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It's a whole new world, so don't you dare close your eyes. Because if you do, you might find yourself the subject of a hard rain. Which is gonna fall. Radiation rain. Can you believe that Trip is not the focus of this episode? I know! I just got back on my chair myself. Reed and Mayweather put in some punch card time but one spends most of it on his back (not that way) and the other dances outside shuttles and caves but most importantly, T'Pol didn't totally drive me up the wall, across the ceiling, and through the windows. At least not at the first watching. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
PING! Ah, my hogshead of coffee finished brewing. Excuse me while I hook up an I.V. to pipe this stuff straight into my veins; I'm gonna need it tonight.
Enterprise bridge. "This was their first view of it," Mayweather says as he looks at a laptop image of a planet. "If you don't look too close, you'd think it was Earth," Hoshi comments. The second planet to be Earth's doppelganger in three episodes. How unspeakably original. And German. Travis opens a few more JPEGs, one showing humans posing in front of a shuttlecraft, another of the humans shoving a spade into the dirt. "Breaking ground on the town hall," Mayweather supplies for us. "Is that Captain Mitchell?" Hoshi asks, pointing at the image. "No," Mayweather says, examining the picture, "I think that's Mitchell." Captain Quantum enters the bridge, smiles indulgently at his two overachievers, and asks, "Are we there yet?" Mayweather tells him they'll arrive in about three hours. Hoshi needlessly tells the Captain that Mayweather has been "digging through the archives," and Mayweather corroborates this by running off at the mouth about all the information he found: crew manifests, survey photos, weekly status reports, the word "Croatoan" chiseled on a tree. Mayweather tells us and the Captain that he's been obsessed with the lost colony of Terra Nova since he was a wee one and, in going over the data in their computers, was hoping that he'd find a clue to what happened. Because his mind is so superior that in seventy years, the finest intellects at Starfleet wouldn't have…damn, is this I.V. even working yet? I think someone needs to flick it or something. Captain Quantum tells Mayweather that he'd be the first to find something in all that data. "I always thought that lost colonies affected boomers more than anyone else," Mayweather says, stating his raison d'etre in this episode while shaking his head. "Something about people who choose to live off-world." Hoshi asks if Quantum thinks there are people still alive on Terra Nova. Quantum glances carelessly at Mayweather's JPEGs and says, "I'll let you know in about three hours and seventeen minutes," before swaggering off to the O.K. Corral.
Mathra performs an interpretive dance Peter Gabriel's-"Sledgehammer"-style to the theme song.
Commercial for the Roswell-Enterprise cross-over with Phloxy and Number One heading up the billing. That night, Djb's pain and mine will be inextricably twined. Forrreveeeer.
The Enterprise equivalent to the Algonquin Round Table, minus the cleverness. "Terra Nova?" T'Pinhead Parker asks. "I'm surprised you've never heard of it," Quantum says. T'Pol tells him she's not "familiar" with Human Space Travel, The Early Years. "Really?" Trip says. "Every schoolkid on Earth had to learn about the famous Vulcan expeditions." "Name one," T'Pol tells him. Trip looks uncomfortable and says, "History was never my best subject." Neither was Table Manners, especially on NOT TALKING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL DAY! "It was called 'The Great Experiment.' Could humans colonize deep space?" Quantum says, picking up The Water Pitcher Of Exposition and filling up Trip and T'Pol's glasses. Apparently, after establishing close-knit colonies in various space-burbs, Earth decided to try out a Class-M planet just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Earth -- twenty light years, to be exact. Trip supplies that the uh, trip, took the colonists nine years, and that his grandfather remembers seeing one of Terra Nova Colony's first transmissions home. T'Pol asks what happened to them. "People have been trying to answer that question for a long time. No one's heard from Terra Nova in over seventy years," Quantum tells her. "After the colony was built, relations with Earth became strained." Trip picks up The Exposition Pitcher and pours, "The Space Agency figured nothing succeeds like success, so they decided to send another vessel." Quantum explains that that idea stuck in the Colonists' collective craw, and they protested new arrivals. Eventually, after a few nasty emails flew back and forth across the light years, all communications ceased. T'Pol asks, logically, why Earth didn't send a ship to find out what the deal was. "Nine years there, nine years back," Quantum explains, "it would have been a pretty long trip." T'Pol points out that the voyage would have been pie to a Vulcan vessel. "Why didn't you ask them?" "Asking favors of the Vulcans usually ends up carrying too high a price," Trip tells her. T'Pol ignores this barb and tells Quantum, "My experience with humans is limited but I've come to learn that they're quite resourceful. Terra Nova may still be there, Captain." Quantum takes a bite of Pondering Pudding. Does it strike anyone as oddly cold-blooded that the eighteen-year round trip was the only thing that stopped Earth from finding out if the colonists had been eaten by Rock People, impregnated against their will by Eczema Aliens, or been drugged with Magic Spores? And the explanation for why they wouldn't have asked the Vulcans for help is lamer than a lame duck from the planet Lamea. "Too high a price"? The Vulcans may be annoying, but they aren't malicious or violent or prone to making offers humans can't refuse. It's not like the Vulcan ambassador would have charged a pound of flesh for every leg of the journey. Am I getting too riled up when the credits haven't even ended? I guess the caffeine finally kicked in.
