We open with the view of the temporal chamber of the Suliban. We see Silik in an operating chamber and the mysterious figure from the future in his column. Silik is being punished for his failure in the Klingon Mission from "Broken Bow" with the loss of his enhanced vision. Future boy assures him that if he is successful in his next mission his sight will be restored.

Following the opening credits and the first commercial we find a discussion between the 2 bridge ensigns we know of concerning the movie selected for the previous evening's showing of "Night of the Killer Androids" and a discussion about there being 50k movies in the database and that is what they picked. We soon find the Captain being served breakfast by our other principal player in tonight's episode: Crewman Daniels (more on him later) who asks why they have changed course. Captain informs him that they are on their way to a Stellar Nursery that has several ships inside.

Archer introduces himself to a rather gruff transport captain who explains that he is escorting people to see something called the "Great Plume of Agasoria" (please excuse my spelling, I haven't seen the script and am not sure how these words are actually spelled) which holds spiritual value to these aliens. The aliens believe that this nursery is the place of the creation of the universe and that the Great Plume symbolizes the continual creation cycle of the universe.

The apparent leader of the aliens gives the Captain and Trip some gifts of a clock and a bottle of some sort of "spirits".

When the aliens describe the spiritual significance of the event, Phlox describes his studies of Human and Vulcan religions.

After a brief scene on the bridge where Maryweather gets to try on the Captain's chair on for size, we are shown a brief technical description of how the warp core works given by Commander Tucker. The important part of this scene however is that one of the aliens walks around the side of the warp core and severs a connection, morphing his physical structure to do so.

The Captain of the transport informs the Enterprise of a Plasma storm and advises that they should be cautious. Several plasma thunderbolts hit the Enterprise and jolt them several times. Finally one sends a power surge throughout the impulse relays. And then another strikes the warp manifold causing explosions to start going in a chain reaction, but the cascade stopped in its tracks before it hit the core causing the whole ship to go back in a big boom.

Following the commercial the Captain invites the aliens to view the Great Plume from their mess hall and bids Phlox farewell as he will be spending the night studying their culture. Trip asks the captain to come down to engineering where he shows him the conduit that was severed, calling it an antimatter junction, telling him that if it hadn't been severed the ship would have gone boom boom. Trip is concerned that nobody in his staff did it and doesn't know who. The captain of the transport doesn't know who did it either, although if there was some kind of reward involved he would gladly say he did it.

Finally here comes in our boy Daniels who says a few things to the Captain that he should not know, like the fact that he fought Silik on the Helix, oops, who's been letting out information they shouldn't have?

Daniels invites the captain to his quarters so he can describe to the captain what is going on. He mentions that he is not a part of Starfleet although he admires it well. He explains that he is from an organization that helps keep history intact.

He mentions that he is from 900 years in the future and shows the captain a holographic presentation of a temporal observatory. He describes the temporal accord and that there are rules in how to observe the past and that some factions ignore the accord and alter the past and that he is there to stop them. He explains that someone from the future, but not as far in the future as him, is swapping genetic alterations for the Suliban for getting them to fight their temporal cold war for them.

Daniels explains that he needs the Captain's help in order to catch Silik although he also explains that it was Silik who just saved the ship from destruction. The reason he gives why the Captain should trust him is that he always brings the Captain his food exactly the way he wants them.

In a briefing between the "big three", T'Pol says that the Vulcans have studied the concept of time travel extensively and found it to be impossible. The captain counters by saying that the Suliban woman and Daniels both used the same phrase "Temporal Cold War", her counter "It proves nothing". Captain tries the genetic manipulation card, but she counters that it doesn't mean it came from the future. He counters a third time with the device that changed the room, this time Trip counters with his account of the holographic chamber on the Xyrillian ship, and comments that if what Daniels said is true then Silik saved the ship, should they really be hunting down the person who saved them? Finally, the captain puts his foot down saying that even if the chance of what Daniels says exists they must help him, no doubt remembering that Silik tried to kill him in the Temporal chamber in the Helix. After a hail from the other ship asking to dock so that the aliens can take the Captain up on his offer to let them view the Plume from the mess hall, the captain instructs docking and tells Trip and T'Pol to help Daniels do as he suggests to modify the internal sensors to track Silik, using what we later find out to be Tachyons.

After a discussion with Phlox about his trip including several questions from the Captain trying to track down the Suliban infiltrator. Then we see Daniels, T'Pol, and Trip working on the modifications, including Daniels walking through a wall to fix a relay.

Finally, we find out that the one person on the ship not tricked by Silik's personal cloaking device, Porthos. Porthos stands barking and growling at an apparently blank wall where Silik appears to have a heated discussion with the Captain.

Silik informs him that it is Daniels who is the danger to his crew, not Silik and that Silik only acts on orders from the future. T'Pol lets the cat out of the bag over the comm and inadvertently tells Silik who it is that is from the future, after which Silik stuns the captain and goes hunting Daniels.

Phlox and the aliens note that the event is starting when they honor Phlox by letting him start the ritual chant.

Silik shoots Daniels who blows up in a rather unusual fashion, that would almost lead me to believe that he wasn't there at all, to begin with but was more like a hologram, or perhaps one of those isomorphic projections from the VOY episode "Think Tank". So we are not sure if Daniels is still alive in the future or not, just that he is no longer in the present. Trip and T'Pol can't get an answer from the captain over the comm so they call Phlox and tell him to join them in the Captain's quarters.

Phlox revives the captain who goes out to find Silik, armed with Daniel's hand device that allows him to walk through walls. Meanwhile, the plume occurs quite a lovely visual effect.

Archer confronts Silik telling him "You keep saying this is in our best interests, but what are you going to get out of it, eyes in the back of your head, wings?" Then they fight. Archer hits his head and chases Silik into the shuttle bay.

The captain shoots the device that Silik was there to steal, the temporal observatory of Daniels'.

We now learn yet another interesting fact about Enterprise, Enterprise does NOT have a forcefield protecting the doors in the shuttle bay, Silik opens the doors decompressing the bay then jumps out. Captain Archer holds his breath while trying to get out into the place where there is air, in the process the nifty hand device gets sucked out into space. A Suliban shuttle picks up Silik and goes to warp, T'Pol asks the captain if they should pursue and the captain says to let them go.

As the episode winds up to a close the Captain is trying to figure out how the clock the aliens gave him works and is confused as to how to report what has happened, to which T'Pol offers her aid.

Captain Archer instructs Reed to have crewman Daniels' roommate assigned new quarters and then instructs him to seal off that room not knowing what other futuristic devices may be in there. For those of you wondering about your list of trivia, the cabin is E14.

The episode closes with Ensign Mayweather setting a course to get back on the road and then eerie music while a lock is placed on cabin E14. Ending with a zoom-in on the locking device.