Episode Report Card 4 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT A Horse! A Horse! My Boredom For A Horse!
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.28.2003
Quantum hasn't really started with the questions yet. Instead, he's moodily pacing around the domed hut, searching for a WOTWW to morose out of. Mr. Mugato decides to ask some questions of his own, like who they are and what they want from him. "Sit down!" Quantum yells, pointing his phaser at him. A man who can be that mean to someone who looks like a stuffed animal is beyond all past, present, future, and temporal-anomaly help.
Reed and Uh-Oh Hayes return to say there's no one else around, and then go to stand watch. For no one. Mr. Mugato and Quantum introduce themselves, and Quantum even goes so far to say he's from Earth. Mr. Mugato has no reaction to that. Clearly, he's already as bored as I am. Quantum demands information on kimosabe, and the upshot is that kimosabe has many applications and Mr. Mugato isn't in the practice of asking his clients why they need the stuff. Quantum gives Mr. Mugato the weather when he asked for the news, as he surely spits all over him in his lunge to inform him of the weapon being created to exterminate Earth. Mr. Mugato is aghast.
Number Eight: Counting color flecks in handmade paper.
Using the words "sub-quantum" and "quantum" a lot, T'Pol and Trip report back on their scans of the canister. It's the same isotope used in the Psycho Bocce Ball. Trip also asks Quantum if he has his permission to examine the rifle they took off the dead Snake Eyes in "Rajiin," since it also bears the same quantum imprint. Quantum consents.
Outside the hut, Reed congratulates Quantum for how far they've come since the season finale. He again mentions the plan to blow up the entire weapons facility. Rule of Boregagement Seventy-Five: The sheer number of times that plan of action is verbalized means they aren't going to do it in the end. Quantum even hints that he's having second thoughts when he says they're there to stop a war, not start one. Reed insists that the Xindi struck first, but Quantum argues that it was a pre-emptive strike in the Xindi's own defense. Quantum doesn't want to confirm the Xindi's worst suspicions about humans by destroying the plant. Reed reminds him of the seven million voters who were killed in Florida by the radioactive chads. Not having a WOTWW handy, Quantum stares off into a Weight of the World Wooded Area and orders some blast suppressors made ready because, "when this facility goes," he doesn't want the rest of the settlement affected. Reed asks about Mr. Mugato, but Quantum's not ready to deal with him yet. "I don't intend to let anyone know that we were here," he says. If you intend for us to think you're actually going to kill him in the guise of this Meaner, Harsher Quantum, I'm not exactly plunking down my money. Why? Because you're too BORING to actually go through with it! The least you could do is prance around in a black shirt to make yourself easy on my eyes. Go on -- prance! Can y'all hear me banging my jeweled scepter on the floor? Because I am.
Enterprise. Trip can't imagine what Quantum wants with something in the suitcase he places on the transporter pad. T'Pol mentions that Quantum was insistent. Trip says they ran the quantum analysis many times, "Doesn't he trust us?" The whole specifically not mentioning what it is they're talking about was, I assume, supposed to drive up tension and mystery. You know what it actually drove up? My yen for sleep. They beam the Boring Device down.