Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc From: zorak@netcom.com (Lone Locust of the Apocalypse) Subject: MSTing Voyager: "Scorpion" Organization: Screen Locusts Guild X-Spaceghost: Reading is fun for mentals. Spoilers and MSTings for this week's Voyager, "Scorpion" (stardate 50984.3) Call me anal, but I was disappointed with Chakotay's parable. First, I have no idea why they made it a scorpion and a fox except to use scorpion in the title -- I remember this as a fairy tale which goes something like this: traveler happens across a snake that is nearly frozen to death which begs him for help, and the traveler is eventually persuaded to give shelter to the snake and holds it against his body to warm him up. After it recovers it bites him. "Why did you do that?" "You knew what I was when you picked me up." Now, I don't really care that they made it a scorpion and a fox, but Chakotay could have made his point even better if the scorpion stings the fox right AFTER they finish crossing the river. - Why does a holographic doctor interact with the force field? - How come they detect the alien ships when they scan the Northwest Passage the second time but not the first time? (Maybe the probe's sensors aren't as sophisticated or something.) Anyway on to the MSTings. [SCORPION] Servo: Maybe Klaus Meine will guest star? [Special Guest Star: JOHN RHYS-DAVIES as "Leonardo da Vinci"] Mike: Special Guest Star on Voyager is kinda like Special Olympics, for actors. [Leo describes getting stiffed for his painting of the cardinal's nephew] Leonardo: In other words, signorina, less than nothing. Servo: So, you paid him to paint his picture? Janeway: I'm only asking for a corner, one bench, a place to work on my own projects -- paintings, sculptures... Crow: ... and my busts. Janeway: Just being in your company is inspiring to me. Leo: Flattery, Katerina, is also beside the point. Servo: You're gonna have to put out. [Leo starts his artificial hammmer-swinger] Crow: The world's first one-armed bandit. Leo: Every blacksmith who has ever swung a hammer will thank me for this creation. Crow: as will every 13-year-old boy. [the motion was just too suggestive...] Leo: You will get your hands covered in goose grease. Mike: Cover your whole body and then we can wrestle. Janeway: It's this... flapping approach. You designed your machine to mimic the way a bat or a sparrow flies. Leo: Yes, yes. So? Janeway: So what if you based it... on a hawk instead? Mike: That's right, hawks don't flap their wings. [Janeway is called to engineering] Janeway: What have you got? Chakotay: Some bad news. Crow: We've been cancelled. Servo: No, that's good news. Janeway: We are no doubt entering the heart of their territory. Mike: I thought they just got there. [Chakotay briefs the major characters] Chakotay: Doctor, how are you coming on the medical front? Mike: I'm afraid you still have syphilis, sir. Chakotay: Neelix -- Crow: We'll force-feed your food to the Borg and give them indigestion. Neelix: No problem, sir. I'm working on a plan to extend our food and replicator rations. Servo: I've created a holo-vomitarium and recycling center. [lame establishing shots of people preparing busily for battle; random engineering people wheel a cart of equipment past the camera] Servo: (British accent) More apparatus! Crow: Ping! [doctor shows image of Borg nano-probes attacking red blood cells, which become dull grey] Mike: finally, an answer for Ted Turner. [Kes has a vision of piled-up Borg corpses] Crow: Looks like a Picasso. Servo: Yeah, cubist art. [Borg ships approach] Chakotay(?): My God... Crow: It's full of cubes! [Borg scan sweeps the bridge; Chakotay flinches] Mike: Who left the cover up on the photocopier? Tuvok: The last cube has rejoined the others. Mike: Even the Borg don't want to watch Voyager. [lame attempt at scene showing mutual emotions] Janeway: Three years ago I didn't even know your name. Today I can't imagine a day without you. Servo: No one would ever mistake these two for Mulder and Scully. Paris: Who could do this to the Borg? [they fly through the remains of the carnage] Crow: Oh good, let's fly *through* the debris field. Janeway: Someone more powerful than the Borg!? It's hard to imagine. Kim: But they did it. 15 cubes! Mike: That's a lot of sugar. [Image of bioship attached to Borg hull on screen] Servo: Time to call the Orkin man. Janeway: (speaking softly to Chakotay) I want you to take an away team inside... Mike: Are you NUTS!? Janeway: ... try to get a short range scan of the biomass. Servo: She's whispering because she doesn't want the whole bridge to hear this stupid idea. Chakotay: Tuvok, Harry, you're with me. Crow: Prepare to die. Servo: Nice knowin' ya! [they beam over to the cube; Chakotay brushes past what looks like the end of a wire hanging down from the ceiling] Mike: Oww!! [they move past the piled up body parts, which includes a disembodied hand towards the bottom of the pile) Mike: (pointing out the hand) hey, they assimilated Thing! [Chakotay/Tuvok wander into the alien ship] Crow: Oh, *this* is a good idea. [Tuvok finds the Borg body in the alien ship, its face covered with yellow stuff] Mike: Gesundheit. [Kes has a vision of Harry screaming] Janeway: Voyager to away team. Chakotay: Go ahead. Janeway: Stand by for transport, we're getting you out of there. Chakotay: Good idea. Janeway: (to Torres) energize. [transport fails -- gee] Torres: I can't get a lock on them. Servo: Good thing we wasted all that time talking. [the away team flees, somewhat slowly, along the corridor, following some Borg] Mike: It must be boring to play follow the leader with the Borg. [the alien bursts onto the scene] Servo: That's the answer to "What do you get when you cross a velociraptor with the aliens from Independence Day." [Kes has another telepathic experience] Janeway: What did it say to you? Crow: "Visualize World Peace." Kes: It said... "The weak will perish." Mike: (whining tone) Awww, I thought we were going to inherit the earth. Servo: That's "meek." Mike: Same thing. Doctor: These are alien cells. Servo: These are alien cells on drugs. Any questions? [the inflection was right...] [Doc explains to Janeway about the alien cell structure] Doctor: It's the most densely-coded