Star Trek: Hidden Frontier – 208 – Cowards Death

2001 Official Site
Directed by Jennifer Cole

How dare you call me a coward??? I’ll kick your butt all the way to imploded Vulcan!

	Captain Ian Quincy Knapp (David W. Dial) – Still Angry! His brother was killed by the Dominion, and left Captain Knapp angry! Had a mysterious encounter during the Dominion War (The Dominion who killed his brother) with mystery aliens that made him angry, and now that he commands Deep Space 12 and the USS Excelsior he can take out his anger over his brother’s death with flaming kill-lasers. Did I mention his brother was killed?
	Commander Elizabeth Shelby (Risha Denney) – Stop standing in Shelby’s way or I’ll kick your butt! Shelby’s back and being Shelby and stuff.
	Dr. Henglaar (John Whiting) – Medical Doctor, Tellarite, and an actual interesting character. Now with new and improved nose. He went to Space Dr. 90210. John Whiting rules. Miss Piggy has a poster of him on her wall.
	Counselor Myra Elbrey (Barbara Clifford) – Betazoid, used to teach at the Academy. Survivor of the Grey attack on the USS Rutledge. Has a dog named Mr. Scott. Occasionally blonde.
	Ensign Jenna McFarland (Adrianne Lange) – Half-Trill, Half-Human, all Navigation. I still don’t know if she has a worm in her belly. Is always there if you need the ship steered. Has amusing stories that she never gets to finish due to the plots developing. Her uncle’s name is Rufus.
	Ensign Andrew Barrett (Tyler Bosserman) – Communications officer and brand new member of the third grade! Wooo!! A whole season later and he still has no character development. So let’s make something up. He is deathly afraid of oreoes, because an oreo killed his father. This is now canon.
	Lt. Luko (Terence Schoshinski) – Who is this dude? – Luko is the replacement for Lt. John Martinez who is off doing…something…maybe they’ll explain it when he returns later in the series. Luko was on Voyager, so we know he’s used to being on ships run by morons. But he was also in the Maquis, so never trust him. As for a security officer, he gets shot and contributes to the death of a main character in his first appearance. Nowhere to go but up. Luko is a Bre’elian, which is funny because it rhymes with alien.

Guest Star Roll Call

Crewman Thalek (Beau Christian Williams)- An Andorian who is feeling blue. Because of crippling depression! He just needs to meet a nice Na’vi chick and settle down.

The amazingly already fixed USS Excelsior is heading home after a patrol, but a plasma conduit explodes! I guess they shouldn’t have rushed the repairs after the pasting they took last episode. That makes Captain Angry angry…

The one injured person is beamed to sickbay, he’s Crewman Thalek, Andorian. You know, those blue guys with antennas? Dr. Henglaar takes Captain Angry aside to tell him the Andorian will now have permanent depression because of the injuries, and the Andorians will ostracize him because of that. Yes, Thalek could go crazy and kill himself and take others with him. Oh no!

After the credits, Thalek gets to use the holodeck, and he gets to spar with the Captain. Captain Angry is very angry, so maybe this will help his anger. They get to use someone’s backyard to film the Holodeck stuff, so we got that going for us. Thalek and Captain Angry fight with sticks and the Star Trek Duh duh duh duh duh duh music from Amok Time plays. Thalek shows Captain Angry what angry is all about and storms off. So angry…

Thalek storms all the way to Counselor Elbry’s office for a chat. That’s angry. Thalek is declared fit for duty. Counselor Elbry rants to Captain Angry because the doctors on Andor don’t care about the depression and say Thalek should kill himself. Captain Angry is angry and thinks Thalek should have the right to decide if he kills himself. What, is Captain Angry now a libertarian? That would explain a lot… Counselor Elbry argues that Thalek should be put on medical retirement because he might try to find an honorable death and kill others with him.

Thalek goes to his room, takes out a knife, and sharpens it as disembodied voices say he’s not ever gonna get better. Hey, Thalek is hearing voices. Or his quarters are haunted. Maybe by all the crewmembers who died last episode.

2 weeks later…

A Grey Warship attacks! Oh no! The rear torpedo tube is offline and has no shielding, it can’t fire because the backfire will kill anyone firing it. So Thalek locks himself in the room and loads the torpedos. The disembodied voices of General Patton and a female Eddie Rickenbacker and Dr. Henglaar give words of non-support in his head.

Thalek fires and the torpedoes fire (out of the front of the ship…I thought this was the rear torpedo tube?!?) and blast the Grey, who run away. Cowards! Stay and fight like a neutral! The Excelsior runs as well, but since they are the good guys they are bravely doing a reverse charge, not a retreat.

Thalek the Andorian is still alive but hurt because he put fire suppressant foam in the torpedo tubes so he is only half burnt alive. Who ordered the half-cooked Andorian? Thalek says living is the true test of courage! Hooray! He won’t kill himself this week. next week, he’s dead. Maybe, he doesn’t show up again this season, so maybe he is dead… And no sign of Chimp Guy, but we do get a Chief Okul, a Crewman Takahashi, and some injured lady.

Rated 8/10 (Captain annoyed, the wounds of depression, I think this shot made it into reviews of all nine episodes this season, fight time, Captain Ninja, Christmas Ship X2, the wounds of non-depression)