Episode Report Card Keckler: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Future Nonsense
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.18.2003
Quantum's Quarters. Quantum gets nothing helpful out of Admiral "I'm So Boring I Must Turn Out to Be Evil To Justify My Repeated Presence On This Show" Forrest regarding Corpus Chris T.
Shuttle Bay. Reed and Trip dab around in the MMP's innards and find a glowing blue crucifix thingy. "It registers as some kind of bio-matter," Reed grunts. "Organic circuitry?" Trip clarifies for those of us who aren't bored. Using their Starfleet ratchets that fit curiously perfectly into MMP's sockets and stuff, they pull out the Bread and Circuits ["You realize no one outside of Boston is going to get that 'organic' reference, don't you?" -- Mathra] and take a closer look. It turns out the MMP has a false bottom. It's sort of like those plastic rocks you can hide your key in because no one would ever think to check a bogus-looking rock that's on your stoop next to your front door. Actually, maybe it's more like those fake books that don't have pages but are really safes. Yes, I get the Lillian Vernon catalog -- why do you ask? Anyway, in their case, it's a loooong deeeep shaft. Trip drops something down the shaft to determine how far it goes and then heads after it. Reed frets about calling the Bridge to get their permission slips signed by Quantum, but Trip forges ahead into the Infinite Corridor. Reed reluctantly follows. Once in the MMP's basement, Trip comments, "I've read a few papers on spatial geometry but I never heard a theory that would explain this." "It's obviously a hyperbolic 3-manifold -- what papers were you reading? Ass," Mathra snorts from his octonionic calculations. They scan around and find possible evidence of a warp breach, and Malcolm Powder even detects a faint energy signature!
Bridge. Some Suliban in a non-combat ship are on an intercept course with Enterprise, and they tell Quantum they want to relieve him of the Magical Mystery Pod. Quantum is reticent to acquiesce, since the pilot is human and the vessel is from Earth. The Suliban charge weapons, and without batting a furrow, Quantum tells them to contact "a man named Silik" who will tell them he isn't easily threatened. Great, now I've got a Johnny Cash song in my head.
Magical Mystery Pod's basement. Reed and Trip futz some more and find what I think looks like a pile of dusty gold bricks. The ship shakes as a spiny lobster fires on them. Oh, wait, that's not my Normandy-Brittany class notes -- that's a new kind of Suliban ship. Cool.
Bridge. Quantum orders May-The-Refugee to return fire.