Episode Report Card Keckler: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Night of the Living Dread
By Keckler | Season 1 | Episode 20 | Aired on 04.02.2002
Bridge. Reed's located the ship and puts it up on Bridge TV. It looks like a triangle in some misty mountains. T'Pol reports finding no power signatures and opines that the ship "appears to be deserted." "What? Are your sensors calibrated for ghosts?" Trip asks. Quantum smiles indulgently at his Mini-Me. "So far, D'Marr's battin' a thousand. I'm readin' duratanium, beryllium and dilithium," Trip reports. Hoshi wonders what caused the crash, and Quantum says there's no way of hypothesizing without examining the thing bow to stern. "Well, let's git down there," Trip says. May-something-that-rhymes-with-feather asks, "Are we sure that's a good idea?" Hoshi asks him if he's really afraid that it's haunted. Mayweather says, "We don't know what happened to the crew. That ship could be a tomb. You really think we should be picking through it for spare parts, sir?" I really don't think you should question your captain, Mayweather. He'll take all your lines away and demote you to an extra. "D'Marr didn't say anythang about bodies," Trip says. Well, that's comforting. Quantum looks at him. "Captain, we've taken more damage out here than we ever expected to. There's enough duratanium down there to patch a lot of hull fractures." Quantum makes a command decision: "Let's pay her a visit." Now, that line was delivered pretty naturally, but he flubs the second part of it by wandering into John Wayne's corral when he says, "If we feel the spirits don't want us there, we'll leave." Who are you trying to kid, Cpt. Buttinski? Anyway, back to my critique. Other than placing a period after every word, there's really no good way to represent on paper how Bakula screws up these lines. He seems to deliver each word as though it were a complete thought. "If. We. Feel. The. Spirits. Don't. Want. Us. There. We'll. Leave." I wish he would stop it. Quantum tells Reed he's on bridge duty and says, "Travis, you're driving." After months and months of virtual anonymity, Mayweather gets to be the captain's chauffeur again. You gotta wonder, though -- is Quantum dragging Mayweather along because he expressed some squeamishness about pilfering the ship? He does seem to do that. Hoshi and the upside-down ugly bags of mostly water in "Fight or Flight," for example. It's like he's trying to make them do stuff for their own good or something.
Deserted triangular ship. The away team, carrying flashlights, forces open the doors and splits up, Trip and T'Pol to Engineering and Quantum and Mayweather to another dark place. Mayweather pauses in one particularly poorly-lit corner. Quantum asks him if he's okay. "Yes, sir. I was just wondering if that trader left in such a hurry, why did he bother to close the hatch behind him?" Quantum meditates on this as the creepy music attempts to swell into something creepier. We know that you're trying to make the most of your role on this mission, May-June-July, but not everything has to be meaningful. I think it's pretty fair to assume that others have actually been there to investigate the deserted ship since the trader and maybe, just maybe, they didn't spook as easily.
Deserted triangular ship's engineering. Trip fiddles with stuff, as T'Pol swings her flashlight around. She pauses, and Trip looks behind him. "What is it?" he asks. T'Pol says she heard something. "Rats, maybe?" Trip suggests. T'Pol scans and says, "No." "Well, then you probably imagined it," Trip tells her, going off to fiddle with more stuff. Vulcans don't imag-- "Vulcans don't imagine things," T'Pol interrupts me. God. I was kidding. Trip tells her it's nothing to be "ashamed" of. "Spooky ship, missin' crew, thangs goin' bump in the night -- it'd give anyone the creeps," Trip reassures her. "'The creeps'?" T'Pol repeats. "Yeah. Willies. Heebie-jeebies," Trip says by way of non-clarification. T'Pol just looks at him. Trip asks if she ever gets frightened, and T'Pol answers with a flat negative. "Not by anythang?" Trip asks. "No," T'Pol repeats. "That's too bad," Trip says, putting his flashlight under his chin so it shines up over his face. Heh. "Nuthin' like a good skeer," Trip drawls. Nothing like a good heart attack, either.