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
Again with the upside-down shuttlecraft. "How were they killed?" Quantum asks Phlox. "Different ways. This one was given a lethal dose of chloraxine, the first three back there were shot -- particle weapons, I believe. This fellow," Phlox says, moving on to a hanging body, "hasn't suffered as much cellular decay. He's our best candidate for a post-mortem -- care to assist?"
In another part of the dead ship, Trip examines the com system and fires it up. It babbles a bit. "Coona tuta, Solo?" Mathra garbles through his beer. Hoshi potters a bit and says, "Maybe it's a log -- what do you think?" Trip responds, "Beats me, could be a laundry list or instructions on how to conquer the universe." Hoshi says, "The grammar sounds bi-modal," and Trip says, "Their transceiver's intact," and neither of them understands what the hell the other just said. Trip hauls some cable and pokes some buttons, commenting, "Let's hope the next time we make first contact, it isn't with a roomful of corpses." "Let's hope," Hoshi says, calibrating her translator. "Ship," she says, and, in case we didn't hear her the first time, she says it again: "Ship." Do you think she discovered the word for "ship"?
In the makeshift morgue, Phlox tells Cpt. Quantum that he discovered a zymuth gland that releases triglobulin into the blood. "That's what all these tubes and pumps are for," Phlox explains, gesturing, "Whoever did this is trying to collect triglobulin." Cpt. Quantum asks why. Phlox says that triglobulin has a number of uses: medicine, vaccines, aphrodisiacs. "Aphrodisiac?" Quantum exclaims. "It's quite a common practice, I'm surprised you're not familiar with it?" Phlox says, fixing him with a gimlet eye through his space helmet. Cpt. Quantum admits that humans used to collect black bear bile -- eww, really? -- powdered rhino horn, et cetera. "But not people!" he says. I'm not going to start a rant focusing on how humans use animals so heartlessly because they're "not people." I'm just not. However, my grandmother often said that she preferred animals to people, and sometimes I'm very inclined to agree with her. Phlox pokes at the dead alien and tells Quantum that triglobulin is "very similar to human lymphatic fluid."
Back in the com room, Hoshi asks Trip how long before he can have the transceiver online. "Just another minute or two," he tells her. There's a tingle, and we hear, "You've got mail!" Okay, there isn't. More alien language jibba-jabba. "I can't get enough of this," Trip says, "an alien spaceship sending off a message to who knows where." Hoshi's less than exuberant. "I wish I had an ear for languages," Trip continues. "The Cap'n's going to need a translator with him a lot more often than an engineer." "Distress," Hoshi says, calibrating her translator again. Hoshi tells him a story of visiting some Amazonian tributary, which had lots of icky creepy crawlies. She was less than thrilled about that little adventure. "If I don't like being around anacondas [My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon!], you can imagine how I feel about Suliban or whoever butchered the crew of this ship." Yes, we know, you saw dead bodies. You screamed. You were traumatized. You can only sleep portside. Get a psychiatrist and get over it. "I'm going to ask the Captain to take me home," Hoshi says finally. Trip looks at her, concerned, and asks if she's serious. Hoshi tells him she shouldn't have left the university: "I'm not suited for this." But you are, you're wearing it, it's bronze and it's what makes you claustropho -- okay, never mind. "Give it a try; you'll be fine," Trip says in a totally unconvincing tone -- and with totally unconvincing dialogue, for that matter. Hoshi says she lost it when she saw the bodies; the Captain needs a translator made of sterner stuff. "That isn't me," she says. "You can't be sure of that," Trip says, again with a total lack of real feeling. Hoshi tells him, "Oh, yes I can. 'Distress'!" In case you were alarmed, that last part was more of her translating business. She makes the alien language repeat its word: kunatsila. "Distress," she says again, "I think I've got it -- 'Ship in distress.'" Oh, big whoop. Like that was such a big leap of the imagination. I mean, if it had been a conjugation of a few irregular verbs or the libretto of a light opera, now that would have been something. Hoshi smiles at Trip. Gee, do you think she's going to rethink her desire to go back to Earth?