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Hoshi exhibits what has become her typical skittishness when she and Trip have to transport off a storm-infested planet. Of course, Hoshi "comes back wrong" and realizes she's slowly disappearing from sight, but no one really listens to her cries in the night. Suddenly, every other crewmember starts acting really mean and completely out of character, and I really begin to wonder whether it's because the whole thing is happening in Hoshi's head. Once invisible, Hoshi comes across some aliens fixin' to blow up the ship and tries to save the day. My Thanksgiving wish was that at least one of those planetary storms was the Crystalline Entity there to wipe this pathetic excuse for a storyline off the map. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I've made no secret of my feelings regarding this episode. The only reason I'm not giving this "Inner Light"-"Frame of Mind"-"Remember Me"-"Realm of Fear" meatloaf an F is because I think Linda Park is exceptional and deserved to have her own episode. At long last. Not that they gave her much to work with, given that her two expressions were "fear" and "concern." Lecture time -- for those of you who don't want to hear an opinion other than one that lauds this episode as the harbinger of all that is good and holy, please avert your eyes. When I was in college -- no, it started even earlier than that -- when I was a freshman in high school, my revered creative writing teacher told us never to use the whole "it was a dream" device if we wanted to avoid descending into The Trite Depths Of Hackneyed Mediocrity. Maybe Bermaga should've gone to Southwest High and had Ms. Sexton bludgeon some originality into them. Some might argue, "Um, Keckler, it was original because we've never really known what goes on during those few seconds of transport, and plus Hoshi and Trip are just hot together!" To that I respond thusly: Give your italics finger a rest. Secondly, to paraphrase nelamm, chemistry between actors does not the act of copulation equal -- whether you like it or not, there is more to this show than people getting it on under covers. Additionally, anything perceived between Hoshi and Trip -- or Hoshi and ANYONE in this episode -- was all in Hoshi's head. IT WAS NOT REAL. In closing, I'd like to remind everyone that the fact that Barclay also experienced a certain awareness during transport, and that Picard lived an entire lifetime in the twenty-five minutes it took for a probe to access his brain, still makes this an entirely derivative plotline patched together with scraps from several series' episodes. It's not that hard to think up something fresh, people -- that's why they call it CREATIVE writing! God.
Trip and Hoshi investigate hieroglyphics on some old ruins. Hoshi tries to date a few of them as being older than others in another cave, and Trip establishes for us that Hoshi can't read any of them. Hoshi asks Trip if he can read them. Just because he reads at a Highlights level doesn't mean he can read pictures too. "Well, I think this says 'Tall guys are popular,'" Trip answers, taking a snapshot of a carving that shows a tall image standing between two smaller ones. Hoshi tells him, "You're a budding linguist." Well, he's a budding something, at any rate. They muse over what could have happened to the civilization. In my opinion, they got into trouble for playing Harold and the Purple Crayon with their walls, and their gods wiped them off the face of the planet. "It is kinda weird -- not a single bio-scan in the entire planet," Trip mentions, so casually that we know it has to Mean Something. Maybe the Crystalline Entity has been here. Quantum calls to tell them that a storm is quickly moving in, so they have to skee-daddle out of there. Hmm -- Crystalline Entity?
On the bridge, T'Pol reports the existence of another storm front. This new storm means they can't use the sh'pod to return to the ship -- it has something to do with being "saturated with polaric energy." It IS the Crystalline Entity! Outside the ruins, some plants blow in the storm. "'No bio-signs,' huh? So, those must be the plastic plants the civilization left behind when they tired of living on the 'Way to Eden' set," Mathra snaps. Hoshi wimps a bunch about not transporting back to the ship, but Quantum and Trip tell her to suck it up. After arguing about who should be the first to get their molecules reorganized, Trip finally agrees to beam out first and comms Hoshi that he made it to the ship all in one piece. Hoshi goes , and arrives on the bridge. Also in one piece. Or -- is she? Linda Park does an excellent job of contorting her face into pure terror before beaming out. It's really too bad they couldn't have given her better material to work with in this episode. Although I feel even worse about the fact that the Crystalline Entity never showed up.
