In my blind rage over the Borg episode last week, I completely forgot to gush. My wonderful posters, when faced with the fact that the site banner ads had been bought up by Alias, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Amazing Race fanatics, couch potatoes, and groupies, pooled their resources and got me two lovely gifts. I adore my DS9 DVDs (I'm halfway through the season!), and my Star Trek Cookbook has already become the envy of my culinary class. Of course, it means I've been doing a lot of explaining about Vulcans, Klingons, and Trayna. You guys really are the best, and I will be able to keep and enjoy these gifts for years to come -- you can't say that about a Spuffy ad. Thank god.

Eh. During this episode, I looked in the fridge, I looked in the shower drain, I even pulled apart all the dustbunnies under the couch, but for the life of me, I could not find any suspense or tension. At all. Oh! Oh! Is A.G. going to make it out of that first flight? Of course, because he JUST DIED in the present and we are stuck viewing a flashback. Oh! Oh! Are we going to learn what "Trip" really stands for? I still prefer to think that it's because he's a klutz. Oh! Oh! Is Quantum really going to open up to T'Pol and tell her all his dark and disturbing secrets? God, I really wish we could have stopped him, but even more, I really wish they had been disturbing, or at the very least, dark. All those "heartfelt" confessions served to do was cement his stiff Boy Scout persona. And what kind of trip down memory lane is complete without a big dark matter metaphor, whose surrounding dialogue serves only to bash us over the head with the anvil of The Greater Meaning Of It All. The deeper they dig into the dark matter, the deeper T'Pol is encouraging Quantum to dig into his "anguish" over his comrade's untimely death.

Quantum and Trip get the B-plot (and show metaphor) rolling as they point out what they think is dark matter. T'Pol is skeptical that dark matter exists in such dense concentrations, and tries to make excuses for it. Quantum arranges for Trip to whip up a few technobabbles to expose the dark matter in all its glory, if it does indeed exist. Hoshi interrupts to tell Quantum that Admiral Forrest is on the horn for him. The Admiral has some bad news: "It's A.G.. He was back on Mount McKinley. ['If they wanted to be politically correct, they should have called it Denali.' -- Mathra] There was an accident. He was killed. I'm sorry." In my alternate Enterprise universe, Admiral Forrest is really an evil mastermind. I think he pushed this A.G. down the mountain.