Problems
- A big point is made about transferring energy from the holodecks to another ship system, yet in Voy: Parallax a big point is made about how you absolutely cannot do that under any circumstance. This isn't the first time an episode has contradicted this detail of Voy: Parallax, but I'm starting to wonder exactly why they keep doing this. Are we supposed to believe that they've modified the holodeck power systems such that now they can do this as well as believe they rebuild shuttles and manufacture photon torpedoes?

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Janeway reprogramming Michael Sullivan.
- Tom, Harry, and Neelix unintentionally worsening Tuvok's space sickness.
- Tom: "You'd make a good barometer, Tuvok. Every time you get queasy, we go to red alert."
- Seven acing the rings tournament.

My Review
Not very interesting in the slightest. A lot of people complain about how every episode of Star Trek introduces a new dangerous situation and a new conflict; that at times it feels redundant or that we never get a sufficient feel for daily life aboard ship. However, this episode is deficient because of its distinct *lack* of any such contention. It's also annoying that in order to show an episode about the day to day life of the characters, there had to be some kind of space anomaly to stop the ship from moving first. That said, the main plot of this episode would have made a decent B plot for a more interesting episode and there were details about the setting and characters of Fair Haven that were quite charming. But ultimately it seemed to be a poor use of episode time.

Problems
- While not impossible, Tuvok being less than 100 years old in this episode is hard to rationalize with Voy: Flashback. Maybe like Klingons, Vulcans reach maturity much faster than humans, for Tuvok would have been a very young teenager whilst aboard the Excelsior.

Factoids
- Kes' shuttle's internal set is another reuse of captain Braxton's shuttle.

Remarkable Scenes
- Tuvok's excuse for blowing out the candle: "It was a fire hazard."
- Kes' appearance and subsequent telekinetic attacks on the ship.
- Kes traveling back through time.
- The doctor lamenting about not having a name.
- Tuvok mentioning the Delta Flyer whilst in the briefing in the past.
- The Vidiian attack.
- Chakotay: "Reverse thrusters, full power!" Harry: "That could tear the hull apart!" Chakotay: "Then tear it apart!"
- Janeway deactivating the EMH in the middle of talking to Kes.

My Review
This is an episode which gets lost in its own premise. The idea was to have Kes come back, but for only one episode. Which is fine, it was fun. But examining the episode more deeply shows its flaws. First of all, the episode takes place in Voyager's past, probably season 1. Again, it's fun to revisit this, but having a "modern" Kes return to us, then tossing the episode in the middle of the past was a grand waste of time. By the time we finally got the "real" Kes back and Janeway + Tuvok managed to quell her evil plan, the episode was pretty much over. Kes and Janeway have an extremely short conversation, and off Kes goes in Braxton's, er, I mean her shuttle to the Ocampa homeworld. Several things are not explained. Where did Kes get that shuttle? How fast is it? How did she locate Voyager? How did she catch up with Voyager? Why is she not as powerful as she was in Voy: The Gift? The question of why she was so angry throughout the episode is only barely answered. Suffice it to say, either a longer episode or an episode devoid of time travel would have been a better episode. And frankly, this likely being the final Kes episode leaves me more than a little annoyed. She already had one relatively bad send off, now two? I'm surprised Jennifer Lien actually did this episode after reading the script. This episode could have been the perfect opportunity to show us what Kes' life has been like for all these years or to even reintroduce her character. What a monumental waste. An extra point for the Vidiian plot and doing a good job making a season 1 set though.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Admiral Hendricks claims Janeway has made first contact with more species than anyone since James Kirk.

Remarkable Scenes
- Janeway discussing the Voth with Admiral Hendricks.
- Carey's death.

