed, and claiming to be experiments will get them dissected, and therefore also killed. Why can't they come up with a story that will give them an opportunity to escape or at least try the truth and see what happens.

It all seems to be a lot of fuss about very little, with the end result being that Archer and company cause more questions to be asked and more problems than if they'd just left the communicator behind. Maybe next time their retrieval plan should involve a better set-up than 'if we're spotted, try to fight a huge crowd of people and escape'.

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