Episode Report Card Keckler: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Worm Turns
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.02.2001
Burp. A few delicious chorizos and guacamole from Boca Grande later…
Hoshi stands in sick bay, pouting and listening to Phlox regale her with tales of his mysterious home planet. "Not long after I became a physician, there was an explosion on a cargo ship orbiting my home world and I was part of the first medical team to arrive. There were seventeen bodies on the bridge alone. I'd never seen so many dead people in one place before. Very disturbing. You have nothing to be ashamed of," he says, turning to Hoshi. "I screamed like a twelve-year-old," Hoshi says. Yes, yes, you did. Phlox tells her they're all scared of unfamiliar things: "You should be grateful that your body of experience doesn't include rooms full of corpses." Hoshi comments that no one else screamed. Phlox shrugs and takes of the lid off of Sluggo's terrarium. Hoshi asks if her pet has been eating. "Not so far," Phlox comments. "She has been under a great deal of stress but I'm hoping this protein concentrate whets her appetite," he says, dripping a turkey baster full of white stuff onto the rock near Sluggo. Hoshi goes on that she's a translator (Hoshi, not the slug, but I can see where you'd get confused) and therefore not skilled in the dead-body discovery missions. "It goes without saying that you're going to encounter the unexpected," Phlox tells her. "Not corpses on hooks!" Hoshi says, for the benefit of those in the viewing audience desensitized to mentions of violent death. Phlox asks her if she'd be happier back at the university, because he taught for years and loved it. Somehow, I get the feeling there's precious little in the cosmos that Phlox doesn't love. Hoshi begins to pace. "I'm an exo-linguist," she tells him, "I graduated second in my class, I spent three years in Starfleet training -- I was Jonathan Archer's first choice for this mission." Then start living up to your overachiever reputation, O Squeamish One. Hoshi gazes intently at Phlox: "Every inhabited world we come to is going to be filled with language. Some will have hundreds of them. He needs me here." "If she doesn't take these nutrients, I'm afraid she won't survive," Phlox tells her. "Are you sure that's what she eats?" Hoshi asks, clasping her hands behind her back. "It's close enough," Phlox tells her. Hoshi muses for a bit and says, "I shouldn't have brought her on board." No, you shouldn't have, especially since she crawled into Ensign Daemon's ear two nights ago and burrowed into his brain. HOOOOSHI! What? Oh, wrong storyline. "Maybe I should ask the captain to try to find a planet with an argon-rich atmosphere," she says. Phlox comments that it might be easier to feed Sluggo to his bat. Hoshi sighs and glares. She does that a lot this episode. When she's not squealing, that is. "She needs to get back to an environment that is more suited to her," Hoshi says. "Hmm, perhaps someplace where she can teach," Phlox says pointedly. Wait, I'm confused now. Are they talking about Sluggo or Hoshi? It's far too complex for my alcohol-addled brain.
At Captain Stubing's table, Quantum, Trip, and T'Pol gather round to sup and gossip about Gopher's hair. It's clear that Trip is the most voluble of the trio. T'Peevish is just naturally so, but Quantum -- well, Quantum's conscience is twanging him a bit. "What kind of pasta is this? It's great," Trip asks. Are they going to hammer it home in each episode that all they eat is regular Earth food because they haven't encountered any other species? Just checking. Cpt. Quantum mutters that he doesn't remember. "Too spicy for ya?" Trip quips to T'Peevish. "It's fine," she tells him. Trip says that Reed wants to do another weapons test, "especially after what happened." Whatever -- Reed wants to do additional weapons tests whenever the wind blows in the right direction. Cpt. Quantum gazes to his right, lost in thought. Trip offers tea to T'Peevish, who declines. Anyone notice that the table shrunk for this episode? In "Broken Bow," they made a point of showing how looong the table was in order to wax metaphorical about the distance between the three of them. Now, the table's a tighter circle, more intimate. More anvilicious. Trip next offers tea to Cpt. Quantum, who absently accepts. "I heard they were humanoid," Trip says, attempting to jump-start the lagging conversation. "Humanoid," Cpt. Quantum confirms. Trip asks if they looked anything "like us." "They were in uniform," Quantum says. Trip polishes his pliers, readies his syringe of Novocain, and goes for the molars: "But you didn't recognize the species?" The camera tightens on Quantum's face for the Dramatic Shot as he says, "They were crewmen, murdered on their own ship. Fifteen. Dead. Crewmen." Point. Taken. Trip nods. T'Peevish says she detected a "stellar nursery" somewhere along their present course, and Trip says he saw one once "through the big lens outside Anchorage." Right, that "big lens." I got it confused with the other "big lens."