Episode Report Card Keckler: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unfrozen Caveman Captain
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.23.2003
I'm on a Pumpkin Ale Quest in San Francisco. I desperately need something to replace my New England nectar, and I actually have a few leads. However, until I fully test them all, I'm settling for a very different form of mental Novocaine: sake. The first U.S. sake store EVER opened in our neighborhood and, after the owner/sake sensei diagnosed my sakeity based on what kinds of wines, beers, and hard alcohols I prefer, I carted two little bottles home. Man, I think I'm in love, and that's powerful stuff!
Command Center. Quantum gets up and says, "Sorry if I woke you," in a tone that tells me he couldn't be less sincere if he had a gold tooth and was promising that a bottle of Dr. Beetles' Batch of Burgeoning Bakula would turn this block of birch back into the charming actor he used to be. T'Pol, now in her onesie that Benjamin Moore calls "Blue Dragon," tells him she wasn't sleeping. She's just daring him to ask what she was doing! She wants him to know, she wants him to suffer, she wants him to plead for some Neural Node Nudging of his very own! I think the Enterprise that I make up in my head is far more diverting than this one. Quantum shows her a picture. "Another species of Xindi?" T'Pol guesses. Not saying where the picture has come from, Quantum says that Phlox thinks this one evolved from an "arboreal primate." Like a gibbon? Or Australopithecus, which was never fully erect because he was nervous? "I managed to piece together some of their starcharts. It took me half the night to figure out how they map coordinates --" "Half the night?! He clearly should have taken my Math 21a last year," the Harassed Dr. Mathra mutters, sifting through his lesson plans. "But I've been able to reconstruct the ships course over the past few months," Quantum finishes before the Harassed Dr. Mathra (the Evil Dr. Mathra's alter ego) can get in any more grumbling. Quantum says that before these Monkey Boys were attacked by the Osaarian pirates, their ship had visited some nearby planet, and now Enterprise is going to that planet to see if they can find something. Oooh, now I get it! This is from that database Hoshi downloaded in the last episode. Forgive me -- I've sort of started a new job, and it's been a long week. Especially since yesterday I went to a party sponsored by Mitchell's ice cream and my brain is a bit sugar-and-cream-addled this morning. What, pray tell, does Quantum hope to find on this planet? I mean, the only thing I can think the Monkey Boys would leave behind would not exactly be things you'd want to bring back to your ship to study, you know what I mean? Well, I guess Phlox would. T'Pol reminds Quantum that they don't know if these were the same Xindi that attacked Earth. "We don't know they weren't," Quantum growls, and orders her to order May-You-Snooze-You-Lose to set a course.
Enterprise approaches a planet. Remember that commercial a few years back that announced the new color of the New VW Beetle as "Vapor"? Well, that's the new color of T'Pol's new onesie -- she's the Vapor Velveteen Vulcan today. That puts her wardrobe up to three distinct colors now, and once I can come up with a shade of blue that starts with "V," I can have a hat trick of wardrobe descriptions for her. Huh -- I wonder if it says anything about this episode that I'm more involved in thinking about T'Pol's clothes than I am in mentioning that the planet is filled with lots of plant life but no humanoid life as yet. I'll have to think about that a little more. Reed picks up signs of a landing craft on some islands, but T'Pol still can't find any bio-signs. Quantum furrows at the screen. A sh'pod launches from the belly of Enterprise with Quantum at the helm. Reed and T'Pol are there too, and Hoshi hangs out in the back looking bored.