Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Technobabel
By Keckler | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.27.2005
Bridge. Enterprise tries to hail the flea ship, but it doesn't respond, and T'Pol can't determine if there are any bio-signs aboard. Quantum orders Reed to go aboard with Trip and some Uh-Ohs and figure out what's up.
The Away Team beam over and discover that the ship's depressurized. They start to check stuff out.
Luke the ROMULAN wants to overload the core to keep it away from Starfleet. After an initial boggle, the other ROMULAN fiddles with The Gimp. The Gimp is all creepy and shrouded and sort of like Laura Palmer. Actually, I really don't know who Laura Palmer is. At least, I know she has something to do with Twin Peaks, but I never watched it, so I never get the references. I do know she's dead and that it was weird and gruesome but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Oh, except for the fact that I recently learned they aren't the Twin Peaks I see every day. You hate me now, don't you? But hey, ROMULANS who would commit suicide in an act of homeland security? That's something.
In the middle of Trip trying to get the Flea Ship's power online, the ship powers itself up and fires on Enterprise. Quantum wants their people back, but because the Flea Ship's hull plating is reinforced with a Plot Device, they can only transport one person at a time back to Enterprise. After a few explosions, the transporter and a whole mess of other things are offline. Naturally, Reed and Trip are stranded on the Flea Ship. Quantum comms Trip and Reed that they will have to come back for them. Enterprise flees.
The Gimp rotates in his chair and twiddles his fingers. No, he really does. But his fingers are attached to all those sparkly cables, so he's probably actually doing something. The ROMULANS confirm that Enterprise warped off, and order a pursuit.
You know, it would appear that most sci-fi shows these days have their own, albeit rather smurfy (especially when overused in the forums) words for "fuck." There's "frell," "frak," "smeg," "feldercarp," "shells"...but what does Star Trek have? Nothing. They don't swear. Apparently, they don't get upset enough to befoul their evolved mouths. Star Trek is the pollyanna of sci-fi. Maybe that's this show's problem, you know? Hey, just shove some invented expletives in there and people just might start watching again.
Somewhere on the flea ship, Reed and Trip are tossed like fictional humans in a fictional warp-capable ship whose fictional inertial dampeners are fictionally offline. Because, people, if we wanted to be real for a moment, we would realize that if the inertial dampeners were truly offline and the ship was really going as fast as they want us to think it's going, Reed and Trip would be mere smears on the bulkheads. In all of this, Reed's suit blows a leak. Trip determines that Reed's got eight minutes of oxygen left, so he takes his thick tubing and sticks it in Reed's tank and blows him some. Air. Blows him some air. Perverts.