"Minefield" is the 29th episode (production #203) of the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, the third episode of the second season.
The episode opens with Captain Archer attempting to have a friendly chat over breakfast with Lt. Malcolm Reed. Reed, however remains tight-lipped and formal.
The Enterprise begins to orbit a seemingly unclaimed planet for observation when it runs into a cloaked mine, heavily damaging the ship and flooding Sickbay with injured crew members. Soon, another cloaked mine attaches itself to the hull but doesn't immediately explode. Lt. Reed performs a spacewalk in an EVA suit to try to disarm it, but accidentally activates a magnetic grappling spike that impales his leg before attaching to the ship's hull, thus pinning him to the hull with a limited oxygen supply. Any attempt to cut the spike would set off the mine. The Enterprise then makes first contact with the Romulan Star Empire when two Romulan Warbirds arrive and demand that they exit the system.
Captain Archer dons an EVA suit and goes to disarm the mine under Reed's direction. During this period they converse frankly, in contrast to their earlier meeting. Reed is willing, almost insistent, on sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise, and Archer has to stop him committing suicide at one point. Archer returns to the ship and requests two shuttle hatches from a puzzled Commander Trip Tucker, also ordering him to detach the hull plates that the mine is attached to. He returns to the mine. As the plates and attached mine fly off, he cuts the spike holding Reed. This arms the mine, but as Reed and Archer drift away from it into space, they are able to shield themselves from the resulting explosion with the shuttle hatches.
[edit] Alignment with canon
This episode is often cited as an example of the Enterprise series breaking established Star Trek canon.[citation needed] Specifically, this episode shows that the Romulans have had cloaking technology since at least the twenty-second century, despite the fact that in the original Star Trek series episode "Balance of Terror," Spock implies that the Romulans did not have cloaking technology during the Earth-Romulan war 100 years earlier and have seemingly developed one during the time since hostilities ended. Subsequent Enterprise novels have attempted to explain this discrepancy by stating that the cloaking device seen in "Minefield" was a prototype and the Romulan ships employing it would self destruct from the power overload.
It is also mentioned in "Balance of Terror" that the war with the Romulans was fought using "old style nuclear weapons" and there was never an up close visual encounter between the two races, leading to the revelation in that episode that Romulans closely resemble Vulcans. "Minefield" preserves this element of canon by never showing actual Romulans, just their ships.
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