Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- This arc sets up a number of long term plot threads, including Bareil's relationship with Kira.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- The scene with Kira, Odo, Dax, Bashir, O'Brien, Quark, and finally Vedek Bareil. I love all the fast and confusing dialog.
- Kira's orb experience.
- Kira: "If you want to change the government, minister Jaro, you vote to change it. You don't sneak up from behind it with a dagger."

My Review
The plot thickens with the revelation that the Cardassians are supplying the Circle with weapons. Winn is scheming again and the reason for Kira's reassignment is revealed to be a political maneuver. Sisko's decision to disobey orders and stay aboard the station to fight the political uprising is an interesting twist for his character since the pilot. The focus on the characters preserving their friendships with the Bajorans was a nice acknowledgement of the sadness of being torn apart expressed so eloquently by Jake being prevented from seeing his girlfriend in the last episode. Perhaps the best scene of the episode is when Minister Jarro stands up on the ledge in the hideout like a James Bond villain confessing his evil plot to Kira. Overall though the episode is just dragged out far too long. A faster pace might have improved it somewhat.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Lwaxana talking Picard to death.
- Lwaxana calling Worf "wolf" again.
- Lwaxana telling Worf and Riker that their brains aren't sophisticated enough.
- Maques telling Troi about how her mother told him about her "need" for a husband.
- I like Troi's comments about how Lwaxana for some reason isn't wearing elaborate clothing.
- Data using his experiences dreaming to assist Troi decipher what's going on with Lwaxana.

My Review
This is a very interesting episode at first; I love the aliens who are so telepathic they have no need for verbal words, but must relearn how to speak in order to join the Federation. Another detail I liked was that they literally couldn't speak and needed a special device to amplify their weakened vocal chords. The episode very quickly ceases to be about the aliens, but about the personal demons Lwaxana was dealing with. This takes all of the intrigue away from the episode in my opinion. An exploration of Troi's lost sister is certainly worthy of story, but it was slapped on top of a for once interesting alien of the week, which voided plenty of important story time they could have received. I would have really enjoyed seeing these guys join the Federation instead of watching a chick flick emotional bonding between Troi and Lwaxana. The two stories should have been separated and made into two episodes. They conflict with one another badly here.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Picard and Beverly sensing each other's thoughts.
- Riker handling the Kes. I'm most fond of his beaming up one of the Kes without permission.
- The sad scene at the end, where Beverly rejects Picard.

My Review
This episode opens with another interesting idea, a new Federation world where only part of the planet is joining. I like Picard's discontent with this concept, it is really weird. The episode quickly becomes the long awaited confrontation of love between Picard and Beverly. The scenes where they read each other's minds are very convincing, and very entertaining. The episode comes off as a little annoying in the end though when Beverly rejects Picard. There's certainly realism and logic in Beverly's decision, but the entire point of this episode was to setting the romantic tension between Beverly and Picard, and this episode seems only to have made it worse.

Filler Quotient: 2, filler, but an enjoyable episode nevertheless. You can skip this one, but you'd miss out on some fun.
- There's no essential plot or exposition in this episode that renders it unskippable, but it's a decent episode, even though it could have been better.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- O'Brien and Bashir during the medical exam.
- O'Brien: "I haven't had a physical take this long since I was born!"
- Jake accidentally inferring that O'Brien is "really, really old."
- O'Brien: "They even broke into my personal logs to see what they could find there. I hope they enjoyed the sexy letters I sent to my wife."
- O'Brien freaking out at Quark.
- O'Brien fleeing the station and stealing a runabout.
- The revelation that there are two O'Briens!
- Rules of Acquisition; 194 (maybe, Quark's not sure): It's always good business to know about new customers before they walk in your door.

My Review
A decent premise is slightly ruined, drowning under the weight of another conspiracy plot. The ending redeems most of the annoying aspects of the story, but I wish the plot twist was revealed a little sooner than the last two minutes of the episode. Though it is sometimes fun to watch O'Brien freak out at everybody and everything, it also gets old fast. A decent ride though.

Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- The Kai election is decided in this episode.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Kira insulting Vedek Winn.
- Kira and Odo talking to the collaborator.
- Vedek Winn's meeting with Sisko.
- Kira and Odo waking in on Quark. Kira: "Don't be so defensive!" Quark: "I can't help it, between the two of you I'm developing a persecution complex!"
- Rules of Acquisition; 285 (last rule). No good deed ever goes unpunished.

My Review
Vedek Winn manipulates Vedek Bareil to get him to withdraw his candidacy for the next Kai. An interesting idea, but drowns under the weight of slow plot development. The consequences are profound though, as it leads directly to Winn becoming Kai, which will surely lead to some interesting drama down the road.

Filler Quotient: 1, partial filler, but has important continuity. I recommend against skipping this one.
- This episode furthers several smaller arcs on DS9. Lwaxana's relationship with Odo evolves, Odo's love for Kira is more firmly established, O'Brien's relationship with Keiko evolves, and this is the last time we see Bareil before his untimely death. None of this is essential though unless you watched DS9: The Forsaken and you want to continue the Lwaxana/Odo arc.

Problems
- Why does Lwaxana's telepathic influence only affect the senior staff?

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Keiko, having not had a good time on her trip back because of Lwaxana. :)
- Keiko and O'Brien arguing.
- Jake trying to seduce Kira!
- Bareil trying to seduce Dax.
- Jealous O'Brien.
- Quark: "You hew-mons, you never learn. You let your women go out in public, hold jobs, wear clothing, and you wonder why your marriages fall apart!"
- Jadzia seducing Sisko.
- Kira and Bashir falling for each other.
- The staff figuring out what's going on.
- Bareil attacking Sisko and Sisko's response.
- Quark trying to seduce Keiko.
- Lwaxana seeing through Odo, noticing he's attracted to Kira.
- Morn appearances; 1. Talking to Jadzia about his problems. (Never actually says anything onscreen.) 2. Seen behind a juggler while Quark is selling festival items at the promenade.

My Review
This is a successful humor episode, but in many ways comes across as far too silly. The issues between O'Brien and Keiko are only barely convincing. The story itself is acceptable, but the humor in the episode makes the whole endeavor between Keiko and O'Brien seem more silly than it should have been. I'm fond of the ending, where everything is "fixed" and made to be serious again, but personally, I would have preferred O'Brien and Keiko's meetup to be under completely different circumstances.

Problems
- The judicial system of our aliens of the week is a little strange. Seems to me, forcing someone to relive their victim's death once every 14 hours will just further desensitize a murderer, making him more dangerous, rather than discourage further crime.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- The Doctor discussing the choosing of his name with Kes. One of the names the Doctor was considering was Spock. :)
- Paris: "Smoking is a bad habit. My species gave it up centuries ago when we finally got it into our heads it was killing us." Lidell: "You must be a very superior species." Paris: "That's not what I meant." Lidell: "Maybe I kill myself slowly because I don't have the courage to do it quickly."
- Chakotay's "play dead" trick.
- Neelix, regarding Tuvok's proposition of mind melding with Paris: "A, a what? What, what did he say? A mind what?"
- The Doctor's objections to Tuvok's mind meld idea. The Doctor: "Believe it or not, I know more about mind melds than you do!"
- Paris regarding taking another man's woman: "Some day it will be you Harry. You'll meet her and you'll know it's wrong from the first moment you see her. And you'll know there's nothing you can do about it.'"
- Tuvok uncovering the Numiri plot.
- Tom's way of expressing his gratitude to Tuvok.

My Review
This episode uses the classic "flashback" story template. Meaning, we see the effects of the story (Paris' sentence) before the cause (the story of the murder). Fortunately, it doesn't dominate the story, like certain other episodes do. So only parts of the story are wasted, which is mostly the beginning. So the episode gets off to a bad start, but eventually becomes interesting when Tuvok begins his criminal investigation. Tuvok is my favorite character on Voyager, and it's nice to see him shine here. As nice a job as Tuvok did though, the Numiri couldn't have done a worse one. Surely there would have been easier ways to transmit intelligence info than to encode military secrets in someone's mind, set this person up for a murder conviction, and then steal the prisoner? The episode has weak points, but overall comes off as pretty solid, so I don't take off too many points.

Problems
- How could there still be gas in the engine and water in the radiator of a truck which was floating in space? How could the battery still be charged?

Factoids
- This is the first episode to feature the landing of a starship, if we don't count the destruction of the Enterprise D.
- Current crew count is 152.
- Mars was colonized in 2103.

Remarkable Scenes
- A truck floating in space.
- Tuvok's reaction to Paris starting the truck.
- Voyager's landing.
- Janeway telling Earhart the history of Earth after she disappeared.
- Nobody deciding to stay behind on the planet.

My Review
A decent episode, but a little annoying. Besides the technical issues which largely don't matter anyway, the premise doesn't make much sense. Why would native Delta Quadrant aliens travel to the other side of the galaxy, retrieve a rather tiny amount of slaves from Earth and only Earth, then return to the Delta Quadrant? This just seems too unlikely. Bearing that in mind, this would have made a far better TNG episode than a Voyager episode, but it manages to pull its own weight fairly well. Janeway certainly identifies with Earhart better than Picard would have, and Tuvok's reaction to Paris starting the rusted old truck was something that only would have worked with a Vulcan. ;) A decent, though flawed episode.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Kar was played by Aron Eisenberg, who plays Nog on DS9.

Remarkable Scenes
- Chakotay's shuttle fight with Kar.
- Neelix speech about being underused.
- Chakotay's meeting with the Kazon leader and the children.
- Chakotay and Kar's escape.
- Kar killing the maje and earning his name.

My Review
This episode is a nice exploration of the Kazon culture. They value the "earning" of their names which they do by accomplishing great feats. By killing people or dying honorably in battle. It seems obvious that the Kazon are supposed to be a less sophisticated delta quadrant version of the Klingons, which is both interesting and annoying. It is interesting in that their culture is diverse and rich, but annoying in that it is an obvious parallel to the Klingons. The highlight of the episode is Chakotay's performance. I like his moral stance on everything. "You'll see no hate in my eyes." We learn about the Trabe in this episode, the Kazon shared their homeworld with them. The Kazon were oppressed by them. There was a revolt and the Kazon conquered the Trabe. Not a particularly amazing episode, but a decent watch.

