Shuttlepod One

***** (5 stars out of 5)

Trip Tucker and Malcom Reed argue the relative merits of their cultures, North American versus European. As a Northernmost North American with European ancestry, I must weigh in- Superman comics are one billion times better than Ulysees. (No, I haven't read it.  I can feel it in my bones...)

Enterprise has picked up some boron Tesnians. Sorry, I mean they BREATHE boron. Also, they're very boring. But when they crashed their ship and took a chunk of Enterprise door with them, they gave Reed and Tucker the mistaken impression that NX-01 went down will all hands, when in fact they just stepped out of the system for a minute so they wouldn't have to talk to the Tesnians or see them on screen.

Ten days worth of air in the pod, and their communicators are broken. Robert Heinlein would be sorely disappointed in them: neither has a sextant or slide rule handy. Still, their meals are ready in about six seconds. I'm not saying I want to trade places with them (about to be outlived by a Fox TV series), but that's one fine dinner-doodad!

"White noise- the sound of the galaxy laughin' at us." Not just laughing- firing tiny black holes at them. Hull punctured, I'm not so sure about the 'fingers in the dyke' routine when it comes to total vacuum.

In case I set you up for disappointment by saying "dyke", the episode assures us Trip and Reed are straight- and kind of pigs. The 602 Club in Mill Valley was frequented by Starfleet cadets like Trip and Reed- as was the waitress. Coincidentally, 602 is the same number of heartfelt maudlin letters Malcolm dictates to his many paramours. And when drunk he praises their "deceased" science officer. "You ever noticed her bum? She's got an awfully nice bum!"

In Reed's subconscious (likely the only place outside of the Mirror Universe where T'Pol would have him) Mol-kom is the Vulcan word for Serenity. He's somehow presaging one hell of a shiny series! If only they had some brown coats, it's getting cold and the air is growing stale. We might need big damn heroes.

(Speaking of Vulcans with respectable posteriors, didn't Mr. Spock pull a rabbit a lot like this out of his hat once? Oh, my bad: "Galileo Seven" isn't for 116 years!)

"Shuttlepod One" has a deleted scene where Trip regales Malcolm with a tale of how he went scuba diving with Archer and tried to scare him with a moray eel named Waldo. In a titanic struggle, Archer subdued Waldo with a neck pinch. I don't know what this has to do with anything, but if they hadn't immediately changed the subject to T'Pol's behind I might have speculated that Tucker's eel needed a little subduing, too.