The plot is an elaborate excuse to learn more about Malcom. Well, not that elaborate, a poorly thought out excuse. Nothing was logical or even reasonable. It's SciFi, we are accustomed to readily accepting implausible and impossible things but so many key things did not make sense.
The Enterprise aims to orbit an M-class planet that has no life but hits a cloaked mine that tears open a significant section of the ship. Many rooms are half-obliterated but yet no one was lost? Why? That makes no sense. And there's no reason not to lose unnamed people.
A second mine attaches itself but does not detonate, so the rest of the episode is trying to dislodge this mine.
From a previous episode, the Enterprise has new equipment that can detect cloaked ships. This reveals a huge closely-spaced minefield for as far as the eye can see. Enterprise slowly moves forward through this. Why? If you just took three steps into a minefield would you continue to run forwards through it or carefully back up? If the mines were that closely spaced, then the ship would have hit more than two of them!
Archer asks if they can jettison the panel that the mine has attached to. Of course they can! This ship is repeatedly beaten up, so it clearly has modular panels that can easily be replaced. Right? No. This panel has important conduits attached to it so it will be a long process and Trip really doesn't want to release it. Ya, ok, we'll ignore that implausible situation.
So, Malcom has a spacewalk ALONE. Huh? That's implausible, but ok. He of course can scan the mine and easily determine all of the circuits and how to disarm it. Malcom starts working but another strut suddenly shoots out of the mine, through his leg and attaches itself to the deck. He probably should have known to avoid that port, but hey, we all make mistakes, so, ok.
Now, how many ways are there to extract Malcom?
- transporter - not mentioned
- cut off his leg - not mentioned.
- cut through the muscle on one side of his leg (the strut missed the bone, so just cut through his thigh. Surely Phlox is fully able to suture muscles back together. Reconnecting nerves is probably child's play for him too. - not mentioned
- cut a circle out of the hull plate around each strut - not mentioned
- cut the strut - motioned! Yay. We know that is not possible because there's an arming mechanism in the leg.
Malcom needs help, so Archer goes out to play bomb technician. Not either of Malcom's two armory staff that were mentioned early on and probably know more about mines than Archer. Ok, ignore that.
The disarming process feels ridiculous and is tedious to watch.
Archer makes a mistake, the mine starts to prepare to detonate, then Archer reverses his last action and the mine shuts down. Really? Seems implausible, but ok. So Archer has a plan. He now knows that it takes time for the mine to react, so he can cut the strut and have 10 to 20 seconds to get to safety. So now, now would be a good time to use the transporter, right? No, not mentioned.
Archer asks for two shuttle blast doors. The panel is jettisoned. Once far from the ship, Archer cuts the strut, he and Malcom jump off of the panel and then spin around to hold the doors in front of them to protect them from the blast. Um, well, when free floating in space can you reliably twist and move the panel into the correct position? I doubt it. You need to orient yourself and then jump away backwards and if you inadvertently spin.. but whatever, let's believe that you can. The blast doors will protect you from shrapnel, but when the shockwave hits, you're going to get smacked hard in the face by that door! Let's believe that the EV suite will protect you from that hit, but your brain will get slammed into your skull as the worst concussion ever.
The Romulans are full of bluster but actually give the Enterprise a lot of time to respond. There's a terrible lack of discussion throughout it all. Hoshi was injured in the first blast, so she's not available to respond to the aliens' hails. The bridge crew simply don't reply! If they simply talked, then maybe the aliens' universal translator would work, or they would learn! But no. Hoshi repeatedly wants to leave sick bay to help interpret. Only after three attempts do they realize that they have a com system and data pads, so that Hoshi can work from sick bay. (Even though there were many crewmen injured worse than her, so why is she even still in sick bay?)
Why do the Romulans decloak every time that they want to talk? Seems unnecessary, no? Ships typically need to decloak to fire but not to talk.
The Enterprise didn't even learn the extent of Romulan space, so how will they avoid future encounters?
Apparently some people really like this episode but I kept getting knocked out of the episode by the implausible actions.