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
Hoshi walks in and sees the Captain on the floor with his science officer standing behind him. "I'm sorry," she says, imagining all sorts of kinky space scenarios. T'Pol looks at the Captain's butt and tells him she'll "leave [him] to [his] 'exploring.'" Cpt. Quantum heaves himself to his feet and comments that he heard of the space worm's -- no, not T'Pol's lip -- declining health. Hoshi tells him the good doctor is doing all he can. "Sir, my quarters are on E-deck, starboard section five," she says, broaching a new topic. "Yes?" Cpt. Quantum prompts her. "The stars are going the wrong way, sir," Hoshi tells him, channeling Monica Gellar. That leaves Cpt. Quantum stumped. Hoshi explains that she had a portside cabin on both her training flights, and now that she's starboard, she's not sleeping too well. "Have the doctor give you a hypo-spray for that, Ensign, we can't be playing musical cabins!" Mathra calls out from the kitchen in his best Picard accent. Hoshi tells Cpt. Quantum that she and Ensign Porter have discussed the matter, and he's agreed to swap with her. "With your permission," she finishes. "You got it," Cpt. Quantum says. "Can't have my Com Officer," he pauses and looks at the floor of his cabin, "falling asleep on the bridge." Hoshi thanks him but continues standing in front of him. Cpt. Quantum asks her if there's anything else she wants to say. "No, sir," she says and leaves, shooting him a look from the corner of her eye. Cpt. Quantum sits back and puzzles over whether she suspects that he's wearing The Tick Underoos.
In the weapons bay, Mayweather and Reed calibrate some things. "Ready?" Reed asks. "Fore and aft target scanners are aligned," Mayweather tells him. "Activating simulation J-6," Reed says. They walk up to a screen and start to play Pong. Actually, these graphics are much better than that -- showing the target grids, diagram of the type of torpedo they're detonating, et cetera. "Target acquired," Reed says. "Simulated launch," Mayweather reports. Tweaks and squeals emit from Pong. "Five seconds to impact," Reed says, "three, two, one." There's a diddle noise, and Mayweather shakes his head. "We're only off by three meters," he tells Reed. Reed huffs a bit. "Three meters could mean the difference between hitting a weapons port and a warp core," he gripes, "instead of disabling a ship we could end up destroying it. And ourselves in the proe-cess." Reed says, getting all passionate and British. He whines some more that they should've taken care of all this before they left Earth. "Have they detected any inhabited planets or vessels?" Reed asks. Mayweather tells him they've sighted nothing yet and says, "I hope you don't expect everyone we run into out here to be hostile. In twenty-three years I don't think my parents ran into trouble more than half a dozen times." Just in case any of us stumbled into a time-space-memory distortion and forgot that Mayweather grew up bopping around space on a cargo ship. Reed tells Mayweather he was never out "quite this far." "You think that makes a difference?" Mayweather asks. Reed's just worried that if they run into aliens who want to suck their blood or mate with them, they're not prepared with effective weapons or adequate prophylactics. "Seems like everybody else aboard is itching for a first contact," Mayweather comments. Either that or it's the slug rash Hoshi's been passing around.