Mayweather reports on Enterprise's progress as they approach the planet. Quantum gets up from his throne and orders, "On screen." Earth facsimile appears for all to gaze upon. "I promised my dad I'd see this place someday," Mayweather says. They attempt a few hails, which fail, but Quantum doesn't quail. Oh, no, he will prevail. My, is the coffee coursing through my veins or what? T'Pol can't find bio-signs, but reports that the colony seems to be intact (I guess she must mean structurally) and that they are picking up some minor surface radiation. "From what?" Quantum asks. T'Pol doesn't have an answer, so they visually zero in on the colony locale. "Closer!" Quantum orders. I'm not sure what we're supposed to see, but there seem to be a few squares and triangles, which must represent buildings. "Looks like a ghost town," Trip comments. Quantum says, "Let's hope the ghosts can give us some answers." Or, if not that, at least a few bumper stickers or key chains so they can always remember their visit to the Land of the Lost. After T'Pol tells them that the radiation levels shouldn't make too many of their teeth fall out, Quantum tells Trip he has control of the bridge and then turns to Mayweather, saying, "Travis?" Reed, T'Pol, Mayweather, and Quantum scamper off to prepare for their away mission while Trip stands tall and attempts to look commanding, which is more difficult than you'd imagine, considering that he looks more like the type of guy who gets the odd nipple on his arm rather than the type of guy who got a scholarship to John Wayne's School of Captain Acting.
We can see two moons in the distance as the shuttle-pod lands in Bryce Canyon. The Fearsome Foursome walks through the rolling tumbleweeds (because you can never get the "deserted town" effect without the tumbleweeds), tricorders a-buzzing. Reed passes an overturned bicycle and gives the punctured wheel a spin for kicks. Quantum scuffs over a rubber mat which, when he turns it over, says, "Welcome." Contrivance pulls up a case of Post Road Pumpkin Ale, kicks off her shoes, and gets good and comfy. "A housing unit?" Mayweather says in disbelief looking at a dilapidated shack. You know, aren't all shacks dilapidated? Okay, maybe not Mighty Big TV's Shack, but when you think about it, when you read about a shack, you can bet ten-to-one it's going to be dilapidated. All aboard the Recapping Train, now leaving Digression -- stop, Avoidance, followed by Hysteria, and terminating at Complete Unconsciousness. T'Pol reports that she can find no evidence of weapons fire, "only rust." "Whatever happened, I gotta believe they tried to let Earth know about it," Quantum says. Mayweather says they have the schematics for their communications tower, so Quantum techno-tells him to look slippy about accessing any of the Colony's transmission logs. Reed's task is to "walk the perimeter" to see what he can find. T'Pol says, "Judging by the isotope decays, the radiation levels seventy years ago would have been lethal." Quantum challenges this, saying, "If that's what killed them, where are the bodies?" Maybe, and I'm no coroner or C.S.I.-watcher by trade, but perhaps the bodies would have decomposed and decayed at such an accelerated rate because of the radiation that there might not be a whole lot left to identify? T'Pol opines that the Colonists could have left the planet before they all shuffled off this mortal coil. "That would have been difficult," Quantum says, gesturing at one of the dilapidated shacks. "That's a bulkhead. They designed their ship to be disassembled. That's how they build the colony." Like Legos. "It was a one-way trip," Quantum says thoughtfully.
On the perimeter, Reed and his itchy trigger finger patrol. He picks up some bio-signs on his tricorder and squints into the underbrush. "'Ello?" he calls, Britishly. Something runs. "We're not alone, sir," Reed says into his communicator. "There's someone in the forest." "We're on our way," Quantum tells him. The someone in the forest runs across a babbling brook with Reed hot on his tail. We get a glimpse of a Braveheart-kitted extra. Over hill and dale and fallen logs they run. Through the ring of Antares moons of Nibia and Pentacost's something-or-other. Braveheart disappears into a cave. Cripes, with all the money the ST franchise makes, you'd think they could manage not to use the exact same set from "A Whole New World." Reed peers into the cave as T'Pol and Quantum finally catch up. Uh, where's Mayweather? Quantum asks if Reed was able to see what Braveheart looked like. "Yeah, he appeared to be a couple of meters tall [aw, he's so cute and British], biped, odd-looking scales," Reed reports. T'Pol reports that the cave opening leads to a network of various tunnels and caverns, extending a few hundred meters. Okay, they all use "meters," but it's cuter when it's a British accent using it, rather than Unblinking Hypnotized Acting Mode. Quantum signals to Mayweather and tells him to grab flashlights from the shuttlepod, "and make it quick." Just after saying that, which, of course, leads us to believe that they don't already have flashlights, Quantum stands up and proceeds into the cave, switching on a flashlight! That's it, I'm changing from a coffee drip to a Post Road Pumpkin Ale drip and citing a gross lack of continuity.