My Review
Weak. Lt. Carey appeared in season one, then was remarkably absent from future episodes. They brought him back for episodes that dealt with "Voyager's past" connoting that he was lost some time in season one. Now it's revealed that he's always been around and that he never died... only so they could kill him off here! His death was utterly pointless and Janeway's speech about how exploration at the cost of loss of life being unacceptable is just downright offensive. Every starship we've seen on Star Trek has lost life in the name of exploration. That's what makes it so "bold" when they go "where no one has gone before." It's not unrealistic that Janeway, who has just lost a friend (okay, maybe that's a stretch seeing as how he was already a ghost) might be feeling shaky about her convictions but such feelings could have been expressed better. On the other hand, the idea of having Voyager go on a mission to retrieve Friendship One was a good one. I did indeed like the premise of the episode. It's just a shame that instead of getting a discussion about this being the reason the Prime Directive exists, all we got was a dumb hostage story instead.

Problems
- Dr. Phlox talks of some "tropolysine" atoms in the pollen that were brought by the storm. Phlox says that they have an extra neutron which breaks down into a poison inside the body. This doesn't make any sense from a physics point of view though. A poison would be a complex molecular structure. Not a stray neutron or a single atom.

Factoids
- T'Pol has been to 36 Minshara class planets.
- This episode establishes that there are 82 crewmembers aboard Enterprise.

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip: "Where no dog has gone before."
- The transporter accident.
- T'Pol using the Vulcan neck pinch for the first time.

My Review
A nice premise goes sour. First we had the introduction of a few interesting minor crewmembers, of which I especially liked Elizabeth Cutler, then the peaceful exploration of a new world. The episode lacked contention, but it was far more pleasant than the previous two which were relatively dark and dreary. But night falls and the episode turns into a generic horror story quickly. The whole thing looked to me like an excuse to get the characters down on the planet acting all crazy. And it's not as if we haven't seen this cliche several times over in TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager...

Problems
- Archer tells us that at one time, all of Earth's colonies were within Earth's Solar System. Then an M class planet is discovered a mere 20 light years away and is selected for the first extrasolar colony. This planet was named Terra Nova and was colonized in 2078. This, however, contradicts what Harry Kim said in Voy: The 37s regarding early Earth colonies. Kim claimed that Mars was not colonized until 2103. It's very hard to rationalize this, because Archer specifically said Utopia Planitia had been built before Terra Nova was colonized in 2078. Maybe Utopia Planitia was built before the bulk of the actual Mars colony?
- Additionally, Alpha Centauri is closer than Terra Nova. Why wasn't it selected as Earth's first extrasolar colony? It was certainly colonized at some point, because Zefram Cochrane moved there some time during his lifetime...

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Archer showing Nadet who she is with old photographs.
- Archer and T'Pol arguing about what to do about the colonists.
- The shuttlepod sinking into the ground on Terra Nova.

My Review
A real mixed bag. It was a good idea to show details regarding Earth's early extrasolar colonies, but they couldn't have done it in a worse way. This whole episode is more or less a rehash of Voy: Friendship One. And indeed smaller plot elements in this episode resemble numerous other episodes. Suffice it to say, this plot is hardly original. But at least it's appropriate. Unfortunately, the already weak plot strains the hell out of credibility. For one, there's the Alpha Centauri technical problem, which is documented in the problems section. Suffice it to say, Alpha Centauri would have made much more sense as a setting for Earth's first extrasolar colony. Then there's the timing. Also documented in the problems section, this episode contradicts Voy: The 37s regarding when Mars was colonized. All of the technical problems could have easily been avoided by simply not making Terra Nova Earth's first extrasolar colony and giving specific dates, but by making it one of many of Earth's first extrasolar colonies. In this respect, the plot could be viewed exactly the same way as intended, except in a more credible manner. There were a few details to redeem the episode, though. One thing I liked was that the Novans had a unique vocabulary, using strange terms much like the Vori from Voy: Nemesis. I was also quite fond of how patient Archer and his crew were with the rather uninformed Novans. I also liked T'Pol's objective opinion once again. Unfortunately, these details do little to enhance this rather ill conceived episode.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- T'Pol's vague behavior when she tells Archer about her impending mission.
- Tucker having trouble being the acting captain.
- The Vulcan captain confusedly informing "Captain Archer" of the recent water polo scores.