Problems
- So if Ocampa can only reproduce once in their lifetime, exactly how does their species survive? Think about it. It takes two people to have a baby. For any population to remain stable, one couple must have at least two children; more than two is ideal!

Factoids
- This is Ensign Samantha Wildman's first episode.
- Tuvok has four children. Three sons and one daughter.
- A mention of the Breen! The Doctor mentions that the Breen are a warlike species in which pregnancy at a young age is common.
- Ensign Wildman's husband is stationed aboard DS9.

Remarkable Scenes
- Kes eating beetles. Holy nasty.
- Kes can't stop eating. Hah.
- Tuvok: "It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."

My Review
A sex episode! Er, well kinda. Lots of relationship stuff in this episode though. Chakotay sees people kissing in a turbolift, more of Neelix' jealousy over Tom's behavior, and of course the main plot with Kes entering puberty early, and the B plot with the space creatures trying to have sex with Voyager. The paralleling themes of the episode are skillfully woven together, but the subject matter just doesn't interest me at all. It seems to me that Chakotay was right, relationships are going to be necessary. For a 75 year trip, it's going to have to be a generational one. Since it's all so obvious, skillful or not, cramming a bunch of relationship stuff into a single episode seems overkill. Though I was pleased to see in the ending the story run full circle when Ensign Wildman proclaims her pregnancy. That was tactful and appropriate; we'll be seeing more of this later.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Gary Graham, who plays Tanis in this episode will go on to play Soval on Enterprise.
- This episode establishes that the Caretaker species is called the Nacene.

Remarkable Scenes
- Kes' lessons with Tuvok. She listened to Neelix' thoughts. Funny.
- Tanis regarding Voyager: "There are people, but there is so little life."
- Kes burning up Tuvok.
- Kes burning the hydroponics bay.
- Janeway's meeting with Suspiria.
- Tuvok: "Without the darkness, how would we recognize the light?"

My Review
We've been waiting for this one since Voy: Caretaker. We were told in the pilot episode that there was another Caretaker out there and it was just a matter of finding her. In this episode, when Voyager discovers that the remains of their dead sporocystian Caretaker friend start vibrating, that his companion may be near. Unfortunately, I am rather annoyed that we have yet another Voyager-might-get-home episode so early in Voyager's run. You know going into this that they won't get sent home by this or any other Caretaker, at least not so early in the show's run. One interesting thing is that Voyager is regarded by the natives as "the ship of death." It seems the Kazon are spreading rumors about them. Janeway once again demonstrates her superb diplomatic skills during her brief meeting with Suspiria. To me though, it's a shame Suspiria just up and leaves at the end of this episode, never to return. This makes this episode somewhat of an unsolved mystery on many levels. We're not entirely sure what the exact relationship between these Ocampa and Suspiria was. This episode clearly calls for a sequel, but unfortunately, it's one which we won't get.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Naomi Wildman is born in this episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- The fetal transport.
- Harry being vented into space.
- Janeway discovering the double Voyager.
- The Vidiians boarding Voyager.
- The other Janeway's friendly greeting to her conqueror just before the ship explodes.

My Review
This episode is pretty good from a sci fi perspective. Much of it has some pretty decent technical explanations behind it. Unfortunately, it falls short in the ending. Several plot holes crop up. It seems unlikely that the two ships could in fact merge after being separated, and even more unlikely that one Voyager self destructing would solve the whole problem. Not really avoidable though; a reset button was necessary.

Filler Quotient: 1, partial filler, but has important continuity. I recommend against skipping this one.
- This episode ends Leeta's relationship with Bashir and begins her relationship with Rom. However, Bashir's relationship with Leeta was previously featured in only one episode (Explorers) and for only a single scene which did not indicate clearly whether or not they would actually ever get together. As such, their breakup is inessential continuity and Leeta's attraction to Rom later on can be understood in context without seeing this episode. Nevertheless, this episode does feature nice texture and character development both for Leeta's love interests as well as the Dax/Worf relationship.

Problems
- How could a "friend of Curzon's" instantly recognize Jadzia?

Factoids
- The Ferengi have 178 different words for rain.

Remarkable Scenes
- Another mention of captain Boday, a Gallamite with a transparent skull.
- Leeta declaring that she's in love with Rom then Quark and Bashir's subsequent reactions.
- Worf telling Jadzia a story in which when he was a child he accidentally killed a human boy during a soccer game.
- Morn Appearances; 1. The first scene, hands a Starfleet officer a flower.

My Review
Another attempt at a humor episode finally sparks a dud. We get to see Dax in some interesting clothing again, but the overall plot is just lacking. Some good continuity and decent details in the episode, like the horgon which caused Worf's faux pas in TNG: Captain's Holiday. Bashir's and Leeta's "relationship" in this episode is wonderfully handled. But the plot concerning Worf and the Essentialists is very poor. The idea is sound, and the opening is well handled, but they quickly become annoying with their childish attacks and petty sabotage and totally fail to make a point concerning the Federation's complacency and overindulgence. To me, despite his redemption in the end, it just seems petty that Worf has to ruin the vacation of hundreds of thousands of people before he can talk to Dax about his relationship with her.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Neelix' overly enthusiastic attitude and his fumbling with the backpack.
- Tuvok's little strength pissing contest with one of the aliens, crushing his fist.
- Neelix freaking out at Tuvok.
- Tuvok: "I am looking for Mr. Neelix' instinct. Perhaps it will be marked."
- Alien regarding having pushed Tuvok off the lift: "Mr. Tuvok returned to the surface."
- Neelix to the ambassador: "Mr. Sklar returned to the surface."

My Review
Redirecting asteroids to planets as a method of conquest is an interesting concept and an original plot. Unfortunately the episode concentrates very little on these would-be conquerors and nearly exclusively on Tuvok and Neelix. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just that the aliens of the week were particularly more interesting to me than another Neelix vs. Tuvok conflict. With respect to their conflict though, the episode reminded me quite a bit of the conflicts Spock and Dr. McCoy used to have. And in that respect, the episode was quite entertaining. Overall the episode is decent. It has some untapped potential though.

Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Worf nitpicking the wedding again.
- Bashir and O'Brien lamenting about the Klingon food and the Klingon singing.
- Martok: "War is much more fun when you're winning!"
- Worf to his son: "You heard what I expect from the others; twice what I expect from you!" Ouch.
- Ch'Targh picking on then fighting Alexander.
- Ch'Targh to Alexander: "Keep a close watch! There might be more hostile simulation programs out there!"
- Dukat: "You don't like the dress?" Kira: "The dress is fine. I don't like you."
- Dukat giving the dress to Ziyal instead. Opportunistic indeed!
- Martok: "You are both stubborn, tiresome, qu'vatlh. The only difference is I need him. I do not need you."
- Alexander joining the house of Martok.

My Review
Kira walks the collaborator line again, Jake is frustrated with his inability to send news to the Federation and wants to join the resistance, and we get another episode taking place largely on the Rotarran. Unfortunately, this particular combined rehash is kind of a miss compared to the originals. While I enjoyed the basic story and appreciate its contribution to the current arc, the episode leaves one somewhat underwhelmed. I appreciate the basic theme. The episode title "Sons and Daughters" refers to Alexander and Ziyal. Alexander is having trouble gaining acceptance as a soldier and Ziyal is having trouble gaining acceptance as a student. I'm also glad the writers are tying up the whole "Hey, you know Worf has a son, right? What's up with him?" loose end. Other than that the episode is kind of unremarkable. Even the battle with the Jem'Hadar seemed routine.

Problems
None

Factoids
- This is the first episode to show Torres wearing an overcoat (which the actress called an "ugly smock") to hide her real life pregnancy.

Remarkable Scenes
- The opening scene of nightmares.
- Harry's reaction to Seven's request for assistance in the Jeffrey's tube when he woke up.
- Torres: "I wonder what a Vulcan nightmare would be like." Neelix: "Alone, exiled on a planet where the only form of communication is laughter."
- Seven of Nine's diversion.
- The doctor, regarding himself: "No rest for the never weary."
- Janeway: "Either I've become impervious to antimatter explosions, or we're still dreaming."
- Chakotay's solution.
- Chakotay, regarding everyone showing up the mess hall because they can't sleep: "Neelix, I think it's time for breakfast."

My Review
There are elements of TNG: Schisms (once again) in this episode with the crew all sharing similar bad dreams and attempting to mutually figure them out. This is an interesting twist to the "illusionary world" or "holodeck" plot, but it got rather annoying when everybody kept waking up, then realizing they were still dreaming, then waking up, and so on. I got tired of it at about the third time it happened. This trick is cheap in the first place and using it over and over again is a little insulting. I commented in DS9: Distance Voices about how much I hate "it was all a dream!" type plots, but this one is a bit less annoying. It isn't centered around one character, but the whole crew. And although the narrative misdirection gets annoying, the plot is overall effective. With a little tweaking the plot could have been worth a few more points.

Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.

Problems
None

Factoids
- A security officer says 98 ships were lost in the Federation's 7th fleet. This is good continuity with DS9: A Time to Stand.
- This is the first episode to feature Section 31.

Remarkable Scenes
- O'Brien injured from kayaking... again...
- Bashir: "I'm going to a medical conference, not on vacation!" Not exact, but I'll count it. Count 23 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
- Bashir being served Worf's gagh.
- Sloan regarding the events of DS9: In Purgatory's Shadow and DS9: By Inferno's Light: "Why would the Dominion leave your Runabout orbiting the camp unattended?" Bashir: "They didn't think we'd be able to contact it."
- Sloan drilling Bashir.
- Weyoun beaming Bashir off of DS9.
- Bashir realizing that he's in a simulation.
- Bashir: "You function as judge, jury, and executioner. And I think that's too much power for anyone to have."
- Morn Appearances; 1. Watches as Bashir is arrested.

