Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Damage

*** (3 stars out of 5)
"Damage" is (if you can believe it) an episode about damage. Everything and everyone on the ship is wrecked, shell-shocked, and out of righteous options.

Archer is sleepin' with the fishes! No, not dead, but gassed unconscious by the Aquatics and mailed back to the Enterprise postage due. Ship's casualties were high before the Xindi withdrew on Degra's whim. 14 dead, 3 missing, and also acting Captain T'Pol is going 'round the twist. The ship looks like a wheel of Swiss Cheese. And the missing aren't missing, I saw them fall out last episode. Not good news, I guess, but it's definitely 17 dead.

Asking some naive Expanse Tourists for a warp coil nicely fails. Archer puts on his Sisko hat (the one in the lovely shade of Morally Grey). They disable the neutral ship, steal the vital component, and leave the poor innocent saps stranded in hostile space three years from safety. The humans salve their consciences by leaving some extra burgers behind. As The Great Bird of The Galaxy intended. Heroism!

T'Pol dreams of eating Trip in the shower. And not in the good way. At last we learn what's wrong with her... she's actually been shooting up trellium-D for three months. Literally cooking up the little blue crack rocks that turn Vulcans into pain-maddened zombies. Yeah, it's killing her, but what's life without love? Love of drugs!

Speaking of insane women, we finally learn who the Xindi mean when they talk about HER. A trans-dimensional demon. Visually she's a Dominion Founder in a barbed Borg Queen corset. She gave the Xindi their "Kill All Humans" order. A Sphere-Builder, they call her. But that's a dumb name, so just call her a PG Cenobite.

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