“Carpenter Street”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 3, Episode 11
Production episode 063
Original air date: November 26, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. We open in Detroit, 2004. A guy named Loomis returns home to his shitty apartment and gets a phone call from someone who wants to know if he made his selection yet, and who also warns him to go easy on the sedative this time. Loomis makes sure he’s getting paid. The guy on the other end of the phone is a Xindi-Reptilian.
Loomis drives to where there are prostitutes hustling and picks one up whom he’d previously seen at the blood bank he works at. He douses her in chloroform and brings her to a warehouse that’s full of other people laying on bunks hooked up to IVs. He does the same for her, setting the IV up, then takes a briefcase full of money.
In 2153, Archer is feeding Porthos cheese (which Phlox told him not to do, but who can resist that puppy face?) when Daniels appears out of nowhere. Or, I guess, out of the future. Daniels’ people have no idea what’s happening in the twenty-second century because there’s no record of an Earth-Xindi conflict. However, they have also detected Xindi on twenty-first-century Earth, and that’s not right. For reasons he doesn’t bother to explain, he wants Archer and a plus-one to go back in time and stop the Xindi doing what they’re doing. Archer asks T’Pol to come along, because she’s second in the opening credits. (Wouldn’t it make more sense to take Sato, who, if nothing else, has a grounding in cultural history, plus also isn’t an alien from another planet?) T’Pol expresses skepticism about Daniels, about time-travel, and about the mission, but once she and Archer wind up in 2004 Detroit, she stops complaining and focuses on the mission.
Armed with equipment that will help them navigate the mission and the timeframe, Archer and T’Pol steal a car (they have to find one that’s easy to steal without much of a security system), then they steal more money from an ATM to pay for gas.
They track the Xindi-Reptilians by their unique-on-this-planet life signs. While staking out the warehouse they’ve detected them in, Loomis shows up with his latest conquest: a person in a wheelchair whom he’s convinced to come along on the pretense of getting an extra bonus for giving blood. After Loomis hooks up the latest one to an IV, the Xindi (who remains in the shadows) says he needs the last two blood types immediately, and even offers to pay double.
Archer and T’Pol follow Loomis, figuring he’s their way in. They ambush him at his apartment—Archer knocks on the door, Loomis, thinking they’re cops, runs away down the fire escape, and T’Pol neutralizes him with a neck pinch.
Loomis, still thinking they’re cops, agrees to help them stop the bad guys in exchange for a lighter sentence. They bring him to the warehouse (stopping at a drive-through burger place en route, with the vegetarian T’Pol declining the option to eat, given that the only non-meat item she’s offered can come with bacon if she’d like). Archer has one of the two blood types Loomis still needs to provide, so Archer goes in as one of Loomis’ victims.
T’Pol and Loomis wait in the car, Loomis briefly firing her phase pistol to prove that her “ray gun” is real. Archer does surveillance of the warehouse, and finds a bio-reactor. They’re creating a toxin to wipe out humanity. Archer gets into a firefight with the Xindi. Two of them run outside, and Loomis beeps his horn to warn them, and then tries to attack T’Pol with a switchblade. T’Pol easily deflects the weapon and then stuns him with the phase pistol.
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Archer is able to stop the Xindi from unleashing the toxin in twenty-first-century Detroit—even though it’s incomplete, it’ll still wreak havoc with Earth’s twenty-first-century development. They go back to the future (ahem) only seconds after they left (confusing the heck out of Tucker) and take the unconscious Xindi and all their equipment with them, leaving Loomis unconscious in his car to be arrested by the Detroit Police for kidnapping.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Daniels provides Archer and T’Pol with various doodads, including devices that will allow them to break into cars that don’t have electronic security systems. Why Daniels didn’t just provide a slim jim is unclear…
The gazelle speech. Archer keeps feeding Porthos cheese even though it’s bad for him. He’s at once a good human for indulging the pooch and a bad human for indulging the pooch.
