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The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Abigail on 2008-12-18 at 5:11am:
  I sometimes feel that the writers of DS9 were unaware that you can develop characters through normal sci-fi epsiodes. You don't have to invent an episode with no external plot to do so. If I wanted to watch a goofy soap opera, I would. No need to turn "Star Trek" into one.
• From Christopher Wright on 2012-01-16 at 9:20pm:
  I disagree with the previous comment. I am not normally one for sappy romance stories, and redcuing this episode down to such isn't fair. The romantic tension between Odo and Kira has been so well-developed and stretched out that when the kiss came I almost jumped up and yelled "yeah!" with clenched fist. I also liked Vic a lot. This episode should have a higher rating. Lastly I would like to say that the costume design on DS9 if by far the best. Odo's tux and hologram Kira's dress were very nice touches. Those combined with Quark and Garak's wardrobes in other episodes really show off the designers' talents.
• From hugo on 2013-01-20 at 7:40pm:
  through the first half of this ep, i thought this was developing into a yawner - no suspense or sense of urgency. Then I found myself smiling through the rest of it, don't really know why. I liked vic too!
• From carsonist on 2013-09-29 at 4:36am:
  I can't believe how annoying this episode is. Instead of a second plot, they have four unbelievably long songs. Vic is fine, but takes up a lot of time in a series in its next to last season during a major war.
  
  Kira and Odo getting together is great, but there's nothing else that happens in the whole episode. You could cut the whole thing down to maybe ten minutes.
• From Scott on 2018-10-15 at 2:15am:
  I didn't think I would like it, but I did. Normally the holosuites are an overused story device, but Vic's just a great character. Wouldn't it be great to have a guy like that you could talk to about your problems?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Dstyle on 2015-06-16 at 12:59pm:
  Why does Seven (and sometimes Harry) seem to be the only person who ever does any work in the astrometrics lab? It's like that room was just empty space until Seven arrived. I mean, do the Delaney sisters EVER show up to their shifts?
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-16 at 1:34pm:
  Lal + Hugh = One
• From Dstyle on 2015-06-16 at 3:52pm:
  Seven of Nine rushes to the bridge with a dermal re-generator after the ship flies into the nebula and the crew starts reeling from the effects. She flips over a nameless red shirt, face horribly burnt, and looks up as the camera zooms in on her face. "He's dead," she says. The music swells dramatically and the scene ends, unfortunately cutting off the rest of her speech. "He's dead," she says. "Fortunately I have already demonstrated that my superior Borg technology can bring him back from what you call 'death.' Hopefully he doesn't suffer a tedious crisis of faith, like Nelix did a dozen episodes ago, earlier this season. Hey, you guys remember I can bring people back from the dead, right? Guys? Seriously, it was just a couple of episodes ago. [looks down at the crew member again] Oh wait, this one isn't important. I don't even know his name. Never mind."
• From tigertooth on 2017-05-29 at 3:17am:
  To me, the worst part of the premise is: what would they do if something went wrong? If there was another anomaly within the nebula or they got attacked? Or if there was a problem with the stasis units that they never used before?
  
  
  Once they're inside the nebula, you can't take people out of stasis for any reason. You're counting on the month-long trip through this nebula -- that has already shown itself to be unlike anything they've seen before and they're unable to scan -- to go extremely smoothly.
  
  Way too risky. An extra 11 months is a small price to pay.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete Miller on 2006-11-06 at 2:49am:
  That holodeck program is the most inane thing I have ever seen. Naomi seems way too old to be entertained by such nonsense, and I frankly felt insulted being subjected to watching it. I kept jumping every time it came on in case my roommate was about to come in.
• From Vincent on 2011-10-05 at 11:25pm:
  I find it odd that the shuttle crew were running out of air on an M class planet. The away teams sent out to rescue them were able to breathe the atmosphere without aid, so why couldn't the Paris or Tuvok find a way to ventilate air between the interior and exterior of the of the shuttle?
  