My Review
Introducing Section 31: an autonomous branch of Starfleet that answers to no one, established 200 years ago when the Federation was founded, sanctioned by the Federation charter. It is the equivalent to the Romulan Tal'Shiar or the Cardassian Obsidian Order. Bashir has been "recruited" into it by Sloan, who is seemingly their leader. The episode ends with this; it's obviously meant to be the start of a longer term arc. While the ending is somewhat unremarkable, the ride taking us there is a decent amount of fun to watch. I was worried this would turn into another TNG: The Drumhead, but fortunately Sloan wasn't a crazed madman but in fact had an ulterior motive, and quite the ulterior motive at that. In the end, the episode is a pretty balanced mix of annoying and cool. It all kind of averages out. In the end though, I just plain don't like misdirection plots, which I ranted about in Voy: Waking Moments. The writers shouldn't have to create layers of deception and revelation to hold an audience.

Problems
- Species 8472 got a few things wrong in their Starfleet Headquarters recreation. The uniforms were outdated, and there were multiple Ferengi in Starfleet. (Nog from DS9 is the only Ferengi in Starfleet...)
- Janeway orders Voyager to charge weapons twice.

Factoids
- The fake Starfleet headquarters was created using a combination of holographic generators and the previously mentioned "particle synthesis" from Voy: Hope and Fear.

Remarkable Scenes
- Boothby appearance.
- The discovery that species 8472 is behind the training facility.
- The doctor: "Talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing."
- The doctor: "Throughout human history, weapons of mass destruction were designed in the hopes that they would never be used." Seven: "And yet in Earth's third world war, nuclear weapons accounted for 600 million casualties."
- Paris: "It's a date! These things can't be rushed. They've probably just finished dinner, a couple of drinks, and now they are moving past the polite stage." Kim: "The polite stage? The last 8472 I met tried to dissolve me from the inside out!"
- The "class reunion."
- Boothby: "Sit down, Admiral." Bullock: "Sir?" Boothby: "I said sit down, or I'll knock you right on your human butt!"

My Review
Another episode tying up another loose end. We never quite knew how species 8472 was going to react to losing the war with the Borg due to the Federation's help, and now we know. It seems they've built training facilities in which they are training operatives to infiltrate Earth. This was a nice opportunity to show us Starfleet Command for the first time since DS9 and TNG, as well as to bring back the beloved Boothby. He's only been in a few episodes so far, but each time used well. I liked the statement regarding Boothby having given valuable advice to all the captains in Starfleet, including Picard, which is a nice reference to TNG. That said, this episode is a bit annoying. While it is true to the spirit of Star Trek, it reeks of the writers saying, "well, let's wrap up this 8472 thing." But they didn't in fact wrap it up. The ending is *almost* a cliffhanger as there is still room for further conflict. I hate it when writers use this kind of cop out. This plot thread is wrapped up, but not! Additionally, 8472 seemed vastly out of character in this episode. This can be attributed to their "think human, be human" attitude, but again, it reeks of a cop out. Overall, disappointing.

Filler Quotient: 2, filler, but an enjoyable episode nevertheless. You can skip this one, but you'd miss out on some fun.
- This episode is sort of a sequel to DS9: Honor Among Thieves, but the coda was unnecessary, so there's no reason to consider this episode not filler.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Ezri describing the various types of Gagh.
- Sisko regarding O'Brien: "He is not a detective, he's an engineer!" Not exact, but I'll count it. Count 28 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
- O'Brien, sarcastically regarding Bilby's wife: "Yeah. She accidentally hit herself in the head and accidentally threw herself in the river."
- Ezri regarding her family business: "I feel like I'm trapped in some sort of Ferengi nightmare."
- The revelation that Norvo Tigan murdered Bilby's wife.

My Review
This episode skillfully combines a sequel to DS9: Honor Among Thieves with an episode centered around Ezri. As it turns out, the murder O'Brien was investigating was committed by Ezri's brother, Norvo. This is, of course, all very convenient from a writing perspective, but it ended up being an interesting and entertaining episode regardless. Unfortunately, most of the episode is character development on Ezri's family, not so much on Ezri herself, and most of the rest is spent on the murder investigation. Nevertheless, it was nice to meet Ezri's family, and it was nice to see her doing her job as a counselor, even if she was just consoling family.

Problems
- Tom says Tuvok's wife is 50,000 light years away. Actually, by my calculations, she's closer to 43,000 light years away.

Factoids
- We get to see Tuvok as a young man in this episode.
- It's remarkable how the doctor was able to speak Noss' language. "A universal translator was written into" his program.

Remarkable Scenes
- Tom getting "mugged." I loved hearing Noss' native language. Lori Petty did a good job with it.
- Tuvok saving Noss.
- The doctor: "I'm a doctor, not a battery!" Count 29 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
- Tuvok telling Tom his story.
- Tuvok mind melding with Noss.

My Review
A rather generic episode, other than the rather interesting time displacement part, the character of Noss, and Tuvok's flashbacks. If it were not for these things, the episode would be hideously cliched. We have yet another shuttle crash (one wonders if by now half the crew is assigned to "shuttle and photon torpedo replacement duty") resulting in yet another rescue attempt. It's rather funny how the writers don't even tell us why Tuvok, Tom, and the doctor were on a shuttle mission in the first place, as if it doesn't matter. My complaining aside, the social situation that developed between Noss and Tuvok was very well written and made the episode most watchable. It's also remarkable how Tom kept encouraging Tuvok to accept Noss' advances, to accept the inevitability of their situation, that this planet was "home" now. It reminded me a lot of Voy: Remember with Chakotay in place of Tom. I also liked how the aliens trying to seal the rift were the same aliens attacking people down on the planet. It certainly makes sense with their claim that they've lost ships to the anomaly too frequently. Even all these nice touches can't save the episode from being below average though. We've just seen too many shuttle crashes.

Problems
None

Factoids
- The Klingons have a legend describing Kortar, the first Klingon, who destroyed the gods that created him and was condemned to steer the Barge of the Dead for all eternity as punishment.

Remarkable Scenes
- Torres' shuttle crashing into Voyager's shuttle bay.
- Torres: "We only have one multi spatial probe, I didn't want to lose it." Janeway: "We only have one B'Elanna Torres. I don't want to lose her either."
- Tuvok wielding a bat'leth.
- Seven of Nine and the doctor singing a Klingon drinking song.
- Chakotay: "I accept there are things in the universe than can't be scanned with a tricorder."

My Review
Voy: Coda + Voy: Mortal Coil = Voy: Barge of the Dead. The third "afterlife" plot Voyager's done so far. First Janeway, then Neelix, now Torres. I wonder when the writers will get tired of it. This one's a little better than Voy: Mortal Coil, but not quite as good as Voy: Coda. Torres' issues weren't quite as annoying as Neelix' were, but the writers made no attempt to explain away the dreams Torres was having like they did with Janeway. So in the end, the episode ended up being slightly below average. Not particularly bad, but not all that good either.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Tuvok was married in 2304 and his daughter was conceived during his 11th Pon Farr.
- Chakotay: "We already have a full compliment of shuttles." More evidence that they've been rebuilding them.
- Rules of Acquisition; Not rules, but "The 5 Stages of Acquisition." They are as follows: 1. Infatuation, 2. justification, 3. appropriation, 4. obsession, and 5. resale.

Remarkable Scenes
- Paris: "Congratulations Tuvok, you just saved us from a flotilla of hostile trash."
- Tom freaking out at Torres.
- Alice at warp. Nice visual effects.
- Alice's destruction.

My Review
This episode thoroughly failed to live up to its premise, mostly I'd say because of the ulterior motives of Alice and her eventual destruction. The episode could have been a lot more interesting if Tom was less reckless and Alice ended up being a permanent addition to Voyager's shuttle compliment; a fast, maneuverable battle shuttle to supplement the Delta Flyer and standard shuttles. I envisioned space battles where Voyager acted as a carrier, deploying its fighters against the enemy. But instead of these grand uses, Alice was reduced to a mere plot device, something to make Tom act all bonkers. Fortunately, Tom did a great job acting all bonkers in this episode; in fact the acting in this episode was superb all around. A decent episode even if not quite what it could have been.

Problems
- Why have we never, ever seen Ballard before?
- How could Ballard have ever possibly caught up with Voyager?
- If Ballard died 3 years ago, how could she have been killed by a Hirogen? For that matter, don't the Hirogen claim their trophies?
- Why hasn't Mezoti been returned to Norcadia? They rescued her from the Borg one episode after Voyager made first contact with her home planet!

Factoids
- Borg Species Designation: 689, Norcadian.

Remarkable Scenes
- The opening scene. I liked Ballard switching from Kobali to English.
- Seven of Nine: "Fun will now commence."
- Seven of Nine's less than perfect parenting skills.
- Tom: "For those of us keeping score, Harry Kim has fallen for a hologram, a Borg, the wrong twin, and now the dearly departed!"
- The doctor: "Hair is one of my specialties, despite evidence to the contrary."

My Review
Good concept, nice premise, a well flowing story, and a great guest starring actress playing Ballard, but the flaws in this one spoil the ride. With more careful writing the episode could have been a lot better. It's hard to watch an episode like this because the execution of the premise was nicely done. If continuity did not exist, there wouldn't be a problem with this episode at all. But there are things in this episode that are hard to justify which wreck a lot of the fun. For details, see the problems section. Otherwise, this episode would have scored well above a 5.

Problems
- I fail to see how shooting a computer console can deactivate a forcefield.
- Tuvok says to Neelix: "Concentrate on the rhythm of your breathing. Envision your lungs filled with light." But Neelix has only one lung.

Factoids
- Borg Species Designation: 5973, name unknown. The Borg encountered them in galactic cluster 8. They're multispectrum particle life forms.

Remarkable Scenes
- Neelix: "But I'm warning you. This is not a tale for the faint of heart." Mezoti: "We're not faint of heart." Icheb: "Our cardiopulmonary systems are reinforced."
- The replicator malfunction, replicating the coffee, it spills, then the cup. :)
- The computer telling the bridge crew where everyone on the ship is.
- Tom: "Don't you ever sweat?" Tuvok: "Not unless the temperature reaches 350 degrees Kelvin with a humidity factor of approximately--" Tom: "Forget I asked."
- The life form communicating with Janeway using the computer.

