Episode Report Card Keckler: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Best. Episode. Ever.
By Keckler | Season 4 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.21.2005
I'm sitting here. Mouth agape. Fist bruised from pounding the sofa. NOW they cancel the show? Where were these writers when...and why...just...sob. Excuse me. I need a moment.
People, when I realized that Vaughn Armstrong was brought back to be evil, I just about lost it. Three years ago, at the close of the first season, I said, "See, I think Forrest is going to turn out bad. First of all, no one can act that wet and be real, and secondly, this is the only time we've seen a repeat Admiral that the captain of the Enterprise reports to." I then hypothesized that he could be Shower Guy and proceeded to constantly call him Evil Admiral Forrest on the strength that he was too boring to be anything but evil. It was a joke. But when that joke got realized in this episode -- yes, they made him a captain, but big diff -- I decided that I'm just going to have take it as a shout-out. I just am. If you don't agree, I don't care because I'm lovin' it. And this is the deal, I'm not coming up with an evil name for Forrest because, cha, he's ALWAYS been evil. However, I had several evil names lined up for Quantum (among them, Scott Evil) but I decided Evil Leaper captured it neatly.
We get a shot of the top of the ship and we can see that it has been PT Cruisered with yellow flames and also has the Terran Empire symbol painted on it. By the way, the ship? In true TOS Mirror Universe form? Is called the I.S.S. Enterprise. Yeah, baby. Evil Cpt. Forrest logs that they are meeting up with their "assault fleet" and that Reedvil and Phlevil want to show him their "latest project."
A Starfleet-uniformed Tellarite is tortured in the Agony Booth. As Reedvil and Phlevil take turns elucidating the many pleasures their Agony Booth can provide, I note two things. Keating has dropped his voice and subtly comes across as very smooth, very calm, very evil. Of course, bring British, I guess it wasn't much of a stretch. You know, I quite enjoy every ounce of his acting in this episode. And the lack of lipgloss is very manly of him. Phlevil, on the other hand, seems higher-pitched and grating. Also excellent. Forrest thinks Phlevil enjoys his work too much. Phlevil grins. Evil Leaper wants to know, "What exactly did Mr. Terev do?" Go figure, Evil Quantum is as much a goody-two-shoes as Quantum Regular and also has just as big a sequoia planted up his ass. TIMBER! Sorry. Evil Reedvil sneers that he doesn't rightly know and hypothesizes he was late for his shift or some such, adding, "Aren't all Tellarites guilty of something?"