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
The alien ship returns. Bridge. T'Pol detects a ship dropping out of warp. "Let me guess -- our shadow?" Quantum says. T'Pol reports how quickly the ship is closing in on them. Quantum orders an ensign to polarize the hull plating. Enterprise sustains a hit, which finally manages to pull Reed away from his work in the Mess Hall. He runs to a window and peers out, but he can't see anything, so he tries to com the bridge. No response. He coms the armory. Again, no response. Reed orders everyone in the Mess Hall to their stations and runs out.
Bridge. Power fluctuates, and T'Pol reports that the warp drive is offline. The lights go out, and T'Pol needlessly confirms, "Main power is down." We can see the alien ship launch a shuttle that looks like a very large cicada. It screams toward Enterprise. "Torpedoes?" Quantum gasps out. "Tactical systems are down," T'Pol tells him calmly. "Why don't you save time and tell me what isn't down?!" Quantum squalls, showing all the signs of coming unpasted. They all grab flashlights, and T'Pol reports, "The outer doors of Launch Bay Two are opening." "Seal them!" Quantum orders. How? With her dinners? I mean, main power is down; otherwise he wouldn't be shining that flashlight at her. "I can't," T'Pol reminds him. Quantum runs away.
The Cicada Shuttle Pod enters the Enterprise by way of the launch bay. Two red-shirts play with conduits and motherboards, but are distracted by pounding feet. They shine their flashlights down a corridor and see two weird shapes go by. So of course they must go and investigate -- are they even carrying weapons? As soon as they get to the end of the corridor, they're jumped by something from below. I know it sounds weird, but the camera was taking the view of the attackers, and it was angled to look up at the red-shirts. There's some muffled grunts and clattering, and then the dropped flashlights go dead.
Quantum, accompanied by a security detail, investigates the corridors. The constant but still random drumbeats in the music make it sound like something is constantly running by. It really gets under your skin, which is a very effective ploy, because as you hear the "running feet" you are peering into the darkness on the ship, straining to see something, anything. Finally, Quantum et al. reach the corridor, where the red-shirt's flashlights have miraculously come back on and are pointing the way to the attacked crewmen. They see two shapes kneeling over the prone red-shirts. Anyone see My Life? Okay, remember when Michael Keaton goes to the healer in order to prolong his life, and the healer uses a form of touch therapy where he doesn't actually touch him? He massages his chakras or something. Well, that's what the aliens are doing to the red-shirts, except I don't think they are trying to cure them of lung cancer. Light emanates from their hands as they do their alien probing stuff. Quantum aims a phase pistol at them and orders them to stop. Man, Kirk would have just fired had he found aliens messing around with attacked crewmembers. The aliens continue their probes until Quantum finally fires at one of them. As the phase array hits the alien, you can see a protective shield surrounding its figure. The alien stands up to its full eight feet, blinks weird eye-like things at them, and lopes slowly away. Actually, since they seem to have eyes like snails -- where the actual eyeball is on the end of a stalk thing, which then curves around to the appropriate place on their "face" -- I guess "blinks" isn't really the correct word. Maybe it's more like they undulate their eyes at Quantum. The other alien follows suit. Nqllisi mentioned on the forums that they walk like Jar Jar Binks, and while that's definitely true, they really remind me of praying mantises on steroids.