Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Trip to Die
By Keckler | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.20.2005
Okay, so what the HELL do these Organians want? How does the observed species win the game and get to take home the first contact prize behind door number three? What DO they want? Do they want all species to be as germophobic as they are? Do they want the species to be sufficiently compassionate in how they treat their dying? That would explain why they didn't like the Cardassians or the Klingons, since they just killed their infected crewmembers. Do they want them never to have even explored the planet in the first place? If so, how would they ever have observed them? These are clearly not the same Organians of "Errand of Mercy," who were only concerned with preventing the war between the humans and Klingons. I mean, maybe they've evolved since then, but to what end? What are they now? What do they care about? What are they hoping to achieve? Are these questions ever answered in this episode? No. Instead, the Organians change their M.O. so we never really know what, without changing their M.O., would have made the humans pass Organian Chemistry. If they have standards, we are never made aware of them. Even Q was never this mean. He may have been enigmatic, irrational and egomaniacal, and naked, but he always had a goal. There was always an end. He was trying to teach them something or make them aware of things -- he wasn't just doing stuff to check them off as failures. He kept giving them more chances to prove themselves.
I also want to note here that there are two different Organians. One who is older, wiser, and has no merciful feelings towards the subjects they study, and another who is younger, possibly on his first mission, and more compassionate. In this scene, Bakula is playing the younger, more compassionate Organian, but where Montgomery played the ingénue part quite well, Bakula is still playing the part as if he were Quantum: angry, rigid, and furrowsome. It's a bad decision. Bakula could have seized on this opportunity to show all of us that he could still actually act beyond anger and assholishness, but he let it slip through his fingers. Like planets.
Orga-T'Pol suggests they return to their original hosts, as Quantum and T'Pol have decisions to make.
Phlox explains to T'Pol and Quantum that they have to move Hoshi and Trip to Sickbay in order to use the precision-based radiation treatment he's developed. They make the decision to expand the quarantine area.
We get a look at Trip and Hoshi's bio-monitors, and Hoshi's starts to beep. That can't be good. As he and Quantum EV-suit up, Phlox announces that Hoshi is deteriorating, so they must hurry. They hurry. The quarantine zone is expanded and Phlox and Quantum proceed. Orga-Mayweather stares at the monitor tensely.