  Placing the manufactured danger to the shuttle crew aside, I thought this was an enjoyable exploration of the way different people prepare for their own death (the shuttle crew), handle the death of family (Neelix), and the ethics of censuring the truth from a child.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-15 at 5:27pm:
  Wait, they had Holographic entertainment when Janeway was a kid? She's in her early-mid 40s in the 2370s, which means this stuff had to be around in the 2340s. But wasn’t it established, in TNG: Encounter at Farpoint, that this was brand new technology during that time (circa 2360s)? I seem to recall Riker seeing the newfangled programs (which he had vaguely heard about) for the first time when he came aboard the Enterprise. Anyway, totally boring episode, aside from Naomi expressing her fear of the “Borg Lady” and trying to fake out Neelix with “I am borg”....
• From Dstyle on 2015-06-20 at 3:52pm:
  I actually really liked this episode a lot. Perhaps it's because I lost a close family member when I was young and just became a father myself, but I got a bit misty several times while watching this.

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• From Benjamin Baxter on 2008-07-15 at 8:18pm:
  Problem: Sometimes when Nog walks, he's limping with the wrong leg. At least, that's what it looks like it.
• From Remco on 2009-07-25 at 11:13pm:
  I didn't get the impression that this episode was about holodiction. The prolonged holodeck time only had a positive influence on Nog. If we've seen anything before, it's 7 years of counseling sessions with Deanna Troi. I thought this was a fresh spin on both holo-issues and psychological counseling.
• From S. Egil on 2009-08-20 at 5:32pm:
  Regarding the problem of veterans' post-traumatic stress syndrome, the writers get many things right in this episode. Listen to Nog's breakthrough confession to Vic about his battle revelation that he too, though young and eager, was mortal and vulnerable. Combat veterans will certainly find much truth in this. The play of Nog's mortality against Vic's supposed (hollow)immortality makes for an interesting and subtle story. But why weren't the other crew members, most of whom had seen grueling combat themselves, more skillful and empathetic in helping Nog?
• From rpeh on 2010-08-04 at 8:18pm:
  One minor problem: in the scene just after Nog moves into the Holosuite, and the staff are discussing Bashir's programs, Ezri's collar insignia changes. It starts as a Lt. JG but with the black pip to the right, then it cuts away to Jake. When it cuts back again, the pips are the right way round.
  
  Having demonstrated my amazing powers of observation, the episode falls a bit flat. I agree that Ezri would have been a better choice for counsellor, but they did kind of explain that when Nog told her that all he'd done was talk to people about his feelings.
  
  I'll give it a 4.
• From Krs321 on 2011-10-04 at 12:22pm:
  Have to disagree with this review and your opinion of Vic in general.
  
  1. This episode isn't about Vic and his trivial holographic life. It's about PTSD and Nog. The fact that Nog could escape to a literal fantasy world is what makes the episode.
  
  2. Vic is the, what, 3rd sentient Hologram now? Shouldn't Starfleet be flipping out and studying this phenomenon?
  
  3. Vic is a better counselor than Ezri. Honestly, they should've introduced Vic a long time ago. He's more interesting than Jadzia or Ezri. They just need to spend less time showing him sing.
• From Omcn on 2012-01-10 at 12:48pm:
  
  This is one of my fav. ep. in the season if not the entire series. This is a classic example of how Trek has an excellent way of pointing out the flaws in modern (and apparently for centuries to come) treatment to mental illness. Does Ezri show off her stuff? No. Why not? Cause with a problem like this it needs to be handled in an extreme way and the holosuite is the perfect place with Vic the perfect hollow character. I think that the way Nog reacts to doctors telling him the pain he feels is "all in his head" is very believable. I love that as soon as Nog reacts violently Ezri is ready to end the experiment of allowing Nog to let things run its course in the hollowsuite, that is so realistic. Vic (not a "trained" counselor) knows better and stops her from removing him. A violent outburst is often a show of the road to recovery and modern (as well as in the future) always view violence as a negative progression of mental illness. This ep. rounds out nicely with Nog finding his purpose again, not as a soldier but as a businessmen which again fits in with his character nicely. I love this ep. for the commentary on mental illness and in dealing with physical impairment.
  
• From Harrison on 2012-08-29 at 1:58am:
  Watching a self-absorbed depressed Ferengi adolescent mope around a holosuite isn't my idea of good TV drama.
  
  Blech.
• From Esper on 2014-04-04 at 7:48pm:
  I think this was a magnificent episode.
  The episode handled PTSD suffering and healing process perfectly and the whole ride made Nog's character more alive and likable persona whom you can relate with.
  