Also, he apparently has B-negative blood.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Where Spock wore a hat, and Tuvok wore a do-rag, T’Pol just either grows her hair or wears a wig to cover up her ears when she travels to the past on Earth.
Florida Man. Florida Man Is In Charge Of Ship For Two Seconds Because Time Travel.
Good boy, Porthos! Porthos apparently likes Daniels. Then again, before he revealed his true self, Daniels was the guy who brought Porthos’ human his food…
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… T’Pol insists on being skeptical about time travel despite Daniels magically appearing on Enterprise, and despite everything that happened in the “Shockwave” two-parter. One assumes, now that she’s spent the better part of a day in 2004 Detroit, she’ll finally shut up about time travel being theoretical…
I’ve got faith…
“Have you ever operated a vehicle from this period?”
“I can pilot a starship!”
–T’Pol expressing skepticism about Archer’s ability to drive a truck and Archer not actually answering her question.
Welcome aboard. Leland Orser is back for his fourth and (so far) final Trek role as Loomis, having previously played a Skrreean in DS9’s “Sanctuary,” the changeling disguised as Colonel Lovok in DS9’s “The Die is Cast,” and an evil hologram in Voyager’s “Revulsion.” Matt Winston is back for the first time since “Shockwave, Part II” as Daniels; he’ll be back in “Azati Prime.”
But this week’s Robert Knepper moment is the great Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Xindi-Reptilian. Morgan has since gone on to fame and fortune in such roles as John Winchester in Supernatural, the Comedian in 2009’s Watchmen, Negan in The Walking Dead, and lots of others.
Trivial matters: Jeffrey Dean Morgan reportedly only took the role because he needed the money, and the trauma of having his head covered in latex nearly led to him quitting acting.
Most of the cast doesn’t appear in this one. Connor Trinneer’s role is very small, Dominic Keating is only heard briefly over Archer’s communicator, and John Billingsley, Anthony Montgomery, and Linda Park are nowhere to be found.
When Archer sees the bio-reactor, he mentions that they were warned about that as a possibility by the title character in “Rajiin.”
The script is full of references to the Halloween horror movies: the titular street is named after director John Carpenter (there is no actual Carpenter Street in Detroit, though there is a Carpenter Avenue); Loomis is a reference to Donald Pleasance’s character; one of Loomis’ victims is named Lawrence Strode, a reference to Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode; etc.
It’s been a long road… “Be careful—they got ray guns!” At the very least, this episode has a much better fakeout teaser than “North Star,” as it ends with the shot of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Xindi-Reptilian, which works beautifully as a tease for this episode.
That’s the good news. The bad news is the episode that it teases…
Trek has a long history of using time travel to go back to contemporary (or near-contemporary) Earth, from the original series’ “Tomorrow is Yesterday” to The Voyage Home to DS9’s “Past Tense” two-parter to First Contact to Voyager’s “Future’s End” two-parter, and “Carpenter Street” is quite possibly the most boring example of the breed.
We start with the sheer inanity of the premise. Why did the Xindi feel the need to go back in time? Why go to Earth in 2004? Why Detroit? Why does a biological weapon need different blood types to work? Why, if Daniels knew the Xindi had been in 2004 Detroit for months, did he send Archer and T’Pol to when they were almost finished instead of to right after their arrival? For that matter, why the heck did Daniels send Archer back when he’s supposed to be part of an agency that deals with this nonsense?
Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the dumbshit Temporal Cold War plot, which apparently ties into the Xindi crisis on a macro level, but on a micro level all Daniels’ presence induces is groaning that we’re revisiting this nonsense again. There’s not even a token effort to try to make any kind of sense out of all of it. Daniels knows just enough to make the plot mechanics work, but not enough to actually provide any useful information. He’s a plot device, as usual, and this particular device is buggy and malfunctioning and probably needs to be rebooted.
