Episode Report Card Keckler: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Home Is Where the Snark Is
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 20 | Aired on 04.15.2003
Enterprise orbits a planet with an acute case of spider veins. Bridge. Quantum and T'Pol exchange information about the data collecting the computers are going to be doing. Hoshi gets some very minor face-time in this scene as she offers to set up a way to transfer images of the planet back to Starfleet. "So, you comin' tonight?" Trip asks T'Pol. T'Pol says that IF she irons all the clothes and IF she mends her evil stepsisters' dresses and IF she washes the floors, THEN she can then go to the monster ball. "Well, yew better make up yer mind -- seats are gonna fill up fast," Trip warns. T'Pol tells Trip it has come to her attention that Frankenstein is also a book. "Mary Shelley wrote it -- the wife of a famous poet," Trip nods. Sure, because that's clearly all she was. It's not like she became a well-regarded author after she met and married the complaining, kvetching, and downright depressing poet, or that she had an incredibly famous mother who wrote (among other things) a groundbreaking essay called "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Let's just say she was the wife of a famous poet. T'Pol thinks that instead of watching Boris Karloff lurch around and pick flowers, they should hold a dramatic reading of the work in order to better understand the writer's intent. Trip doesn't think that would go over well. How does he know? Maybe there are some other members of the crew who would actually like to study the book that way. At any rate, I think he should shut up. Trip tells her that if she wants to pick up where Oprah's book club left off, she can do that in her own time, and walks away after checking that Quantum will be in attendance. "Wouldn't miss it!" Quantum says, flapping his arms at the obviousness. Trip promises to save him some popcorn, then gives a meaningful backward glance to T'Pol.
Quantum then takes it upon himself to badger T'Pol into attending movie night the same way he badgered her in "Catwalk." He even pulls the same line about fraternizing with the other crew being good for her. Like zinc and B-12. "I don't understand how sitting silently in a darkened room constitutes 'fraternizing,'" T'Pol responds. Match point to the Vulcan. "Tell you what, let's make a night of it. Dinner in the Captain's Mess -- eighteen-hundred. Movie at nineteen-thirty. You'll be my date," Quantum pleads. Sad -- Trip goes through all that other cajoling, and Quantum swoops right in and reaps the reward. "I beg your pardon?" T'Pol reacts. "I'll be a perfect gentleman," Quantum assures her. But that's no fun. "And if you don't like the movie, I'll never ask you to sit through another one," Quantum pledges. Without waiting for her answer, Quantum walks away.