And that's the last real part of this episode until fifty-five minutes later. Including the theme song.
Hoshi washes her face and looks intently at her pores. Some Bioré strips will fix those right up. Although she doesn't really have to worry about blackheads, since none of this is actually happening. Quantum comes in and tells his Dreamweaving Linguist to take her time resting up and not bother reporting for duty until the morning. And when she does, she should show up in her underwear so everyone can stand around and laugh. Quantum goes on about her and Trip returning to the scene of the plastic plants to retrieve the sh'pod and finish their survey. Hoshi wimps, but Quantum tells her they can take the other sh'pod and not worry about transporting down. "I'll only get lost," Hoshi comments. "Lost?" Quantum repeats. I'm not even going to worry about making sense of her dialogue, because imagined dialogue never makes sense. Hoshi reiterates how tired out she is, and Quantum leaves. Hoshi goes back to debating the usefulness of Queen Helene's Mint Julep Masque.
Mess. Trip, Reed, and May-This-Episode-Should-Have-Been-All-About-Me-Disappearing-But-That-Would-Have-Been-Too-Self-Referential are chowing down and yukking it up. Hoshi approaches and greets them quietly, but they all ignore her, because her id believes that she's not truly one of the guys. She raises her voice, and The Boys' Club finally notices her and allows her sit down with them. "You know what? I don't do dream sequences!" Mathra announces, throwing his notes away. May-See-The--Moniker wants Hoshi to tell them what transporting felt like, but she's not that jazzed to go into the gory and made-up details. Of course, Trip is much more cucumber-like about the whole ordeal. Hoshi insists that she still doesn't feel right. I've heard that often happens when you're in a dream state. Hoshi announces that she wants to check the medical database and find out what happened to the people they first tested the transporter on. "You mean other than Cyrus Ramsey," Malcolm "Easy Breezy Beautiful Cover Girl" Reed sniggers. Hoshi has no idea what he's on about. "thing you'll tell us you never hurd uv the Easter Bunny," Trip chews. Naturally, The Boys' Club knows all about the guy who tested the transporter in Madison, Wisconsin and never reappeared at the designated one hundred meters away. It seems to be a ghost story they like to spin on all their Survival Badge sleepovers. This is where Hoshi's psyche decides Trip should bring up the fact that he and Quantum did their survival training together in Australia, and that May-I-Can't-Think-Of-Anything-Interesting-To-Call-Him did his in Death Valley, CA. Not Vasquez Rocks?
Trip gets a comm. Or at least I think he does -- the sound people seemed to have forgotten to put the noise in. Maybe he has his communicator set on vibrate. Or maybe it's Hoshi who forgot to hallucinate the noise up. Anyway, Quantum gives The Good Ol' Boy a jingle to tell him that he and May-Humdrum will be making the run to pick up the other pod, since he doesn't "think Hoshi will be joining [him]." Hoshi makes a face. At this news, Trip and May-Duller-Than-A-Collection-Of-Actuaries all but bump chests, slap butts, and stick their tongues down each other's throat as they get up from the table. Malcolm, not wanting to be left out of the HoYay Club for all the lipstick in Christendom, gets up as well. "Never say I don't take you anywhere," Trip joshes. "You don't take me anywhere!" May-Not-Really-A-Good-Comeback giggles. The Boys' Club laughs, and Hoshi "Dream A Little Dream" Sato feels left out. "See you later," she mutters.
Sick Bay. Serving as The Establishing Moment Proving That Hoshi Will Indeed Disappear Like That One Buffy Episode, Phlox doesn't initially hear Hoshi come in and call out for him. Hoshi complains about feeling like she came back wrong to the sort-of-sympathetic doctor. Phlox scans her, doesn't find anything amiss, and assures her she's not about to become "the Cyrus Ramsey." Here's a fun fact to know: dreamed-up anvils still weigh as much as regular anvils. Hoshi points out that a mole on her face used to be a centimeter lower. Phlox thinks it looks "lovely" in its new home, and recommends she get a good night's sleep. That's the second mention of Hoshi getting sleep. Could it be because she's DREAMING? I hate this episode so much, I'd like to force feed it Brussels sprouts, offal, and head cheese.
