Sunday, August 4, 2013

Hatchery

** (2 stars out of 5)
Having delivered 50% of T'Pol's behind, and a copious amount of Phlox Phlesh, I will spare you the sight of the slimy, grape-like globules dangling above Captain Archer's head in this shot. You may find it distasteful, sir, I could just file a report on that.

Investigation of a crashed Xindi Insectoid ship uncovers only Corpses and Eggs, and not the good kind. (It's no Denny's.) I hope Trip was using gallows humour when he suggested they might find a new insect for Reed's dad. It's a far cry from collecting butterflies on pins to having a dead sentient bug child in a shoebox.

The Insectoids live for 12 years, reproducing asexually and copiously. The reason they had kids along on a military vessel appears to be that they have kids along A LOT. -Morbo, how's the family? Belligerent and Numerous! -Good, 'cause Nixon's pro-war and pro-family.

Nobody seems to care as much as Archer about the death of Jiminy Cricket. Saving the hatchery becomes his top priority, siphoning Enteprise's own gas tank to preserve the drippy, drippy eggs he keeps standing under with his mouth open. Lieutenant Ellen Ripley might have had something to say about that.

Wacky Jon unfairly relieves T'Pol and Reed of duty, and orders Hoshi to start shouting for help in Giant Grasshopper, putting (say it with me) The Entire Earth at Risk! Mutiny time!. And luck or sheer incredulity causes the Starfleeters to best the MACO stormtroopers. Hard as that might be to believe.

"Hatchery" loses me when it turns out Captain Archer needs to be Drugged on Drippings to have compassion for enemy infants. Archer's great-grandfather served in North Africa during the Eugenics Wars (haven't heard about that in a while! Man, that takes me back to the 1990's!) in which Archer's ancestor called the enemy for a cease fire to evacuate schoolchildren. How the mighty have fallen: without trick pheromones it seems this generation would have left the baby bugs in a ditch. Heroism!

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