Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Pirates of the Implants
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.16.2003
Quantum and his Uh-Oh dart down a corridor, pause with their backs against a door, and dramatically fling open the door, guns drawn, to see...nothing. The entire storage facility or cargo hold is cleared out.
Outer space. The pirate ship takes off.
Sickbay. Phlox harriedly tends to his patients. Quantum enters and irritably asks how they are. "Stable. However, they've suffered extensive disruptor burns. I'd like to start them on regeneration but the imaging chamber was damaged in the attack, I'll need a repair team as soon as possible," Phlox tells him. "Understood," Quantum mutters, and walks over to a curtained-off area. He tears back the curtain to reveal a body covered head to toe by a sheet. The first casualty. As Captain Quantum's still togged out in the exact same furrow he's been wearing without washing since the first episode of the season, it's really hard to tell if he feels anything for this dead crewmember. Phlox tells him he did everything he could. Quantum almost tears the curtain off as he angers over to the prone alien pirate and asks, "What about him?" "A few internal injuries, I'll need to keep him under observation," Phlox says. "You can observe him in the brig!" Quantum growls. Oh, tough talker! Hey, have we even seen a brig before? Quantum orders the Uh-Oh to "See to it!" Phlox tells Quantum that he recognizes the pirate prisoner's species as Osaarian. "He's not from the Expanse?" Quantum asks. "Not originally," Phlox shrugs.
Quantum stomps off and meets Trip at the Sickbay entrance. Trip gives him the low-down on the pilfering: "They made off with three photon torpedoes, a case of plasma rifles, two dozen stun grenades, Chef says they cleaned out half the food stores, and Cargo Bay Two's been stripped to the bulkheads." Wait, did they take the salt and pepper shakers? Because then I'm going to be really mad. "But that's not the worst of it" -- here it comes, the salt and pepper shakers are lost to me forever -- "they took every one of our anti-matter storage pods. All we've got left is what's in the main reactor." "How long will that last -- a month?" Quantum asks. "Tops. After that, we're out of gas," Trip says. Gas schmass, I still have the salt and pepper shakers to look forward to! Although I will say that if they can remember the stripped resources in the storylines to come, that could make for some possibly interesting scenarios. Specifically, I think hunting and foraging for food would be far more cool than seeing them dicker with yet another dodgy arms and hardware dealer.