Episode Report Card Keckler: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Maximum Over(warp)drive
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.08.2002
Hoshi walks through and gasps a little, her eyes looking May-corpse up and down. "I was hoping it was another of his practical jokes," she says, putting her hand up to her nose. "Another"? When were there ever any? "Travis called me down to decon a few weeks ago. He said that he brought some kind of gelatinous life-form aboard. He said it might be sentient and that the Captain needed me to figure out how to communicate with it," Hoshi says. Phlox says, "Hm, I don't recall that." That's because the gelatinous life-form was actually Cheney, and there was no hope of communication. "There was no life-form -- it was only strawberry gelatin," Hoshi laugh-cries. They make May-body-meets-a-body-coming-through-the-rye more interesting in death than he ever was in life. Phlox smiles from the depths of his steel-grey autopsy smock. "I told him I was gonna get him back." Hoshi pauses to wipe her eyes. "I'm sorry." Phlox tells her she might be comforted to hear that he felt very little pain. "An isolytic shock instantly impairs the, uh..." Phlox is distracted by something on his e-pad. "The nervous...that's odd." Hoshi asks what's odd. "They're dead -- all of them," Phlox comments, and excuses himself.
Quantum steps into May-will-the-body-kiss-the-body cabin and asks Reed, "Anything?" Reed answers in the negative. "It doesn't look like Travis used the comm system last night. Crewman Hayes says she passed him on his way to the Launch Bay but they didn't speak. She said he seemed to be in quite a hurry." Quantum asks him what he has up on the computer screen. "It's a letter to his sister -- it was on the monitor when I came in," Reed tells him. Quantum sits down as Reed tells him that there isn't much in the letter to go on. "He mentions something about canceling breakfast with him," Reed says. "That was...last...week...I...had...topostponeit," Quantum admits. "Well, it clearly sent him over the edge, Quantum," Mathra comments. Quantum asks if there's been any progress in locating May-will-somebody-die's parents, and Reed shakes his head, saying that T'Pol is working on it but it could take some time. Just long enough to bring him back from the dead, right? Phlox comms Quantum, asking to see him right away.
Quantum lumbers into Sick Bay and asks, without looking at the body on the table, if Phlox found anything. "As a matter of fact, I did -- this isn't Ensign Mayweather," Phlox tells him. Quantum is floored. Phlox goes on that he's never seen a life-form duplicated in such detail, "from its epidermis down to its cellular proteins. This is remarkable work." It's easy to duplicate someone convincingly when he doesn't talk, do, or even show up onscreen very much. Quantum wants to know why Phlox doesn't think it's May-carrion. It all comes down to the fact that they were all inoculated recently after some ensign got Rigelian Fever when they visited Tessik Prime. And this is where I have to have a MAJOR rant. In "Requiem For Methuselah," Bones, Spock, and Kirk are on Planetoid Holberg 917G, looking for an antidote to the Rigelian Fever that swept over the ship. The fever was described as akin to the bubonic plague, and Bones finally got the antidote in the form in ryetalyn. But here, they're just trying to brush it off as some minor ailment they all got inoculated against because one crewman came down with it? They're really polishing off the Great Temporal Reset Button in the Sky, because I don't know how Starfleet records wouldn't have the inoculation on file for Bones to use one hundred years later. Phlox shows that Quantum still has genetically altered microbes from the vaccine in his bloodstream, but all the microbes in May-worm-food's bloodstream are dead. "Couldn't they have been killed by the isolytic shock?" Quantum asks for us. "These microbes thrive on isolytic energy," Phlox tells him. Of course they do. Phlox thinks that something or someone has carried the real May-pushing-up-daisies off to parts unknown and left this imposter in his place. "Apparently bulkheads aren't the only thing this station can replicate," Quantum says, turning his furrow on Hoshi, who really didn't do anything to deserve that kind of treatment. "Well, let's just all be glib about replication now that it's been introduced once," Mathra snaps, leaving to get us chocolate. Phlox thinks it's ironic that a machine can duplicate a human carcass in complete detail, yet can't manage a one-celled creature.