Having said that, the episode is somewhat salvaged by three good performances. One is by Leland Orser, whose progression of guest appearances is a chronicle of improvement. His Skrreean was a cipher, his Romulan/changeling was wooden, but his psychotic hologram was entertaining, and his Loomis is a perfect schlub. His rant to the cops about lizard-people with ray guns at the end of the episode is hilarious. While Jeffrey Dean Morgan is unrecognizable under the Xindi-Reptilian makeup, his gravelly voice shines through beautifully, adding significant menace to his character.
And Jolene Blalock is magnificent, beautifully showing T’Pol’s disdain and disgust with twenty-first-century Earth in general and Loomis in particular. I also loved how easily she disabused Loomis of the notion that she’d be helpless before his switchblade attack, and I was grateful that the producers remembered that Vulcans have superior physical strength to humans.
Still, this is a nonsensical exercise in time travel
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s first Trek fiction in thirteen years will be a DS9 story called “You Can’t Buy Fate” in Star Trek Explorer #7, which will be on sale on his fifty-fourth birthday, 18 April 2023. It’s available for preorder from Titan.
The main thing I learned from this episode is that Porthos does have his habitual spot in T’Pol’s cabin. Does he normally come alone, for a bit of cheese and petting? Or does Archer stop by when he takes our favorite beagle for a walk? If he was a cat, he’d presumably stop by in every single cabin and look half-starved …
You are right, Daniel’s mission brief was extremely dodgy. So he knew it was Detroit, but no better than that? What would Archer have done if the actual hideout had been in Detroit, Illinois? Ever widening search spirals? Daniels is telling his pawns just barely enough so they can be marginally effective.
If one buys the premise that the Xindi had to test eight suitable humans, the early 21st century is not half bad as a destination. They had to find hirelings who could do blood typing, yet come before the mid-21st-century devastation and the 22th-century Vulcan presence.
I’m not sure if Sato would have been a good second time traveler. It was likely to get violent and that is not her forte. But there is at least one MACO who grew up in North America, right? Regarding disguises, if they had time for the clothing, the doctor should have had time to park T’Pol’s ear tips into a freezer. Or to glue them temporarily to some critter. They’ve done disguises for primitive worlds before.
If one ignores that time travel raise impossibilities for the plot, it should have been better than a 3. Perhaps a 5?
“Carpenter Street” is the most boring and useless Trek time-travel episode ever, as well as the most boring and useless episode of the Xindi arc. Well, I guess not entirely useless, because its events pay off later in the season, but the fact that those events took place in present-day Detroit added nothing.
And why Detroit? Why anywhere in the US? If they chose an Earth city at random, statistically they’d be more likely to end up in Asia somewhere.
“For that matter, why the heck did Daniels send Archer back when he’s supposed to be part of an agency that deals with this nonsense?”
Well, on the one hand, the reason it’s a Temporal Cold War is that the combatants don’t engage in it directly but operate through local proxies in the present. So it makes sense that Daniels wouldn’t intervene directly. But on the other hand, the key is that they recruit local proxies, i.e. people from the time period in question, which is why Daniels works through Archer and Future Guy through the Suliban Cabal. So logically, if the problem is in 2004, Daniels should recruit someone from 2004 to take care of it. It makes no sense that he sends Archer and T’Pol. (Particularly in retroactive light of Picard season 2, which reaffirms that Gary Seven’s organization is still active in the early 21st century. Why didn’t they take care of it?)
I’m not saying Captain Archer took T’Pol back in timE purely so he could say “Time travel IS a thing that exists” but that has to be a bonus to packing along NX-01’s most uniformly competent officer.
I would also like to suggest that Gary Seven’s organisation may well be (A) heartily opposed to both factions in the Temporal Cold War and (B) capable of keeping Earth during their period of operations completely out of bounds (Hence Crewman Daniels’ deployment of Archer and T’Pol: it’s also possible that the presence of Gary Seven’s operation seriously narrowed the time frame of dates into which Daniels could insert Archer & T’Pol*).
*It’s also possible that Daniels picked a later, rather than an earlier, date of insertion to catch the Xindi after the point at which they’d settled into a comfortable routine.