  I also liked Vic a lot considering he is entirely made by Bashir's genetically enhanced doctor brain, so no wonder he knows a thing or two how to handle PTSD patients.
  All and all I give this episode 9/10. The duo brought both of them both alive, each in unique way.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Marie Douceur on 2011-08-19 at 8:10am:
  I'm not to fond of any of the DS9 mirror universe episodes, this one included. However, I disagree with the assertion that the lesbianism here is "over the top". In fact, I found it, well, disappointingly tame. There was a fairly simple kiss between Mirrors Kira and Ezri, a vague show of tenderness between them, and a rather gentle innuendo between Mirrors Ezri and Leeta at the end. Mirror Kira herself was over-the-top, as always, and that was grating. But, as a bi woman, I was hoping for something a little more... sweeping and romantic... or at least, a portrayal as suggestive as hetero romances have gotten. I mean, "Rejoined" was much more "lesbianist" than this episode, and even then, that came with major caveats.
  
  It's always been pretty disappointing to me that characters with non-hetero sexuality never got much (or really any) showing on Star Trek. I hate to be on a soapbox, but it seems like that would be part of the "enlightened 24th century". It's really too bad for those of us who'd like to see the girl get the girl at the end sometimes.
• From John on 2011-12-22 at 2:56am:
  I'm not a fan of mirror universe episodes either, and this one is no exception. Personally, I think it's a shame that this is the last "Ferengi" episode, because it's nowhere near as good or entertaining as the others. Granted, we do get a little bit of Ferengi intrigue -- and we get to see Zek again -- at the very end of the series, but this is the last proper Ferengi episode, and it's kind of boring. The only thing "new" here is Mirror Ezri (who, I have to admit, is a total fox).
  
  But it's still lame, and we still have to deal with Mirror Kira and Mirror Julian, who are somehow even more annoying and than their 'regular' counterparts.
  
  2 points for Quark and Rom, 2 points for hot Mirror Ezri and 1 point for being the LAST Mirror Universe episode (thank god) = 5/10
• From Inga on 2013-06-21 at 9:31am:
  I agree with Marie Douceur - the lesbian moments were too tame.
• From Bronn on 2013-07-26 at 1:30am:
  I actually don't think this one was too bad. The inconsistencies are annoying, but the Ferengi episodes and Mirror Universe episodes are all just there for the sake of fun. It was nice to combine them and get them both out of the way at once to avoid disrupting the overall seriousness of the plotlines in season 7.
  
  
• From L on 2013-08-17 at 4:40am:
  
  Mirror Worf is the only mirror character I don't hate (apart from Ezri, rowr) - he's very entertaining as a bombastic fool.
  
  Loved Rom pointing out the logical inconsistencies, very 'meta'.
• From ChristopherA on 2021-07-31 at 3:28pm:
  I rather like this episode, I thought the exploration of a family with a specific type of dysfunction was a good one and generally made for a good Ezri character episode.
  
  You are right that the tie-in of this episode to Honor Among Thieves is largely irrelevant. This episode is about Ezri’s family, not the Orion syndicate, and O’Brien is only there to fulfill the mandatory “B Plot” requirement.
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From MJ on 2011-08-04 at 5:59pm:
  J.G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Combs...did DS9 strike gold when it hired those two or what? Fantastic, versatile actors.
  
  I do agree this episode fails to explore some very interesting story arcs. At the very least, Laas could have showed up later in the season having found a couple more Changelings and that could've been worked in somehow...maybe to the sequel instead of wasting it on the ridiculous Pah Wraith/Prophet arc.
  
  But overall I really like this episode. Laas' behavior is understandable, and gives us some insight into why the Changelings have such a distrust for "solids". It's likely they experienced everything Laas did, and much worse, throughout their history. Laas proposal to form a new link is exactly what I would expect a Changeling in his position to want to do. I do think it was a bit absurd that he kept baiting humanoids, being deliberately confrontational. He had to know by now what the outcome of such behavior would be. More likely he would want to avoid them entirely, but of course that wouldn't have been much of a story.
  
  I give it a 6.
• From John on 2011-12-22 at 6:30am:
  You have to love the irony of Laas complaining about how humanoids recklessly "displace all the life forms around them", while his people are trying to take over the entire galaxy and have killed billions of people and destroyed entire planets in the process.
  
