First Flight (Star Trek: Enterprise)

"First Flight"
Star Trek: Enterprise episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 24
Directed by	LeVar Burton
Written by	John Shiban Chris Black
Featured music	Paul Baillargeon
Production code	224
Original air date	May 14, 2003 (2003-05-14)
Guest stars
Brigid Brannagh - Ruby Vaughn Armstrong - Commodore Forrest Keith Carradine - A.G. Robinson Michael Canavan - Vulcan Advisor #1 Victor Bevine - Flight Controller John B. Moody - Security Officer
Episode chronology
← Previous "Regeneration" Next → "Bounty"
List of Star Trek: Enterprise episodes

"First Flight" is the 50th episode of the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, the 24th episode of the second season.

Plot

Captain Archer receives word that his friend, Captain A.G. Robinson, has been killed in a climbing accident on Earth. Saddened by this news, and wanting to be alone for a while, Archer decides to take a shuttlepod to examine what is believed to be the first dark matter nebula ever observed. Sub-Commander T'Pol insists on going along; although her stated reason is scientific curiosity about the nebula, it's clear she wants to provide some sort of support for her friend.

During the mission, Archer tells T'Pol about Robinson, leading to a series of flashbacks to the earliest days of the NX program, in which Robinson and Archer were colleagues and rivals for the first command of a Warp 5 starship. Archer relates how he befriended his future chief engineer Charles Tucker III and how early experiments with warp power nearly ended the NX program a decade before the launch of Enterprise.

Notes

• During the flashback, Archer asks the waitress Ruby "Do you remember what Buzz Aldrin said when he stepped on the moon?" Ruby answers "No." Archer says "Nobody does." In fact, Aldrin's first words upon stepping on the lunar surface was "Looks like the secondary strut had a little thermal effects on it right here, Neil."

• On the wall of the 602 Club, a bar frequented by Starfleet personnel, are paintings of several historical vessels. One is of the ringed Enterprise originally seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A picture of Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix also appears. There is also a picture of the DY-100 class sleeper ship, S.S. Botany Bay, which Khan Noonien Singh had used in the original series episode "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

External links

• First Flight at the Internet Movie Database
• "First Flight" at TV.com
• First Flight at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• First Flight at StarTrek.com