My Review
A rehash of several previous episodes, but told in a unique manner. Instead of just telling us the story directly, we watch as Neelix tells the story to the Borg children. Among this there are other details redeeming the episode. It was nice to see Tal Celes from Voy: Good Shepherd again, and I much enjoyed the various system malfunctions, as well as the alien using the computer to communicate. All things considered though, the episode is largely an unexciting rehash that remains most predictable throughout.

Problems
- Tuvok runs out of his quarters without a comm. badge. But when we see him in the hall in the next scene, he's mysteriously acquired one.
- Janeway says Voyager is 35,000 light years from Earth in this episode. This corrects the previous incorrect statements that it was in fact 30,000 light years from Earth. Unfortunately, the previous claim was made several times across several episodes. Still, I'm more willing to believe this episode.
- A female Vulcan aboard is hard to rationalize with Voy: Counterpoint and Voy: Blood Fever. In the former, she would have had to have been shown hiding among the transporter people. And in the latter, she could have served as Vorik's new mate...

Factoids
- Voyager is said to be 35,000 light years from home in this episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- "Let me get this straight. You've gone to all this trouble to program a three dimensional environment, that projects a two dimensional image, and now you're asking me to wear these to make it look three dimensional again?" Tom: "Great, isn't it?"
- Tuvok discovering himself to be the guilty party.
- Tuvok "activating" Chakotay.
- Chakotay "activating" Torres.
- The ensuing Maquis takeover.
- Tuvok shooting Janeway with a defective phaser.
- Tuvok undoing the damage he did.
- Tuvok explaining to Janeway how he knew the phaser would be defective.

My Review
An episode with a poor premise spiced up with great acting by Tuvok and some fun action scenes. Yeah, the timing is way off for a Maquis takeover. But at the same time, this exact story couldn't have been done until Voyager reestablished contact with Starfleet. There were two remarkable details that I thought made this better than the average mind control plot. Contrast this episode with TNG: The Game where everyone is totally out of their minds. Now look at how it's done here. Tuvok, after having mind melded with everyone, simply says "pah'tem'far, b'tanay" to Chakotay. Chakotay simple responds with "understood", and in that instant he is "awakened." He says the same to Torres, who replies with "I understand." The two of them probably went on to "activate" more people. The "activated" Maquis didn't act any different than they normally do, with the exception of to whom their loyalties lied, which I thought was kind of creepy, but cool. Overall, not too bad.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Tylium is said to be used as a power source for Hirogen ships. This is a reference to Battlestar Galactica on which it was used by the Galactica as a power source too.

Remarkable Scenes
- The doctor pressing Chakotay to let him take a shuttle to attend the symposium.
- Seven shutting down the hologrid, revealing the hirogen bodies.
- The doctor: "I'm a doctor, not an engineer." Count 35 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.

My Review
I was a little annoyed that Voyager seems to be vastly more powerful than Hirogen ships now, a big change since Voy: Hunters. Holographic rights are the center of attention in this episode and Janeway puts forth a remarkably Draconian view on the subject. Finally, the doctor makes an amazingly stupid decision, betraying his crew like that. Flaws notwithstanding, this was a fairly successful action episode. It was nice to see that not all Hirogen are hunters; not all Klingons are warriors likewise. While this is a fun action episode with a fair amount of eye candy spread throughout, the flaws do add up and I can't justify giving it any higher a rating.

Problems
- Why didn't Voyager share the results of the doctor's research with the Nygeans so that future birth defects could be corrected before they become a problem?

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Seven of Nine's valiant escape.
- Tuvok shooting the prisoner through the doctor.
- The doctor: "This is a Federation starship, not the barge of the dead."
- The doctor curing the neurological disorder in Iko's brain which caused him to be violent.
- Iko ending the prisoner revolt, proving he's changed even to the warden.

My Review
An episode dealing with prisoner ethics. Is an eye for an eye wrong? Should the death penalty be exacted on murderers? What if it's discovered that the murder was only committed due to mental illness? And what if that mental illness can be cured? The episode doesn't much deal with these issues other than skimming over the obvious. It's obvious Iko should not have been executed. And it's obvious that people like him should be cured. Unfortunately, no attempt is made to check to see if any of the other prisoners suffered from this condition, nor did Voyager share this medical finding with the Nygeans for some reason. Instead we get character drama, some pointless action, and more of Seven feeling guilty about being formerly Borg. I would have preferred an episode less unoriginal, but the one we got wasn't too bad.

Problems
None

Factoids
- The teaser of this episode is the shortest ever on Voyager at only 43 seconds long.

Remarkable Scenes
- Seven's opening piano performance.
- The doctor: "Rock-a-bye baby, in the spacedock. When the core blows, the shuttle will rock. When the hull breaks, the shuttle will fall. And down will come baby, shuttle and all."
- Seven discussing hairstyles with Torres...
- Seven: "Slice these vegetables transversely in five millimeter increments."
- The metronome scene.
- Seven's medical emergency and the doctor stumbling on her fantasy.
- Seven disarming the alien weapon.

My Review
Great continuity with Voy: Unimatrix Zero. I was wondering if they'd pick up on Seven's behavioral changes whilst within Unimatrix Zero and thankfully they did. Unfortunately this episode ends with the biggest anticlimax in Voyager history for which I subtract points. I couldn't believe the way the episode just ended well before it began. I was totally enthralled in the story of Seven of Nine finally becoming truly human, jumping over that last hurdle to humanity. But instead of letting the doctor treat her and instead of picking up on the real Chakotay's advances, she dismisses them both right out of hand so she could remain a workaholic. How sad. This episode parallels TNG: Lessons in that it features some more extremely beautiful piano music. I'll never forget the Moonlight Sonata scene in the Jeffries Tubes in that episode. Likewise I'll never forget the metronome scene between Seven and holographic Chakotay here. With only eight episodes left, the plot thread left wide open in this episode is at the top of my list for loose threads to resolve. Never end a story this way!

Problems
- Neelix says it is the 315th anniversary of the Vulcan first contact with Earth, but it's actually the 314th.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Tuvok's "hypothetical" advice to Neelix.
- Neelix leaving Voyager with his shuttle.
- Naomi: "Thanks, Neelix. But I can put myself to bed. I'm not a little girl anymore."
- Neelix' send off.

My Review
My first reaction to this episode... wow. Naomi looks a lot older since the last time we saw her. Funny how those kids just shoot right up in size. Well, the episode is adequate as a send off for Neelix, but unremarkable as an episode. I just felt that Neelix' character never got used to its full potential, so his send off didn't feel very meaningful. To be honest, I would have rather seen Neelix return to Earth with Voyager. But what's done is done. In a way, I'm glad the writers decided to give Neelix some closure. But it's always sad to see a long time character go. First Kes, now Neelix. It's not like he's really going anywhere though. With only three episodes of Voyager left, I'm sure he'll pop up again on long range communications. So again, the send off didn't feel very meaningful.

Problems
- Archer claims that they have traveled 78 light years. But the current date of the episode is July 31st, 2151. Given this date and comparing it to the date in the first episode, Enterprise couldn't have possibly traveled more than 40 light years from Earth.

Factoids
- This episode establishes that Earth has not yet adopted Vulcan's original version of what became the Prime Directive, their non interference policy.
- Garos is from the Malurian system which will be destroyed by Nomad in TOS: The Changeling.

Remarkable Scenes
- Archer: "Starfleet could have sent a probe out here, to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't. They sent us, so that we could explore with our own senses."
- Archer discovering Garos.
- Archer kissing Riann as an excuse to fix his translator.
- Archer winning a fight!
- Trip beaming the reactor up then beaming it aft Enterprise so Reed could fire a torpedo at it to detonate the reactor, dropping the shields of the Malurian ship.

My Review
An average episode with not much wrong with it other than one detail. It could have easily been done on any of the other Star Trek series. And if you think back to Star Trek IX: Insurrection, or episodes like it, it already has been. So I subtract a point for the episode not being very original. Other than that though, it was well done. I was pleased to see continuity with TOS: The Changeling, showing us a little about the Malurian culture destroyed in that episode. I can't say I mourn them as much now! It's remarkable that Earth doesn't have a non interference policy like the Vulcans do. Trip didn't even think it served much of a purpose! Another good point in the episode... Archer finally won a fist fight. ;)

Problems
- T'Pol says Klingons don't use escape pods. So exactly what did Worf use in DS9: Penumbra?

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Hoshi's target practice.
- Reed: "We can travel faster than the speed of light. You'd think we could find a cure for the common cold!"
- Hoshi, translating a console: "Something they call photon torpedoes?" Reed: "Photon torpedoes? Never heard of anything like that. What else?"
- Bu'Kah: "I've never seen your kind before, but you have made an enemy of the Klingon Empire!" Archer: "From what I've noticed, that's not hard to do."
- Hoshi's reaction to the Klingon galley.
- Hoshi and T'Pol stumbling on targs.
- Archer doing his Klingon homework.
- T'Pol, Reed, and Hoshi using the Klingon photon torpedoes to push the ship up in altitude.

My Review
A reasonably entertaining episode, but devoid of consequences, which is annoying. As Archer complains, why does his help always go unappreciated? Archer has helped Klingons three times now and received no gratitude. Did the war with the Klingons start because Earth kept being really nice guys around the Klingons? What we're shown hasn't been very credible so far.

Problems
- Your hair and nails do not continue to grow when you die. Instead, the skin around the hair and nails desiccates and therefore shrinks.

Factoids
- Reed's attempt to attract Enterprise's attention in this episode is an homage to Spock's similar attempt in TOS: The Galileo Seven.

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip and Reed picking on each other's heritage.
- Trip complaining about Reed's pessimism.
- Reed dreaming about T'Pol.
- Trip and Reed getting roaring drunk and discussing T'Pol.
- Trip and Reed blowing up the impulse engine in an attempt to attract Enterprise's attention.
- Trip trying to sacrifice himself to save Reed.

