Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pets And Petulance
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.15.2002
Does Forest Whitaker have a lazy eye?
Sick Bay. As Quantum crouches with the net, Phlox slinks around with an origami pterodactyl ("Look -- it's a pterodactyl! SQUAWK! SQUAWK!" Anyone else remember those Little Caesar's commercials? "Sistine Chapel on the head of a pin!"), which I guess is intended either to scare Pyro into Quantum's net or to serve as some sort of romantic lure for it. The bluish-white Pyro squeaks and crawls across Phlox's shelves as Phlox sneaks up on her. Quantum climbs the shelving, net poised. Phlox starts flapping the wings of his origami pterodactyl and makes a low gurgling wail deep in his throat. Sounds a bit like the sound I made the fifth time I sat through this episode. Pyro takes off and attacks the noisy piece of origami, which succeeds in knocking Phlox completely off balance, and he crashes to the floor. Quantum is equally ineffectual in catching the errant Pyro. He pokes the net in the bat's direction a few times, but really is worse than useless -- especially since he knocks shelves clean of vital-to-Porthos's-life compounds and acts more scared than predatory. A turned-over can of something pink and gooey -- a three-pound tin of Reed's lip gloss, perhaps? -- drips on Phlox. Finally, Quantum jumps down next to the still prone doctor/vet and accuses, "I thought you said your bat was supposed to be terrified of that thing!" I think the bat's more scared of your furrow than of origami. Phlox groans to his feet: "It should have been -- Pyrithian Moon Hawks eat these bats." Phlox muses over his origami: "Oh, I know I got the silhouette right. And I mastered the call...years ago." Phlox tries a few more guttural coos and groans again. "That stuff isn't poisonous, is it?" Quantum asks, indicating the ooze covering Phlox's front. Phlox slides his hand through the stuff and sucks it off: "Nah, I'll be fine." Hee -- I love blasé alien doctors. Phlox wrenches the origami off the end of his net and tosses it away as Quantum asks what they do next. "We have to find her before we can catch her," Phlox tells him. "She'll stay up high." They look around. How much was I praying that Pyro would guano in Quantum's hair, and that it would drip into his furrow? Yeah, me and just about everyone on the forums.
Phlox attempts to revisit the whole Quantum Loves T'Pol tree carving. Quantum snaps that it's two-thirty in the morning and he's crawling up walls looking for an escaped bat, so T'Pol's curves -- er, edges -- aren't foremost in his mind. "Sexual tension, Captain," Phlox tells him. "There's no doubt in my mind." Quantum thinks he sees Pyro by the air duct, but Phlox tells him it's the filter bracket. "For a few months I've noticed increasing friction between you and the sub-commander. You must understand that I'm trained to observe these things," Phlox tells him. As much as I hate to contradict Phlox, I think he's incorrect about the "few months" thing. First of all, friction started the first moment T'Pol stepped her bony butt aboard the ship and turned her nose up at the stench of Porthos and Trip in the morning. Second of all, they've been getting along better in the last few recent months than they did at the beginning of their professional relationship, so if anything, Phlox should have noticed a decrease in friction, not an increase. Either those truncated hours of his hibernation affected Phlox more than he thought, or someone in the editing room needs to take another look at their plot arcs. Quantum tells him flat out that he's wrong and that he and T'Pol are getting along like peas in a pod, "so let it alone." Heedless of Quantum's furrow, Phlox goes on with his analysis: "When one person believes their sexual attraction for another is inappropriate, they often exhibit unexpected behavior. Such as inordinate anger toward comparisons made between their ship and their beagle." Phlox titters. Quantum turns his perma-furrow (have you noticed that even when there's no emotion requiring a furrow, he STILL has one stuck up there?) on Phlox and starts to say, "Listen, Doc --" But Pyro decides she's as bored as we are with this contrived and forced semblance of chemistry between the Captain and his Bony But Buxom Science Officer, and flutters down toward them.