Hoshi sleeps until T'Pol comms her to say she's needed on the bridge. Apparently, Hoshi overslept by three hours and missed the beginning of her shift. Well, that kind of thing can happen when what's going on isn't really happening. Hoshi runs onto the Bridge and babbles apologies to a stalking-around Quantum, who tells her that May-Expendable-Even-In-Other-Crewmen's-Dreams and Trip were taken hostage on the planet. "Taken hostage by who?" Hoshi asks. "'By whom,'" Mathra corrects. "The people down there didn't like you disturbing their ruins," Quantum blame-games. This is where I was really convinced that we were being forced to watch an alternate reality television show. I mean, Quantum has been known to get on my nerves now and again, but he's usually not irrationally unfair. At least not to Hoshi "Dream On" Sato. "'People'? There wasn't a bio-sign on the planet!" Hoshi defends herself. "The chambers you and Mr. Tucker photographed contained sacred relics," T'Pol informs her, wanting to get in on the game that is one of blaming. "How could you possibly know that?" Hoshi wants to know. Wait! Wait, I can explain how: Hoshi, you're DREAMING!
More talk about where Trip and That Other Pilot are being held, and then an alien-speake communiqué comes through. Hoshi can't decipher it with the Universal Translator, so Malcolm suggests, "Maybe you should just forget about the UT -- just try and talk to them." Maestro Mathra expounds, "You know what gave this scene away for me? I mean, other than the fact that it was so completely obvious that it was not real? The music was all wrong for a real suspense situation. It was too middling and meandering -- it should have been more 'duh, duh, duh!' with brass and not these namby-pamby strings." Hoshi tries talking back to the aliens, but it doesn't work, so Quantum pulls some redshirt from another part of the bridge and tells him to have a go at it. He orders Hoshi back to her quarters to get some rest. Sleep Anvil Number Three is having its wings de-iced. Hoshi protests, but everyone ignores her. She leaves.
"Gift exchange? I don't think anyone's ever described Wrath of Khan as a 'gift exchange' before," Mathra mutters irritably.
Hoshi turns her shower on from the outside. Must be the same set. She gets all kinds of naked and looks at herself in the mirror. The mist from the shower plays tricks and makes her look like she's disappearing. Hoshi jumps back. She waits a bit and then looks in the mirror again, which, by now, has become completely fogged over. She cleans it off and stares intently at herself. You know, if I kept looking that long and that hard at myself, I might start to see things too. Hoshi gets into the shower, flashing a long bit of upper thigh, and gets wet. She pumps some soap into her hands and rubs them together -- but wait! As she looks at them, she starts to see the tile of the shower through them! She gasps and looks again, and now her hands appear normal! So very, very BORED NOW.
Mess Hall. Hoshi grabs a tray and asks someone if she can join them at the table. There is no answer from T'Pol. Hoshi stands there: "Sub-Commander?" Still no response from the Vulcan nose buried in a book. Hoshi clears her throat. T'Pol looks up: "Ensign. Would you like to join me?" Hoshi thanks her and sits down, but a second later wishes she hadn't when T'Pol tells her that the redshirt Quantum put in her place deciphered the alienish within an hour of Hoshi sleepwalking off the bridge. "A simple bimodal syntax," T'Pol explains, and also rubs the saltpeter in the wound by saying that Trip and his random friend are now back on the ship, no longer hostages. Hoshi thinks she should get back to the bridge now that most of her job has been done for her, in case Quantum wants to speak to the aliens again. "Captain Archer has asked that you remain off duty for the time being. Crewmen Baird [a.k.a. the redshirt who took over Hoshi's post and outshined her by deciphering a simple bimodal syntax that any baby could've handled...as long as the baby wasn't dreaming] has been placed in charge of communications," T'Pol informs her, and leaves. "You know if they had to do this storyline AGAIN, couldn't it have been Reed who started disappearing? At least we could have had people getting blown up, or self-flogging, or at the very least makeover parties!" Mathra crabs, pulling Hunca Munca's jaws off Poppadum's overfed rear.