My Review
A meager plot. There are only two redeeming qualities in this episode. It's a nice character building piece between Archer an T'Pol and it was very well acted all across. Jolene Blalock's portrayal of a Vulcan whose emotions are bleeding into the surface was quite good. I guess there are a few other, minor things to redeem the episode too. We don't get to watch another atrocious decon scene, even though it was hinted at. And Mayweather isn't totally ignored. What's annoying is that we're shown yet another wayward Vulcan plot. There would seem to be three types of Vulcans in the 22nd century. Right wing, emotionless, arrogant Vulcans like Soval, left wing, emotional, unstable Vulcans, like the people from Ent: Fusion or this episode, and those that fall somewhere in between like V'Lar from Ent: Fallen Hero or more recently, T'Pol. It seems the lefty righty extremist types die off by the 23rd century. Personally, I'd like to see stories explaining how they die off, not more stories demonstrating that this social structure exists. There's been enough of them.

Problems
- Why did the asteroid have Earth like gravity?

Factoids
- Maybe obvious, but this was a Halloween episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- The sight of the chaotic asteroid field.
- The transporter malfunction.
- T'Pol explaining the history of and reason for the Vulcan emotion suppression to Corporal Hawkins.
- Archer: "I can't try to save humanity without holding on to what makes me human."
- Trip: "Part of the fun of a mystery is trying to solve it before it ends. Using logic. You of all people should appreciate that." T'Pol: "Then use logic more quietly."

My Review
I found this episode largely appalling. Most importantly, it was violent to an extreme. The brave crew shooting Vulcan zombies left and right sounds more like something out of a bad fanfic than a real Star Trek episode. Secondly, all that incessant flashing is enough to induce an epileptic seizure. Finally, T'Pol's character is abused once again. Jolene Blalock sports an amazing performance, making the blatant abuse of her character not so bad, but it's still annoying. Finally, far too much time was spent on that dreadful A plot concerning the crew stuck trying to escape Vulcan zombies; that extension at the end was just awful, and not nearly enough time was spent on studying the Trellium-D. Fortunately, the time mismanagement doesn't disadvantage the B plot too much. There's a decent amount of continuity here, we learn that Trellium-D poisons the Vulcan mind and that it's likely that the reason the crew of the Vankara from Ent: The Expanse went crazy was due to the Trellium-D. I was also liked Archer's declaration that he won't use the Trellium-D if it hurts T'Pol. These two details are what scores the episode two points, nothing more.

Problems
None

Factoids
- The title of this episode is a reference to a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth: "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."
- At just under 38 minutes, this was the shortest episode of Star Trek, not counting The Animated Series.
- This episode establishes that mirror Terrans are biologically more light-sensitive than humans from the prime universe.
- A medical scan of Tyler establishes him to be 29 years old, with a birth year of 2227.

Remarkable Scenes
- Mirror Stamets toying with Stamets.
- Burnham's reaction to realizing that she's eating Kelpien.
- Mirror Georgiou executing her lords to prevent knowledge of the prime universe from spreading.

My Review
Despite being a historically short episode and jam-packed full of exposition and revelations, this episode still comes across as remarkably slow-paced, perhaps because nearly every plot development is executed remarkably clumsily. Not just the big developments, but even small things too. For example, in the scene depicting mirror Georgiou and Burnham eating Kelpien, it's tough to tell whether or not they were eating mirror Saru or just some random Kelpien. It sure looked like Saru, but if it was him, how did he get aboard the I.S.S. Charon? And what the blazes was that artificial sun thing at the center of that ship anyway? These details were supposed to be small but compelling emotional beats in the story, but just ended up being distracting. As was the repeated use of horror movie aesthetics in Stamets' and Tyler's scenes.

