SPOILER!!!


According to IMdb:

"Episode #2.2, "Carbon Creek," which aired on 25 September 2002, included a reference to the TV series "The Twilight Zone" (1959), in which William Shatner once guest starred. As it happened, the debut episode of a revived version of the series aired immediately after the Enterprise broadcast. It also features a joke involving the TV series "I Love Lucy" (1951) which was produced by Desilu - the company that produced "Star Trek" (1966). Lucille Ball has also been credited with saving the original series from early cancellation. The episode includes a scene in which T'Pol's great-great-grandmother introduces Velcro to earth. One of the Vulcans involved is named Mestral, after the real-life inventor of Velcro, George de Mestral."



According to the Wikipedia:

"Carbon Creek" was the second episode of the second season of Star Trek: Enterprise. First broadcast on September 25, 2002, "Carbon Creek" was actually the first episode produced for the second season. An atypical Enterprise episode, it does not focus on any of the central characters.
Contents


Plot

"Carbon Creek" begins with Captain Jonathan Archer, Commander Trip Tucker and Sub-Commander T'Pol having a small dinner party in honor of the first anniversary of T'Pol's assignment aboard Enterprise (and, by extension, the first anniversary of Enterprise's mission).

During pre-dinner conversation, Archer, out of curiosity, asks why T'Pol travelled from San Francisco to Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania prior to joining Enterprise. T'Pol reveals that, contrary to human belief that the first contact between humans and Vulcans occurred in the mid-2060s after Zefram Cochrane made his first warp speed flight (see Star Trek: First Contact), in fact the contact occurred a century earlier, in Carbon Creek. Trip and Archer react incredulously to this claim, so T'Pol offers to tell the story of this contact since her great-grandmother T'Mir was part of those events.

Most of the episode is told in flashback. T'Mir (played by Jolene Blalock, who also plays T'Pol) is a member of a four-Vulcan crew studying Earth from orbit in 1957, where they witness the launch of Sputnik, the planet's first artificial satellite. A mishap with their impulse manifold soon forces the Vulcan craft to make a crash landing in Pennsylvania. The captain is killed and T'Mir, as second-in-command, takes charge. A distress signal is sent, but after more than two weeks no reply is received and the crew's rations run out. With his shipmates slowly starving to death, one of the Vulcans, Mestral, chooses to visit a nearby human town. T'Mir reluctantly accompanies him.

Over the next few months the three Vulcans integrate themselves with the townsfolk, successfully hiding their Vulcan nature. T'Mir, despite her desire to avoid contact with the humans, strikes up a friendship with a young scientist-in-the-making named Jack, while Mestral, who is enthralled by the humans, finds himself becoming involved with Jack's mother while enjoying the finer pleasures of human life such as baseball games and watching I Love Lucy on TV – purely for research purposes. The third Vulcan, Stron, has to endure being compared endlessly to Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.

During their months on Earth, the three Vulcans obtain menial jobs – T'Mir helps at the local pub, Stron becomes a handyman, while Mestral works in the mine, at one point utilizing advanced Vulcan technology in the form of a particle weapon to save the lives of a dozen trapped miners.

Eventually, a Vulcan vessel signals that they are about to arrive to retrieve them. Before leaving, however, T'Mir learns a human lesson in compassion when she discovers that Jack's dreams of attending university have been dashed due to lack of money. Surreptitiously taking a small item from the downed Vulcan craft, she travels by train to an unidentified city where she visits a patent attorney and sells the incredulous man the rights to a product known today as velcro (although in reality, this product was already patented by this time). The money she receives for this "invention that will change the world" is more than enough to ensure Jack's future education.

A few days later, as the Vulcan ship is about to arrive, Mestral announces his intention to stay on Earth and observe the great advances he knows lie ahead. T'Mir reluctantly agrees to let him stay and tells the Vulcan rescuers that Mestral died in the crash.

The episode ends with Archer and Trip not sure whether to believe T'Pol's story, and Trip ultimately declaring that she was pulling their leg, a theory apparently supported when T'Pol suggests that she visited Carbon Creek to do a geological survey. However, the last image of the episode is of T'Pol taking a small parcel out of a private storage container in her quarters – the 1950s-era handbag that was used by T'Mir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Creek_%28Star_Trek%29