Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pets And Petulance
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.15.2002
Engineering. It's 9:09 PM. Trip tells Quantum that he really needs to get on with the ass-kissing of the Kreetassans. I'm sure Reed has some lip shine suited to the occasion that he can borrow. Quantum tries to argue that the ship can run on the four injectors it has. "Yeah, but it can't run on three," Trip tells him. "You know what happens at warp speed when you've only got three plasma injectors online." Quantum wants to know what the odds are of them losing one before he can find another race of aliens to offend. "I'm not comferble with four, Cap'n. We need five. What the hell happen'd down thar, ennyway?" Quantum tells him that T'Pol thinks they insulted them again. "How?" Trip asks. "You dinnit eat cabbage before you left." First pewp boots, then Malcolm "Pee-Pee Pants" Reed, and now a fart joke? The collective mental age of this crew has been determined to be no more than six. Quantum insists that he was the "perfect gentleman," then raves that the Kreetassans are impossible and they will have to find a plasma injector elsewhere. Trip argues that the plasma injector has to come from the Finicky Kreetassans for all kinds of technobabble reasons. "Yer a trained diplomat -- take the high road -- there's gotta be sum way you kin kiss and make up," Trip says. Yes, and Reed has the make-up. But hold on a second, Quantum is a "trained diplomat," and he still acts like an ass in almost every situation? I had believed that his behavior from Episode One, Season One to the present stemmed from having no more diplomatic schooling than a backward trilobite wallowing in primeval slime, but now I see that it's simply congenital fatheadedness that causes him to act like a certain malapropistic president from Texas. "I'll have T'Pol see if she can find out what we did," Quantum says grudgingly. You mean he didn't already have her working on it? I didn't know it was even possible to have a negative IQ. He tells Trip he's not promising anything.
Sick Bay. Quantum strides in, saying he went to decon, but Phlox wasn't there and he wants to know if everything is all right. He stops short when he sees Porthos in an incubator. Phlox tells him that he can pet the adorable dog, but he has to use the isolation gloves. Annoyingly, Quantum doesn't give his dog some reassuring strokes right away, instead demanding to know if Phlox ran tests. "His autoimmune system is collapsing," Phlox informs the owner, who still isn't petting his dog through the incubator. "I've isolated the pathogen, broken down its protein sequence -- I can't explain it, Captain. It shouldn't be affecting him like this, but it is." Quantum looks at Porthos, who just looks pathetic, and asks what Phlox plans to do. As Quantum starts to circle the incubator -- still without offering any consoling pats to the pet who is suffering at the hands of his owner's congenital stupidity -- he asks Phlox what he intends to do. Phlox intends to run more tests; he's sure he'll "come up with something. "How sure?" Quantum asks, crouching down on the side of the incubator that has no isolation gloves with which to pet his dog. "Could this be life-threatening?" Phlox tells him it's too early to tell anything. "Didn't we send his genome to the Kreetassans along with ours?" Quantum stiffs, looking for someone -- someone who is not Captain of the Enterprise -- to blame for this situation. Phlox said he transmitted the genomes himself. "So, shouldn't they have noticed that there's a pathogen in their atmosphere that his immune system can't handle?" Quantum demands. "They should have," Phlox confirms, "assuming they took the time to check."
Quantum furrows The Furrow Of Looking For A Reason To Kill Aliens Because I Don't Want To Own Up To My Part In All This and starts pacing the room (do I even have to say that he walks like both his legs have fallen asleep, along with most of his body?) and tells Phlox that he seems to have offended the Kreetassans twice: "Once for eating in front of them, the second time, I don't even know what for. But if their carelessness has hurt Porthos, or, God forbid, ends up killing him...they're going to find out what being offended is all about." Do you want to know why I didn't buy one letter of that speech? BECAUSE HE STILL HASN'T TOUCHED HIS DOG WHO IS ENCLOSED IN AN INCUBATOR! God. Phlox says, "Porthos has no intention of giving up. And neither do I." Okay, this is officially The Hoshi & Phlox Show -- get rid of the rest of these people, or at least relegate them to May-bump status. Quantum manages a half-smile under the weight of his brow and FINALLY consents to address his dog. "You hear that, boy, hmm?" Quantum sticks one of his hands in the incubator and pats Porthos, who puts one of his paws on top of the glove. And now I'm a puddle of goo. I get that way every time one of my cats sticks out a paw and rests it on my leg or hand. Quantum tells Porthos they're all pulling for him. Took you bloody long enough. Ass.