  It seems to me 'the great link' is just the ultimate form of narcissism in the galaxy, and Odo is the only one who can see it for what it is.
  
  J. G. Hertzler does a fantastic job at portraying the arrogant and incredibly rude Laas here -- that alone makes this episode one of the best of the seventh season.
• From 0mcn7 on 2012-01-09 at 10:51am:
  I loved Quarks commentary on why humans are so suspicious of anything out of the ordinary and also showed how Quark despite the constant rivalry really does care for Odo.
• From Chris Wright on 2012-04-30 at 5:26pm:
  I can't believe this episode wasn't rated higher or that anyone on here hasn't pointed out the allegorical representations in the episode. While it has its problems (like why don't jails in the 24th century have surveillence cameras?), this epsiode excelled at beauty. It was beautifully acted, beautiful symbolism, and some of the lines are beautifully quotable. I gave it a 9.
• From JR on 2012-07-02 at 4:19am:
  This is one of the episodes I remember fairly strongly from the first time I watched the series way back when. I thought it came much sooner though...I was expecting it in season 3 or 4.
  
  When Laas becomes fog and the Klingons take offense, I could swear that is Rene Auborjonis (Odo) playing the Klingon that Laas stabs in the chest. It greatly resembles what he looked like as a solid turned Klingon by Bashir in an earlier episode. I checked the credits and only one of the two Klingons is listed as a Co-Star.
• From Bronn on 2013-07-26 at 3:32am:
  I think this was poorly executed. It could have been a good episode, but they missed a lot of things. There's some people acting out of character in order for this story to work. Sisko is out of character-he wouldn't have handed over Laas to the Klingons for a trial that wasn't equitable. It's a callback to the extradition hearing in "Dax,"-he knew there wasn't a fair trial on the other side of it, so he wasn't about to let that trial happen. And while I can understand O'Brien being irritated by some of Laas' baiting, Bashir ends up biting on it too, which is unlike him.
  
  They also fail to address the obvious issue-people mistrust Laas not because of his inherent nature as a changeling, but because the changelings are leading an oppressive government that has declared war on the entire quadrant. The Klingons are persecuting him in much the way they did Odo during "The Way of the Warrior." They think he's one of the Founders. The fact that's unaffected by a virus which has only been revealed through third-hand sources isn't convincing to them.
  
  (also, you have to wonder what happens to Laas after this episode-he presumably catches this virus by linking with Odo...then probably dies not long after this)
  
  Moreover, I wish we'd taken time to explore the moral dilemma that spurs the conflict of this episode-the death of the Klingon. I felt like that could have been a really interesting use for this guest character. The Klingon tried to stab him, but it doesn't affect him much since he has no vital organs to injure, then he kills the other Klingon. Was he reaching for a knife, or for his disruptor? Laas COULD have responded with less than deadly force, as we've seen Odo do countless times-he could have extended his arm and disarmed the Klingon instead of stabbing him. The Klingons attacked, but did they attack with deadly force, and was he justified in responding with deadly force? It's kind of a staple of cop shows, but the dilemma there is always whether the other person had a gun or not. Using a changeling makes you really ponder the question of how imminently he was threatened, even after he'd been stabbed once. That was more mentally engaging to me than the main plot of the episode.
• From L on 2013-08-17 at 8:28am:
  Wow, a non-lesbian homo-erotic subtext, that's pretty rare.
  Interesting episode.
• From ChristopherA on 2021-06-20 at 11:04am:
  My main issue with this episode is that it appears to have been written by a Founder as a tract against the solids, with most everyone being written out of character (as Bronn pointed out) so that Laas can make his diatribes without contradiction. The idea that solids are genetically unable to tolerate changelings comes from nowhere, there's never been any sign of that in any previous episode. They just seem to have suddenly thrown that into justify his disdain for coexisting with the solids. The reason changelings are feared has always been that they are incredibly powerful and extremely xenophobic.
  
  The one part of the episode that did make a lot of sense was that the Klingons would be hostile towards him. That could have been a more interesting episode, contrasting the arrogant disdain of Laal for inferior lifeforms, and his hypocritical demands that they treat him with respect, with the paranoid fear and anger of the Dominion’s victims towards someone who looks and acts exactly like a Founder, but nevertheless isn't one and hasn't ever done anything to harm them. Instead it seemed they were trying to awkwardly shoehorn in an unconvincing allegory of Odo being a persecuted minority who was putting up a false front and afraid to show his true self.
  
