“Silent Enemy” is episode twelve of season one of Star Trek: Enterprise.
The Enterprise is deploying the second subspace repeater buoy and T’Pol states that it has made contact with the first. Captain Archer asks Hoshi how long before they can contact Earth; she wants to run a few tests. Reed reports a vessel dripping out of warp. T’Pol doesn’t recognise the configuration; the captain thinks that’s good. They hail the newcomer, to no response, then it leaves. Archer ask Reed if he got anything on the scans. No. To everything.
They try and work this out and Hoshi says that maybe the other ship didn’t understand what the Enterprise was sending; the translator isn’t perfect. T’Pol says that not every species has motives understandable in human terms. Everyone else but Hoshi leaves, and she tells the captain she tracked them down. The captain will contact them in his ready room.
Them being Reed’s parents. It’s Reed’s birthday in a couple of days. The conversation doesn’t go that well; they haven’t seen their son in a few years and not heard from him since he told them he was assigned to the Enterprise. They didn’t even know his job. It sounds like Reed’s father isn’t happy that his son joined Starfleet instead of the Royal Navy. Archer wanted to know if Reed has a favourite food. They have no idea. Afterwards, the captain orders Hoshi to keep digging.
Later, the captain chats to Trip; one thing that comes up is a really long-distance relationship hasn’t worked out for Trip. Archer wants to know if Trip’s parents know his favourite dish. Very definitely yes. The captain thinks they don’t know much about Reed. Then the ship suddenly slows and T’Pol calls from the bridge to say the alien vessel has returned.
There is still no reply to hails, but this time the ship scans them, then opens fire at the Enterprise before warping out. This time, Reed got some scans when the aliens fired; at least 15 biosigns. Not matching anything in the database according to T’Pol and Reed doubts their torpedoes would have penetrated the alien ship’s shields.
In engineering, Trip says they nearly got blown open to space. Afterwards, Archer asks T’Pol if the Vulcans met as many hostile aliens. It was a different time; fewer warp-capable species. Archer says they aren’t equipped to deal with some threats and they need to do something about it. The ship is equipped with phase cannon ports, but left before they were installed. Time to head back to Earth and do it. Reed and Trip tell the captain they have most of the stuff needed, but it will take two weeks. Archer is still heading back, but they ask permission to get a head start.
Archer tells them to do what they can. Trip and Reed take this to a logical extreme, and brief their staff on the weapon. The Enterprise is supposed to carry three. They have one, a prototype. Their job is to get it up and running and build two more from scratch. The captain wants Jupiter Station to do this; Trip wants the station to have nothing to do by the time they arrive.
The alien ship starts following them in warp and it turns out to be a good job that Reed and Trip decided to get as far as they could. Even though the pressure does cause an argument. The captain starts second guessing himself as to leaving early and putting everyone at risk; Trip reassures him.
There’s an alien ship pursuing them, causing frequent damage as they snipe at the Enterprise, clearly with the ability to destroy the ship if they tried. The situation is not great and, during this, Hoshi is trying to find out what Reed likes to eat. A rather jarring dichotomy. Especially when her inquiries result in Reed thinking she’s asking something else; she did offer to cook him a meal in her quarters, after all.