Reed and Quantum creep into the cave, and Quantum spies a very narrow opening in the rocks. "Best to let me go first, sir," Reed suggests. Quantum looks down at his captainly gut and at Reed's trim waist, and agrees. Somehow, Reed manages to wriggle through the opening -- which a minute ago didn't even look large enough for his head to fit through -- and Quantum joins him. They swing their flashlights around the cave as they hear a scrabbling noise. Their beams catch a tortoise-shelled, scaly-tailed creature burrowing into the rock. "It's friggin' Ceti Alpha Five, again -- better cover your ears," Mathra advises, looking up from grading midterms. Reed and Quantum proceed through the tunnels as T'Pol and Mayweather stand guard outside. Reed and Quantum come to a bigger candlelit cavern and observe signs of habitation -- if the hanging shells of scrabbling rock creatures, a wok of blood and bobbling white things, some crude weapons, and various other sundry cave dwelling items can be considered signs of habitation. How do they know that they haven't been lured into a cave of Morlocks, about to be eaten alive like the rest of the Eloi? Reed hisses at Quantum and gestures upwards. Quantum shines his beam around the ceiling and sees lots of mud-plastered faces looking down at them. "Bit early for Halloween, isn't it, guys?" Quantum asks them. But what the Mud Morlocks hear is, "My name is Archer. We're looking for some people. I was hoping you could help us. We're not going to hurt you. We're just trying to find out what happened to them." Quantum rasps, like he needs some water.
About two seconds after Quantum says, "We're not going to hurt you," Reed phasers one of the Mud Morlocks, who tries to shoot at them. Fancy the cheek of the Mud Morlocks, attempting to attack people intruding in their home. There's some more gun and phaser play in the caverns, which causes Reed and Quantum to scuttle off. T'Pol attempts to guide them out of the rockyrinth, but doesn't do so good a job of it. Quantum struggles through that impossibly small rock crevice from earlier, and Reed gets shot in the leg. "I'm all right, sir," Reed rallies valiantly, but as soon as Quantum turns his back, one of the Mud Morlocks grabs the wounded Brit and ferrets him off. Quantum turns back to see Reed's flashlight lying on the cavern's floor in an ominous sort of way. The brave Captain tries to go after his missing crewman but gets fired on, so he scraps that idea and runs away. Hearing the gunfire, Mayweather stands right in front of the cave entrance in case a stray bullet was looking for him. A Mud Morlock comes flying out and tackles him square in the chest. They tussle a bit until T'Pol phasers him. I'm wondering if the phasers are set on "stun" or "kill" tonight. Quantum emerges from the cave, dusty and breathless. T'Pol, Mayweather, and Quantum jump into the pod, and Quantum orders liftoff. "If those aliens killed the colonists, they could kill Malcolm, too!" Mayweather says. "Those weren't aliens," T'Pol informs them, "they're human." Quantum looks shocked as they fly away. I'm sorry, but I cannot believe they just left Reed there with so little effort to rescue him. Picard never would have done that.
Buffy The Musical? Oh. My. God. How the hell d'you recap that? Well, if there's a way, Ace and Sep will find it.
Back aboard the Enterprise, Mayweather says, "I don't get it -- if they were human, why were they shooting at us?" He's ignored, as they all get into a turbolift. Wait, a turbolift? When did that happen? That clinches it; they're multi-decked. Quantum coms the bridge to find out what's going on. Trip tells him that they've managed to get a good "picture" of the caverns, and have picked up fifty-two bio-signs. "The only one I'm interested in right now is Lieutenant Reed," Quantum tells him. "We gotta get him outta there -- have you found him?" Don't you think it's a little late to pretend you care about his life, hon? Trip tells him that they have located Reed's bio-sign ninety meters below the surface. "He's not responding to hails, Captain, but he's alive," Hoshi tells Quantum, who tells them to call Dr. Phlox to the Situation Room. What is this -- West Wing? Quantum turns to his fellow Away Missionaries and says, "If these are the descendents of the original colonists, they've never seen other humans before. We probably looked as strange to them as they did to us."