My Review
Like Ent: Dear Doctor, this episode is a mixed bag. I loved the episode, but some of the plot logic just didn't make any sense. Why didn't Enterprise retrieve Shuttlepod One immediately after the accident with the Tesnians instead of abandoning them to the asteroid field? Maybe the Tesnians couldn't survive on Enterprise very long and getting them back to Tesnia as soon as possible was the only way to keep them alive, but this is never explicitly stated, nor does Enterprise ever even contact shuttlepod one to explain the change of plans until well after they're underway! For this annoyance, I subtract points, but beyond this the episode is a lot of fun. Watching Trip and Reed pick at each other on that shuttle was some great humor, especially after they got drunk and started discussing T'Pol. With some more careful writing, this episode could have been above average easily. I'm also kind of annoyed that we never got to see the Tesnians.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip: "Where'd you hear that?" Kov: "A Vulcan anthropologist told me he'd seen the ritual during an Earth expedition." Trip: "They're not trying to kill the quarterback. They're just trying to keep him from throwing the ball and running with it. It's only a game. Not a... fight to the death." Kov: "I see."
- T'Pol dreaming.
- The mind meld scene.
- Archer confronting Tolaris about his assault on T'Pol.

My Review
This episode outlines a Vulcan subculture, a group of Vulcans who embrace emotion and practice mind melds. So now we know of two 22nd century Vulcans. "Evil" Vulcans, who are logical and mostly kind, but arrogant and push hidden agendas. And emotional Vulcans, who tend to lose control, but practice mind melds and are a lot less arrogant for the most part. I think it's obvious that the Vulcans we come to know in the 23rd and 24th century end up being a hybrid of these two groups. Certainly by the 23rd and 24th century, mind melds are no longer a taboo. So there's that evidence at least. Well, while this episode is an interesting Vulcan introspection, it is little more. T'Pol's character is abused for the third time in a row... first a bondage scene, then Reed dreams about her and runs his mouth about her ass, and now she's mind raped. I wonder how much further the writers will take this crap. It's getting worse than Seven of Nine was.

Problems
- Sputnik was launched in 1957. Velcro was invented in 1955. The episode was close at least. ;)

Factoids
- Trip confirms what Geordi said in Star Trek VIII: First Contact that a statue of Zefram Cochrane would be built in Bozeman Montanna.
- In the real world, Velcro was invented by a man named Mestral, which is also the name of the Vulcan who stayed on Earth.
- This episode was nominated for the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip wondering just how old T'Pol is.
- Mestral: "It's unfortunate that you'll be leaving these people without experiencing one thing they have to offer." Stron: "Such as alcohol, frozen fish sticks, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation?"
- Trip: "This is like finding out Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to walk on the moon!" T'Pol: "Perhaps he wasn't."
- T'Pol winding up Archer and Trip over whether or not her story was true.

My Review
T'Pol's story is captivating, and the Vulcan actors do a superb job. The episode leaves you wondering if any of it is true, but like Voy: The Haunting of Deck Twelve, there's clear evidence that it is true shown in the final scene. Besides, I find it hard to believe T'Pol would lie when she said the incident was well documented on Vulcan. Unfortunately, these plots are poor recipes for episodes and seldom make good ones. I was pleasantly surprised that this episode didn't turn into another Voy: 11:59, which was totally irrelevant. But then again, an episode like this is something the writers can only get away with once a long while. It was done well and it was a nice change of pace, but we just don't watch Star Trek these kinds of stories.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- The crew starting to obsess over trivialities.
- Reed's various obnoxious alert sounds.
- Hoshi freaking out at people.
- Everybody starting to freak out.
- T'Pol waking up Archer.
- Archer piloting while T'Pol determines the course corrections.

My Review
We've seen it all before. TOS: The Naked Time, TNG: The Naked Now, DS9: Dramatis Personae, Voy: Bliss and even Ent: Strange New World. There've been far too many "the crew is acting strangely..." episodes. Hell, the whole flying between the stars thing reminded me a lot of Voy: Scientific Method too. Suffice it to say, the writers seem to lack originality. Fortunately, aside from the fact that the episode is unoriginal, it is genuinely entertaining and funny. I enjoyed watching Archer obsess over writing the preface to his father's biography, Trip obsessing over redesigning the captain's chair, Reed obsessing over his "Reed alert" which may be the precursor to the "red alert" ;), Hoshi obsessing over food, and Phlox obsessing over Travis' "medical condition." It's yet another cliche that T'Pol, as a Vulcan, is immune to the radiation's effects, but I'll let that one go. The episode may not be spectacular, but it's an improvement over the last four episodes anyway.

Problems
- Archer suggests that the Retellians should dock in Enterprise's launch bay so that Enterprise can take them to their destination quite a bit faster. But how exactly was the alien ship supposed to at all fit in Enterpise's launch bay? It was almost as big as Enterprise herself!

Factoids
- Kaitaama is a Kriosian. Her race was last featured in TNG: The Perfect Mate.
- Trip once owned a car.

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip trying to get the Universal Translator to work.
- The evil Archer and evil T'Pol scene.
- Trip's fight with Goff.

My Review
Remember TNG: The Perfect Mate? It's likely Kaitaama in this episode is one of those very rare empathic Kriosian females. But it seems Kaitaama was already married. It's interesting to see that while Trip finds her attractive, he doesn't at all fall for her immediately, like he would with an unbonded equivalent. Eventually, they start to hit it off though. Still, you've got to wonder why the Retellians stole her if she's already married. Not that they seemed very bright, though. Anyway, this episode is your rather generic abduction / hostage situation plot. It's rather annoying that there's a handy M class planet immediately available for Trip and Kaitaama to land on when they steal the escape pod. Other than that, the episode is another improvement over the not so good episodes season 2 has been serving up lately.

Problems
None

Factoids
- J. G. Hertzler who plays Kolos in this episode played Martok on DS9.

Remarkable Scenes
- Duras telling his colored story.
- Archer telling the real story.
- Kolos telling Archer that not all Klingons are warriors, complaining about the new trend among young people.

My Review
A fairly unremarkable episode, but interesting. It's a shameless blatant rip off of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and DS9: Rules of Engagement. It also tried to generate some ratings by using J. G. Hertzler to play Kolos. But I don't really care about any of these things. What I enjoyed about the story was that we got to see some of the origins of the Klingon warrior culture. Obviously, Klingons were always warriors. But I like how Kolos described the difference in generations and how the acquisition of honor has somewhat depreciated over time. For this insight into Klingon culture, I give the episode extra points. So yeah, the general plot may have been ripped off, the seemingly important detail of exactly how Archer fell into the hands of the Klingons was omitted, and resolution was rather convenient, but at least they weren't mining "deuterium" at Rura Penthe. ;)

Problems
- The date in the last episode was given to be March 21st and the date given in this episode when they reach Earth is April 24th. The idea that Enterprise could have traveled 150 light years in one month is rather ridiculous. Maybe their exploration was in a spiral pattern?
- How stupid could the Xindi possibly be? Gee, let's test our prototype on Earth directly, so they have a chance to exact a retaliatory mission against us before the final version of the weapon is completed!

Factoids
- Photon torpedoes were first used on a starship in this episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- The probe cutting a swath through Florida.
- Archer speaking with Future Guy.
- Earth ships coming to Archer's rescue when Duras attacked. Nice to see there are other Earth ships.
- The Vulcan "doctor" questioning Archer.
- Trip and Reed examining the damage first hand.
- Reed: "Photonic torpedoes. Their range is over fifty times greater than our conventional torpedoes. And they have a variable yield. They can knock the comm array off a shuttle pod without scratching the hull, or they can put a three kilometer crater into an asteroid."
- Archer and Trip discussing T'Pol and their mission.
- Duras: "Surrender, or be destroyed!" Archer: "Go to hell!"
- Enterprise destroying Duras' ship.

My Review
Hoo boy. Now here's an episode to get the opinions flaring. The obvious question was as to why the Klingons or the Romulans weren't the ones who attacked Earth. Duras and his crusade against Archer seemed to play little importance in this episode, as if the writers wanted to wrap up that whole Klingon thing so they could focus on this "expanse" storyline. It would seem that the writers were more interested in following in the tradition of Ent: Shockwave and Ent: Broken Bow by making this season finale further complicate the Temporal Cold War. Now Archer is taking orders (in a sense) from Future Guy! It would seem that the writers would much rather take Enterprise in a "bold new direction" than stay true to the prequel they created. Two seasons have gone by and we've seen only one episode dealing with the Romulans and only a smattering of episodes dealing with the Klingons. No war has been declared and it doesn't look like much more time is going to be spent on the Klingons at all, much less the Romulans. This is depressing to say the least. Maybe the Xindi will be interesting and maybe the Temporal Cold War will stop sucking, but I'm getting the feeling that this new arc they're developing is nothing but filler.

Problems
- Trip claims that platinum becomes unstable at 30 degrees Celsius... This isn't true. For that matter, why does the administrator insist on "liquid" platinum? Platinum melts at well over 1700 degrees Celsius. What purpose does constantly keeping it that hot serve?

Factoids
- This episode featured a change to the opening credits. The music has been reworked to be a bit more upbeat.
- The Xindi council is 50 light years from Earth.
- T'Pol has no siblings.
- The outer hull of Enterprise is lined with duranium.
- There are five distinct species of Xindi.

Remarkable Scenes
- The cargo containers bouncing off the walls.
- T'Pol: "Delicate is not a word I associate with Mr. Tucker."
- Tucker freaking out at the Xindi slave.
- The MACOs rescuing Archer and Trip.

My Review
My primary complaint was addressed here. The Xindi aren't exactly as stupid as I originally thought. It seems the rather ill advised move (sending the prototype to Earth) I commented on in the problems section of the last episode was caused by the remarkable disunity of the Xindi council. The Xindi themselves are sufficiently interesting for a multi episode arc; their council reminded me somewhat of the Jedi council from the Star Wars films. It's remarkable how there can be five distinct species of Xindi, especially when it's a rarity for even two distinct species to be native to a single planet. Unfortunately, the episode itself was similarly flawed to Ent: The Expanse. I liked the Trellium-D mining complex though. The administrator was most amusing. What I disliked was Archer's bad attitude and especially the Vulcan neural pressure scenes. Somehow I doubt either will go away. Hopefully they can be presented with better taste in the future.

Problems
- Reed refers to the "smaller" Xindi ship, but they were both identical in size.

Factoids
- Randy Oglesby, who plays Degra in this episode, played Trena'L in Ent: Unexpected, Kir in Voy: Counterpoint, Silaran in DS9: The Darkness and the Light, the twins in DS9: Vortex, as well as one of Riva's chorus in TNG: Loud as a Whisper.

