Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Cannon in D-fense
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.15.2002
Trip's burning the midnight oil as Quantum enters Engineering. "Don't you ever rest?" he asks. Trip says he can't sleep with the warp engine offline. Kind of like how I wake up when the refrigerator stops humming. Okay, it's different, but still sort of the same. "If I don't feel those vibrations, something just doesn't seem right," Trip says. Maybe he should -- ah, too easy. Quantum tells him he hopes he fixes it soon, "because [he] looks like hell." Well, Merry Christmas to you, too. Trip tells him "with all due respect" that he shouldn't be talking. Quantum asks how the warp engine is coming, and Trip tells him they'll definitely be online by the end of the next day. Trip asks him for some help in some technobabbling. Quantum helps and says, "At least we'll be flying home under our own power." Trip ignores this and asks the captain to check something else. Quantum explains that he tried contacting the Vulcan High Command, but to no avail. "If it had [worked], we'd be expecting a Surak class ship tomorrow oh-so-politely offering to help us," Quantum says, blatantly not checking what Trip asked him to check. "Well, the Vulcans would have loved that -- towing the pride of Starfleet back to base," Trip comments, once again showing signs of amnesia where Vulcans and emotions are concerned. VULCANS DON'T FEEL -- THEREFORE THEY WOULD NOT HAVE "LOVED" ANYTHING, YOU HALF-WIT HAYSEED! God. Get me a bromide -- and put some gin in it! "Maybe we should thank our visitors for blowing up the sub-space amplifiers," Quantum says. Be sure to thank them when they pulverize you as well, because then you really wouldn't have to ask for Vulcan help. Ever.
Trip gripes some more about having to go back to space-dock, but Quantum assures him that "this time" they won't leave before they're ready. "Are your ears a little pointier than usual?" Trip asks. Are you a little more racist than usual? Quantum gets all defensive and says, "I never said we didn't belong out here. I just wish we'd have launched with all our systems online. Especially weapons." Trip argues that if they hadn't left when they did, Klaang would have died and they wouldn't be relatively small heroes to the Klingon Empire. Martyristically, Quantum sighs and says, "I keep reminding myself of that. But I rushed us out of space-dock, because I had something to prove and I risked the lives of eighty-one humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan to do it." Trip tells him not to forget Porthos, which Quantum seems to do, frequently. Trip gives Quantum a pep talk about the first astronauts never worrying about risk when they went to the moon and the fact that every person on that ship thinks their mission du jour is worth a little risk-taking. You know, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that particular opinion is held by the two poor schmos currently stretched out in sick bay with their eyes gathering dust because they were neurologically violated by spaceship-traveling praying mantises. Quantum stops slumping and squares his shoulders as The Trumpets Of Renewed Pride play. "Let me know when we're ready to go to warp," he orders Trip. "Aye, sir," Trip says, wiping away a tear. Well, perhaps not, but there's no real need for either of them to act like such drama queens with each other.