In the Situation Room, the main cast is gathered around the tabletop viewer, which is displaying the cave network; they discuss strategy. Trip brings them all up to speed: "Twelve-point-six kilometers worth of tunnels. Looks like they even dug a few wells. The geology's a little shaky -- some of these passageways have collapsed." T'Pol suggests they were driven underground by the radiation, which prompts Quantum to ask if they know what caused the radiation. That gets a negative from Trip. Hoshi asks what they would have eaten if they lived underground. "Many species feed on underground fauna and flora, tubers, fungi, insects," Phlox offers. "They also hunt some kind of burrowing animal," Quantum tells them, then asks, "Where's Malcolm?" Trip points out a flashing light on the viewer, and Mayweather asks if they can transport him out. "He's too deep," Trip tells him. Thank God, no miraculous transporter rescue this episode. T'Pol points out that there's a collapsed section of the tunnels they could gain access to, blast away the collapsed bits, and rescue Reed, who would then be only a few meters away. Hoshi points out a few more flashing dots and says, "What about these two? We have to assume they're armed." Trip says they could use stun grenades on them. "Stun grenades"? I'd hate to get hit with some of that "stun shrapnel." Quantum refuses to do this because he doesn't want any more casualties. "Despite how they look they're still human. We have to find some way to talk to them!" Quantum's getting frustrated. I think he's going to lose it in this episode. What a leader. Mayweather points out that the Mud Morlocks didn't seem too eager to talk in the caves. "If I can't make First Contact with other humans --" Quantum starts to shout, then stops himself and says, "I don't have any business being out here." Oh, wah. Quantum tells Phlox to get his medical supplies and meet him in the shuttle bay. "Captain?" T'Pol says. "Try to find out what irradiated the surface," Quantum tells her, and turns to Trip: "You and Hoshi get to work on that data buffer. I want to know if they tried to send any messages to Earth."
On Terra Nova, Phlox asks Quantum if he thinks the Mud Morlocks know they're there. "Hard not to hear a shuttle pod landing on your roof," Quantum responds. They walk a few more paces, until Quantum stops Phlox with his hand and listens to the answer that's blowing in the wind. "I'm unarmed," he calls out, "I just want to talk." Phlox looks curiously at Quantum's arms raised in surrender-mode and copies him, awkwardly. Quantum continues talking to the wind, saying, "I'm concerned about my officer. I'd like to see him." A few Mud Morlocks with weapons come out of the bushes and apprehend the Captain and the Doctor.
They are taken into the deep, dark caverns, where they find a deep, dark Reed. "Fancy meeting you here," Reed quips, wincing as he remembers he's supposed to be wounded. Quantum asks him how his leg is. "I've lost a bit of blood, sir, I don't think it's too serious," Reed tells him. Phlox asks the Mud Morlocks for his medical supplies, but they are reluctant to comply. Another Mud Morlock, who looks like Chris Elliott in a blue cornmeal masque, walks authoritatively into the cavern. "Human?" Muddy Chris asks. I think Enterprise took a wrong turn somewhere, so that instead of reaching Terra Nova, they've fetched up in a chic European spa instead. "That's right," Quantum says cautiously, wondering if such a masque would improve his pores. "What's that?" Chris in the Muddy asks, jerking his head at Phlox. "My name is Phlox. I'm a Denobulan. I am Captain Archer's physician," Phlox tells him. I think that's the first time we've heard Phlox's species mentioned. "You tracked from Earth on a Sky Ship," Chris in the Muddy says. Quantum agrees, and tells him the ship's name is Enterprise. "To what?" Chris in the Muddy says, getting up in Quantum's face. "Gut the rest of us?" "No," Quantum tells him cautiously. "We're here to find out what happened to the colony. We've come to help you." Another Mud Morlock steps up. "Novans have had enough 'help' from you," it says. "We're not so easy to hunt as Diggers," Chris in the Muddy tells Quantum. "Go back to the Overside or we'll seal your passage." Quantum again tries to explain that they're there to help them. Chris in the Muddy gestures at Reed and tells Quantum to take him and "don't track back." Is this an attempt at some form of NewSpeak? It's just so 1984. Quantum tells them they would gladly do that, but with Reed's bum leg, they have no hope of making it through the tunnels. "My doctor needs to treat him," Quantum explains. Chris in the Muddy gestures to the Mud Morlocks to give Phlox his medical toys.
"What makes you think we're here to hurt you?" Quantum asks as Phlox examines Reed. "Humans hurt Novans," Chris in the Muddy tells him. Quantum asks him why he thinks that. "They gutted us. They gutted our families, our before-families," Chris in the Muddy elaborates succinctly. Quantum tells him he doesn't understand. "Poison rain," an older woman to Chris in the Muddy says. "I was no taller than a Digger but I can still see back. We lived on the Overside then. The humans dropped the poison, burned our skin, gutted the grown ones. There was no place to go but here --" and the older Mud Morlock is seized with a fit of coughing. "To the 'Underside,'" Quantum finishes for her. "I think I know what you are talking about. The poison rain, it was some kind of radiation. I don't know what caused it but I am sure it wasn't humans." Phlox finishes with Reed and tells Quantum, "He can walk, more or less, but I'll need to get him back to sick bay to remove the projectile." Quantum attempts to explain to the Mud Morlocks that they're all descendents of the human beings who colonized the planet seventy years ago. He suggests that they try to put their heads together and discover what happened to the colony. The Mud Morlocks are not buying it. "He speaks in shale," one of them hisses to Chris in the Muddy. Quantum says, "If that's your way of calling me a liar, give me a chance to prove what I am saying. My 'Sky Ship' has tools that can tell us what happened here." "No!" Chris in the Muddy growls.