As for the episode itself, I quite enjoyed it but would not regard it as essential viewing – one enjoyed the cinematography, the performances and the score but thought that more could have been done to suggest the connections between Archer’s era and our own, in terms of how far we’ve come and how far we have to go.
I have to assume the reason Archer took T’Pol instead of Sato was specifically so that she would stop insisting that time travel was impossible. However, it’s never a bad idea to bring along the most competent member of your crew, especially if you’re not the most competent of captains.
My problem with bringing T’Pol is what if she gets hurt and starts to bleed green?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Also a nonsensical exercise in there being mountains visible from Detroit. I mean, really?
S
@6: Perhaps part of the Great Illinois Mountain Range* seen in Christmas Vacation?
*aka Breckenridge, Colorado
Fun fact: chloroform doesn’t knock people out like it’s always portrayed as doing in movies and TV shows. It takes an estimated 5 minutes of breathing it in to render someone unconscious, making it practically worthless for quickly incapacitating someone. And even then, there are potentially hazardous/lethal side-effects to those exposed, including the assailant, making it a very unlikely and dangerous tool to use.
Definitely among the worst in Trek time travel tales and all the fish out water gags just fall flat. Leland Orser is one of my favorite character actors, so his presence is definitely a godsend in salvaging the episode’s entertainment value for me. And I agree with Krad that the ending with Loomis ranting about the lizard people with ray guns is an hilarious scene. Otherwise, a misbegotten clunker of an episode.
@3/ED: “I would also like to suggest that Gary Seven’s organisation may well be (A) heartily opposed to both factions in the Temporal Cold War and (B) capable of keeping Earth during their period of operations completely out of bounds”
In my Department of Temporal Investigations books, the Aegis (the name given to Gary’s organization by Howard Weinstein in DC’s Trek comics, later adopted by the novels) is one of the signatories of the Temporal Accords and an ally of the other pro-Accord TCW factions including the Federation Temporal Agency, albeit a mysterious ally with its own agendas. But nearly all of those books are incompatible with Picard continuity, I suppose (except for Forgotten History, mostly).
@8/Austin: “Fun fact: chloroform doesn’t knock people out like it’s always portrayed as doing in movies and TV shows. It takes an estimated 5 minutes of breathing it in to render someone unconscious, making it practically worthless for quickly incapacitating someone.”
That’s interesting. Where did the trope come from, then, I wonder?
A bit off topic, but one of the few instances on TV where Chloroform was used relatively properly was the pilot episode of Emergency! A young boy comes into Rampart with his pet rabbit trapped in a Sousaphone. They can’t cut the instrument because it’s School Property, so Brackett blows into the Sousaphone through a rag with some Chloroform on it. They wait for the Chloroform to take effect then shake the rabbit out.
@@.-@. David Pirtle: Credit where it’s due, Captain Archer isn’t the most Brilliant of STAR TREK captains, but he’s still pretty darned competent – how well would WE do, dragged back a couple of centuries at short notice?
@10.ChristopherLBennett: At a guess, an author’s need for some way of putting Our Heroes out of action without permanently maiming or outright killing them (not to mention a lack of medical knowledge and/or shame).
As for your DTI novels and their status vis a vis present canon – when it comes to Time Travel, it’s probably true SOMEWHERE (though I know how much you hate that approach to Time Travel, so one can only apologise for trying to comfort you with it).
@12/ED: “At a guess, an author’s need for some way of putting Our Heroes out of action without permanently maiming or outright killing them (not to mention a lack of medical knowledge and/or shame).”
Well, yes, that part is obvious. My question is how chloroform, specifically, got picked as the knockout drug of choice for fictional abductions if it doesn’t actually do that in real life.
Just dumb and tepid and pointless. Time travel episodes to contemporary Earth are supposed to be excuses in a fish-out-of-water humor but then why was this so half-hearted? It seems the decision was to go in the horror genre instead but even then it wasn’t so scary. If you’re going to make so many Halloween references then go all in and have our characters at serious risk of being slashed or something. Or just have Jamie Lee Curtis make an appearance. Plus, this episode aired about a month after Halloween already occurred so the timing for a “holiday event” episode also missed the boat. Leland Orser was wasted in the role. This episode was simply filler in this season that vacillated wildly in quality and another example of how the Temporal Cold War arc didn’t do this show any favors.