• From floreign on 2022-09-15 at 6:27am:
  To me this is an episode that outstretches the arc. Like the Voyager "year of hell" episode that could replace a full year of the season, and not as elaborate as TNG's "All Good Things" which stretched in three time periods. I have the distinct impression that at that point it was known that the show will end with the current season.
  Another comparison is Stargate:Un iverse. The first season and half was subpar, but the last half-season was amazing because it had a lot of good material that was added due to the show having been canceled.
  
  Well, soon the finale (episodes 16-26) starts, so you know I am right. It offers a possible direction for Odo if he were a few centuries out, and left one companion or a few behind (yes, it resembles Highlander here.)

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• From Richard on 2012-12-13 at 5:28am:
  It's really not such a bad episode. It advances the Star trek scientific framework pretty solidly, and deserves to be canon - although it clearly did not come off as the writers intended. The notion of "chaotic space", where the laws of physics are in constant flux, is a rich and plausible one. Boothby is a great character. But the narrative is sluggish and unconvincing in several spots, as if poorly edited. Beltran's performance is somewhat stilted, with way too much dissonance with Chakotay's established character traits.
• From L on 2014-04-20 at 6:36am:
  God, utterly awful. The previous episode about the doomed clones was way better than this.
  An episode that amounts to an over-emoted hallucination in a boxing ring? No thanks Star Trek.
• From Dstyle on 2015-07-10 at 1:39pm:
  I have no interest in watching this episode again, but if I did I'd time the hallucination sequences to see how much of the episode they took up (answer=too much). I'm sure hallucination sequences are fun to shoot and edit together, but they sure are a drag to watch.

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• From Pete Miller on 2007-01-11 at 9:46pm:
  You're right about this episode being a giant melting pot of a lot of ideas from previous episodes. There are all kinds of borrowed themes from episodes like Schisms, The Inner Light, and even several of those dark DS9 war-guilt episodes. That's what kept this episode from being good. As a matter of fact, that's pretty much what kept Voyager itself from being good. It's one big rehash for the most part.
• From David in California on 2008-03-18 at 4:59pm:
  I completely agree that Janeway (urged on by Neelix) completely failed to understand the moral issues of the situation. Choosing to ignore some basic, clear violation of people's rights such as forcing them to undergo this trauma (and failing to do something simple one can do to prevent it) on the grounds that it's for some "good cause" or to "teach a valuable lesson" is bizarre, IMO.
  
  And in this case especially useless, because Janeway herself recounted that there were similar historical instances in human history (which apparently nobody really "forgets" even though nobody is forced to experience them firsthand or Janeway wouldn't know of them!) But more importantly, it's apparent in the Star Trek Universe that just about every sapient species also has similar historical atrocities and tragedies in their past. So what's so damned special about this species' specific experiences that makes it so vital to the understanding of others? This idea, I submit, is simply stupid--not just a point of controversy or difference of values or disagreement over the issues covered in the story. I submit it's a huge gaping plot-hole which renders the premise of the episode absurd.
  
  As to the issues actually raised in the episode, the common sentiment that the only way to know something is wrong/bad and to avoid it is to remember some specific instance of it happening and then somehow you automatically, by that alone, realize it's "bad" because, presumably, you feel the bad feelings, is silly.
  
  Questions of right and wrong, good and bad, ought-to and ought-not-to, are not just down to feeling an emotion. Some people's emotions are twisted--feeling "good" when they cause harm to others, such as a sadist or powerluster or whatever. Rather it's some degree of thinking which is needed to lead one to decide "not to repeat this mistake again". What I just typed is a cognitive proposition, not a feeling, even if it's accompanied by various feelings. You gotta figure out what your values are as a person or society, and then consider the "good" to be supporting them and the "bad" to be opposing them--the "right" to be acting in line with them and the "wrong" to be acting against them. All that is done with thinking, ultimately, and the emotions that come about are results, not causes.
  
  So I'm triply (if I'm counting right) opposed to the ideas the writers are moving from here, and to what Janeway did as a character.
  