Phlox addresses him casually, saying, "Are you aware that your, um, mother, is sick?" Old Mud Morlock grabs Chris in the Muddy's hand in fear. "This," Phlox says, holding up the medical tricorder, "is one of the tools the Captain spoke of which can tell me all kinds things about the inside of your body. She has an illness we call 'lung cancer,' but it's easily cured." Quantum explains that Phlox can help Chris in the Muddy's mother (Muddy's Mum) but she'd have to come back to the ship with them. "This is shale," the Mud Morlock who used that annoying term before says. "They want to trap us on the Overside to gut us!" Chris in the Muddy ignores Shale Morlock and asks Quantum, "How long of a day would it take?" Phlox tells him it would only be a few hours. "Hours?" Chris in the Muddy queries. Quantum helps him out, "She'd be back before the sun rises on the Overside." Shaka, when the walls fell, right, buddy? Chris in the Muddy looks down at Muddy Mum, who gives him a hopeful look. "Let us help you," Quantum says, feeling that this is his finest hour. Chris in the Muddy says that they will "track together," but that Reed must stay. Quantum protests that Reed needs treatment as well, but Phlox tells him that Reed should be okay for a few hours. "Don't worry about me, sir, I was just getting used to the place," Reed says, all stiff-upper-lippish. At least he's not like Trip "The All Day Sucker" Tucker, who whined about going home after just five minutes of mind-altering drugs. Twice. Quantum tells Chris in the Muddy to lead them out, and he exchanges another look with Reed, who nods his head to reassure him that he'll be okay.
The shuttle pod approaches the big spaceship in the sky, and Quantum explains to Muddy Mum that it's a lot like the ship that brought them to Terra Nova. "Maybe you were born on board," Quantum suggests, "or were your born after your parents got here?" "My parents were Novans. They came from the Overside," is all Muddy Mum has to say about that.
Later, in sick bay, we can hear Muddy Mum's muffled banging and insistences to be let out. "Open the passage!" Chris in the Muddy commands Phlox, who tells him to wait a few more seconds. Chris in the Muddy gets all Anita's Anger about it (any other Superfudge readers out there in the dark?) while Quantum tries to reassure him. Finally, the CAT scan opens, and Muddy Mum slides out. Phlox apologizes for any "discomfort" she experienced. Chris in the Muddy asks if Muddy Mum is healed. "Not quite," Phlox says. "First I have to determine how far her sickness has spread." Phlox dials up some beeps and shows Muddy Mum her innards on the sick bay viewer. "That is you -- well, the inside of you, anyway," Phlox says. "This picture will tell me what kind of treatment you will require." He reads the data and tells Quantum that the cancer has spread, so she will need a series of cytolytic injections. "Injections?" Chris in the Muddy asks, reading over the Prime Directive Daily. "Medicine," Quantum assures him. "He's just going to give her some medicine." While Phlox synthesizes the required dosages, Quantum tells Chris in the Muddy and Muddy Mum that he wants them to look at some pictures: "They might help you remember what it was like living on the Overside before the poison rain." Some of Mayweather's research appears on the sickbay viewer. "It's human shale," Chris in the Muddy says to his mother. "They're confusing our path. You'll lose your tracks in this." Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Quantum tells them he's just trying to show them how they got to Terra Nova. "All I see is Digger filth!" Chris in the Muddy says. "Well, look again, because whether you wanna believe it or not, we're both human," Quantum tells them. "Bury your drawings!" Chris in the Muddy tells him angrily. Zinda! His face black, his eyes red! Quantum turns off the viewer and tells Phlox to keep him apprised of the situation. He leaves sick bay to chop a starlog.
T'Pol has found evidence of an "impact crater," which seems to explain where the radiation came from. On the bridge, T'Pol elucidates for Trip and the Captain that the crater, caused by an asteroid, is five hundred kilometers from the colony and that its depth is about two thousand meters. Coincidentally, T'Pol has learned that the impact of the asteroid occurred about seventy years ago. Sokath! His eyes open! "The poison rain," Quantum muses. "The geology was comprised primarily of beresium ore," T'Pol continues. "The thermo-shock would have created a radioactive cloud that probably covered the northern hemisphere for more than a year." Trip shakes his head: "They spent all those years getting here, and for what?"
