Episode Report Card Keckler: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Crazy Like A Phlox
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 21 | Aired on 04.22.2003
Mess. Phlox sits alone. T'Pol walks in and gets herself some tea. She asks to join Phlox, but Phlox tells her he's not in the mood. T'Pol starts to walk away, until Phlox calls her back and apologizes. T'Pol reports that the repairs to the transport are going slowly, and Phlox reports that Denotbulan has a death wish. "That's unfortunate," T'Pol sips. Phlox says, "This man seems to want to die just to prove a point. It's painful to admit, but I understand why." T'Pol just listens. Phlox relates a story of his grandmother's extreme prejudice against the Antarans that prevented him from visiting a planet the Antarans once inhabited, because she thought the planet was "tainted" by them. Phlox goes on to say that when he had children of his own, he took them to that planet: "I was determined not to raise them as I was raised." T'Pol comments, "Your children were fortunate to have a father who taught them to embrace other cultures." Wow. Jolene really should have checked those bags at the gate -- she's looking pretty haggard here. Phlox's eyes fill up with tears as he chokes out, "I've certainly tried." T'Pol asks --with enough feeling for us to know she's not really a robot, but not so much that she's trespassing on her Vulcan values -- "Are you all right?" Phlox apologizes and hurriedly excuses himself. T'Pol looks contemplative. After saying how annoyed I was by the Teach T'Pol To Be More Human shtick, this was a welcome, if predictable, change.
Canyonlands. Trip and Reed crawl through a crawlspace in the rocks, and my claustrophobia kicks in with the added bonus of an asthma attack. Trip asks if Reed can see anything. Reed can't. Trip asks if Reed is sure this is the way the Denobulan scientists came. Reed says there was no other passage. Trip thinks they'll give it another half hour and then turn back. Reed has no argument with that. Reed reads three Denobulan bio-signs ahead. Party. They crawl some more and reach a cavern. Anytime now, I'm expecting to have them stumble into a cave of jewels or one of the other 1,001 tales. The Geobulans turn around and want to know why they hell they are encroaching on their cave. Trip explains the situation -- what was it again? -- of having to get off-worlders off the planet before the Militant Government starts in with the Armageddon stuff. The Geobulans are unimpressed, and say they have no immediate plans to leave. Trip and Reed are annoyed. Hee -- Reed made a funny "um, really?" face. And then I banned him for starting a sentence with "um."