Star Trek: Hidden Frontier – 205 – Encke

2001 Official Site
Directed by Risha Denney

We got a potential love interest, a random ship blowing up, Greys being jerks, and secret space pyramids. Just another day in the Briar Patch! The USS Excelsior is in the thick of it all, because otherwise this episode would be pretty boring with Captain Angry just reading a mission report of the people who actually discovered all this, then getting angry it wasn’t him and then he punches the wall and kills his fish and eats a lot of toasted ravioli and then throws up the toasted ravioli in Ensign Ro’s bed and tries to pretend it wasn’t him. Poor Ensign Ro… I’m hungry for toasted ravioli!

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. He’s a changed man! John Whiting rules. The nose knows! 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. Lt. Cmd. Robin Lefler (Joanne Busch) – Chief Engineer, and still dating Wesley Crusher despite the fact he ran off after last season. You may remember Lefler when she was Ashley Judd on the actual The Next Generation show. Has a bunch of laws that she will recite until you pull out a gun and kill yourself. Lefler’s Law Number 244 is “Recite laws until everyone dies!” Ensign Ro Nevin (Arthur Bosserman) – Science officer and Ro Laren’s brother. His hair is now more frosted than tiger-endorsed flakes! Ensign Brad T. Rawling (Tristan Clark) – Ensign Ro’s best friend and lover of alien poontang. Communications officer. Makes bad jokes. Spends a lot of his time hanging out in his quarters with Ensign Ro and getting hammered. 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. Lt. Toby Witczak (Matt Kruer) – Still dead! 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. Chief Teb (Angela Hahn) – Transporter Chief Chick in a few episodes, so we might as well introduce her and stuff. I don’t know if she goes on to bigger and better things or if she’s playing “Beam Me Up!” until she retires.

Guest Star Roll Call

Ensign Corey Aster (J.T. Tepnapa) – Corey Aster is from the USS Olympus and has come to specialize your mission. Or something. He’s that guy you never remember from college who suddenly shows up one day and wants to date you.

The SS Square ship with nacelles (aka Terraforming vessel SS Encke) is terraforming or something. They almost crash into the planet when the power goes out, probably because their display panels show both Galaxy-class and Prometheus-class ships, not their own terraforming vessel. Their Captain is a human named J.T. Edwards (Hugo Moreno), and there is a Klingon female named Serilla (Suzy Kaplan with totally rad makeup) and a Trill Guy who doesn’t rate a name or an actor credit. The ship regains power, and just when you think it is safe they lose power again and crash into the planet. D’oh!

Stardate 55529.8. The Excelsior rendezvous with the Prometheus-class USS Olympus to beam over Mission specialist Ensign Cory Aster. He is told by Captain Angry that his goal to get the flight data recorder to find out what the frak happened to the SS Encke.

Dr. Henglaar shows up with a new nose. Crewmembers comment about how he looks different, and Henglaar is all moody and storms off. Counselor Elby tells some random woman who is actually new characterDr. Anderson that Dr. Henglaar just hit puberty. Way to spread embarrassing information, Counselor!

Ensign Ro is bringing Ensign Rawling to see the doctor because he caught a rash from his girlfriend or something. Use a condom on your stomach next time or whatever part of your body your freakish alien girlfriend has sex with you with. Don’t they have safe sex ads in the future?

Ensign Cory Aster introduces himself to Ro, who doesn’t remember him at all despite having several classes together at the Academy. This is unusual because in Episode 102 everyone knew everyone ever from the Academy. And Aster and Ro will probably be making babies soon enough.

Despite Ro and Aster being charged with finding the data recorder, Lt. Luko just randomly finds it the second they get in orbit and beams it abord the ship. Stealing the thunder of Captain Angry is upset there is no obvious sign of what happened. Ro and Aster get to work on the mysery and make X-Files references, as that helps solve mysteries.

Aster talks to Elbry and tries to probe if Ro is gay, but she says he should figure that out himself. Do your own probing, Aster! Ro and Aster go to bother Rawling and party down, Starfleet Ensign style!

Meanwhile, Luko is actually doing work on the wreckage in engineering with Lefler. They wake up the hungover Ro and Aster, who get back to work. There, Ro says he isn’t interested in Aster. Later, Ro goes to talk to Rawling about how Aster likes him, and Rawling says “Whatever powers your starship, bro!”

What’s with Rawling actually being interesting? And a novel he was reading, Tom Corbett, mentioned hyperdimensional physics, which is related to the energy stuff they detected in the wreckage. They come up with a Tom Corbett theory of detecting hyperdimensional physics, so they are going to test scanning for them. Will every Sci-Fi franchise yield their own physics theories? Just wait until my Flash Gordon theory of partical physics takes off and we all fly smokey rocketships to the Moon!

They scans find a bunch of tetrahedrons that were hidden in the hyperdimension but are now visible. They have lost their hyper! The crew tosses around a bunch of theories as to what those odd structures are, but suddenly a Grey ship warps in out of nowhere! It scans the Tetrahedrons and tries to beam something off of them, only to blow the frak up!

And now the planet will blow up!

You have no idea how angry Captain Angry is right now.

The ship warps out and the planet blows up along with the artifacts. Then they dump Cory Aster off onto a Nebula-class starship! Haw-haw, the Nebula-class USS Endeavour. Nebula-class sucks! The transporter girl gives Ro a minute with Aster, they say goodbyes, and Ro beams him off. And that’s the end of Aster! Until he shows up later…

Rated 6/10 (Klingon!, Guy!, Trill!, Holy Hand Placement Batman!, Room background, This potted plant is an evil alien that is probably going to kill many characters soon!)

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