Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pets And Petulance
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.15.2002
Coming from behind his curtain, Phlox dumps his petri dish of toenails into a cage, which rattles and munches with delight. Quantum's repose is once again shaken when he hears a strange noise. It's a sucking-slurping sound and no, that's not the sound of the episode. Well, it is, but it's also Phlox doing something strange to his extra-long tongue. He seems to be using a curved metal object to scrape his saliva into a receptacle. Wonder which pet gets that for a treat. This time, Quantum doesn't bother to ask what he's doing. Quantum tosses and turns restlessly. Time must have passed, because all goes dark. Suddenly, it sounds like the bird house at the zoo. Quantum jerks awake, knocks his pillow off the table, and scrambles out of bed. Phlox apologizes for waking him again. "What the hell is going on?" Quantum demands. "Feeding time," Phlox tells him, and opens a cage to shake a can of food in. Quantum asks how long he slept. "Nearly an hour," Phlox informs him. "Does this go on every night?" Quantum asks. "Only when I'm here -- they're very demanding when they know I'm in Sick Bay," Phlox tells him. Quantum bends down next to the incubator. "Porthos?" he calls. Phlox tells him he still needs more time, and Quantum asks if he's comfortable. "He's fast asleep," Phlox assures him. "I'm glad to see someone is," Quantum rasps, and walks toward the door. "I'll check back in a couple of hours," he tells Phlox. Phlox smiles at his retreating back and continues to feed his pets.
By the looks of an overly complicated contraption that resembles Da Vinci's spheres put to Gold's Gym use, I'd say Quantum just walked into the ship's gym. It's twelve-oh-nine in the morning, and T'Pol is already putting herself through her paces on a treadmill. Quantum's not thrilled to see her. T'Pol pretends she doesn't see him as he strips down to shorts in the corner. What I am completely fascinated by is the complete lack of movement in T'Pol's dinners region. She's not running a slow mile, and she's bouncing pretty high on the instep, yet her dinners, they DO NOT MOVE! That's some bionic jog bra she's strapped herself into. Quantum gets on another treadmill, looks at T'Pol a few times, and starts running. "How's your dog?" T'Pol asks. "Nice of you to ask," Quantum snaps. "We'll know in a couple of hours." T'Pol pushes some buttons on her treadmill. There's a lot of high-powered noise that makes it sounds like she's increased her speed, but Jolene doesn't really look like she's running any faster. Quantum gives her a sharp look and increases the speed on his treadmill as well. Because everything's a competition with him. "Have you heard from your friends on the surface?" Quantum barbs. "Not yet," T'Pol tells him.
Something interesting I noticed in this scene: Quantum's running form is a mess -- he moves his arms and shoulders way too much and twists his torso unnecessarily, while T'Pol's form is steady, controlled, and clean. When I ran track, my coach told us that any unnecessary movement would just tire us out faster and prevent us from building up stamina. He told us imagine we were carrying eggs in the hollowed-out space made when we lightly touched our index fingers to our thumbs -- this image kept us from pumping our arms too much. Quantum's running form is much like his command style: careless, tiresome, heedless, and just plain wrong. T'Pol's form shows her to be calculating, careful, structured, and correct. I wonder if that was the director's intent -- if so, I applaud the subtlety. If not, well, it should have been.