Speaking of Tyler, it's still pretty hard to know what to make of this plot thread, as L'Rell's actions continue to not make much sense. The exposition in this episode seems to fully confirm the likely hypothesis from previous reviews that Voq was surgically altered to look human and the personality of Tyler was grafted onto him. L'Rell once again insists that this was all part of some grand plan and Saru even agrees referring to her actions as "devious designs." But as mentioned before, it was anything but. Again, it seems L'Rell and Voq are only in this position due to bumbling, dumb luck. And with their covers fully blown now, it's hard to see how they'll gain any advantage from this mission whatsoever.

One perhaps remote possibility for how L'Rell could come out on top is that L'Rell was feigning weakness to Saru and used the surgery supposedly meant to save Tyler to once again repress Voq's emerging personality beneath the Tyler imprint. That way she could bring Voq back to the surface later at a time that is more useful. And in order to convince Discovery's crew that Voq was truly gone, she publicly mourned Voq's death with the signature Klingon howl after the surgery not because Voq is truly dead, but as a ruse to make the Discovery crew think she did as they asked. The fact that it's hard to tell if the narrative expects us to believe that far-fetched hypothesis or believe the perhaps worse conclusion that L'Rell just shrugged, did the surgery, effectively killed Voq in the process, and gave up on her mission on a whim shows how terribly conceived a plot thread this is. No matter which way it pans out, it's still stupid.

Perhaps the most cringeworthy plot thread in this episode though is Stamets' conspicuously unexplained conversation with his dead(!) boyfriend Culber, strongly hinting at some supernatural afterlife stuff. At best, this will be resolved by some technobabble about how Culber's consciousness was somehow preserved in the mycelial network inadvertently by Stamets. At worst, this is Starbuck's ending from Battlestar Galactica all over again. Dead person shows up for tearful goodbye, the whole thing is supernatural, and we're just expected to buy it without an explanation because apparently stuff making scientific sense in science fiction stories is an unimportant detail... Let's hope the show establishes that it's the former in a future episode, not the latter.

What works a bit better with Stamets in this episode is the revelation that the spore drive does damage to the mycelial network, at least insofar as how mirror Stamets was using it. This goes a long way towards explaining why the spore drive eventually becomes an abandoned technology later in Star Trek's chronology, though obviously there is still some work to do here to button it up completely.

The most intriguing though perhaps also the most problematic new development in this episode is Lorca being revealed to have always in fact been mirror Lorca. There were several hints dropped that this could be the case in previous episodes, which previous reviews have alluded to. On the surface, this would seem to explain the numerous instances of shady behavior we've seen from Lorca since the beginning. But unfortunately, there are also several Lorca scenes that are difficult to explain now in retrospect. For instance, there seems to be little point to Lorca failing to remember Ava's name during his torture by Ava's brother. The scene heavily implies that Lorca wouldn't remember Ava's name because only mirror Lorca would know such a detail. Thus we were supposed to conclude Lorca must not be mirror Lorca. When it turns out Lorca was just pretending to not remember and he is in fact mirror Lorca, the narrative expects us to see it as a clever twist. But like many others in this show, it isn't a clever twist. It's a cheap twist. Deliberately misdirecting the audience isn't clever, it's lazy.

This same narrative flaw can be seen with the revelation that mirror Terrans are more light-sensitive than humans from the prime universe. This was explained before as Lorca having suffered from an injury and refusing to get it fixed out of a misplaced sense of guilt. Now it's explained simply as an innate feature of mirror Terrans. While again the narrative clearly acts as though this is clever misdirection, it's more like just lying to the audience. It likewise strains credibility to accept that this quirk of mirror Terran physiology would go unnoticed in all the other mirror universe episodes in the other Star Trek series.

