“Canamar” is episode seventeen of season two of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Enterprise has found Shutttlepod 1, drifting and damaged. Hoshi is trying to contact the captain, with no response. Reed says there is evidence of weapons fire, main support, grav plating and life support are offline and there are no biosigns.
The shuttlepod had the captain and Trip on it and Hoshi is playing back the captain’s starlog. The captain had reported successful first contact with the Enolians and apparently was going to see a sporting event that was the closest thing to water polo he’d seen since leaving Earth. The sensor logs are too badly damaged and Phlox reports traces of the captain and Trip’s blood inside. T’Pol orders a case laid in for Keto-Enol.
Meanwhile, the captain and Trip are on a prison transport. The captain tries to speak to a guard and gets shocked by his restraints for his trouble. Another prisoner, Zoumas, advises him to stay quiet. They’re heading to the penal colony of Canamar. First, they’ll go to a processing station in orbit where they’ll be tried and sent to the surface. Everyone is guilty. The captain and Trip were arrested for smuggling. This is apparently bad.
Enterprise is in orbit around Keto-Enol and T’Pol is speaking to an official. Apparently, there’s a problem with thieves and smugglers and their officers are kept busy. T’Pol offers to send descriptions of Archer and Trip to see if any officers encountered them.
Feeding time on the prison transport and a Nausican wants Trip’s food. Trip declines. The Nausican gets shocked by a guard. As does Trip, dropping his food, when he thanks the guard. Zoumas warns Trip to be careful of the Nausicans; nasty tempers. He asks what were they smuggling. Trip says they weren’t; they’re the chief engineer and captain of a starship. Zoumas thinks he should have said he was a starship captain.
Enterprise is told the shuttlepod was intercepted after leaving orbit as they appeared to be carrying contraband. Smuggling is rampant and mistakes can be made. The prison transport has been contacted and Enterprise is expected. T’Pol suggests the official come with them. To ensue no more mistakes are made.
The captain is told that he is being released and a ship is coming for him. The Nausican asks how much that cost and offers to pay. Whilst the Nausican is being dealt with, another prisoner deactivates his cuffs and gets free. The guard is taken down, the other guard in the cockpit comes about and also gets taken down and the Nausican takes out the pilot. Not dead, but badly injured and incapable of flying. The captain speaks up, making clear he knows how to fly. He’s a pilot and a good one. He’s a smuggler, remember?
The Enolian who removed his cuffs, Kuroda Lor-ehn (Mark Rolston), releases the captain and takes him into the cockpit. Archer looks at the controls and finds navigation, then the binary system Lor-ehn wants. Lor-ehn says to set a course for there. Lor-ehn asks why Archer and Trip were being released. Because they’re innocent. Archer has friends who want to keep doing business with him, they made some discrete payments and now he’s innocent. He would have been off the ship if not for Lor-ehn. And how did he break free? Subdermal implants; when Lor-ehn escaped from Canamar last time he made plans to ensure he wouldn’t go back. The captain says he’s taking the subspace transceiver offline so no-one can track them. Lor-ehn takes it offline by breaking it.
Hoshi, however, has detected an automated distress call on what that the Enolian official says is one of their frequencies. He doesn’t know which ship it is, but it’s near the rendezvous coordinates. He offers to send some patrol ships to check.
Archer and Trip are now on a prison transport that is heading somewhere, led by an Enolian who is perfectly willing to kill anyone who gets in his way. Archer needs to walk a line between cooperating, whilst pretending to be a criminal, and not actually killing anyone.