Episode Report Card Keckler: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Friendship 2 1/2
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.23.2001
We can see two moons in the distance as the shuttle-pod lands in Bryce Canyon. The Fearsome Foursome walks through the rolling tumbleweeds (because you can never get the "deserted town" effect without the tumbleweeds), tricorders a-buzzing. Reed passes an overturned bicycle and gives the punctured wheel a spin for kicks. Quantum scuffs over a rubber mat which, when he turns it over, says, "Welcome." Contrivance pulls up a case of Post Road Pumpkin Ale, kicks off her shoes, and gets good and comfy. "A housing unit?" Mayweather says in disbelief looking at a dilapidated shack. You know, aren't all shacks dilapidated? Okay, maybe not Mighty Big TV's Shack, but when you think about it, when you read about a shack, you can bet ten-to-one it's going to be dilapidated. All aboard the Recapping Train, now leaving Digression -- next stop, Avoidance, followed by Hysteria, and terminating at Complete Unconsciousness. T'Pol reports that she can find no evidence of weapons fire, "only rust." "Whatever happened, I gotta believe they tried to let Earth know about it," Quantum says. Mayweather says they have the schematics for their communications tower, so Quantum techno-tells him to look slippy about accessing any of the Colony's transmission logs. Reed's task is to "walk the perimeter" to see what he can find. T'Pol says, "Judging by the isotope decays, the radiation levels seventy years ago would have been lethal." Quantum challenges this, saying, "If that's what killed them, where are the bodies?" Maybe, and I'm no coroner or C.S.I.-watcher by trade, but perhaps the bodies would have decomposed and decayed at such an accelerated rate because of the radiation that there might not be a whole lot left to identify? T'Pol opines that the Colonists could have left the planet before they all shuffled off this mortal coil. "That would have been difficult," Quantum says, gesturing at one of the dilapidated shacks. "That's a bulkhead. They designed their ship to be disassembled. That's how they build the colony." Like Legos. "It was a one-way trip," Quantum says thoughtfully.
On the perimeter, Reed and his itchy trigger finger patrol. He picks up some bio-signs on his tricorder and squints into the underbrush. "'Ello?" he calls, Britishly. Something runs. "We're not alone, sir," Reed says into his communicator. "There's someone in the forest." "We're on our way," Quantum tells him. The someone in the forest runs across a babbling brook with Reed hot on his tail. We get a glimpse of a Braveheart-kitted extra. Over hill and dale and fallen logs they run. Through the ring of Antares moons of Nibia and Pentacost's something-or-other. Braveheart disappears into a cave. Cripes, with all the money the ST franchise makes, you'd think they could manage not to use the exact same set from "A Whole New World." Reed peers into the cave as T'Pol and Quantum finally catch up. Uh, where's Mayweather? Quantum asks if Reed was able to see what Braveheart looked like. "Yeah, he appeared to be a couple of meters tall [aw, he's so cute and British], biped, odd-looking scales," Reed reports. T'Pol reports that the cave opening leads to a network of various tunnels and caverns, extending a few hundred meters. Okay, they all use "meters," but it's cuter when it's a British accent using it, rather than Unblinking Hypnotized Acting Mode. Quantum signals to Mayweather and tells him to grab flashlights from the shuttlepod, "and make it quick." Just after saying that, which, of course, leads us to believe that they don't already have flashlights, Quantum stands up and proceeds into the cave, switching on a flashlight! That's it, I'm changing from a coffee drip to a Post Road Pumpkin Ale drip and citing a gross lack of continuity.