Another scene that's difficult to explain given that Lorca was always mirror Lorca is when in Despite Yourself he almost blew his cover by trying to personally answer the hail from the I.S.S. Cooper. Had Burnham not fortuitously stopped him from answering the hail, his cover would've been blown. If Lorca was always mirror Lorca, wouldn't it have been prudent to simply ask Burnham to look up who their alter egos were before speaking to anyone from the mirror universe? There is simply no way he could've known Burnham would conveniently stop him from answering the hail just in the nick of time so as to make Lorca look conveniently ignorant about the mirror universe. Knowing what we know now, that is an incredibly contrived scene.

Even going as far back as The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry, Lorca's irrational obsession with turning the tardigrade into weapons is even more incoherent now than it already was then back when we were supposed to believe he was prime Lorca instead of mirror Lorca. In the context of prime Lorca seeking to waste the tardigrade's potential for building a functional spore drive in exchange for the uncertain possibility of making weapons, the tradeoff was already dumb. Taken in the context of mirror Lorca only seeming to care about getting back to the mirror universe, that idiotic emphasis on turning the tardigrade into weapons somehow is even dumber than it already seemed.

All things considered, the steam is definitely running out on all of Discovery's plot threads. While there are some moments of intrigue and amusement here, this episode and all the plot arcs in general feel aimless and poorly planned.

Problems
None

Factoids
- This episode establishes that Tilly has a step sister.
- The Xahieans just achieved warp capacity.

Remarkable Scenes
- The food dispenser malfunctioning and chucking random food dishes all over the mess hall.
- It was nice to see the universal translator not working automatically for once. This was very reminiscent of several scenes in Enterprise as well as DS9: Sanctuary, which featured a similar plot in which the usually reliable UT took a bit of time to pick up a new language.
- Tilly: "There is a hormonal space rabbit. He escaped from the lab and then he got loose in here. He's got mood swings."

My Review
Before getting into the story itself, it's worth noting that in season 2, Star Trek: Discovery is now being filmed in a 2.39:1 "true cinematic" aspect ratio, which is even more annoying than the first season's almost as bad choice of 2:1. Like before, this leaves black bars on the top and bottom of 16:9 screens which are the most common screens this series will be viewed on. Again, the producers have said this aspect ratio was chosen to make Discovery "feel more cinematic," which is truly bizarre. Game of Thrones is 16:9 and definitely feels more cinematic than Discovery. A perfect example of how the producers have repeatedly focused on style over substance. Wasting more than a quarter of the screen is not how you make something "feel cinematic." Producing good content is.

As for the story—such as it is—following in the infamous tradition of the horrible Battlestar Galactica "webisodes," this new between-seasons "Short Trek" format delivers what might end up being Star Trek Discovery's first true filler episode, annoyingly sandwiched between the first season finale and the first "real" episode of season 2 that will eventually get the plot back on track and resolve season 1's cliffhanger. This thankfully short chronicling of Ensign Tilly's mysterious encounter with an awkward alien teenager doubles down on Discovery's preoccupation with targeting the short attention span crowd, delivering story depth roughly on par with a typical episode of The Animated Series.

The narrative's only apparent purpose appears to be celebrating immature anxiety as an identity group. All that happens here is a therapy session between Tilly and her alien counterpart in which the sole moral of the story is that it's okay to feel nervous about things sometimes, especially when you're young because it's harder to control your emotions when you're young or something. While it would certainly be nice to see a Star Trek episode that explores anxiety disorders in some depth in an effort to portray mental health problems on TV in a better, more sympathetic light to help erode generations of stigma surrounding mental health issues, this episode misses that mark by far. And in so doing, presents a largely incoherent plot.

How did the alien hitch a ride on a shuttle to Discovery? Why target that specific shuttle or Discovery in particular? Why didn't Tilly call for help when the alien appeared in the mess hall? How could Tilly have possibly gotten away with keeping all this a secret after multiple people witnessed the mess in the mess hall, complete with alien blood? Why didn't the internal sensors detect the intrusion and set off alarms? How did Tilly get away with beaming a living creature off the ship without setting off alarms? Why is it possible for anyone—especially an ensign—to operate the transporter alone without setting off alarms? Where exactly did Tilly even beam the alien to? Where was the ship at this time? When was the ship at this time? Since Tilly was talking about joining the Starfleet Command training program, it had to be after at least some of the events of the previous episode Will You Take My Hand, but it seems hard to believe Tilly would have this entire alien adventure during the cliffhanger between Will You Take My Hand and whatever the next "real" episode of season 2 is which will presumably resolve the cliffhanger. So then the events of this episode take place during the middle of the previous episode somehow...?

