Seasons / 2-1

Countdown to Destruction
Image


Cast


Captain Robert Smith -- Bruce Campbell
Lieutenant Martin Jasper -- Ted Rami
Commander Belinda Reines -- Amy Acker
Colonel Shauna Finelli -- Jewel Staite
TAG -- Christopher Judge
Johnny Danger -- Edward Kerr
Skip Tyler -- David Tennant
Robin Cunningham-- Wil Wheaton
4675636B -- John DiMaggio (voice)
Alice Tolman -- Amy Adams
Red Shirt-- Justin Long


Guest Stars


Gary -
Sword -
Conway -
The Author-


Production


Writer: D. M. Jeftinija
Director: D. M. Jeftinija
Script editor: D. M. Jeftinija
Executive producer: D. M. Jeftinija
Production code: 2.1
Originally broadcast: 08-14-03
Timeslot: Thursday at 9:00 EST
Length: 24


Chronology


Preceeded by

  -  

Followed by

Flirty Shortskirty:
Victoria Secret Agent

  -  

Look Who's Coming
To Dinner

Countdown to Destruction

Plot Synopsis


When the synari attack the Muffin the damage is so extensive that the crew are forced to evacuate and take all that they can and drift off into space.

Plot Summary


When a synari vessel attacks the ship the meager defenses are insufficient to defend themselves or escape. After exchanging insults, the Captain blames Marty for their predicament and orders and evacuation of the ship as he is about to initate self destruct. Once the bridge has been cleared he gives the order to self destruct and prepares to leave himself.
On his way out, after picking up his sentient sword the Captain runs into Marty who is in the process of saving his Tetris game as it contains his high score. The two, heading for the escape pods together run into Shauna who has her cat, Conway with her and Belinda who informs them that their path is blocked by a plasma leak. This gives Shauna an idea.
Shauna leads them to a shuttle bay where her ship? is waiting. The ship has been retrofitted from an old school bus and Marty at first refuses to go anywhere near it. Marty quickly reconsiders his refusal as the ship is about to explode. The ship stalls dramatically as the seconds tick down and Marty does not aide the situation by worrying about their impending doom out loud. As the bay doors begin to close and things grow even more dire, Belinda knocks Marty out with a sedative just to get some peace and quiet, much to the relief of the others.
In the very last seconds the ship manages to escape along with all of the other escape pods and ship is destroyed in a massive explosion.
Elsewhere in space, Red, 46, and Alice are in an escape pod being regailed by Red's ability to sing all of 99 bottles of beer on the wall. They decline a second performance, however. Later they speculate on where they'll go to the bathroom, but Alice brings up the point that she had difficulty finding the bathroom on the ship.
Elsewhere Robin, TAG, and Skip ponder with the size of the escape pods how Gary managed to get off the ship, at which point we see the giant space squid attacking the synari ship.
Back on the Red/Alice/46 pod Red complains about when they are going to be wherever they are going, and back with the Captain, Marty and Belinda bicker like children as the confinment gets to them. Another problem on Shauna's ship arises when Conway takes a liking to Sword who does not wish to be used as a scratching post. Marty attempts to deal with the boredom by playing games, which no one has any interst in, but play along in hopes he might stop talking eventually.
Just as Marty is starting in on the Knock Knock Jokes a ship? decloaks and we discover it to be Johnny in an experimental craft he found while trying to escape the ship. Luckily for Johnny the ship came with an instruction manual.
This episode also featured a brief interlude celebrating the end of the first year and the beginning of the second.

Critical Reception




References and Allusions


  • The code for destroying the ship comes from a rather obscure reference to a segment children's show. Mathnet featured an episode with a parrot who spouted the fibinoci number sequence followed by Eureka.
  • Ships tend to blow up on Star Trek. They always get new ones, though.
  • During the anniversary strip Marty is again, naked, as he was in the first comic.