This episode is more of a comedy so we'll give it a pass on some of the "deh stupid". It's a lot more entertaining than the last two episodes were.
So we start with Archer taking a shower and the grav plating cutting out. Man, they sure did put in the fancy shower heads. Then it comes back on and he lands, hard, on his tailbone. That HURTS, I can say from personal experience.
T'Pol is definitely opposed to trying new things in this episode. Phlox is chowing down on blueberry pancakes and bacon. Yum! Trip is going nuts trying to fix things all over the place.
So the malfunctions are the result of a Xyrillian ship hiding out in their exhaust and streamlining along. Xyrillians don't seem to have a lot of regard for personal boundaries. A whole race of close talkers, must be.
Trip gets sent over to fix their warp drive. After submitting him to three hours of Vick's Vapo-rub they let Trip into the ship and it's too weird for him. But after an hour or so of lying down he's feeling much better (and the sonic distortion is turned off) and pretty soon he's eating grapes from the fingers of a slave girl - sorry, water jello from the fingers of Ah'Len, the engineer.
After getting the warp engine to the point where it will fix itself, he and Ah'Len go off for some R & R. And the infamous pebble game comes out. Hard to call on just how reprehensible this was. The telepathic exchange makes it more than just playing "hide the salami" and she didn't think he'd get preggers but still...
OK, so everything works, Trip goes back to Enterprise (note to writers: decompression is not something you can do both ways. In fact, if Trip needed to decompress to get onto the Xyrillian ship their air pressure was probably so low that he wouldn't be able to breathe anyway. But I promised to give them a few passes this episode).
Back on Enterprise Trip has a bump on his wrist so he goes to see Phlox. And when he gets out of the scanner, Archer and T'Pol are there. Phlox tells him he's preggers and T'Pol gets all the good lines.
"Three days. You were only there for three days and you couldn't restrain yourself. "
"One of the first things a diplomat learns is not to stick his fingers where they don't belong."
Trip starts going off on the dangers of the lift in Engineering. I gotta say, though, the finger chopping bit looked pretty bad. Enterprise is obviously not OSHA compliant.
The next bits, I'm not sure if Trip is supposed to be some kind of a parody of a pregnant woman. He seems to be having some kind of hormonal induced paranoia. Archer and Phlox are pretty merciless while Trip is chowing down.
Oooh, and a classic D7 Klingon battlecruiser. OK, Memory Alpha claims it's not a D7 but it looks like one. The Xyrillians are not terribly bright because they're hitching a free ride on the Klingons.
Lots of posturing and explosions from the Klingons. Archer is too stupid to mention that the Klingon Empire owes him one so T'Pol has to do it for him. Then Trip has to out his pregnancy to everyone on the bridge.
And one more good zinger from the Klingons in the holo chamber - "I can see my house from here!" After they get everybody happy and the baby removed, Trip complains over dinner "The only thing worse than spending three hours in a decompression chamber with a bunch of Klingons is doing it twice in one day. I smelled things in there I hope I never smell again." - which seems to be a callback to something David Gerrold (The Trouble With Tribbles) wrote about Klingons long ago:
David Gerrold wrote:A Klingon is a good person to invite to a rape - or even a murder, providing it's your own. Klingons build their battlecruisers without toilets; it makes them a little nastier. Klingons pick on old ladies. Klingons fart in airlocks. Klingons drop litter in the streets. Klingons pick their teeth in public. And those are their good points.
Everyone leaves on their merry way and Trip enters the history books.
Ethics aside this works pretty well as a comedy episode. The Xyrillian ship has a few neat alien touches Is T'Pol jealous or viewing Trip as a typical over-sexed male? I'd have to say at this stage of the game it can't be jealousy.