Much of that litany of plotting issues seriously strains credibility to rationalize, which is clearly why the episode didn't bother trying. As usual with an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, the writers are hoping to activate your feelings here, not your mind. And as usual with an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, this episode is kind of entertaining, so long as you don't think about it too much. Instead of thinking about totally boring things like plot coherence, you're supposed to feel super moved by such inspiring lines like, "Evolution is about soul," man! Like whoa. Super deep. Almost as deep as Kirk's similarly profound line, "What of Lazarus?" from TOS: The Alternative Factor, an episode that is apparently this show's role model for writing quality.

Problems
- Saru beams off the ship while the shields are up.

Factoids
- David Benjamin Tomlinson, who plays Linus in this episode, also plays a Kelpien Villager.

Remarkable Scenes
- Saru being reunited with his sister.
- Pike ordering disruptive Saru off the bridge during the confrontation with the Ba'ul.

My Review
In the classic tradition of bad Star Trek episodes, our heroes swoop in and force massive societal change on an entire planet this time by forcing precocious puberty on the Kelpiens causing their danger noodles to "evolve" into danger needles to cure them of their Irritable Ba'ul Syndrome. They don't give a second thought to what side effects there might be to forcing this medical intervention on a whole society of people. They just toss a whole civilization a laxative to force them to have a Ba'ul movement against their will, then give them a nice pat on the ass, wish them well, and fly off into the sunset, leaving the Kelpiens and the Ba'ul to sort out their own isuses, clean up their own messes, and flush their own toilets.

Meanwhile it's completely unknown why the Ba'ul didn't just exterminate the Kelpiens ages ago if they were so willing to do it now if the "Great Balance" were ever even mildly disrupted like what happened here. Or if they're so afraid of the Kelpiens, why didn't they just leave the planet with the warp drive they recently invented? But you see, in comic bookish stories such as this we're not meant to consider such questions. We're supposed to react with shock and horror at the menacing black alien goo that looks and sounds scary rather than think of them as a society of people. Besides, scary black alien goo killed Tasha Yar in (a particularly awful episode of) TNG, so it's automatically bad, right?

And like any good comic book story, our heroes need ever escalating superpowers. In this episode Saru implausibly dismantles a machine of oppression by getting angry, becoming The Incredible Hulk, and doing some Hulk Smash. Who knows if that's even his Final Form? Will Saru go Super Saiyan someday? There was some potential for real personal growth for his character in this story that was totally wasted here. Instead of showing us a new Saru that is more confident and outspoken, he just starts fights with Pike. Instead of showing us a Saru who has to work hard to prove to his people that Kelpien puberty need not automatically mean death, the deus ex machina of the red angel just magic wands away their entire religion in one fell swoop. Handy.

Speaking of superpowers, Airiam is starting to get annoying. She appears to be able to absorb information quickly in the same way that Data was able to do a century later, an ability which during Data's time was regarded as novel and impressive. But a hundred years before Dr. Soong created Data, we've got something that strongly resembles an android with apparently all of Data's abilities. They'd better clear this up soon.

On a positive note, what's going on with Culber is incredibly touching and very well-acted. His posttraumatic stress disorder is well earned by the plot and convincingly portrayed. Stamets' denial about it is too. It's quite unfortunate that more of the episode wasn't that good. This much-anticipated sequel to the prior much classier Short Trek episode The Brightest Star ended up being a real stinker.