Hoshi walks down corridors and gets ignored by several crewmen. A person could really start to develop a complex with that kind of treatment. Hoshi gets in a turbolift, but the buttons don't respond to her touch. She starts to hear distant voices that seem to be Malcolm and Trip telling her she "can do it" and that it's as "easy as one, two, three." "What?" she asks. Another crewman gets on the turbolift, doesn't look at her, and pushes the buttons to make the turbolift go.
Sick Bay. Hoshi complains some more to Phlox that she thinks she's going all Ensign Ro and Geordi, citing the fact that people are ignoring her, Quantum replaced her on the Bridge, the turbolift had selective hearing, she doesn't like her reflection, and water seems to pass through her in the shower rather than bounce off her. After some lip-service to the transporter being new technology that is natural to be wary of, Phlox takes more scans, again tells her she's fine, and recommends she take a mild sedative. "Mild"? Hell, I just popped a handful of Vicodin and washed it down with a bottle of brandy-spiked Nyquil to keep myself from picking the paint off my walls in abject ennui. "It will help you get a good night's sleep," Phlox explains. Sleep Anvil Number Four is clear for landing. "Phlox should just go over and administer a good hard pinch," Mathra advises. Hoshi declines the pill pop, saying the last thing she needs is medicated sleep. That's the only kind of sleep I like. I wish I were medicatedly sleeping now. Phlox tells her to stop by in the morning. "First thing," Hoshi agrees, and thanks him. She's able to open the Sick Bay doors manually, and Phlox gives her a "See? Told you so" look.
Jazzercise Room. Trip uses that thing I thought looked like something Da Vinci drew. I'm not entirely sure what sort of benefit it has for your muscles. Looks like a job for Dramamine before I'd even consider strapping myself into it. Hoshi apologizes to Trip for flubbing the translation while he was being held captive by the non-bio-sign-bearing aliens. Trip assures her he's fine and not bothered by Hoshi's mental collapse, and then asks if she wants to get on the Vomit Comet. Hoshi reminds him she gets motion sick. And she chose to serve on a starship? That's gotta be the worst kind of air sickness. Hoshi "Dream Date" Sato gets on an arm-pumping machine and confesses to Trip how out of whack she feels. Trip attempts to counsel her, telling her it "seems perfectly natural" to be anxious about being taken apart and put back together again. Except that he's not anxious, so would that mean he's not natural? Hoshi hopes it's just all in her head. "Well, what else could it be?" Trip asks -- showing great concern, according to Hoshi's imagination. "I saw my reflection become transparent," Hoshi tells him. "I saw water pass through my hand. I'm convinced the transporter didn't put me back the way it was supposed to." Have you noticed that I haven't recapped much dialogue this episode? Three reasons for that: one, it sucked; two, it sucked majorly; and three, it was all a variation on what Hoshi just said. "All the king's horses and all the king's men," Trip muses. I wrote a little recipe today called "Shut Up, Trip," and it has one ingredient: a single heaping tablespoon of Shut Up, Trip! "I can see why you might imagine the universe unraveling," Trip continues. "If you're afraid you haven't been put back together right, why assume anything else makes sense. If I were you I'd ask the doc for a sedative -- nothing like crawling into bed." "You men are all alike," Hoshi wrys. Meaning what, exactly? I didn't see that as sexual, no matter how much certain forumites want to read into this "chemistry" -- which is all happening in Hoshi's brain, I might add. Trip tells her that getting a good night's sleep would do her "a world of good," and leaves. Hoshi tries to fiddle with some buttons on the arm-pumping machine, but she can't seem to press them. I think Sleep Anvil Number Five is affecting her with its proximity. She goes to grab some weights, but her hands pass right through them. She freaks and jumps back, and then finds that she can't press the buttons to leave the room. She looks in the extra-large jazz-hands mirror and sees her reflection fade away. "Hold on, hold on! I don't understand -- her reflection is fading but she isn't? So, is she just turning into a vampire by degrees? This really is not making sense. Wait a minute, IT DOESN'T MATTER ANYWAY!" Mathra hollers.