@CLB – My best guess is it came from the literary tradition. People knew that chloroform was used to knock people out, and saying that someone came up behind a person, shoved a chloroform-soaked rag into their face, and after a brief struggle, the person lost consciousness works just fine on a page. In TV and film, noting that “brief” actually means several minutes doesn’t work quite as well (if they or the writers who originally used the method were even aware of the fact), but the trope was already well-established.
Honestly, it isn’t much worse than all the folks being knocked unconscious by blows to the head and never suffering any ill-effects, when the reality is that even a minor concussion can cause continuing symptoms for days and even weeks afterwards.
@15/northman: There are so many fictional tropes that don’t work at all in real life, but that writers just uncritically use because everyone else has used them. Like the “instant kill” method of twisting someone’s neck from behind, which terrified me when I first saw it on TV decades ago, since there seemed to be no defense against it — when in reality it would take near-superhuman strength and probably wouldn’t even be fatal, just paralyzing at worst. Or the trope of slicing the palm open to draw blood, which is an old stage trick that makes no sense since it would really hurt your hand and render it next to useless until it healed. (I remember being surprised when I saw something recent where a character cut the inside of their forearm to draw blood for a ritual or something. That’s really the most logical place, for the same reason doctors draw blood from there. But you so rarely see it done right.)
Then there are tropes where writers forget the difference between dangerous real items and harmless stunt props, and have characters punch through glass without cutting their hands, or get a chair smashed over their head and shake it off in moments.
Oh, and anything to do with the convection or conduction of heat through air, like having people stand over a pit of molten lava without being roasted alive. Or explosions where you’re perfectly safe as long as the fireball doesn’t touch you, because blast waves apparently don’t exist, except when they pick you up and hurl you through the air without actually doing any damage.
“I think all your doubts about time travel are about to go out the window.”
In the light of Picard Season Two, it’s hard not to suspect that this episode, with its minimal cast and contemporary locations, was a bit of a cheap one. But hey, I found it enjoyable and serviceable, and it moves the ongoing plot forward in ways that aren’t immediately apparent.
Once again, we see the strong bond of trust between Archer and T’Pol as he chooses her to accompany him to the past, although that might be partly so he can give her a “Told you so” look when they arrive. There’s a couple of amusing moments around their rather inept attempts to steal a car and other reactions to the modern world. Loomis is a believable catspaw, easily swayed by money and easily swaying with it too. Archer again resorts to roughing him up to get information, although there’s something almost endearing about the fact he’ll only do it when he’s untied, even if it is psychological torture. And there’s a decent shoot-out at the end. I quite like the way that no-one feels the need to comment on the fact that their whole mission to the past took place in the blink of an eye for Trip, they just accept it and carry on. Presumably Archer and T’Pol were responsible for tipping off the police about Loomis, which may be why they walk away after tagging the corpse of the Xindi leader (although possibly they still had to tag the rest of the equipment too).
I’m not sure why there’s so much confusion about why Daniels recruits Archer when the episode provides an explanation: The Temporal Agents have a lot of bureaucracy and Daniels isn’t authorised to operate in 2004 (either directly or through a proxy) but is already authorised to contact Archer. (Whether or not you think that’s a good explanation is another matter, I suppose, but it’s there.) I thought the device Archer used to break into cars was just a standard 22nd century tricorder.
Phlox is mentioned but not seen. Daniels wears a Starfleet uniform, I think for the first time since ‘Cold Front’.