  Now, frustratingly, whenever you see me chime in here with lengthy criticisms of an episode, it's not that I found it particularly bad as compared to others where I don't bother to comment. It's always when there are some aspects of the episode I really liked, and so I feel strongly about the producers getting it wrong in other places. Wasted potential rather than just a "meh" reaction. Here, the intense performances, the conflicts played out between the crewmembers, the action, and the kind of New BSG style of addressing issues of morality in war are all huge positives for me, so to have it all break down in ways I strongly take issue with prompt me to post these commentaries.
  
  Finally, I just want to note that by titling this episode "Memorial" they removed any possibility of suspense or mystery as to what is going on. I can't believe this was done. Ok, it's not the most difficult of plot mysteries to solve and maybe most people would have gotten it more easily, but still. You don't title your story with a word which puts across clearly the "reveal" of what's really going on no matter what. It's bad form even if you think nobody in the audience will be in suspense anyway. For me personally, I figured things out a good deal before I think I would have by simply knowing the title.
  
  
• From Tony on 2008-08-31 at 3:35am:
  Heloooo. Am I the only one to notice that Janeway set warning beacons around the Monument so no one would have to experience it if they didn’t want to? How is she forcing people to experience it?
• From Jem Hadar on 2010-05-16 at 7:44pm:
  ^^
  If they need to go through that space?
• From Lee on 2013-04-24 at 1:12pm:
  I actually only wanted to comment because of one thing. I'm fairly certain that probably no one noticed this and / or no one cares for it. The guns of those alien people sound awesome! You know, I never really liked the sound of phaser rifles or the Jem'Hadar guns, but the gun sounds in this episode have the right amount of "brunt" to it, like a cannon firing, but also still sound like energy / particle weapons.
  
  But since I don't want to spam like this, here my review: I, like many others, didn't really like the episode. I liked the acting of everyone really much and the plot wasn't necessarily bad, but it all doesn't make too much sense and once again Janeway totally misses the point and comes to a stupid decision. Overall sub-par.
• From Hugo on 2015-05-24 at 7:19pm:
  Like someone said, the title gave away the whole mystery. I support Janeway btw, in the spirit of the Prime Directive, one shouldn't just interfer when passing by.
  
  Also - wasn't this one of the 10 lamest teasers ever in Trek?
  
  One interesting point that I saw on the discussion page about the Memory Alpha entry for this ep - they never question the "truth" in what the memorial tells them - maybe there is another side to the story...
• From Mike on 2017-07-16 at 6:12pm:
  Assuming the warning buoy actually makes it clear to passers-by what they are about to experience, I don't have an issue with Janeway's decision. The probe in TNG: Inner Light certainly didn't give any warning about what it did, and you could argue it's just as invasive and traumatizing since it makes a person think their previous life was a hallucination.
  
  But, along with the aliens in Inner Light and whoever built the archive in TNG: Masks, this is yet another story about a civilization that likes to interface and take control of ships/people in order to preserve the memory of their cultures. While not entirely original in its plot, it was a pretty decent episode and worth watching.
• From QuasiGiani on 2017-09-19 at 3:38pm:
  Just about everything is trivial in the long-run.
  
  War-crimes are not.
  
  Neelix made the right call; and Janeway did the right thing.
  
  (though there are a lot of unresolved or unexplained things about just how defective the system had become as compared to what it would be restored to; and just how effective the warning system would be... "problems"... but, assuming the "eractics" were truly fixed, and the buoy would work it's purpose... Janeway did the right thing)
  
  
• From McCoy on 2017-10-18 at 3:27pm:
  Of course Janeway did the right thing! What's wrong with you, peaple? You don't understand and that's why there are still wars across the world. Know something is one thing, but experience it is totally different. (And it concerns not only war, but other things - you will never understand what means to love someone if you never loved yourself).
  You know why we didn't had atomic war yet? Because during cold war people still remembered what a real war means. Now we are slowly forgetting... I know what I'm talking about. My grandmother still lives and she survived II world war in Poland. We have no idea what people of that time experienced. We can listen them but we will never fully understand. Really. We have NO IDEA!
  10/10
  Great, moving episode, and with good use of sf.

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• From Pete Miller on 2007-04-17 at 9:09pm:
  This episode epitomizes Voyager. It's really painful for me to even talk about this episode. Tom Paris turns Harry into a cow. The Doctor is a minister. The show has nothing to do with outer space.
  
