Episode Report Card Keckler: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Maximum Over(warp)drive
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.08.2002
Enterprise putters along and comes into view of a take-off on the pod racers from Phantom Menace. Quantum attempts hailing them several times, but isn't what you would call "successful" at it. T'Pol can't detect any bio-signs, and Hoshi thinks the pod racer could be abandoned. "We might be able to board it -- salvage some of the materials we need," Trip suggests. Quantum doesn't think there's room enough in the pod racer's docking berths for his brow and the ship. "What's it look like inside?" he asks his science officer, who tells him she reads a liquid helium atmosphere. "The temperature is two hundred and seventy degrees below zero," T'Pol finishes. Ah, springtime comes to Minnesota. There's a bright light as the crew gets a V'Ger scan. "A bio-molecular probe," T'Pol confirms. "Sir..." May-on-his-last-legs starts. Yeah, I'd save my breath too, if I were you. Quantum raises his furrow to the viewscreen, and we see some changes made to the pod racer. In a close-up, one of the docking bays acts like those contorting things you get at the science museum gift shop where it's all hinged and you can turn it inside-out and stuff -- weren't those cool, though? "It's reconfiggerin' t'fit the sah-ser sec-shin," Trip informs us. T'Pol chimes into say that the atmosphere is being replaced by a warmer oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere -- i.e. stuff we can breathe. Hoshi says they're still not getting any answer to their hails. "It appears an invitation has been extended," T'Pol hints. "They need to work a little on their hospitality," Quantum snaps. Just because they aren't up to your meet-and-greet standards?! I mean, what do you know anyway, Furrow Man? Where they're from, punching you in the face could be considered the friendliest of all greetings. Come on, Quantum, let's you and I get friendly. Quantum looks over at Trip for input. Good thing Malcolm's not on the bridge -- evidently, he hates it when the bridge crew is allowed to voice opinions. "I don' see that we have a lot of op-shins," Trip tells him. Quantum orders May-one-foot-in-the-grave to take them in. Enterprise docks.
Trip, T'Pol, and Quantum board the pod racer and take a look around. Everything's white and octagonal. The three proceed down a white octagonal hallway with caution. They seem to know which door to pick as they enter a room to the left of the white octagonal hallway. A suspended blue hologram of a mini-Enterprise hovers in the middle of the chamber. Trip examines the hologram to see if it's truly outrageous. "They've isolated every hull breach, every damaged system -- I'll be damned, we scratched the hull right there a year ago," Trip says, pointing. "I bumped it with the inspection pod, remember?" "I thought I told you to have that repainted," Quantum says pointedly. CONTINUITY! "Well, I wuz gettin' 'round to it," Trip hedges. Guess the pregnancy, talking to rock people, getting delirious with dehydration, and going on a bender with Reed in a sh'pod was taking up too much of his down-time. Quantum examines the consoles and comments that everything is in English. I'm surprised they're not given the option of Spanish or Portuguese, like at our ATMs in Boston. "English, English, English -- it's always about the English, isn't it?!" T'Pol yells. That is, inside my head she yells that. I have a lot of voices yelling inside my head -- makes it hard to walk down the street. Quantum pauses in front of a monitor: "The ship wasn't the only thing they probed." Okay, who had to turn their head and cough? The monitor shows an image of a body. "I think that's Malcolm," Quantum says, pointing, "that's where his left leg was injured." T'Pol opines, "This facility may have the technology to repair Mr. Reed, as well." But can they find that wandering Regulan blood worm?