First Flight (Enterprise episode)

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"First Flight" is the title of a Star Trek: Enterprise television episode from season two.

[edit] Plot summary

Archer issues commands.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Captain Jonathan 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 awhile, 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.

[edit] Trivia

Since the next episode Bounty is part of a Klingon-related story arc, and the entire third season consisted of one story arc, "First Flight" would be the last completely standalone Enterprise episode until "Daedalus" aired midway through season 4.
When Captain Archer dictates his father's story to the computer, it misspells "own" as "won", speaking of someone's prefence for "his won design".
This episode gives a Star Trek version of the Movie [The Right Stuff] giving a tribute to the first people to achieve space travel.