  God. Since it doesn't break canon, I can't give it a zero on this scale. However, its score is the limit as x approaches zero. It's as close to a zero as you can get without actually being one.
  
  As a matter of fact, I actually think that "Threshold" has a better plot.
• From f. ive on 2010-01-28 at 11:08pm:
  Paris didn't turn Kim into cow. He turned his holographic girlfriend
• From L on 2014-01-30 at 8:44am:
  Almost worth it just for the scene where the Doctor slams open the church doors and yells "Sinners!"
  
  But otherwise, lame.
  
  
• From Hugo on 2015-06-27 at 7:12pm:
  That doc has a jeremiah-chrichton-level-bad beard. A thorough stupid/silly episode, but it still kept my interest. Not sure what that means though.

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• From zook on 2009-06-07 at 4:36am:
  Shran is played by Jeffrey Combs, who also played the Vorta Weyoun in DS9.

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• From Zorak on 2016-09-22 at 10:31pm:
  I have to disagree about the morality of Archers actions. First off, the hunters were very good to them and Archer could have easily gotten them killed with his actions. Second, he never even tried to reason with the hunters or explain his position. He just up and decided these people and their cultural practices are evil and wrong and going behind their backs and sabotaging them was the only answer.
  
  Sloppy writing and another poorly done morality play in my opinion.

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• From Pete Miller on 2006-12-10 at 6:38am:
  As with many Enterprise episodes, you kind of have to ignore the continuity errors. After all, it is Brannon Braga's show. I find that when you dismiss the Ferengi first contact stuff, this episode becomes quite enjoyable. The humor is priceless, and I like how the Ferengi here are much more like the Ferengi we see in TNG rather than DS9.
  
  Also, I really like Jeffrey Combs and Ethan Phillips in this one.
• From JRPoole on 2011-07-21 at 11:35pm:
  I agree with the sentiment here. Not a bad episode if you take it with a grain of salt. One thing that DS9 (still probably my favorite Trek overall though it got kind of religiousy after Roddenberry died) got so right was what it did with the Ferengi. They were so well used as fodder for satire in so many solid humor episodes even if you have to overlook a few really bad outings.
  
  The problem with TNG-style Ferengi is that, much like the ones here, they seem so much of a self-parody that it's hard to believe they're really capable of space flight and pose any threat at all. At least these are a little sharper than the hissing, growling, whip cracking Ferengi we see early on on in TNG.
• From Josh on 2011-10-08 at 1:08am:
  This has pretty much everything you need in a light-hearted episode: lots of humour, my two favourite ST supporting actors, and a solid 20 minutes of Trip running around in his underwear.
  
  Usually Ferengi in large numbers annoy me, but its hard not to like Jeffrey Combs and Ethan Phelps. Besides Clint Howard, who was the other Ferengi played by?
  
  One thing I wasn't sure about; I thought gold didn't hold much value to Ferengi? I could swear I remember Quark saying something to that effect...
• From Dstyle on 2015-09-03 at 1:09pm:
  Hey, did any of y'all notice that T'Pol is a very attractive woman? Don't worry if you didn't: the writers will make sure to repeatedly draw your attention to it episode after episode.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Tallifer on 2011-05-13 at 11:14pm:
  The climactic fight was horrible. These were fully armed Klingons and yet no one died: not much of a lesson for the Klingons. (Perhaps T'pol wisely advised them that killing any Klingons would only instigate a bloood fued, but I never saw that mentioned.)
• From belvedere_hedon on 2012-08-17 at 8:51pm:
  Deuterium is a form of hydrogen, but it cannot be separated chemically and (at least on earth) it is found in very low concentrations in naturally occurring hydrogen sources (i.e. water). Purifying deuterium is energy intensive with modern technology, and it is not unreasonable to assume that refining it would be a self-sustaining service as it would provide a fuel for fusion reactors in a remote part of the galaxy. Indeed, much of our justification for establishing permanent presence on the moon is that it would provide a valuable source of deuterium to fuel space exploration since the natural concentrations are higher there, and the lower gravity makes sending it into orbit cheaper.
• From Roger on 2015-05-22 at 12:13pm:
  Was this the first episode that established that Klingons have transporter technology? The Klingons were mischaracterized as utter wimps. And why didn't they just beam back down behind Archer and Company at the end and open fire? Or just drop a photon torpedo on the camp before they departed! Instead of just leaving with their tails between their legs.
  