Remarkable Scenes
- Archer still suffering from his experiences in Ent: Extinction.
- Archer winning a fight!
- Trip and Reed trading Earth spices to the chemist for the Trellium-D formula. I loved his silly little laugh.
- T'Pol, observing the destroyed lab: "Some of our calculations may have been slightly off."
- Rajiin's interesting athletics in the engine room.
- The Xindi boarding Enterprise.

My Review
Ent: Rajiin was a better episode than I thought it would be. But this is largely due to the parts of the episode that didn't deal with Rajiin. She seemed largely unnecessary to me. If the Xindi needed scans of humans, why didn't the reptilians and the insectoids just abduct one, then scan it all they wanted? They certainly seemed more than capable. Some things I liked were the Xindi and their unique weapons when they boarded Enterprise. I also enjoyed the scene when T'Pol and Trip tried to synthesize Trellium-D. Finally, the chemist on the trading colony was just great. These are the details which make a Trek episode great. They do a lot to enhance this rather ill conceived episode.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Among the images Hoshi saw using Tarquin's telepathy device were stock footage of the Klingon homeworld (x2), the image of a moon Reed used for target practice (x4), the image of Jupiter used int Ent: First Flight, an image of the aliens from Ent: Silent Enemy (x2), an image of the alien ship from Ent: The Crossing, the Klingon ship from Ent: Sleeping Dogs, a targ from Ent: Sleeping dogs, the sphere from Ent: Anomaly, an image of the storm that hit Enterprise in Ent: The Catwalk, an image from the planet Trip was on in Ent: Dawn, an image of an alien ship from Ent: Civilization, an image of the battle between the two aliens from Ent: Fight or Flight (x2), pictures of some Xindi, a number of other images I couldn't identify, and some which were repeated.
- Shuttlepod one is now insulated with Trellium-D

Remarkable Scenes
- Archer: "Did you bring a phase pistol?" Hoshi: "I'll keep it under my pillow."
- Tarquin the describing the circumstances of his exile.
- Archer's water polo ball getting stuck to the wall due to an anomaly.
- Anomalies occurring throughout the ship.
- Hoshi using Tarquin's telepathy device. Holy stock footage batman!
- Tarquin: "No one will ever understand you the way I can."
- Archer and Trip almost losing shuttlepod one. Hilarious.
- T'Pol discovering that there are dozens of spheres.

My Review
Ah, my thoughts exactly. I was wondering if they'd ever use the Trellium they found on a shuttlepod and just order T'Pol to keep away. ;) Speaking of that shuttle, the scene when Archer and Trip almost lost it was just too cute. One of the more memorable things I've seen on Star Trek lately. Unfortunately, we have another case where the A plot isn't very interesting. Linda Park did a wonderful job playing Hoshi in this episode, just like Jolene Blalock did a great job playing her dreadful role in Ent: Impulse just one episode ago. But good acting doesn't save poor writing. Tarquin was an interesting alien, but his ulterior motive and his attempt to force Hoshi to stay with him was just petty. The whole plot just reeked of "Beauty and the Best" in space too. We get a good deal of progress though, such as more information on the spheres, and the location of a Xindi colony. Hopefully the future of this arc holds less filler and more getting to the point.

Problems
None

Factoids
- This episode establishes that Vulcan females can have sex whenever they want, not just during their Pon Farr.
- This episode was set one day after Christmas! I guess it's no longer celebrated in the 22nd century...

Remarkable Scenes
- Anomalies floating around the bridge.
- Trip and Reed getting hostile over Reed's conflict with Major Hayes and the Vulcan neural pressure thing.
- T'Pol and Trip discussing Sim declaring his love for T'Pol.
- Trip: "I can't believe this... I'm jealous of myself?"
- T'Pol offering herself to Trip.
- Reed and Hayes sparring.
- Reed and Hayes disabling the alien.
- T'Pol writing off her sexual encounter with T'Pol as an experiment in human sexuality.
- Archer laying into Reed and Hayes for their fighting.

My Review
This has got to be the most juvenile episode of Star Trek I've ever seen, but it was reasonably entertaining. I know some fans complained that Ent: Harbinger was needlessly childish, that Trip and T'Pol's long awaited sexual encounter was handled poorly, that Reed and Hayes' showdown was immature, and that the alien plot in this episode was inadequate at best. All of these things I agree with, to a point. First there's Trip and T'Pol. I think their relationship was handled well for the most part. There was some immaturity to it, but it was mostly Trip in my opinion. T'Pol was just dropping herself to his level, in their little verbal pissing contest. After all, she has to endeavor to become more human in order to have a human sexual encounter. Then there's Reed and Hayes. This was much more easy to swallow. Their poor relations was hinted on as early as Ent: The Xindi but was never followed up on. I'm glad it resurfaced here. I've been waiting for this kind of conflict for a while. I'm glad they had a chance to fight and a chance to realize how stupid it is to compete with each other. Finally, there's the alien plot. I think it's obvious that their involvement in the arc will be elaborated further later, so I don't want to discuss the fact that we learned next to nothing about them. In short, this episode was a decent contributor to the current arc. Yes, it was juvenile, but everyone is a little immature now and then, even the crew of a starship. I'm much more forgiving of this episode than others may be; hell I genuinely enjoyed it. So there.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Season 4 is being done by a new showrunner, Manny Coto.

Remarkable Scenes
- German Soldier: "Americans are good at making movies. They're not so good at fighting."
- Trip: "I was just all set to get home... I wasn't expecting to be in the middle of another... situation." Preach on, brother!
- Daniels showing up in Enterprise's sickbay.
- Alicia: "Patch on your ship says Enterprise! You musta made it off before it sank!"
- The sight of a conquered White House with Nazi flags draped over it.
- Silik's appearance.
- Trip's fight with Silik.
- Archer confronting the alien Nazi.
- Trip and Reed destroying a shuttlepod.
- Archer and Alicia beaming to Enterprise.

My Review
Well I must say that I was more impressed with this episode than I originally thought I would be. Maybe it's the new showrunner, Manny Coto, making the best of the dismal cliffhanger Rick Berman and Brannon Braga left him. I get the feeling Coto wants to wrap up the whole Temporal Cold War thing right here and do it with style. Yes, he's being forced to use alien Nazis, and yes the Xindi conflict is still left with loose ends, but at least this episode is presented in a convincing and mostly intelligent fashion. Ever since TOS: The City On The Edge of Forever, I've been fascinated with the idea of time travel being used to alter Earth's history, making WWII end a different way. We get to see the effects of such an alteration first hand with the Nazis having conquered Europe, Africa, and large portions of North America. They were able to do this thanks to help from a future alien species, a faction in the Temporal Cold War. Their motives remain a mystery, other than the obvious notion that a totalitarian government dominating Earth would drastically reshape future politics.

Problems
- This episode is hard to rationalize with TOS: Errand of Mercy regarding the behavior of the Organians.

Factoids
- Organian-Mayweather mentions that Cardassians have been to the planet featured in this episode.

Remarkable Scenes
- The Chess scene between possessed Reed and Travis in the teaser.
- Trip: "I remember Exobiology 101, Captain. Humans are carbon based. Our immune system can't fight silicon."
- The Organians revealing themselves to Phlox after he discovered Trip's and Hoshi's anomalous behavior.
- Archer and Phlox desperately trying to save Trip's and Hoshi's life.
- Hoshi and Trip dying.
- The Organians inhabiting Trip and Hoshi and talking to Archer.
- Archer: "Maybe you've evolved into beings with abilities I can't comprehend. But you've paid a hell of a price. You've lost compassion and empathy. Things that give life meaning. If that's what it takes to be advanced, I don't want any part of it."
- Archer: "If you want to know what it means to be Human, you need to do more than observe."

My Review
This episode was, of course, a bottle show. No guest stars and no special effects other than stock footage. There's no fighting and no weapons fired. Not even the Organians entering and leaving people's bodies is animated. Instead of all this eye candy, we get marvelous performances from all actors involved. Another nice detail was the portrayal of the Organians themselves. All throughout the episode we're given the impression that they're vastly superior to corporeal species in every way. Not in a cheesy direct manner either. Subtle things, like the Chess scene at the beginning or the way they so easily manipulate corporeal bodies were all we needed. All of this put a marvelously different spin on the episode, telling us the story from the Organian perspective. The audience is just as detached as the the observing Organians. What annoys me about this episode is that the Organians shouldn't have been used as the aliens here, as it fouls up continuity with TOS: Errand of Mercy. It could be argued that the Organians went through a radical behavioral change in just 100 years, but given their absurd time frames to exact any kind of change and their radically different behavior in the TOS episode, this doesn't seem likely. A better choice would have been Q. No, seriously. Q, or a group of Q could have easily filled in this role and used the same memory wiping trick. We know how quickly their opinions on things can change. We could have even gotten a cheesy line at the end from Q about visiting in 200 years to see how far humanity has progressed, kind of like the line Arik Soong made about wanting to study Cybernetics at the end of Ent: The Augments. In the end, this was a marvelously well played episode, but for the blunder regarding the Organians, I must strike points.

Problems
None

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Mudd to an Orion: "Your enemies will be positively green with envy... greener... so to speak."

My Review
Perhaps the biggest piece of filler yet on Discovery—still awkwardly sandwiched between season 1's cliffhanger and season 2's pickup—is nevertheless kind of amusing. A mix of humor that ranges between juvenile, bland, stiff, and sometimes effective, Mudd's scheme to make money off of scams is largely inoffensive if not particularly profound. The reference to the "space whale" places this story chronologically after Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, but when specifically beyond that is unknown.

This episode is notable for being some of the most explicit references to capitalism on Star Trek so far. As we've seen many times on Star Trek, while the Federation appears to be a considerably more socialist democracy than most present day governments, it is clear that there is still something resembling the various styles of "mixed" economies we have in the real world that mix some elements of capitalism with some elements of socialism. As such, the various Star Trek series (rightfully) continually undermine Captain Picard's famous "money doesn't exist" quotes depicting characters across centuries of Federation history variously engaged in the pursuit of money. This makes sense. Even in a world with replicators, there would still be scarcity of land, services, and other things the replicator can't replicate.

