This week's review hails from Lady Conqueror! >80)
 

First thing I'd better get out of the way before I start this review is the fact that I didn't much care for this episode.  This can be laid squarely at the feet of the Novans.  They were the most annoying bunch of folks I've ever seen in my life.

Onto the review.

We open with everyone excited about reaching an old Earth colony, Terra Nova. By everyone I mean Travis and Archer.  A few of the others try to look interested (Trip seems mainly to want to use the info to try and show up T'Pol, but she quickly puts him back in his place :) ) but it seems kind of half-hearted.

So they arrive at the planet and Archer, Travis and our fave couple head down to check things out.  They find the settlement but it's deserted - if only they'd left it at that and gone on their way, but no, they just had to keep on searching.  Mal spots a Novan in the forest and pursues it to a nearby cave.

As Archer and T'Pol reach Mal's position, T'Pol moves to stand very close to our lovely armoury officer (and who could blame her?).  Despite having his own scanner in his hand, Reed takes the time to lean over and take a gander at T'Pol's scanner too.

Archer and Mal go to explore the caves while T'Pol and Travis wait outside.  Mal, showing us that he's a smart guy, shoots the first Novan he sees, but more show up and try to shoot back.  This leads to a chase through the tunnels where Mal gets shot and captured.  T'Pol shoots a Novan as well and discovers that they are humans and not the aliens they thought.

After returning to the ship for some angry spouting about losing Mal (fair enough), Archer and Phlox return to the surface to attempt to resolve the issue peacefully.  They get themselves taken to Mal who's shot in the leg but doing all right.  Phlox also for some reason decides to take scans of the Novans instead of paying full attention to our armoury officer.  Turns out the old lady has cancer so Archer convinces them to come back to Enterprise for treatment.  They agree but only if Mal stays behind as hostage to make sure they stay safe.

Malcolm takes this in stride and bravely endures more time with the Novans (bet he wished he had his phase pistol on him, I know I would). Meanwhile T'Pol figures out what happened to the Novans.  Seems a meteorite crashed into the planet and the radiation thrown up killed the colonists.  Only the children survived and moved underground to safety.  Phlox adds more news to the pile in that their water supply is now contaminated and they also will be killed off if they stay where they are.

Meanwhile Malcolm is trying to make friends with the Novan guarding him .  Hmmm! Convincing the Novan to actually start talking - must be getting delirious from blood loss.  He tries Digger meat but it's a little undercooked for his tastes.  Obviously the Novans were too stupid to discover fire - something even prehistoric cavemen could accomplish.

We're caring about these people, why?

Archer obviously does though because he considers bringing them back to Earth.  Thankfully T'Pol realises the horror of unleashing these people  on the general public and dissuades him.  Instead they try to convince them to the unaffected Southern continent.  To accomplish this Archer and the Novan leader follow the standard working together to solve a plot complication (fellow trapped due to earthquake) and become friends cliche.  It works and they grab Malcolm, move the colonists and go on their way.  Travis gets to write the report, probably because noone else wanted too.

There is some nice scenes for Malcolm in this story, and one potential R/T'P scene outside the cave entrance, but it's really not enough to get over the annoyingness of the Novans (I don't think anything would).  Watch at your own risk.