Somewhere sub-terra firma, Reed is starting to feel the rock of the cavern walls pierce through his uniform, "That's an old MK-33, isn't it?" he asks his guard, "Or is it a 34?" Trust Reed to carpe ammo and talk about a subject close to his heart. Or leg. He's probably thrilled he got shot with such an old bullet in the first place. The guard doesn't say anything, so Reed tries again: "Impressive body armor you're wearing, did you make it yourself?" The guard looks suspiciously at this babbling, clean-faced Overside-dweller, but still says nothing. "Right," Reed says, shifting his weight on the rocks and wincing, "I don't suppose there's a lavatory on the premises, is there? I wouldn't mind freshening up a little." Still no response. "No, didn't think so," Reed says. The guard puts his weapon down, picks up a bowl of something, and starts eating with his fingers. Reed looks interested. "Is your belly hollow?" the guard asks. "That all depends," Reed says. "What's for dinner?" Four fried chickens and a coke. The guard hands him a cloth bowl of something. "Digger meat," he tells him. Reed picks up a squidgy white bit of something. "Looks a bit undercooked," he says. "Humans are like damp moss," the guard tells him. "They rot on the Underside." I guess that's a challenge of some sort. Reed shovels the Digger meat into his mouth and queases it down his gullet, mentally cursing Trip for getting to go on the away missions involving sex, drugs, and disco walls. "Not bad," he mutters. A low horn starts to play, and the guard looks up at one of his fellow Mud Morlocks serenading them. A few other Mud Morlocks join in, playing Digger skulls and Digger bones. Reed settles back, expecting to see Uhura appear to perform a feather dance in the sand at any moment.
Hoshi and Mayweather join Quantum in his quarters, telling him they've discovered the last transmission anyone sent from Terra Nova. "It was still in the buffer," Hoshi tells him, slipping a green plastic tile into a slot. "It's Captain Mitchell," Mayweather says as the transmission starts up. Captain Mitchell's transmission is as follows: "No matter how angry Logan's threats may have seemed, there had to have been a way of dealing with this other than attacking us. Nearly half the adults are dead, including Dr. Tracy, and everyone else is getting sick except for the younger children. If they have any chance of surviving, the least you can do is have the Vulcans send a ship for them. But for all I know, they were the ones you talked into attacking us. You wanted Terra Nova enough to do this? Well, it's yours now but I doubt you'll be very pleased with what you find when you get here." Mayweather tells an aggrieved Quantum that Mark Logan was the head of the opposition to more colonists coming to Terra Nova, and that he threatened to fire on any ship that came into orbit. Hoshi tells Quantum that Mitchell's message never reached Earth because the debris-clogged atmosphere wouldn't allow it to transmit. "So for some reason the young kids survive and begin living underground," Quantum says sloooowly, trying to piece it all together. "Their last memories of their parents are hearing them blame humans for destroying the colony. The idea that humans are the enemy has been embedded in them for more than two generations. This isn't going to be easy," Quantum Brain concludes. I'm sorry, can we have a judge's ruling on this? They heard their parents blame "humans"? Why -- how -- huh? Last I checked, a new planet does not a new species equal. Did the Pilgrims blame humans when they got annoyed with the British? Ugh, this episode's affecting me like a skin complaint -- look at me, I'm itching all over.
Phlox intercoms the Captain, asking him to report to sick bay. Phlox has eradicated Muddy Mum's cancer, but apparently, both her and her son's endocrine systems are undergoing microcellular decay brought on by drinking the radiation-flavored water. "I don't have any medication to treat this," Phlox tells Quantum, "and it's only going to get worse." Quantum, if it's possible, looks even more aggrieved than before. "Would bringing them to the surface help?" he asks. "T'Pol says the soil and foliage is going to remain irradiated for at least another decade," Phlox says. Quantum asks how Muddy Mum is doing. "She's as disagreeable as she was before I treated her," Phlox smiles. "Bring them to the Situation Room," Quantum orders, and walks away.
Chris in the Muddy stands firm that they will not leave their caverns, even when Quantum tries to explain what happened when the asteroid hit: "The fallout contained certain poisons. Humans under the age of four or five can usually build an immunity to them; that is why they survived." Phlox explains that the immunity has kept them all alive for the last few generations, but now that the poisons have seeped into their water supply, giving them a lethal little twist, they cannot remain where they are. "You humans tried to gut our Go-Befores when they lived on the Overside. Now you're trying to gut us," Muddy Mum tells them. T'Pol tells her that Phlox saved her life: "Perhaps you should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he is not human. Neither am I." Chris in the Muddy starts to pace, saying, "Giant rocks falling from the sky. Shale! It's all shale! Stick us back!" Shaka, when the walls fell! Quantum ignores his gibbering and tells Muddy Mum that he went through a bunch of photographs until he found one she might be really interested in. It's of a family posing outside one of the colony dwellings, and Quantum asks her if she recognizes anything. "It's the Overside, before the poison rain," Muddy Mum bites out and then identifies the people in the picture as humans. Quantum asks what humans were doing in their colony before it was destroyed, but they don't have an answer for that. Quantum tells her to look closer at the picture, and points out that the little girl in it is Muddy Mum sitting on her mother's lap. All the while, her son hops around in his Queen Helene Mint Julep Mud Masque and tells her it's "all shale" and that the medicine is "confusing her path." Considering that mud masque, I don't think her path's the confused one. Recognition begins to yawn, I mean, "dawn" on her face, but Chris in the Muddy hisses, "They're trying to make us leave the Underside," and then turns to Quantum and says, "If we're not back before daybreak, your crewman will be gutted!" Muddy Mum pushes herself away from the photos and closes her mind with a snap. Quantum angrily tells Phlox to finish with his patient and escort them to the shuttle bay. "SubCommander!" Quantum snaps as he leaves. I guess that's his way of nicely asking T'Pol to follow him, because she does.