Archer mentions his meeting with Future Guy (who he refers to simply as “the time traveller”) in ‘The Expanse’. Reptilians being immune to stun settings and trying to build a bio-weapon were established in ‘Rajiin’, as Archer mentions. (Sorry, Keith, but no way are those three Xindi just “unconscious”…) One contemporary review queried why the Xindi sent Reptilians on this mission rather than a species that would find it easier to blend in, like Primates: We’ll actually find out the reason for that in ‘Azati Prime’. Archer refers to Daniels as coming from the 30th century rather than the 31st, but he is rather tense at the time.
Channel 4 cut the whole sequence of Loomis picking up a prostitute and knocking her out, just having him turn up at the warehouse with her unconscious, as well as the shot of him retrieving a knife. As a result of the former, they broadcast it without the episode caption and the post-titles credits.
Don’t remember seeing this episode, sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Anesthetics that conveniently, quickly, and safely knock people out are a pulp fiction tradition. My favorites were Doc Savage’s mercy bullets and glass globes of anesthetic gas. No matter how much of a dose people got, how big or small they were, or what their metabolism was, the weapons effectively put the bad guys gently to sleep for as long as the plot required.
Despite the risk of bleeding green, T’Pol is far and away the most competent operative/officer available. Would you rather take Malcolm to Detroit?
@18/AlanBrown: “Anesthetics that conveniently, quickly, and safely knock people out are a pulp fiction tradition. My favorites were Doc Savage’s mercy bullets and glass globes of anesthetic gas. No matter how much of a dose people got, how big or small they were, or what their metabolism was, the weapons effectively put the bad guys gently to sleep for as long as the plot required.”
Phasers on stun serve the same purpose. In one of my Trek books, I explained that phasers have some kind of sensor feedback that lets them fine-tune the intensity of the beam based on the target’s metabolic reactions, so that it delivers just enough of a dose to cause unconsciousness without serious risk of fatality. I also said that the reason TNG-era starships never stunned a whole city block from orbit like Kirk did in “A Piece of the Action” was that it couldn’t be individually calibrated and posed too much risk of fatality to more vulnerable people like children or the elderly. (Though I assume Kirk didn’t kill Iotians when he did it. All the civilians on the street fled inside when the shooting started, so presumably they were protected from the phaser blast and only the nine adult male gunmen we saw were affected. As long as they were all in comparable health and didn’t have heart conditions or something, they were probably fine.)
Sometimes I think the most plausible nonlethal weapon would be some kind of physical restraint that entangles people, like Spider-Man’s webbing. But even restraint can be lethal in some circumstances, e.g. if it’s tight enough to cut off circulation or cause asphyxiation, or if it precludes the target from taking cover in a firefight or otherwise retreating from a dangerous situation.
@19/ole49: “T’Pol is far and away the most competent operative/officer available. Would you rather take Malcolm to Detroit?”
One, ideally everyone on the crew should be highly competent and fully capable of handling most any crisis, or they wouldn’t be qualified to be on the crew. Two, competence can be situational. The most competent person to deal with Earth’s past is probably going to be an Earth native who grew up learning about their homeworld’s history — or at least who’s a regular attendee of Enterprise‘s movie night, given how many 20th-century movies it tends to feature. Not to mention that they’re going into a potential combat situation, so the tactical officer’s particular field of competence may well be more applicable than the science officer’s.
@2: It is true that a ‘random’ city could be anywhere on the planet and might be more likely to end up somewhere in Asia if the choice is truly random. American-ism is a tough nut to crack when your “Detroit” has mountains, but…
2004 Detroit would have been a pretty easy city to get lost in. Lots of empty, low-traffic work space, but a large enough urban area that you could, say, get set up and find 10-20 people within a 48 hour period, depending on how long that incubator-thing takes to work.
Whoops. “when your budget is so limited that your “Detroit” has mountains…
@13. ChristopherLBennett: My understanding is that, at the time Pulps were making chloroform the nonlethal anaesthetic of choice for kidnappers, the only major alternative would have been ether (and it’s just possible that writers were worried about confusion between the anaesthetic and the “luminiferous ether” of contemporary speculative fiction).
Either that or they were used to seeing their wives put under for childbirth and come out none the worse for wear – if you can trust your wife and child to a substance, why not your characters?