Problems
- It's unclear why anyone thought the Borg drones being blown into space would kill them seeing as how we've seen that drones are able to survive in a vacuum before.

Factoids
- This episode establishes that Commodore Oh is half Romulan, half Vulcan.

Remarkable Scenes
- Seven of Nine rescuing Elnor.
- Picard gloating to Admiral Clancy about being right and then demanding a whole squadron of ships from her. Clancy: "Admiral Picard with all due respect and at long last, shut the fuck up! I'm sending a squadron to rendezvous with you at DS12, now stay put until they get there!"
- Soji to Picard about Data: "He loved you."
- Agnes marveling at Soji.
- Narissa executing the remaining xBs.
- Picard, making a confident attempt to fly the ship: "...Actually, I don't know how to work this."
- Seven of Nine stealing the Borg cube.

My Review
The various plot threads are starting to come together and paint a clearer picture of what this story is adding up to which is sadly a mixture of bad and possibly worse depending on what happens in the following episodes. First and most importantly, we find out here that the Zhat Vash were radicalized by a prophecy of destruction brought about by the prospect of AI advancing too far. This "admonition" warns against the advancement of AI, driving those who experience it to madness, literally. Back in Maps and Legends when Laris first described the Zhat Vash as keeping a secret "so profound and terrible that just learning it can break a person's mind" we had hoped this lame remark was simply hyperbole we could cough over and move on from. Apparently not. Here we see people kill themselves, smash rocks into their faces, tear off hair and skin, etc. All because of a vision they experienced from an alien beacon.

Making matters worse, this madness was somehow enough to break the collective mind of the Borg as well. It's explained that the Borg cube the Romulans commandeered was broken by the assimilation of Narissa's aunt Ramdha, whose mind had been broken by the "admonition." While this is not exactly unprecedented since something similar occurred when Hugh was reassimilated by the Borg after the events of TNG: I, Borg, it was pretty lame then, and it's even more lame now. The idea that resistance to assimilation just requires a sufficiently strong-willed or traumatized mind is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the assimilation process itself is traumatic and the Borg have undoubtedly assimilated billions of strong-willed people before. It simply isn't credible that Ramdha could break the Borg through the "sheer force of her despair" or that Hugh's newfound individuality would be so profound that it could somehow corrupt the cube that retrieved him entirely on its own.

To make it credible, there had to be more going on than just asserting that these characters had stronger feelings than anyone else who had ever been assimilated, so therefore they were immune to it. But the narrative seems to expect us to just believe that strong feelings was all it took. Damn it Magnus and Erin Hansen, if only you just had stronger feelings about being assimilated, maybe you could've broke the Borg and prevented Annika from being assimilated and becoming Seven of Nine, huh? Speaking of Seven, her return is a welcome one and one of the only bright spots in the episode. Her reticence regarding establishing a micro collective is a nice callback to her actions in Voy: Survival Instinct. But speaking of that episode, it sure is a shame that Lansor (Two of Nine), Marika Wilkarah (Three of Nine), and P'Chan (Four of Nine) didn't just have stronger feelings about Seven of Nine reassimilating them, huh? Maybe they could've broke her and gotten away like Hugh and Ramdha. It's bizarre that the writers didn't think through how obviously dumb the "strong feelings break the Borg" plot point was and give us a bit more to hang our hats on. To be fair, it's not an impossible problem to fix. Maybe Hugh had the Borg virus embedded in him against orders by a renegade Enterprise crewman. And Maybe Ramdha had something similar embedded in her after experiencing the "admonition." But it sure would've been nice if the episode established something like that as a fact rather than us having to offer up our own solutions to these problems, huh?

