Just watched an episode called "The Communicator".
In it, Archer, Reed and Hoshi have been down on some planet that's at about a WWII era technological level. Disguised as natives, they've been observing the culture or what have you. Apparently these people are on the verge of a world war.
Anyway they are back on the enterprise and then Reed discovers he's left his communicator on the planet.
So they start doing scans to see if they can find it. At this point I'm thinking, come on, this is getting silly, it's only a communicator, the chances of it vastly fucking over their society is low. However T'pol predictably insists that they should retrieve it at all costs to prevent "cultural contamination".
So Archer and Reed get made up as the natives again and go down to try to retrieve the communicator... only to get promptly captured, under suspicion of being spies for "the Alliance" (the enemy of the nation they are in). Looks like they should have just let that lost communicator go. Now, after a search of Reed and Archer's pockets, the natives have
two communicators, a couple of tricorders, and Reed's phaser. So much for preventing
cultural contamination.
The two of them are then taken for interrogation. Matters haven't been helped by the fact that the Enterprise had tried to hail them - the result of which was that the communicator went off literally in the hands of one of the native officers who was examining it. They heard T'pol asking for the Captain (minor plot hole - they shouldn't have been able to understand her, it's a communicator not a universal translator) and want to know who T'pol is and which one of them is the captain.
So this general is interrogating them and they're saying nothing. I can sense a beating coming up, and sure enough the general signals a big nasty guard who punches them in the face a few times. This damages their disguise, which the natives then peel off, and also makes them bleed, revealing red blood which is apparently not the natives' natural blood colour. The general orders a doctor to examine them.
The doc x-rays them, revealing their human internal physiology, and does tests on their blood, revealing their iron-based haemoglobin, which would be toxic to these people apparently. The general also presents a photo of their shuttlecraft in flight which had been spotted by a military aircraft earlier that day.
The natives then correctly theorise that Reed and Archer are another species and that they are extraterrestrials from another star system. At this point I'm thinking, OK, the game's up, you have to know when you've been made. But they still try to deny it. Reed comes out with some spiel about being genetically modified Alliance prototype super soldiers. I thought they were getting a bit beyond a joke in their dedication to "prevening cultural contamination" at this point, but it was nothing to what came next...
They were sent back to their cells. You coudl tell the doctor and the military officers weren't really buying Reed's story. The doc says he would like to examine their insides in more detail - he wants to conduct an autopsy! The general concurs, and decides to order them executed.
Cut to Reed and Archer in their cells awaiting execution. They talk about telling the aliens the truth to save their lives, but Archer gives this high-minded vulcan-influenced speech about cultural contamination blah blah blah, you can tell T'pol has thorughly corrupted him with Vulcan ethics by this stage. And Reed goes along with it, I guess because he's the captain.
By this point I'm speechless, I'm thinking if I was Reed I'd be telling Archer to go fuck a targ, I'm not getting my neck stretched over some tight-arse vulcan ideas about who is and isn't "ready" to know about the existence of aliens. They come down here and I'm gonna open my mouth and tell them the whole story, and there ain't shit you can do about it, sir.
But nope, he goes along with it. Suffice to say by the time the cavalry arrives the two of them are standing on the trap doors with nooses around their necks. There follows a firefight (a rare rayguns vs bullets firefight in ST).
When all is said and done the natives have been exposed to:
- Communicators (and heard a transmission from one of them)
- Tricorders
- A phase pistol (and had some target practice with it)
- Clearly alien physiologies
- Cloaked ships
- Another alien (Vulcan) though they may not have had time to notice as it was in the middle of a firefight
Nice going for a mission whose job was to "prevent cultural contamination"
And you just know it never occurs to smug superior T'pol that it would have been a lot better to just leave that communicator where it was and move on.
As with most "prime directive" type eps, this one was thoroughly... unintelligent.
Actually it did a good job of demonstrating that Vulcan obsession with preventing even the slightest "contamination" was over the top.
Parting thought: Why didn't they just lock onto the communicator and beam it up?
), and a race with transporter technology being stopped by a ring of fire. T'Pol teaching the entire crew a Vulcan martial art in 10 minutes so they can defeat Klingons in hand-to-hand combat. Said Klingons, a warrior race with space ships that can devistate a planet, being chased off by sloppy amateur martial arts.