In his quarters, Quantum rails about how the stubbornness of the Mud Morlocks is going to end up killing the fifty-eight people left in the caverns. Logically, T'Pol tries to reason with him: "Stun grenades." "What?!" Quantum, Mathra, and I all ask together. "Commander Tucker has continued to enhance the sensor resolution of their tunnels. We could transport stun grenades to specific locations, detonate them and use both shuttle pods to bring them back to the ship," T'Pol explains. "And then what?" Quantum asks. "Put them in chains?" T'Pol says that she's certain Reed could invent some "appropriate restraints." Quantum tells her, "What the hell d'you think this is, a slave ship? We can't relocate them by force!" T'Pol reminds him that their alternative is to stay and die. Quantum tells her they have to reason with the Morlocks and make them see that returning to Earth is the right thing to do: "We can't take them by force!" T'Pol asks him if he's certain Earth is the right place for them. Quantum doesn't get it. "When you get them back to Earth, what will you do? Send them to school? Teach them to read and write? Wear human clothing, eat human food? Teach them to live on the surface, enjoy the sunshine?" T'Pragmatic asks. "You're damn straight! They're human beings," Quantum tells her. You're a dork. "It's their birthright. It might take them a little while but they'll adapt. It's a helluva lot better than dying down in those tunnels." Instead of calling him a clot-headed thickie, as I would have, T'Practical reasons with him that they've lived in those tunnels for generations: "You can't just pluck them up, bring them to a strange world and hope they'll learn to conform. You'd be destroying their identity, destroying the Novan culture." So, if she doesn't believe that the Novans should be removed from Terra Nova, was her speechifying about using stun grenades just a devil's advocate thing? T'Pol is T'ricky. Quantum refuses to agree with T'Point Made and coms Trip to bring maps of the tunnel system. Looking at the maps, Trip and T'Pol explain to Quantum that the southern hemisphere of Terra Nova was unaffected by the asteroid radiation clouds. Quantum tells them to put the current map on a "PADD" for him and to find out if there are more underground systems like the ones below the colony site. "And it wouldn't hurt if it was crawling with those -- what do they call them -- Diggers!" Quantum says, before leaving the bridge to join Phlox, Mayweather, and the Harvey Mudd family in the shuttle pod. He makes me tired.
On the trip back to Terra Nova, Quantum tries to explain to Chris in the Muddy that a move to the southern hemisphere would be good for them. "The important thing is, the poison rain never fell there," Quantum says. "You'd be safe. Your children would be safe, you could even spend time on the Overside if you wanted to." Chris in the Muddy tells Quantum that the crew of the Enterprise wouldn't want their tunnels so much if they were truly infected. "We don't!" Mayweather says, spinning around from the navigational controls in frustration. "We only want to help you, make you healthy!" He glances quickly at Quantum, then turns back to his controls. "Was that photograph of Vera Fuller and her daughter shale?" Quantum asks, getting down with their lingo. "Do you really believe we created it to trick you? You're human. So am I. Humans help each other." Muddy Mum doesn't say anything, but her son does: "When we track back to the Underside, we'll return your crewman only if you promise to leave!" Quantum asks if they could just tell their people what he proposed. Chris in the Muddy sticks his nose in the air and looks away, pursing his lips. Damn, he really doesn't want to share any of Terra Nova Spa's beauty secrets, does he? The shuttle pod lands and Quantum makes like he's going to get out, but the pod quakes a bit. "All thrusters are down!" Mayweather tells him. The pod rocks again. "Fire them up again," Quantum commands, as the ground suddenly cracks open and swallows them up. Mayweather transmits to Enterprise that they have a commercial, ur, emergency.
Friggin' Mohegan Sun commercials. It's the true dumbing down of America.
T'Pol asks if anyone is hurt as the shuttle continues to gradually fall through the surface. Quantum tells her no one's hurt yet, and when they finally seem to have stopped dropping, Quantum asks how far they've fallen. Trip reports that they're down eight meters, adding, "Looks like a couple of the abandoned tunnels gave away." "Open it!" Chris in the Muddy commands, suddenly wild-eyed and breathing hard. Quantum tells him to keep his Avocado & Oatmeal on and asks Trip what they'd find if he opened the hatch. "You're on the floor of a stable tunnel, you should be okay," Trip says. "Open it!" Chris in the Muddy says again, lunging at Quantum. Oh, sure -- this guy lives in caves his whole life and suddenly he wants to play the claustrophobia card? Quantum coms Trip to build a rig to pull the pod back up, and opens the hatch. They all get out and cough in the rock dust. "We're in the down-slope passage, we need to pass the cut-through to get to your crewman. Give me your pistol," Chris in the Muddy says. Quantum asks him why. "If you want to see your human alive, you'll give me your pistol," Chris in the Muddy says, holding out his hand. Quantum hands it over and follows. He turns back to tell Mayweather to cool his jets by the shuttle pod and keep his com open. Mayweather pulls out his pistol and tosses Quantum a flashlight.
