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Enterprise Episode Guide - Season One Episode: 6
Terra Nova
As the first Warp 5-capable starship, Enterprise was dispatched to visit Terra Nova, the first human colony outside the solar system, and learn why all contact with the settlement was lost 70 years ago. An away team found the abandoned colony structures, but then discovered a society of humanoids living in a network of caverns underground. The cave dwellers were very hostile, firing primitive weapons at the team and injuring Lt. Reed, who became trapped in the caverns while the others escaped back to the ship. Bio-scans revealed the attackers were human.
Captain Archer and crew concluded that the 52 cave dwellers were descendants of the original colonists, driven underground by lethal levels of radiation that were evidently present 70 years prior. Archer and Dr. Phlox returned to the surface to rescue Reed, and learned the inhabitants called themselves Novans and spoke in an odd dialect of English. The Novans blamed humans for the "poison rain" that afflicted their planet. Phlox diagnosed one of the elder Novans, Nadet, with lung cancer, so Archer convinced her and her son Jamin to come to the ship to receive treatment.
An impact crater was discovered on the surface indicating that an asteroid collision caused the radiation cloud that destroyed the colony. And study of recovered transmissions revealed that the colonists accused Earth for launching an attack. Therefore, the children who survived and began living underground grew up believing that humans were responsible for the catastrophe. Their situation was dire, though, because according to Dr. Phlox, they were all dying from microcellular decay due to contaminated groundwater. At first Archer tried to convince the Novans to let Enterprise bring them to Earth, but realizing they have already developed a unique culture that should be preserved, he agreed with T'Pol's suggestion to relocate them to the southern hemisphere of the planet. They resisted any such suggestion, but Archer gained their trust by helping save the life of a Novan man. Nadet came to understand that she was descended from human settlers, and convinced her people to let themselves be relocated.
Episode info from: www.startrek.com
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