A crafty Tellarite tricks Archer into boarding his ship and kidnaps him to collect a Klingon bounty. They want to punish Archer because he is the only prisoner to escape the prison planet Rura Penthe. As Enterprise pursues, contamination by a stray virus while exploring an uninhabited desert planet prematurely starts T'Pol's mating cycle, the pon farr, where she must mate or die. She finds herself confined to the decon chamber with Phlox.