Citing "Fallen Hero"'s Mazarite encounter, May-Dilweg outlines a way for them to take out the alien ship's engines with some newly configured stuff he can do to Horizon's plasma turrets and engines. Capt. Bro-Weather gets very angry, saying he won't risk everyone's lives by getting into a fight they can't win. "If they reach us before we make it to Deneva, we'll give them what they want," Capt. Bro-Weather tells Mum-Weather and Helmsman Possibly Charlie. Of course, May-Dilweg has to start lecturing his brother on the pearls-before-swine of wisdom he's learned from his captain. That's pretty insufferable, I must admit. Basically, it amounts to standing up to bullies so they think twice before they blow you to smithereens and move on to the next puny ship that's always picked last in gym. Capt. Bro-Weather "appreciates" his advice but reminds May-Dilweg that he's no longer a member of the crew. May-Dilweg gives Mum-Weather a look that totally says, "Mo-om, make him stop touching me!" Capt. Bro-Weather orders the excess cargo jettisoned and their speed increased. Left alone together, Mum-Weather reminds May-Dilweg that even Pop-Weather had to make compromises: "The safest thing to do is to give them what they want -- cargo can be replaced." Granted, but doesn't that get a bit expensive after awhile? I mean, exactly whose pockets does it come out of -- the transporter of the cargo, the receiver of the cargo, or the exporter of the cargo? Maybe they have special insurance to cover all alien interference -- corporeal and non- -- under the "Acts of God" clause which also covers wormholes, temporal shifts, rips in the time-space continuum, and general unexplainable by real science events.

Enterprise. Dinners and a Movie. This was probably my favorite scene of this episode. T'Pol sits for a bit, waiting for the camera to reach her, and then starts fiddling with her e-pad. Quantum looks around to see if anyone notices before leaning over and whispering a demand to know what she's doing. I was seriously hoping she had the complete text of Frankenstein downloaded and was about to start criticizing the movie for being so far off-base. Alas, she was only finishing some work leftover from that morning. "I thought you were going to give this a chance," Quantum whisper-whines. T'Pol concedes with a head roll and puts her e-pad down. Before Dr. Frankenstein removes the bandages from the monster's face, thus allowing Quantum to mine some inspiration for future furrows, Phlox starts to babble about Dr. Frankenstein's technique being very similar to some other alien surgical technique. "Really," Trip says flatly. Heh. Phlox continues on, prompting T'Pol to almost perfect the "half-turn." Finally, T'Pol turns all the way around and says, "We can stop the film if it's disturbing your conversation." Phlox looks abashed and puts some popcorn in his mouth. Quantum does a furrowed double-take at T'Pol, but when she notices, he just silently offers her some popcorn. T'Pol grapples at a few kernels -- her fingernails even make a noise against the glass bowl -- and jerkily puts them in her mouth as Quantum watches, still furrowed. The whole body language between Quantum and T'Pol was really funny here. She was embarrassed to be caught saying anything to Phlox that remotely implied she wanted to hear the movie, and then tried to cover it up by eating popcorn defensively in a blank refusal to meet Quantum's eyes. No, there's no sexual chemistry between T'Pol and any of the male actors on this show, but perhaps it's because the lack of it that I got a big kick out of the whole "date" scenario. I think it would have been amusing to have a minor flash of Trip looking slightly put-out when it dawned on him that he wasn't the one to entice T'Pol to the movie. For Trip, it would more be an ego boost if it transpired that his powers of convincing were better than Quantum's than it would ever be a question of grubby romance. Furthermore, it would just make it even funnier later on in the Captain's Mess when Trip is so clearly irritated by T'Pol's analysis of the film that he would figuratively throw his hands up at the whole shebang.