Episode Report Card Keckler: C | 74 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Boredomland
By Keckler | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 2004.10.29
I think all I need to say about this episode is that it put the Evil Dr. Mathra and Cask 23 -- previously hopped up on Halloween candy, mulled wine, and English Cheddar chowder -- to sleep. Unfortunately, I was wide awake. However, it soon became clear that every feeling in my body revolted against recapping this episode when I "accidentally" deleted the episode from TiVo right after watching it. Good thing it airs again on Sundays, and good thing I have friends who know things about things and who shared those things with me in the meantime. Thanks, Belchimaera, you're awesome.
Actually, that's not all I have to say. Let me tell you something -- I love what this episode could have been. I loved Spiner and his sneers and his facial ticks and his comments about the humorless crew. I love that the writers delved into one of the best TOS stories of all time and started to seek out what they could make of it. This is what I've been pleading for since the first season. I love the idea that Data's ancestor could be a morally-ambiguous psychopath. I didn't love the execution. I didn't love Quantum's continued need for brain or Bean-O. I mean, he got laid last week, should he still be glowing? I didn't love the boring, ugly, in-fighting Khannabees. I continue not to love T'Pol the CRACK WHORE and her CRACK WHORE of a costume. Especially now that she's Starfleet. My only hope is that the next two episodes in this arc are the better for having dispensed with the dreary setting-up that happened in this one.
A Klingon (yay, Klingons!) ship analyzes and tractor beams in a "disabled" ship. Klingons march two extremely unattractive "humans" down the hallways. At some point, they stop walking, look at each other sideways, and proceed to beat the crap out of the Klingons. There's a scene where the uglier of the two humans -- that dude from Dune with a really bad case of hockey hair. Not that hockey hair is ever good, but this case is particularly bad, what with Newman's general and overall skanktitude -- plants a foot in a Klingon guard's chest and super-kicks him across the room. More fighting ensues and the humans win. Something within me revolts at seeing Klingons treated this way -- maybe it's because they all look like Worf to me. And no, that's not racism, that's love. But wait, I can't forget to comment on the humans' choice of couture. It's horrid. They're wearing spotty chain mail over black nylon shirts that are, as Chris Van Allsburg pointed out, "'fashionably' torn in places." It's ridiculous and would almost be something I could forgive if this were TNG, but this isn't and I don't. In fact, their claw-marked fashion sense puts me in mind of another group of super-humans. Hmm, I wonder…no, I really don't. Nothing in the way they are going about this episode is subtle, so I'll just lay it on the table and call these sartorially-challenged super-humans "Khannabees." The two Khannabees charge the Klingon bridge and kill Martok's great-great-whatever father and his second-in-command.