#18. Debuting the same year as Doc Savage, the original King Kong used “gas bombs” to knock out the big lug. And I seem to remember the Peter Jackson remake changing them to bottles of chloroform.
I was well aware of this episode’s reputation for years before I first watched it. I wouldn’t call it awful or anything, but it does play somewhat mediocre. Crafting the story as a bog standard ‘cop vs drug traffic’ show is part of the reason it feels so lifeless. But after Picard season 2’s own time travel stumbles, I’m not nearly as critical of this one as I once was.
Still, “Carpenter Street” feels very much like a bottle show, but one that was doomed from the start the minute they introduced Daniels and Temporal Cold War shenanigans without rhyme or reason. That story thread was mostly incompatible with the Xindi arc, and I’m pretty sure they knew they had to start putting an end to it in order to move on to other things.
It’s standard cop show plotting, but thankfully still watchable for the most part. But also, Voyage Home set such a high standards for present day time travel stories that any other time travel story not named “Future’s End” feels stale by comparison.
Well, after bringing up the chloroform fact and Christopher’s question about how it became a popular trope, I went down the rabbit hole that is the internet lol. From what I can ascertain from different sources, the popularity in crime stories can either be contributed to a Sherlock Holmes story that seems to be the first instance of the chloroform-soaked rag and instant unconsciousness trope (“His Last Bow”) or a silent movie in the 1920’s that portrayed someone being attacked with chloroform. You know how things start. Someone mimics what they saw and it just snowballs from there.
This was the episode that almost made Jeffery Dean Morgan quit acting he played on of the XIdini’s in this episode
Brent: That would be a much more useful piece of trivia to comment about if it wasn’t already mentioned in the first paragraph of the Trivial Matters section of the very article you’re commenting on.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25/Eduardo: “one that was doomed from the start the minute they introduced Daniels and Temporal Cold War shenanigans without rhyme or reason. That story thread was mostly incompatible with the Xindi arc, and I’m pretty sure they knew they had to start putting an end to it in order to move on to other things.”
I disagree, I think they absolutely needed to acknowledge that the plot threads they’d set up in the first two seasons still existed and it was all one big (overly complex) storyline, rather than hitting some big reset button and pretending anything more than a few months previous didn’t happen. After all, it was Future Guy that tipped Enterprise off about the Xindi in the first place, so it was always all part of the same storyline.
A young boy comes into Rampart with his pet rabbit trapped in a Sousaphone.
The long-awaited sequel to the Monty Python “Hungarian Phrasebook” sketch.
“My rabbit has become wedged in my Sousaphone.”
“I’m sorry, sir, this is a hospital emergency department.”
“Ah! Yes! Excuse please! So sorry! My emergency department has become wedged in my Sousaphone.”
One thing I didn’t care for is a recurring problem in a lot of Star Trek time travel: directly commenting on how shitty humans are in whatever specific time period (or bluntly moralizing on a specific topic). Star Trek always works best when its moral lessons are either metaphors (i.e., something in the future being topical to a contemporary issue) or through implication (i.e., you can tell future humans are morally superior to modern humans because they aren’t beset by prejudices about race, sex, gender identity, orientation, etc.). Episodes where they just look directly at the past or someone from the past and talk about them tend to be soap-boxey as hell and generally the weaker for it. For example, one of the shittiest episodes of Season 1 (a season with plenty of shitty episodes) was “The Neutral Zone,” where the A-plot was the discovery of three cryogenically-frozen humans from the 1980’s, mostly for the sole purpose of having the main characters talk about how much they suck ass (Riker even straight up says they don’t seem to have any redeeming characteristics).
Jolene Blalocks T´Pol was always the best part of an episode. I will remember this episode as the one that almost made Jeffrey Dean Morgan quit because it´s completely forgettable otherwise.
Hey folks — just FYI, Tor.com’s offices are closed Monday, so the rewatch of “Chosen Realm” will go up on Tuesday the 11th.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido