“The Communicator” is episode eight of season two of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Captain Archer, Hoshi and Reed return to Enterprise in Shuttlepod 1 from an excursion to a planet. They remove facial prosthetics and Reed says he would like to write the report to Starfleet; it’s his first visit to a pre-warp culture. Hoshi wonders if he wants to write it because of the tactical situation on the planet. It is. Dr Phlox gives them a clean bill of health and they are unloading items when Reed can’t find his communicator.
Searching decon, the shuttlepod and the hanger doesn’t locate it. Reed can remember the last time he used it, but didn’t take it out after. Either he dropped it or someone picked his pocket. Hoshi thinks she can narrow down where it is.
On the bridge, Hoshi narrows the location down to 2 square kilometres. T’Pol says they can’t risk contaminating a pre-warp culture. Hoshi has further narrowed down the location to three city blocks. Reed recognises a tavern in that area and suggests it could have slipped out of his pocket when he sat down. The captain and Reed are going to head back down.
They avoid the surveillance towers on the way down and Reed says he’s prepared for whatever reprimand the captain feels is appropriate. Archer suggests 30 years in the brig. Or flogging. It was an accident and could have happened to anyone.
In the tavern, they return to the booth they used before and Reed searches the floor with no joy. He starts scanning for it, but stops when the proprietor comes over to see if they’d like anything. And asks about Hoshi. He thinks she was hard to forget. The man next heads to a table of soldiers and gives them a look. Not a good sign.
Reed has detected the communicator in another room and not one he visited. They go look for it, watched by the soldiers. Reed scans and detects two people inside the room so they return to the main room to wait. The soldiers stand up at this point and, after a brief struggle, they are restrained.
They are brought to the room where the communicator is and the two people who were there. They’re searched and more technology is found, including a phase pistol. The lieutenant leading the soldiers asks one of his men where General Gosis is and orders them taken away.
On Enterprise, Trip says something is wrong and they need to hail the captain. Hoshi says they’re in a public place and it will call attention. T’Pol thinks they have no choice. There’s no response to the hail, but Hoshi narrows down the location. 30km from the city. Too far to walk in the time, the shuttlepod hasn’t been moved and if the captain was going to use transport, he would have contacted the ship. T’Pol wants to know exactly where Archer and Reed are. It will take time to narrow it down, and moving into a lower orbit risks detection.
Reed and the captain are now prisoners. They came down to retrieve a communicator and have now lost much more. The captain hopes the shuttlepod is okay. Reed says that if the locals think they are spies for the Alliance, perhaps they should tell the truth about what they really are. The captain isn’t sure anyone would believe them and no way to know how they’d react.
They’re taken to see General Gosis who asks which one is the captain; he heard T’Pol on the communicator. The Alliance must be growing desperate if they’re recruiting officers as spies. Neither respond to questions about the technology, or accusations they might have been planning to assassinate the chancellor. Even after being hit several times. Being hit does, though, reveal their cosmetic alterations. And their blood is the wrong colour. Gosis wants a full examination performed on them.
Enterprise has figured out where they are located and needs to come up with a way to rescue them. The civilisation is pre-warp, but they have enough technology to discover that Reed and Archer are radically different from them. Even their lies about that might not be accepted in the long run, and even if all the technology is recovered, the civilisation has definitely been contaminated.