There is a similar problem with Agnes. The previous episode did nothing to convince us that the mind meld she had with Commodore Oh was at all coercive. It was strongly implied that Agnes assassinated Maddox entirely of her own free will because the visions she received were somehow sufficiently persuasive enough to get her to murder a man she loved. In this episode she continues to exhibit no signs of mind control and even deliberately chooses not to do any harm to Soji despite Soji being the literal personification of the threat she supposedly was so convinced was urgent that she would murder her lover. There is a way out of this plot hole too if we extrapolate a bit from the scene when she was asked why she did this and replied she "had to," that Commodore Oh had put "poison" in her mind, and a "psychic block" was put in place to keep her from talking about it. From that we could make a leap of logic that what she really meant was she was under the influence of mind control and the murder was something she did without consciously choosing to, like a sleeper agent. But that's quite a leap from the material presented to us which seems to strongly imply otherwise. She continues to refer to Maddox' work as "hubris" and seems to still genuinely fear the prophecy coming true. But again she doesn't fear it enough to take action against Soji. So it's all a jumbled mess. Agnes' motivations make no sense and this is becoming a serious problem that it seems more and more likely the plot won't resolve anytime soon.

Rios too is now a problem. Instead of just immediately telling everyone that Soji looks just like an android his former captain murdered, he decides to get all moody and hide from everyone for no coherent reason. But a bigger problem is how that development nudges this story away from a charming tale about a motley crew brought together for idiosyncratic reasons into a trite tale about everyone being linked together by destiny. It's a ridiculous coincidence that Picard just so happened to befriend the only person in the Federation to correctly predict Romulan involvement in the Mars attack and that she just so happened to be friends with a random mercenary pilot who just so happened to be randomly connected to the exact conspiracy Picard sought to unravel.

The worst thing about this episode though is how it undermines the promise of the pilot. The pilot offered up the possibility of a real reflection on the Federation flirting with reactionary anti-technology politics. It would've been nice to see more backstory showing us substantive public debate about this and how it intertwines with holograms and previous reactionary material on Star Trek regarding genetic engineering. But we got none of that. The ban was just the result of a Romulan conspiracy. No deep meditation on reactionary politics. The writers don't appear to have noticed the parallels between the AI ban and the genetic engineering ban. Nor did they notice that holograms are AI too. They must not have seen Voy: Revulsion where it's shown that a hologram that can fly a ship can be just as serious a threat as any android.

At the end of the episode Picard delivers a speech to Rios about how the Federation should not have given way to fear that the directing clearly emphasizes as some kind of profound moment; as if a few lines from Picard are the payoff on the deep meditation on reactionary politics we were promised. But the narrative didn't earn that moment at all. It fell just as flat as Burnham's speech at the end of Discovery's first season about how the Federation ought not to "allow desperation to destroy moral authority." You can't just trot out some high minded-sounding platitudes at the end of the story and expect that to serve as a reasonable substitute for narrative substance. Worse yet, Picard's whole point about how secrecy and fear are as ineffective as they are immoral is kind of ridiculous in itself given that secrecy and fear scored the Zhat Vash an AI ban in the Federation that lasted for more than a decade. Seems like manipulating people with secrecy and fear is actually pretty effective sometimes after all.

Overall this is a very disappointing offering. When writers build up something across a season of episodes, the payoff has to be worth it. We're seeing some payoff here and so far it's pretty damn anticlimactic.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Ransom: "She's having a great time." Freeman: "What?!" Ransom: "She's finding little ways to inject joy into otherwise horrible tasks." Freeman: "Then give her worse jobs!" Ransom: "I've got her emptying [bleep] out of the holodeck's [bleep] filter!" Freeman: "...Ugh. People really use it for that?" Ransom: "Oh yeah, it's mostly that."

My Review
This one is mostly a swing and miss. Captain Durango almost got a bunch of people killed for no reason and nearly destroyed a priceless artifact. The whole thing was a petty manufactured conflict. The ascension subplot was annoying too. So apparently anyone can become an energy being now just by studying some alien religion? Plus it's entirely unclear why some replicators would have better food than others given that the whole point of replicators is to eliminate scarcity. Ransom's hysterical remark heavily implying people primarily use holodecks for sex is worth an extra point though. But one really good scene does not an episode make.