Hoshi sleeps on the gymnasium floor, but wakes up when Trip and T'Pol walk in. "Thank God you're here -- I've been stuck in here for hours. The door control --" Hoshi says, jumping to her feet. Trip tells T'Pol that "she was here last night -- right over there." T'Pol comms Quantum to find out that there has been no sign of Hoshi on the entire ship. Obviously, the whole point of this scene is to tell us that Hoshi's finally become completely invisible. Quantum comms T'Pol to meet him in Sick Bay, and tells them they will not break orbit while Hoshi is still missing. Trip and T'Pol leave. Hoshi runs after them and makes it through the door before it closes. Although I really don't know why she rushed -- if her hand was able to pass right through those weights, I'm sure she could walk through the door while it's closed.
Sick Bay. Quantum and T'Pol cross-examine Phlox and find out that Hoshi made several visits to him, complaining of feeling left-out and ignored. Phlox shows them the scans he took of Hoshi, which seemed "perfectly normal at the time," but now show that all her molecules are doing a disappearing act. Phlox only took a closer look at them when he heard that Hoshi was AWOL. In the background, we can see Hoshi sitting on a counter, looking by turns sulky and scared.
Transporter Room. Trip discovers that the phase coils aren't aligning. They aren't synchronized, either. This is not a good thing, and it's the reason Hoshi's molecules are doing a fade to black. It all happened after Trip transported, so Trip agonizes over how he should have made her go first. Or maybe they should have checked the phase coil alignment and synchronization before the beamed a second person up? "I tole her I wouldn't leave her alone with that storm comin', but she insisted on goin' second," Trip laments. "She wanted to be sure it wuz workin', that it wuz safe. I'm the wun that shuld be missin'. I tole her to go first. She should'uv listened to me." Sitting in the corridor, Hoshi comments, "It wasn't your fault." Quantum angrily orders that the transporter be taken offline until it is fixed: "Starfleet promised me this sort of thing wouldn't happen." What? Like scores of people are suddenly going to line up to transport off the ship? Phlox brings up the bad news that if Hoshi's molecules are decomposing, maybe they shouldn't be looking for Hoshi as much as they should be looking for her sub-cellular remains. "You're wrong, Doctor, I'm still in one piece -- you just can't see me," Hoshi tells them. Quantum strickenly tells T'Pol to get Phlox's help in recalibrating the sensors, and start scanning for her remains. Trip looks very pensive as Quantum comms May-I'm-Acting-Far-Too-Cheerful-For-This-Scene-Of-Mourning and tells him to break orbit and resume their course. So, do you see why that is Significant? Because, earlier, he wouldn't allow them to break orbit until they found Ensign Invisible. Quantum tells everyone that he'll be in his Ready Room, and walks right through Hoshi on his way out. Because they had to have at least one of those body-through-body scenes. What I'm wondering is how exactly does Hoshi know she's not dead and doomed to haunt Enterprise for all eternity? Why am I even asking? It's all a friggin' perchance-to-dream sequence!
Creeping through corridors, Phlox and Trip scan for Hoshi's lovely bones while Hoshi follows them, babbling that they're barking up the wrong tree. They stop and scan a bit more. "If you spent a little more time trying to figure out what happened to me --" Hoshi starts to accuse, but stops because she hears voices again. This time, they're alien. Hoshi goes down another shaft, looking for the voices, and hears Trip and Reed talking indistinctly, saying, "What's the problem?" "The stream's too unstable," and "It's as easy as one, two --" Hoshi is distracted by Trip telling Phlox he found something, and goes back to their corridor. They scan, and seem to determine that a smear of green ooze is actually Hoshi. "Why would she have come down here?" Trip wonders. Phlox doubts they'll ever know, and pulls out a little envelope and what looks like a pH testing strip, saying, "Captain Archer will want Hoshi's parents to have this." He will? Phlox scrapes up a portion of the green ooze with the pH test strip and puts it in the envelope: "They're both alive, aren't they?" First of all, what the hell in our bodies would leave behind an ooze of that color? And secondly, what parents in their right mind would want a boogery pap smear to remember their dead child by? That's just fifty-two different kinds of ick. Trip affirms that Hoshi's parents are indeed alive, then tells Phlox to go on ahead, as he needs a moment alone. Apparently, Hoshi thinks very highly of what Trip feels for her, as she dream-ons that Trip bewails and bemoans her "passing." He says pretty much exactly what he said in the transporter room, except that he ends with, "And now look what you've done." Trip leaves. Hoshi starts to hear the alienish again, and investigates. This time she spies some blue aliens fiddling with the ship's insides. It doesn't look to be on the up-and-up, but I'm surprisingly unconcerned. I think it must be because NONE OF THIS IS REAL!
