Episode Report Card Keckler: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Let That Be Your Last Bakulafield
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.13.2004
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Okay, so these religious zealots smarm their holier-than-thou way onto Enterprise and after peddling their sad, zealotty story to Quantum and getting medical attention from Phlox, they also get free roam of the ship. Can you guess what happens next? Riiight. They TAKE OVER THE SHIP! It seems that Quantum and Co's fiddling with all those spheres offended their religious sensibilities since they believe their higher powers -- "The Makers" -- made those spheres. Thus, all the landing, going into, and generally prodding those balls of metal that Quantum and Co. have been doing this whole season is tantamount to peeing on Buddha. Or those special trees from season two. Anyway, the zealots manage to take over the ship by demonstrating just how far they will go, namely, they're all equipped to be human organic bombs. Sound familiar? Then either you've been living on Earth for the past thousand of years or you've been watching a lot of TV. Once he gains control of the ship, the head zealot tells Quantum that they mean to destroy the heretics of their species; furthermore, they intend to use Enterprise to rain down this religious vengeance. One small catch, they demand a human sacrifice to make up for all the sphere peeing. Quantum volunteers himself and opts for Death by Transporter. Ha! But since the zealots don't truck with science, they have no idea how the transporter works! In fact, T'Pol just beams Quantum to another part of the ship -- the Catwalk, I think -- where he manages to get back his ship with the help of Phlox, Phlox's bat, and one of the zealots who has been losing his zeal. Or lots. Once Quantum gets his ship back he faces down the "heretics," whom the zealots engaged in a firefight when he was "dead." Get this -- whereas the zealots have one side of their face tattooed with something red, the heretics have the same tattoo in blue! Also? The big heretical belief of the heretics? They believed The Makers created their "Chosen Realm" (aka "The Expanse") in nine days where the zealots believed it was ten! Freaks. The "Let That Be Their Last Battlefield" parallel doesn't stop there, either. Quantum actually gives the zealots cab fare to their homeworld -- where the zealots expected to kill all their religious non-believers -- and they step out onto a dead planet. The warring factions managed to annihilate themselves and all the major cities eight months before their arrival. Who's feeling stupid now? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I didn't think this was that anvilicious of an episode. I mean, holy wars have been going on since they had holy and wars -- they weren't invented on 9/11, and neither were suicide bombers. Also, the critique that the nine- and ten-day creation difference was pathetically simplistic in an almost petty way; wars have been fought for much less. If he had had the time (and Quantum's attention undivided by re-routing the EV controls), I'm sure Doubting Thomas could have explained the religious intricacies that only stemmed from the nine/ten-day difference. The one thing that really bothered me was T'Pol's continued weakness. If she's suffering from her mind-meld AIDS, say so! Otherwise, you must explain why she's about as strong as a human, because I'm crying "SEXISM!" at this point, and, well, I don't like to cry.
San Francisco -- particularly my neighborhood of Western Addition/Hayes Valley -- seems to be experiencing constant power outages today, so I might just have to write this thing from memory.
Now it's Tyra Banks telling me it's time for me? What happened to Christopher Gorham telling me about my Wednesdays? I want Jake 2.0 back -- screw America's Next Top Anorexic!
In a sh'pod, Trip and May-These-Might-Be-My-Only-Lines-This-Ep-So-Mark-Them-Well survey another sphere. They determine it is identical to all the other ones they've surveyed. As the sh'pod breaks through the sphere's outer cloaking barrier, we see that their movements are observed by some aliens on another ship. Of course, when I say "aliens," I mean that they all have the slightest of slight irregularities on the bridge of their noses so as not to interfere with how human they are supposed to look. Anyway, these "aliens" also spy Enterprise, and the bossiest one says he wants to know what sort of weapons the ship has. "We may have found what we're looking for," he says eerily.
"They had TWO MONTHS to change the theme song back, and yet..." Dr. Mathra shouts. Heh. You know the new version is bad when Dr. Mathra is actually contemplating the other version rather than just doing away with the whole damn thing.
In the new room -- dude, it's been so long since I recapped, I can't even remember the name of it! The Season Four Room? The Hoshi Stalker Room? I kinda want to call it the Stellar Cartography Room, because not only would that fit, but I could go around screaming, "Stel-LA! Cartography," as though I had a British accent and lost my "rs" in the dryer. Because like Madonna or Gwyneth, I never miss an opportunity to put on a fake accent. Except I do it in private, because I don't like embarrassing myself and those around me. Where was I? Oh, right, the first few seconds of the episode. T'Pol tells Quantum -- wait, one more random train of thought for these first opening lines. I don't like T'Pol's blue suit anymore. It's not velour or velveteen (so I can't call her names), but the silvery turned-up epaulets and collar detail give it a Judy Jetson quality. The problem is, it's not retro enough to be cool-looking. Okay. I'm done. For now. T'Pol tells Quantum that the new data will allow them to map the anomalies more accurately, and she should be able to pinpoint exactly how many spheres there are in The Expanse. Reed interrupts them to say that they're picking up a distress signal from an approaching vessel.
Bridge. Reed says the distressed ship is trapped in a cluster of anomalies. After getting their ship onscreen -- ooh, look, there's a blurred Hoshi in the foreground of T'Pol! Why am I excited? It's one of the only small shreds of proof in this episode that she actually still exists -- Quantum hails them. The ship responds that they've sustained heavy damage and their life support is failing. Quantum puts them on hold and asks Reed, "What kind of weapons do they have?" "Minimal," Reed responds. "He's never asked that question about a distressed ship before, has he?" Dr. Mathra asks. Since T'Pol can get them safely through the anomalies, Quantum orders them on this rescue mission.