Episode Report Card Keckler: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mallomar
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 17 | Aired on 02.26.2003
Cockpit. Quantum assesses damage from the patrol ships and makes a play for getting Trip to take a look at it. Frick stonewalls him and reminds him they will be meeting up with another ship soon, so it won't matter if the transport ship works or not. Frack walks into the cockpit and holds out a bowl to Frick. "I'm not hungry," Frick tells him, holding up his arms. "You haven't eaten for two days," Frack growls in concern. Frick insists he can wait for normal food instead of eating prison slop, and smacks the bowl out of Frack's hands. Considering how close they seem to be, I wonder how Frick's going to react when he finds out that Frack has formed an attachment with Trip. Maybe he already knows, and his refusal to eat is a way of showing his displeasure at Frack's philandering. Frack gives Frick A Look and storms out of the cockpit. "Prison rations!" Frick sniffs. Quantum finds out that Frick was unfairly imprisoned at fourteen, and thus began his long and unfortunate career as a criminal. Did you know that the Boston Pops is putting on a special solo performance of the universe's smallest violin tonight? Frick blithers that he learned a lot in prison: "If it wasn't for the Enolian guard my life would have been quite...dull." Whoa! An unexpected and blatant delivery of three pounds of Corned Beef Slash just fell out of Darwin's delivery truck and is within the ten seconds rule! Should we partake? It's damn good beef, let me tell you! Quantum ponders how hungry he really is.
The transport ship drops out of warp within sight of two stars, and Quantum asks Frick where his friends are. Frick informs Quantum his friends will be docking with them, and Quantum wonders what will happen to the rest of the prisoners. "Before we leave, you're going to set this ship on a decaying orbit." "It'll be incinerated," Quantum provides for us. "As far as anybody will be able to tell, we crashed trying to land," Frick tells him. Okay, that makes me sick -- they could have moved this ep to a later slot, because it's not even a month later and the parallels are just too glaring to be ignored. And let's face it, just like last week's ep, nothing of consequence even happens in this whole excruciatingly uninteresting hour of lukewarm UPN programming, so they could have just stuffed it in at some other point in the schedule without worrying about continuity. Not like that keeps them up at night, anyway. Quantum doesn't understand why Frick wants to kill all the prisoners, and Frick says, "No one will be looking for us if they think we're dead." Sensing Quantum's squeamishness, Frick invites Quantum to join those who are about to die and says that while he can't fly the ship, he sure can crash it. Quantum furrows out of his travel-size Weight Of The World Window.
Enterprise. May-shroom tracks the renegade transport ship. Dance Of The Reed Flutes manages to isolate Trip and Quantum's bio-signs, and puts in a bid to use the transporter once they're in range. No! That's the one of the only good things about this show -- they haven't needlessly used the transporter to get them out of sticky situations! Thank goodness the Enolian Ambassador nixes that idea by reminding them how heavily shielded the ship is.