Two Days and Two Nights

*** (3 stars out of 5)
We finally made to to the pleasure planet Risa, but for some reason, only half the crew gets to go down. (So to speak.) And only for two days and nights. Ummm... why? Why not the other half afterward? Can't take FOUR DAYS out of your busy schedule? Somewhere you need to be?

And the doctor's hibernating, so don't get the space herp while he's 80% in Slumberland.

In 2152, instead of bibles, hotels come with 'The Teachings of Surak' translated from the Vulcan by Spock's great-grandpa Skon. (Skon enjoyed a scone now and then.)

Trip apparently brought one Hawaiian shirt for the ride down, and one for the nightclub. (In the future, much as now, this doesn't impress the ladies.) Trip and Malcolm debate the relative merits of "casual encounters" with multiple eyes and indeterminate gonads.

Is Archer's meet-cute Keyla the ancestor of 2368's geneticist Hannah Bates, or the descendant of 1989's android designer Victoria Gray? Or both? Actually, she looks a lot like a Trill. And wasn't Jadzia's mother called Keyla? Well... unless Jadzia's mom was a Tandaran spy, I guess not. She's there to pump Archer... for information. (So to speak.)

Hoshi gets hit on by Ravis from GibberGabberJibberJabberGoobleDeGoop. Anyway, he speaks the "International Language" so Hoshi is the only one who actually gets laid in the end. Unless Porthos did? A gentledog never tells.

When I hear about the 300th wedding anniversary of a couple from Vega Reticuli, it makes me nearly infinitely grateful I'm not in the singles scene anymore. And not just because when the girls who are boys take your clothes off, they probably only want to sell them.

"Two Days and Two Nights" answers my first question in a deleted scene: Enterprise can only AFFORD accommodations for half the crew. They paid in dilithium, but that's still PAYING. So (back then at least) Risa's motto is "All That Is Ours Is Yours-- Cash or Credit?"

Let He Who Is Without Sin...

**** (4 stars out of 5)

 I'll give you two guesses what I liked most about the return visit to Risa, the hedonistic pleasure planet from 'Captain's Holiday'. Babes is bikinis! Bolians with surfboards! Rock Lobster!

Love is in the air. Even crusty brown bartifact Morn has a gal to bring flowers to!

Dax forces her new boyfriend Worf to take a break from brooding under the tropical Risan suns. Also, her friends Leeta and Bashir and Quark horn in on the romantic cruise. Leeta and Bashir because they're in the midst of an unusually amicable break-up, and Quark because Risian women are not at all hypocritical when they say 'All that is ours is yours.' Also, Risian women might be stoned or blind.

I'm just saying, Quark is NO prize. Then again, Grilka seemed satisfied. You know what they say about the size of a Ferengi's... bulbous head. (Oh, and it turns out Leeta is dumping Bashir partly because she secretly has feelings for Rom... so... go figure!)

Worf has a bad case of the surlies, falling in with a crowd of quasi-religious thumpers sweltering in grey tweed on the beach. Their leader, Pascal Fullerton, is sternly lecturing everyone to stop having sexy times or the Borg will punish them. Or something. 

Perhaps because Worf would rather read crazy tracts than pay any attention to her, Dax pals around with Arandis, the Risian who jamaharoned Curzon to death in his bed.

If Quark wielding horghans and Worf in a Speedo weren't worrying you, then mild girl-on-girl hand-holding isn't going to upset you either... but Fullerton's New Essentialists decide to wreck up the joint according to traditional family values. They use Worf's guile to screw-up the weather modification grid. Soon it's pouring down outside like it's Ferenginar (where they have hundreds of words for rain and no word for crisp). That should make all these floozies and him-bos put on some clothes! 

"Let He Who Is Without Sin..." cast the first stone, so the Bible says. Although people in glass houses SHOULDN'T do that, I hear. Risa seems like the sort of place that would build glass houses and still not bother wearing anything while indoors. But as far as voyeurs are concerned, chaste swimsuits is what we get at 5 o'clock on family programming. The writers, Behr and Wolfe, claim that this prudish medium failed their intentions in a show about morality and sex. Twentieth Century versions of Fullerton actually put a shirt on Leeta (the first picture on this page is the unaired version) and isn't THAT the greatest crime of all?!?