We can chalk this up to Picard oversimplifying it a bit for effect given that it's clear that nobody in the Federation has to work to attain basic needs. It's clear the Federation has something resembling a government guarantee of free healthcare, free education, free food, free housing, etc. In such a society, working and having money would be totally optional. There would be no "wage slavery." But for the "insatiably greedy" like Mudd, the hustle is irresistable.

Problems
- Pike says it's Starfleet protocol to respect Spock's privacy by not informing his family of his illness, so Pike didn't tell Burnham at first. This only makes the last episode's gaffe of allowing her to her barge into Spock's quarters, rummage through his things, read his personal logs, and invade his privacy even more problematic; especially since it was this invasion of Spock's privacy that led to Burnham making the connection between Spock and their mission, a connection Spock presumably wanted to keep a secret. Then once Burnham made this connection, Pike just throws the remainder of Spock's privacy out the window making a "national security trumps privacy" argument and goes ahead and tells Burnham about the illness. The whole progression of events is a mixture of ugly and incoherent.
- Elon Musk is referenced again as a celebrated historical figure. Irrespective of the ludicrousness of the comparison (covered in the review below), even mentioning Musk's name verges on a continuity error, given that the timeline of Star Trek splits off from the real world in the late 20th century, well before any of Musk's real world achievements (such as they are) came into being.

Factoids
- This episode establishes Discovery can reach a maximum warp speed of warp 7 based on Pike's remarks of how long it would take to travel to Terralysium at maximum warp.
- This episode establishes that the English language is the lingua franca of the Federation, as the colonists on Terralysium speak what Pike refers to as "Federation Standard" and we can infer that since the Federation did not exist at the time they left Earth and these colonists appeared to come from North America, they must have been speaking English. Notably the term "Federation Standard" had been used in non-canon novels in the past, which this line appears to be referencing.

Remarkable Scenes
- Pike revealing that Spock is in fact in a psychiatric hospital.
- Pike: "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from god."
- Burnham and Pike debating the Prime Directive only to be found out by Jacob moments later.
- Pike taking a phaser blast to save the girl.

My Review
This is a surprisingly strong concept for an episode despite a range of flaws in its premise and plot logic. It's fun to see Discovery doing some exploration for once instead of constantly careening from crisis to crisis. It's also nice to see minor characters like Detmer and especially Owosekun get some real character development. It's also nice that the mystery of the red signals is appearing more and more to be like a scientific curiosity rather than the threat it was implied to be in the premiere. We've now had two red signals lead the crew to people who needed rescuing. And Pike is of course right to point out that a lot of coincidences are piling up. Notwithstanding Spock appearing to have had visions of the red angel, other especially notable coincidences include the Enterprise appearing to be intentionally(?) shut down to force Pike to take command of Discovery, which happens to be the only ship with a spore drive. The spore drive then turns out to be the only way to reach Terralysium to rescue the colonists.

It does remain irritating however how the show just keeps busting out the spore drive whenever they feel like it without regard for how we're supposed to believe it would be infeasible for this technology to ever be used again, particularly with Tilly working on a way to pilot it without causing damage to Stamets; damage that once again doesn't seem to be at all medically consequential. Once again using the spore drive seems to be completely free of consequences despite hyperbolic warnings last season that draining the mycelial network of its energy will destroy all life in the universe—no wait—all life in all universes. With that heavy-handed nonsense apparently forgotten, we're back to wondering why a particularly industrious Harry Kim didn't dust off the spore drive plans from the Federation scientific history database to teleport Voyager home in a single episode. After all, Discovery traveled more than 70% as much distance in a single episode as Voyager did in seven seasons, but somehow all knowledge of this mission was lost by the time of Voyager. It would be nice if they would explain how that is possible at some point.

Another perhaps less frustrating but still striking omission from the story is the missed opportunity to contrast Saru's origin story with Jacob's. Both men wanted to fly away from their homes to explore space. Both men managed to use found technology to contact someone from another world. Starfleet allowed Saru to leave Kaminar and join Starfleet. They even clearly allowed Nhan—a Barzan—a person from a pre-warp society that is not a member of the Federation to join Starfleet as well. It would make all the sense in the galaxy for Saru to make a spirited argument in favor of doing the same for Jacob, but it never came up.

Perhaps the most irritating detail of the episode though is one that's very easy to miss. Tilly is said to have attended a "Musk Junior High School." This is the series' second sycophantic reference to Elon Musk, who last season is mentioned alongside the Wright brothers and Zefram Cochrane as though Musk's accomplishments, impressive as they may be, are even remotely comparable to inventing airplanes or inventing warp drive. Again, they aren't. But since they keep doing this, maybe we should dig a little deeper into why Musk is such a problematic person for Star Trek to celebrate. Musk is scandal-ridden union busting billionaire; a person who personally embodies better than most the excesses and abuses of capitalism. Someone like this should not be celebrated on Star Trek of all things, a TV show with a long tradition of depicting a socialist utopia free of greed and mostly free of class.

Consider the contrast between how Star Trek VIII: First Contact portrayed Zefram Cochrane vs. how it is now portraying Elon Musk. Zefram Cochrane was a crass, drunken, greedy man who invented warp drive so he could in his own words "retire to some tropical island filled with naked women." Cochrane was portrayed by the narrative as a flawed historical figure who people tended to irrationally glorify because they wanted a hero to worship, not an actual person to assess. A cult of personality emerged around Cochrane because the myth mattered more than the man.

It is curious how so many of us have a tendency to do that not just with historical figures we are willfully blind to the flaws of which Star Trek VIII: First Contact was warning us about via allegory, but also with contemporary celebrities. The cult of personality around Musk is very real and it has become a clear signpost of foggy thinking. Much as people who unequivocally praise Musk display poor critical thinking skills, the writing of Discovery doing so reveals the vacuousness of the writers. Such vacuousness is at best politically clueless and at worst a betrayal of Star Trek's utopian vision. Indeed, others have noticed how Discovery more generally has drifted away from the socialist roots that Gene Roddenberry planted, and it's a shame.

One could be forgiven for thinking for a moment why should we obsess over such a small detail? Normally we shouldn't. After all, plenty of Star Trek's hundreds of other episodes have dropped cringeworthy throwaway lines and even similarly doubled down on them at times. But in this case that small detail is such a perfect encapsulation of a much broader problem with Discovery's writing: superficiality. A recurring theme for more than a season now has been a constant strain of either pseudo-intellectualism or sometimes even anti-intellectualism in Discovery's writing. When the series isn't wading into puerile immaturity dropping lines like, "Doing donuts in a starship, yippee!" it instead delivers overwrought speeches about not taking "shortcuts on the path to righteousness" without earning the moment at all. The writers take intellectual shortcuts on the path to profundity constantly, so it's no wonder the writers and therefore the writing on this show would be vulnerable to the cult of personality surrounding Musk despite ample evidence that it is devoid of substance.

The biggest flaw of the episode though is how the Prime Directive is handled. It actually started off pretty good, with Pike and Burnham having a quite compelling debate about how to handle the situation. But once they beamed away in front of the colonists, the whole debate ought to have been moot. In previous Star Treks, an incident like that has always been regarded as cultural contamination. Instead the narrative here acted like the colonists observing the transporter wasn't a big deal at all. For that matter, it's quite astonishing that Saru didn't even bother to scan the planet's surface to see if they were standing near any colonists when they beamed them out given that they had already averted the climactic disaster that would've necessitated the urgent beam out.

Instead, Pike and Burnham continue to debate whether or not to enlighten Jacob. After he saw them beam out. Like, really? Just frigging do it. Your cover is already blown. Then when they finally do tell Jacob everything, Pike says they cannot intervene in his society because it "has to evolve in its own way." Really? Even though they're human? Even though they know everything now? Then Pike hands over a piece of society-altering technology to Jacob, which last I checked is a form of intervening, and they fly away to impossible distances with the impossible spore drive that will soon be decommissioned, putting Terralysium out of range of the Federation for centuries. Possibly forever.

It's quite a shame too, because this episode was quite charming otherwise. Without these compounding flaws, it could've easily been one of Discovery's (badly needed) above average offerings.

Problems
- Burnham argues that it would be illogical for a virus to kill its host. Viruses do this all the time.

Factoids
- The title of this episode "An Obol for Charon" refers to the coin one uses to pay Charon to ferry souls of the dead to the afterlife in Greek mythology.
- Tilly's favorite song is "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.

Remarkable Scenes
- The visit from Number One.
- The universal translator malfunction.
- Reno and Stamets debating warp drive vs. spore drive.
- Stamets drilling into Tilly's head with a regular drill.

My Review
This is an episode that tries to do too much at once and would've benefited from fewer plot threads that were fleshed out more. The weakest links are May and the sphere. The May story could've been delayed for another episode. The sphere story could've been cut entirely. A better version of this episode would've cut those plot threads and instead constructed a simpler, more reflective story centering on Saru's sudden illness (which really didn't need a sci-fi plot device in order to present itself) while they're en route catching up to Spock. They could've used the content from the Short Trek episode The Brightest Star here instead making a story that intercuts between the crew trying to save Saru and Saru telling his friends the whole story about what Kaminar was like and how he escaped. This would've given the narrative a useful reason to show us Saru's backstory instead of just lazily having Saru hint at the details in dialog. It also would've eliminated the need for the Short Trek episode, creating a tighter, more focused narrative.

A still better episode would also have dispensed with this nonsense about Saru nearly outright refusing medical treatment, which seemed quite out of character. Saru is a person who left an anti-intellectual planet to live with people for whom—as Burnham put it in New Eden—science is their religion. Someone like that wouldn't just uncritically accept the inevitability of death. He would fight it as long as possible. He would rely on Federation medical science to deliver him from the fate the rest of his people so blindly accept. The contradictions in his characterization are made even more apparent by his newfound resolve at the end of the episode as aired to return to Kaminar to go tell his people their religion is wrong. And as for Saru's fear being "gone" now, didn't we do that already? What ever happened to him losing his fear in Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum? Maybe all this incoherence was inevitable given the idiotic premise of having a species whose superpower is somehow having the ability to "sense the coming of death" to begin with.

