Episode Report Card Keckler: C | 87 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Mallomar
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2003.02.27
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Trip and Quantum are bound (but not gagged, sadly) and on their way to some penal spa on an alien Alcatraz. There's a slight mutiny, which puts even more unsavory characters in charge, but Quantum manages to wangle his way out of his non-padded handcuffs and into the driver's seat where he's in position to save the day. Trip is seated next to an acne-ridden teen alien who doesn't know that silence is golden-pressed latinum and is at the mercy of a curiously well-spoken Nausicaan. Elsewhere, T'Pol and the rest of the crew spin their wheels trying to rescue their beloved crew members from a death insensitively akin to Columbia. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with an exhibit of crap -- an assortment of dull dialogue and pointless plots that share one thing in common: you won't find them on the average network or basic cable channel. Each scene a collector's item in its own way -- not because of any special artistic quality, but because each scene captures on a celluloid canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of Keckler's nightmare. I welcome you to The Spite Gallery.
Empty shuttle. Tricorder floating in the empty shuttle so we really know it's an empty shuttle. Hoshi calling the empty shuttle to ask if all the rumors about it being an empty shuttle are correct. Dance Of The Reed Flutes gives the final word in empty shuttleness by reporting that there are no bio-signs. Ergo, the shuttle is empty. You know what's not an empty shuttle? That which holds my Post Road Pumpkin Ale.
Insert intense song hatred here.
The remaining crew listens to Quantum's log entries about his and Trip's successful first contact with the Enolians, the squeezing in of some R&R, and the mention of an alien form of water polo. GOD! Go to The Mall of America and buy yourself a new facet, Quantum! Phlox finds traces of Trip's and Quantum's blood in the sh'pod and announces that Dance Of The Reed Flutes thinks they were abducted. Did he come to that conclusion all on his own, or did the traces of blood and shuttle emptiness give it away? May-onnaise makes his patented annoyed face until T'Pol orders up a Trip-Tick for the Enolians' home world.
Alien ship. A humanoid alien pilots the ship while the other pulls a rifle out of a cabinet and says he'll be right back. Okay, you know what? I'm going to make this easy on myself. The ship they're on is a prisoner transport ship, and the people running it are Enolians -- I'm not going to wait for the "plot" to tell us those drabs of information, because it's really annoying. And boring. Have I mentioned how BORED I am? Bore, bored, boring. Passing a second Enolian guard with a rifle, the first Enolian paces up and down a catwalk and surveys the rows of prisoners. They all look like they should be holding onto oars stuck through the side of the hull like an old Viking ship. Quantum is hunched over, fidgeting with his restraint, which seems to be a bike lock with two holes for the wrists. A little red light lets us know these restraints do more than play a role in alien bondage films. Across the catwalk from Quantum, Trip alerts his captain that the guard is coming by. Both Trip and Quantum look a bit bashed in the face, although I think Trip's blood is a little pink to be real looking. Unless, of course, they're trying to make him out to be a Klingon-human hybrid. Quantum tries to get some answers out of the guard but gets his bikelock-built-for-two-wrists zapped for bothering. In what I hope is severe and monumental pain, Quantum falls against his seatmate -- who really resembles a latex nightmare of Clem, The Master, and Sloth from The Goonies all smushed together. Lex Latex irritably shoves him off. Heh. Mathra thinks the wrist restraints look like those "guards" people used to twist together on their Swatches. Remember Swatches? In fifth grade, I wanted one so bad. I begged and pleaded with my mother, but all she did was get me a pink and yellow imitation from Target. I got the guards, though.