Episode Report Card 4 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT A Horse! A Horse! My Boredom For A Horse!
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.28.2003
Enterprise. Trip's rifle range. Anyone else notice that Trinneer does a weird lip-pursing thing before he speaks? I never saw it before, but he's in profile in this shot and it's really obvious. Trip can't get the rifle to fire, so Phlox suggests that the safety is on. Heh. That cracked me up, because I just don't think that alien guns have "safetys," but I'm sure Phlox learned about safetys from watching television when he lived on Earth. The rifle starts making noise, and it becomes clear it's overloading. Trip tears down a corridor -- knocking another officer down who doesn't even bother to get up again. I feel you, Rent-a-Redshirt -- and transports the gun into space. It fully materializes miles above Enterprise and explodes. Don't you love how things are required to fully materialize before they are allowed to blow up? I mean, what if the overload countdown finished while the rifle was only partially materialized? It would be a much less impressive explosion. It would be a fart. Trip breathes hard and drapes himself over the transporter console as Phlox and T'Pol run up. Phlox congratulates him on his quick thinking, and Trip acknowledges to T'Pol that it wasn't a good idea to test the weapon on the ship.
Caves. T'Pol comms Quantum that the Xindi ship is where it was before, and that she suggests Quantum hurry his furrowed ass back to the ship. Quantum tells her his business isn't finished yet. Do you need some toilet paper? That's right -- I'm bringing out the bathroom humor full force! Got a problem with that? Reed stands outside the cave and tells Quantum that he hasn't seen any more seekers. That's really too bad, because if there were some more, you could not shoot them again. In the cave, Mr. Mugato lounges by a fire and tells Quantum that the topaline ore in the cave will disrupt the seekers' sensors. Oh, god. I can't believe I called that. Quantum crouches in such a way that his profile is perfectly thrown up against the cave wall. What do you know, even his furrows show up in silhouette. Mr. Mugato hypothesizes what Quantum's next move is. He predicts that he will blow up the weapons facility, and wonders if they will let him go or just murder him first. Quantum acknowledges that the other Mugatos on the planet were not responsible for the attack on Earth, and says he's considering another option if Mr. Mugato is willing to help him. Mr. Mugato is. Quantum turns from Mr. Mugato and stares off into what can only be another cave wall and intones, "Then we'll give them their kimosabe, but it won't be exactly what they ordered." It will be medium rare instead of well-done?
Lately, I thought I needed punishing. I've been watching Dawson's Creek. See, I quit watching that damn show mid-season-four but, possessed by some demon sent by St. Clare to torment me for not taking her out of her plastic box, I have found reason to watch it in reruns on the Superstation. This is what freelancing does to you! Anyway, while watching the Beek pout out his window in "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," I was struck with a parallel so completely freaky that the wine fell out of my mouth. Well, not so much fell as spattered all over my notes on an article about illegal cheeses. The Beek is Quantum. In profile, they have the same chin, the same brow, even the same bushy-ish eyebrows. In personality, they have the same petulance, assyness, and self-centeredness masquerading as emotional depth, not to mention the same power to piss me off to no end. The Beek's hair this season is a perfect facsimile of Quantum's comb-forward, and as for the Beek's famed five-head -- take a look a Bakula's (if you can locate it under all the furrows), it's not an insignificant space. Finally? They even both have a WOTWW! Are you as scared as I am? I'm freaked that I had the time to consider all those parallels. If Enterprise ever had a "Mirror, Mirror", Beek could play Quantum's evil -- albeit younger -- twin. And now I think it's time to change the subject, as this one has clearly wet itself.