Quantum's Ready Room. Quantum furrows and paces. Hoshi comes in through one of his walls. "Okay, so she's more than just invisible -- she can pass through matter. Then how is it that she's not falling through the floor or can still breathe oxygen? Maybe it's because the soles of her feet magically didn't get affected by the transporter, because they came into contact with those plastic plants on the surface of the planet. Therefore, they don't pass through matter, and the reason why no one else can see them walking around is because her invisible body is on top of them, thus hiding them. Hold on, though -- that would mean she wouldn't be able to pass through walls without her soles getting stuck on the other side. Oh, but wait, this is JUST A DREAM!" And with that, Mathra gives up on the fan-spanking. Hoshi tells Quantum that he needs to listen to her, because aliens are planting bombs on D-Deck. Quantum answers a comm telling him that they've located Hoshi's father, but her mother isn't home.
Quantum sits down to a completely awkward (even for him) conversation with Hoshi's father in which he barely gets out the information that Hoshi is dead. Mr. Sato gets offended that Quantum even presumes to call Hoshi one of his own family, and tells him he'll get back to him when he speaks with Hoshi's mother. That's a weird response to have when you've been told you're daughter died in a transporter accident: "I'll get back to you on that one." Wonder what it says for Hoshi's perception of how her parents feel about her. Since Hoshi can stick her hands -- but not her feet -- through all kinds of solid mechanisms, she reaches up to the ceiling and plays with a blinking light. She seems to be capable of interrupting the path of electricity, and reminds Quantum he knows Morse Code. Quantum looks around at the weird buzzing noise, and Hoshi encourages him to figure it out: "That's right, it's not supposed to be making that noise, is it?" Quantum investigates the blinking lights. "S-O-S," Hoshi tells him. "It's a call for help." Just in case there were a bunch of Cleti in the audience who don't know what an S-O-S is. T'Pol walks in, and Quantum explains his furrow. "A plasma circuit's being interrupted," T'Pol tells him. "I'll ask Commander Tucker to take a look at it." Quantum stops her and tells her he thinks it's buzzing out an S-O-S in Morse Code. "Let's see how good your memory is," Hoshi says, and starts spelling out her name. T'Pol convinces Quantum that he's had a difficult day and he should try to get some rest. Sleep Anvil Number Six is taxiing up the runway. Quantum agrees and leaves with T'Pol, saying he'll have Trip look at it in the morning. Hoshi shouts that tomorrow is too late. Honey, you're dreaming if you think he can hear you.
Aliens fiddle some more, and in her see-through state, Hoshi watches the aliens from an access shaft. I guess being invisible and capable of walking through walls cures any and all feelings of claustrophobia one might have had several episodes ago. Hoshi attempts to foil their plans by being able (somehow) to disconnect their stuff. She can't push buttons on doors, yet she can interfere with a plasma circuit and disconnect bombs? Maybe Hoshi dreams of being MacGyver. The aliens reconnect their stuff, but Hoshi can't work her magic a second time, so the bombs seem to be primed. Summoning up a transporter pad, the aliens beam out of the scene of the crime. Hearing Reed and Trip's voices telling her, "Come on, Hoshi, come on!" and "It's as easy as one, two --" Hoshi decides to jump on the pad and follow the aliens, although what in the world she was thinking that would accomplish other than putting her on an alien world, I don't even know.