The three proceed through the passages until Quantum hears muffled cries for help. They all listen, and Muddy Mum says, "It's Akary!" and leads them up some steps to a ledge. Far below, a Mud Morlock lies in a puddle of water, trapped by a fallen tree. I guess that makes it a mud puddle. Heh heh. But hang on a tick -- they have trees growing in the caverns? "He must have fallen when your Sky Ship quaked the tunnels," Chris in the Muddy tells Quantum, and asks Akary if he's hurt. "I'm leg-broke!" Akary calls back. Hey, I'm flat-broke, do you think we're related? What? Come on, this is a really stupid episode, and I have to do what I can to stay awake and drunk. Akary's still talking, I guess: "The wood has me sealed down!" Chris in the Muddy asks Quantum if he'll "risk [his] bones to save a Novan." Quantum says he'll try, but he doesn't think he'll be able to get down the sides of the cave walls. Chris in the Muddy susses out the situation and says, "We'll track together but you'll need to trust me." They find a convenient little path and make their way down until Quantum looses his footing (stupid slick-soled Manolo Blahniks!) and hangs by one hand over the precipice. Chris in the Muddy reaches out to him, and Quantum swings his other arm to meet his hand and is pulled to safety. They finally reach Akary and attempt to pull the log off him. "The water's rising -- we have to hurry!" Chris in the Muddy says, explaining why the puddle that barely dampened Akary's back earlier is suddenly around his ears. They can't shift the log, so Quantum asks for his pistol back. "Why? So you can go free your hostage?" Chris in the Muddy asks. "So I can free this man!" Quantum tells him in his Rising Action Voice. Quantum tells Chris in the Muddy it's his turn to trust him, so the Mud Morlock hands the phase pistol over. Quantum saws the tree in half with a beam and tells Akary to tell him when he starts to feel a slight burning sensation through his middle. Well, not really, I guess. Akary is freed, and they carry him to Reed's cavern. "Captain!" Reed says, struggling to his feet. "How're you holding up?" Quantum asks. "Not bad, all things considered, but I really wouldn't mind getting this bullet out of my leg." And using the powder room, I imagine. "Tell them!" Muddy Mum orders her son, who looks sulky. "Tell them what Archer said about the islands to the south." Chris in the Muddy looks around at his fellow Mud Morlocks and says, "They promised to leave. Let them go. We'll be fine here." Muddy Mum insists, "We're not fine. None of us is fine. We're rotting -- all of us!" Temba, his arms open! Chris in the Muddy pleads with his mother to let the Enterprise people go on their merry way. "I've seen back, Vera Fuller was my mother. That girl in the picture was me. A human girl. Our Go-Befores shared the same path -- we should listen!" Muddy Mum says. Why doesn't she just say, "Because I'm your muddy mother and I say so!"? That's how it worked in my house.
Enterprise dinner table. Mayweather, using chopsticks, is heralding his higher-ups with Unsolved Mysteries, but without Robert Stack's scary voice. "Ever heard of Judge Crater?" he asks. "'Crater'?" T'Pol repeats inquisitively. "Disappeared in the early twentieth century. How about Amelia Earhart?" Mayweather asks. "No," T'Pol tells him, forking up her rabbit food. "Nineteen-thirty-seven," Mayweather says, smugly. "Never found a trace of her. A lot of people spent years -- decades -- trying to figure out what happened to them. But neither of those mysteries holds a candle to Terra Nova, and we solved it!" "You" didn't do anything. You stood outside the cave in the first half, and then you hung around the pod in the second half. I seriously want to know why, if they are so into Earth "ancient" history, they haven't brought up the lost colony of Roanoke as a parallel mystery. Maybe because TPTB don't want to remind their audience that this episode is straight out of Derivative City? Trip says they did better than solve the mystery; they saved the Novans from extinction. "All these years, wondering about that colony. I never thought I'd become a part of their history," Mayweather oozes. Quantum looks at him thoughtfully and says, "Tell you what, Travis, why don't you put together the report for Starfleet? If I'm not mistaken it will be headline news back home." Mayweather looks ecstatic. What a way to get out of doing your homework, Captain. "'The Terra Nova Puzzle: Solved at Last, as told by Ensign Mayweather,'" Trip muses. "Thank you, sir!" Mayweather says joyfully. Quantum nods indulgently. I miss H.G. Wells.