life form I've ever seen. Even I would need years to decipher it. Janeway: (suddenly a fount of information) They have an extraordinary immune response. Anything that penetrates the cell membrane -- chemical, biological... technological -- it's all instantly destroyed. That's why the Borg can't assimilate them. Crow: Hey, hey, *I*'m doing the plot exposition here. [Doc shows modified nano-probes Borg-ifying the alien cells] Doctor: ... I'll need several days to modify enough nano-probes to cure Ensign Kim. Servo: Then he'll just have billions of Borg cells floating around in his bloodstream but that's another problem. Janeway: Does Harry have several days? Doctor: I wish I knew. Janeway: Fight it, Harry... that's an order. [closeup of Harry with snot all over him.] Mike: ... and wipe your nose. [Janeway seeks out Leo in the middle of the night] Janeway: Maestro? Leonardo? Mike: Herr Salieri? Servo: MOOO-ZAAAARRRTT!!! I killed youuuu!!! Crow: McCloud? [the shadows-on-a-wall Rorschach test] Mike: Hey, it's the shadow puzzles from Fool's Errand. Janeway: But there is an alternative I hadn't considered. What if I made an appeal... to the devil? Servo: Did anyone NOT see this like 20 minutes ago? Kes: If what I've learned from the aliens is true, the Borg are losing this conflict. Crow: That's an understatement -- they're getting their asses kicked. [Janeway and Chakotay have it out] Chakotay: I think you're struggling to justify your plan because your desire to get this crew home is blinding you to other options -- I know you, Kathryn. Servo: This to the same woman who keeps bringing up the Prime Directive and investigates every little space-time phenomenon. [the cube holding Voyager in a tractor beam gets pelted with debris from the alien beam punching into the planet] Mike: It's a good thing Voyager is unaffected by all this debris. End of MSTings ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why I Didn't Post This 30 Minutes Earlier (completely unrelated story) As I re-watched Voyager (some riffs occur to me in real time but I usually do a second viewing so I can pause and think) I was also doing my laundry. When I went to move my clothes to the dryer, another set of washers was going and soon another resident of the apartment complex appeared to move his clothes to a dryer as well. He asked me if all the dryers worked (must be new to the apartment complex). See, we have 4 pairs of dryers, each of which has a single coin slot and 6 buttons -- 3 settings each for dryer A and B. You feed 3 quarters and then push a setting button and it starts. One particular pair of washers will occasionally take your quarters but then do nothing when you push the button to start the dryer. So I mentioned this to him and said I usually avoided that unit -- he'd had trouble with it before which is why he asked. Then he asked me "Do you believe in Jesus?" Well, that certainly was an interesting segue. I tried to deflect this with a substantive enough answer (basically the rational part of me doesn't really believe in a deity or an afterlife but my imagination likes to think there is sometimes, and I don't really have a problem with people believing in God or religion per se, but people have done lots of bad things in the name of religion, etc.) without getting sucked into an actual conversation but it was too late -- I was powerless to escape his evangelical clutches. So, he told me about the sort of person he used to be (poor, smoking, drinking, womanizing) and how he prayed to God and turned his life around, God was helping him keep up with rent payments, etc. He said how there's a heaven and a hell, and if you don't confess your sins and give your life up to Jesus you'll go to hell (even if you're otherwise a good person). He explained how Jesus died so we could live, etc., and said "But I guess you know this -- everyone's heard of Jesus, right?" I briefly toyed with the idea of playing completely ignorant and saying no, but decided that was more trouble than it was worth. He talked about evolution and how Darwin later recanted and apologized to God (must have had a direct line) for lying to everyone (I didn't ask if there was a difference between finding holes in a scientific theory and lying) and how dangerous this sort of thing is -- these days, you can write a book and 10 million people will believe you. (I refrained from pointing out that the Bible is a book too.) He asked if I knew about Revelations, and I allowed I'd heard of it, and he said something about this guy 2000 years ago making predictions about things (at this point I thought maybe we'd somehow strayed off onto Nostradamus and not the Bible anymore but I really haven't read the Bible past the first few chapters of the Old Testament that we read for 6th grade religion class so I wouldn't know). He cited the example of how it was predicted that Europe would become 10 countries and then 1 country, and you see this new Labor party guy wants to make Europe into 1 country with a eurodollar and all. I pointed out that the idea of unifying the EC didn't just happen, which he nodded at but ignored completely. I also said "If you make any prediction vague enough, eventually something will happen that can you can make fit into the prediction." This went completely over his head -- he said "Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?" He asked what I did on Sundays and invited me to go to his church, but I told him honestly I didn't think I would go. By now I wanted to get back to MSTing Voyager, and from the digital readout of the time left on the dryer I determined I'd already spent 20 minutes on this, so I wished him a good night and left. Anyway, the ironic part of this is, during this time he attempted to use the problem unit and it ate his 75 cents. Another unit I was trying to use wouldn't take my quarters (but at least it was returning them) so I tried using the problem unit -- I have found the technique of putting the quarters in slowly usually succeeds, and sure enough the dryer started up for me. -- Z. (heathen who will probably burn in hell) ____ "The IRS is auditing the NRA. I haven't had this much trouble picking \ / sides since the Iran-Iraq war." -- Bill Maher, "Politically Incorrect" \/