"Three!" Reed finishes as Hoshi arrives in Enterprise's transporter room. Trip compliments Malcolm on his hour-long transporting work and turns to Hoshi: "See, I told you -- piece of cake." Hoshi drops her suitcase on the pad and tries to dart away, saying, "Where are they? We've got to stop them!" Trip stops her, asking who she's talking about. "You heard me? You can hear me? Do you see me?" Hoshi demands desperately. Malcolm "I See Myself In Feria" Reed tells her everything's fine. "It's not fine -- they put a bomb on the warp reactor!" Hoshi tells them, running off again. Trip grabs her and asks who she's talking about. "The aliens from the surface," Hoshi says, trying to get past Trip. "There's no one on the surface -- it's uninhabited!" Trip assures her, making her look at him. "What are you talking about? They kidnapped you and Travis -- we've got to stop them!" Hoshi shrieks. Trip grapples with her and looks at Reed for support. Malcolm tells her the transporter was interrupted by the storms, and he had some trouble reintegrating her matter stream. "Trouble?" Hoshi repeats. "You were sort of...trapped in the pattern buffer," Trip explains, "but only for a few seconds." "Eight-point-three seconds, to be precise," Malcolm anal-retents. Malcolm? You've got lipstick on your teeth -- go away and wash it off. "Are you saying I was just on the surface?" Hoshi asks Trip. "You insisted on going second," Trip reminds her, clasping her shoulder. Hoshi thinks a moment and asks, "Do you have a mirror?" "What?!" Reed asks, wondering how she knew about the cheval glass he has hidden behind a bulkhead in the transporter room. "Forget it," Hoshi grins, relieved. "And I was sure I was going to be the Cyrus Ramsey!" And all together now: "Cyrus who?" Trip asks, as Reed also looks confused. Hoshi looks disconcerted.
Sick Bay. "So you're saying all of that happened in eight seconds?" Hoshi asks Phlox, who tells her it probably happened in the last one or two seconds of transport. "As your matter stream was coalescing. She seems fine," Phlox tells Quantum. Quantum sits on the examining table to Hoshi and says, "Malcolm's recommending some new transport protocols to Starfleet -- he's suggesting we start compressing the transporter beam." That might be helpful. Hoshi tells him she doesn't think she'll be transporting anywhere for a long time. "But you said you stepped onto the aliens' transporter by choice," Quantum hints. "I was trying to save Enterprise," Hoshi informs him. "Sounds like you overcame your fear," Quantum psychoanalyzes. It was a dream, you freak. I've never heard of overcoming a fear simply by dreaming that you did it. "It's all in my head, remember?" Hoshi says. "Does it matter?" Quantum chuckles. It does to me -- there's a whole hour of my life I'm never getting a refund on! "You were afraid of getting lost, afraid of disappearing, but you still climbed onto that platform -- real or not," Quantum Freuds. "Quantum's just trying to fanspank the whole thing away. He sat there and listened to Hoshi's story, and at the end, he realized how stupid of a story it was, so now he just wants that hour of his life back too," Mathra determines. Hoshi tells him that if it's all the same to him, she'd rather stick to sh'pods. And Dramamine. "Come on," Quantum says, guiding her off the table. "Let's go to the bridge." He puts up his hand to press the door button, but Hoshi stops him: "If you don't mind?" She wants to open the door herself. To prove that she can. Ugh. They walk off together.
You know what could have possibly saved this episode? Having the whole thing in Hoshi's head as she's hanging out in the pattern buffer, EXCEPT for part where the aliens are trying to sabotage the ship. They could have made that the only real aspect of Hoshi's dream; by virtue of getting trapped in the pattern buffer and becoming one with the ship's inner workings, Hoshi was able to see things regular crewmembers could not. See -- that? Would've been cool. Anyway, to celebrate the imminent release of Nemesis, they're showing a bunch of Trek movies on UPN, so I've come up with a good excuse for this episode: Hoshi was clearly in the Mutara Nebula.
week's a repeat, people, so you'll be spared my vitriolic wrath for a bit. Go out and have a drink -- I know I will.