Another strikingly weak piece of plotting was the numerous logical leaps that Saru and Burnham engage in to assign motivations to the sphere at various times. Almost every conclusion they draw is based on zero evidence amounting to little more than wild guesses. The narrative then validating their unscientific hunches as somehow in the spirit of Star Trek is frankly offensive. Yes, it's a nice message that not all alien life is necessarily a threat or at least not everything that causes damage is outright malicious in intent, but that message has to be earned, not sledgehammered through the plot.

There are some endearing things in this story though. Pike's further remarks about holo-communicators do further canon repair validating a common fan rationalization that the technology came in and out of fashion over the next century, guided mainly by personal tastes of individuals. The universal translator malfunction scene is a highlight not just of the episode, but of the entire series so far. And the earlier universal translator failure with Linus was a nice touch too, though it would be nice if they would stop making frankly racist jokes about him for comedic effect. Using Linus as a way to do body humor jokes is really not that different from making fun of Worf's forehead ridges or Dax's spots. They gotta cut this stuff out.

Reno's and Stamets' interplay was also surprisingly good. Their sniping and sneering at each other was actually effective for once. Though their debate about whether the spore drive is a clean source of propulsion while warp drive is dirty was pretty incoherent too. We already knew that the spore drive risked destroying whole universes or something, so Stamets' forceful defense of it seemed odd. Then only a little bit later May reminds us that the spore drive damages the entire mycelial network. Also, gee it sure would've been nice if she had just come out said "hey you're hurting my people" a couple episodes ago so they could work together on a mutually agreed upon solution, huh? Anyway maybe we'll finally be rid of the spore drive forever soon since everyone is super duper sure finally that it has unacceptable tradeoffs now. Maybe this time. Maybe. Just in time for May to abduct Tilly into a Stranger Things-style cliffhanger, dragging Star Trek down into the muddy waters of cheesy paranormal science fiction storytelling. Though perhaps that fits with their emphasis on body humor and pulpy comic book tones.

Problems
- Sarek: "I am not prepared to lose both of our children on the same day." Uh, Sybok? Yeah, he's not Amanda's. But neither was Michael.
- The exterior shots of the turbolift are still showing huge, implausibly cavernous empty spaces all throughout the interior of Discovery.

Factoids
- The opening theme changed to depict the red angel as technology instead of a blurry figure.

Remarkable Scenes
- The beautiful shots of Vulcan during Burnham's visit.
- Georgiou hatching a mysterious plan to help Burnham rescue Spock in defiance of Leland.
- Burnham flying off to Talos IV with Spock, the famous planet that Pike and Spock visited in the very first Star Trek episode TOS: The Cage.

My Review
With the search for Spock finally over, the story advances a bit. The various plots driving it forward are fairly effective. Some Vulcan family drama that is reasonably compelling. Some Section 31 intrigue that works surprisingly well. A fight with a time traveling giant squid robot straight out of The Matrix. Leland is apparently somehow responsible for the Klingons killing Burnham's parents, a curiosity to be followed up on later. Airiam is infected with a virus that might hopefully lead to the irritating questions about her backstory and capabilities finally getting reconciled with canon. None of this is terribly impressive, nor particularly problematic.

A notably unfortunate oversight in the story is the total lack of epilogue regarding the previous episode's events on Kaminar despite Discovery being ordered to remain in orbit of Kaminar. Apparently Starfleet isn't even remotely concerned about Discovery upending an entire society of two sentient species. They're only sticking around because of the red signals. The planet of Kaminar serves only as a pretty backdrop for dealing with the space anomaly. The writers seem to have forgotten about it so much that when the space anomaly explodes into a "time tsunami" at the end of the episode, Discovery just warps away without the slightest regard for how such a terrifying phenomenon might affect the scores of people on the planet below. Whatever. Screw them. They were last episode's problem.

Problems
- Why not throw some photon torpedoes at the mines to blow a few of them up before they strike the ship?
- Saru scans for ultraviolet light to detect a heat signature, but he would actually have needed to scan for infrared light.
- Bodies don't freeze when they're spaced.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Cornwell showing a video of Spock committing the murders.
- Burnham and Spock arguing over the chess game.
- The mines pelting Discovery.
- Tilly putting together Airiam's deception.
- Airiam taking Nhan's breathing apparatus.
- Airiam getting spaced.

My Review
Another fairly banal offering, but not too bad. The increasingly annoying mystery of just what Airiam is and whether or not she is a continuity error is resolved satisfactorily. She's not an android, but a person who suffered a traumatic injury and had extensive implants installed in order to survive; sort of like a more extreme version of what happened to Detmer. A compelling concept for a character. But this satisfactory resolution to the potential continuity error comes just in time to kill her off and waste all of this character development, in the classic Star Trek tradition of bad episodes conspicuously shining a lot of attention on a minor character only to swiftly kill them off a short time later.

The main plot driving the story involving Control spinning out of control is less effective. It is curious why Starfleet would allow Patar—a logic extremist; a member of or at the very least a sympathizer of a terrorist group—to be an admiral and wield such extraordinary power over critical decision-making. It's also remarkable how sloppy a job Cornwell did in her supposedly extensive checking into the validity of the video depicting Spock committing murder when all Saru had to do to prove it was fake was check the non-visible light sensors to show that it was made using holograms. It's also astonishing that after Airiam was trapped in the airlock, Nhan—who was literally suffocating on the floor—was totally forgotten for several minutes, left to retrieve her breathing apparatus on her own. Burnham didn't spare a single moment to help her. Nobody else noticed either.

What worked better was the several scenes depicting Burnham and Spock banter. They continue to be credibly presented as siblings with believable sibling rivalry tinged with Vulcan cultural quirks. Watching them snipe at each other out of both frustration and love simultaneously is good fun. So was the space battle with the mines. But that's about it.

Problems
- So if Gabrielle Burnham can't stay in the past for very long before she gets pulled back to the future, how then could she save a huge number of World War III refugees and relocate them across the galaxy as she was said to have done in New Eden?
- Discovery fired photon torpedoes from its nacelles.

Factoids
- Kenric Green, Sonequa Martin-Green's (Michael Burnham's) husband, plays Michael Burnham's father Mike Burnham in this episode.
- The supernova young Michael wants to watch is Alpha Lupi, the brightest star in the constellation Lupus. It is one of the nearest candidates to Earth for going supernova soon in the real world, at 460 light years away.
- Starfleet is said to have a fleet of 7000 ships at this time.
- Gabrielle Burnham was stranded in the 32nd century. This would be after the time of Daniels from Enterprise's Temporal Cold War, but before the events of Calypso.

Remarkable Scenes
- The flashback to Burnham's childhood.
- Gabrielle trying to use the suit to prevent the Klingon attack and getting stuck 950 years into the future.
- Gabrielle to Pike: "I could say more about your future, but you won't like it."
- Gabrielle: "People think time is fragile, precious, beautiful. Sand in an hourglass, all that. But it's not. Time is savage. It always wins."
- Gabrielle telling her daughter about how she watched her childhood.
- Discovery bombing the facility from orbit.

My Review
This episode is a mixed bag. On one hand, the presence of Gabrielle Burnham giving a firsthand account of developing the red angel suit, being forced to use it, getting stranded in the 32nd century, and using time travel to prevent a galactic calamity is welcome exposition. It was also fantastic to finally see direct flashbacks to the moment when Burnham's parents were lost, which was a notable oversight in the first season's finale. Now they are finally adhering to the principle of, "Show, don't tell." All of that was great payoff, but it could've been worth a lot more points if there weren't so many terrible details dragging things down.

For starters, Leland's story eerily resembles having been assimilated by the Borg. We must pray that it's only a superficial similarity and that there is no actual connection between Control and the Borg, or that would likely be yet another continuity error that the series would have to clean up. Also the debate in the episode about whether to delete the sphere data is idiotic. Saru was right. Burnham, Gabrielle, and Pike were wrong. Knowledge is good. Deleting knowledge is bad. Destroying Control should've been their goal.

But even so, suppose for whatever godawful reason that destroying the data truly was their only option... okay, what's so hard about that? Sure, some kind of firewall or DRM prevents itself from being deleted. Whatever. It's unclear how that could possibly work, but let's go with it for now. Did anyone think to physically smash the computer it's stored on? Or blow up Discovery? It turns out they can transfer the data to the red angel suit (move it, not copy it; which itself implies deleting the copy from the computer it started on, but we digress), so instead of the bizarre plan of "send the suit to the future with the data" why not just transfer the data to the suit and then destroy the suit?

Speaking of the suit, its incredible superpowers are well beyond reasonable suspension of disbelief by this point. Gabrielle and Section 31 appear to have built it without too much difficulty beyond locating a "time crystal." Once constructed it possessed the power of time travel, flying through vast distances in space despite having no apparent means of propulsion, the ability to emit powerful signals that can be detected from across the galaxy, a "heal beam" that brought Burnham back to life, weapons that could effortlessly neutralize the Ba'ul in The Sound of Thunder, and "literally infinite" computer storage capacity. And who knows what else?

Perhaps its best superpower though is it provides the series a way to carve out Star Trek: Discovery as taking place in a multiverse, similar to the Kelvin films, which is a possibility we should not only start taking seriously now, but begin assuming is the case immediately for the long term health of the franchise's canon. We should now assume that 20 years prior to the start of Discovery when Gabrielle Burnham began traveling through time to escape the Klingon attack and began altering historical events, she contaminated the timeline which spun off the prime universe into a multiverse that now exists separate and apart from the main canon, just as Nero spun off the prime universe into a multiverse in Star Trek XI (2009).

Unless and until a future episode contradicts this conclusion, it will be official editorial stance of this publication that Discovery exists in a multiverse apart from the main canon for this reason. Hopefully the writers either 1. validate this on-screen at some point, or 2. at least do nothing to contradict it in a future episode. If so, this can fix all of Discovery's breaks with canon. Even visual canon. So perhaps this otherwise mixed bag of an episode is the greatest gift Star Trek: Discovery has given us so far. It gave us the tools to strike all of this from the main canon to undo all the damage that has been done to canon by this series. Hooray?