Episode Report Card Keckler: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Flight Of The Simulator
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.03.2004
Simulator. Quantum pulls a long swallow of Andorian ale and babbles about stuff he learned in prison from other inmates about some planet on which he wants to take a lake bath. Bamp. Chicka. Degra drinks as well. "It sounds a lot like Earth from the way he described it," Quantum slurs a bit, and takes the bottle back.
From their closed-circuit camera, Hoshi watches Quantum swig. "The Captain's certainly drinking a lot," she comments. "The doctor gave him an anti-intoxicant," T'Pol tells her. See, some people wondered about Hoshi's motivation for making that comment, but I think it was put in by the writers for no other reason than to have T'Pol mention the anti-intoxicant so that the viewers (myself included) wouldn't throw fits about Quantum's drinking while on an important simulated mission.
Okay, so I fucked up THAT meal. First off, the salmon from Berkeley Bowl had bones in it. All over. Bones. Listen, I don't pay for prime salmon to have so many pin bones that Dr. Mathra and I spend our entire meal with thoughtful expressions on our faces as we mull around them! Anyway, I lined my bamboo-steamer (thanks, CLCC!) with paper-thin slices of Blood Oranges and Palestine Sweet Limes and steamed one filet, and I concocted a Blood Orange sauce to accompany it. Then, after marinating the other filet in a puree of Meyer Lemons, green garlic, olive oil, and S&P, I pan-seared the pink sucker. I served that filet with a bit of the reserved puree napped on top. Eh. It was fine. Dr. Mathra loved both dishes, but I had all sorts of finicky, chefy, presentationy complaints. I didn't reduce the Blood Orange sauce enough, and the filets -- which for some reason the Berkeley Bowl fishmonger sliced so thin as to make them roulades -- sort of fell apart after I removed them from the steamer and the skillet.
In the simulator, Quantum gets Degra to talk a bit about the colony he lived on, and how he wasn't living there by choice. In fact, Degra's wife was desperate to leave. Degra asks, "Do you have a family, Captain?" Quantum sniffs amusedly and says, "It's been a long time since anyone's called me 'Captain' -- it's Jonathan, remember?" Ha -- a memory joke! How not very hilarious. Quantum says he never had an opportunity to start a family. "You should make the time," Degra tells him. Degra, since you blew up his world, I think it's a bit late for that, so why don't you try REAL hard to remove the kosher salt from THAT wound? Degra says that he learned that his work meant very little in the grand scheme of things, and that the children are the future if you teach them well and let them lead the way. I don't know how much beauty Xindi possess inside, but I suppose they can still have a sense of pride. Degra adds that he would do anything to protect his spawn, and after he learned about the human threat, he left his theoretical studies and went to Los Alamos make the weapon. Quantum puts a clenched fist to his furrows as he has to sit through and listen to Degra explain how he got Pay-Per-View in order to watch the Psycho Bocce Ball dissect Florida. "Seven million lives were extinguished in front of my eyes," Degra muses trancefully. "I asked myself how many of those were children." Degra pulls hard on the bottle and supposes he's told Quantum all this before. Quantum honestly denies it. They get an incoming message. It's a "response" from Degra's "men." A male voice says it's good to hear Degra's voice. "Trip? Reed? Travis?!" Dr. Mathra wonders. Nope. It's Hoshi speaking through a voice-distorter. Cool, just like when Trini visited the KISS set on 3-2-1 Contact. There's some fake signal failure before Hoshi/Thalen tells Degra that she/he's on Azati Prime, and that Degra's family is safe. They lose the signal, and Quantum comments that it's good to know Degra's family is safe. Degra responds, "There were more than a thousand Primates and Arboreals at that colony; I don't understand why it wasn't destroyed." Quantum presses Degra to cough up the coordinates. Degra pauses and looks up at him. He admits that he still has a problem giving Quantum directions to a classified Xindi outpost. Again, Quantum pushes himself away from the console and says, "Be my guest." Degra starts punching numbers.