  This episode was like "Magnificent 7" in outer space. Not that that in itself was bad, but the writing was really poor, in that they couldn't find a better way to defeat the Klingons that didn't make the Klingons look like utter wimps.
  
  And as already noted, the fight scene was not credible. Very bad shooting, even after practicing - I thought I was watching an old "A-Team" episode! And T'Pol as Rambo wasn't idiotic - why fight hand to hand when you have phase pistols, presumably with a stun setting? I find politically correct Trek to be very annoying...
  
  One of the hallmarks of good Trek is believeability. There is not much to be found in this episode, including the deuterium mining issue. The premise was good, but bad writing killed it. I'll be generous and give it a 2.
• From Dstyle on 2015-09-09 at 3:00pm:
  As I've been reading the comments on these second generation Star Trek reviews, I regularly see someone (or a few someones) complain about "politically correct" Trek, and I'm always left wondering what the hell they're talking about. The original 1960s Star Trek, with their pluralistic, multi-cultural crew (including a real live woman! On the bridge! With her lady parts and everything!) was pretty damn "politically correct" for it's time. In this instance, Roger is upset because a lady is doing martial arts, I guess because ladies doing anything besides being quiet, demure, and obedient is some sort of betrayal of Star Trek core principles. Let me reiterate this point, because it really boggles my mind: commenters like Roger consider T'Pol (T'POL!) to be "politically correct" and problematic. Well, don't worry, Roger, the show still objectifies the hell out of her! She's basically T and A that sometimes talks! The fragile masculinity of your like-minded male Star Trek fans is in no danger of being threatened, trust me!
  
  It was particularly interesting to me to see that comment by Roger on this episode, because as I watched the episode I was thinking about how Star Trek consistently casts almost exclusively white actors in supporting roles. Any time they encounter an alien species, they're almost always white people with some sort of forehead prosthetics. The implication is that "white" is a default race and that any other race, alien or human, is just a variation of whiteness. Even the Klingon captain in this episode--the only Klingon with any significant lines, mind you--is played by white actor Roberson Dean! As with any science fiction series (or any show, for that matter, but it especially holds true for science fiction), you can learn a lot about the contemporary culture and climate by paying attention to things like this, and as such the various second generation Star Trek series reflect the racial milieu of 90s and 00s America. It's interesting to see, and, in my opinion, Star Trek is getting increasingly less progressive as the series of shows run their course, largely because they're being less intentional about their representations of these kinds of issues.
• From Zorak on 2016-09-29 at 12:16am:
  This was by far and away my least favorite episode of Enterprise so far. I don't even want to get into the specifics. This is the writers telling us, the audience, that they have no respect for our intelligence. Utterly predictable down to no one getting hurt (including Klingons), the "Home Alone" style tactics, and the Klingons deciding they would never be back. So completely cliché and predictable that I knew exactly how the rest of the episode would play out within the first 10 minutes. They should be ashamed to have made this.
• From Hugo on 2017-09-14 at 5:15am:
  Reasonably entertaining, but what stops the Klingons from a) just shooting at the camp from space, or b) come back with reinforcements?
• From President Obummer on 2020-01-21 at 10:58am:
  Terrible episode, two big problems aside from all the deuterium science:
  1. The miners would not have just let these murderers go, 5 (plus 3 in battle) of their friends and family were massacred, nobody seems to care?
  2. Klingons live for battle, the miners putting up a fight would give them more incentive to come back.
  Just terrible...

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• From Roger on 2015-06-14 at 10:59pm:
  I thought this episode was entertaining andpretty good overall, for seeing how the Prime Directive had evolved. It had some problems though. The firefight at the end was one of them, it was not believable. The military-trained aliens were such bad shots, while the marksmanship of the Enterprise party had improved greatly since "Marauders". And this was another episode plagued by what I will call "transporter phobia" - once they had located Archer and Reed in their cell why couldn't they just beam them up?
• From Zorak on 2016-09-29 at 3:48pm:
  I completely agree with your review on this one. I'm guessing this run of the last 4 episodes is where this show started to lose it's fan base. How could they think this was good Star Trek?
  
  The episode even started out alright (despite the premise relying entirely on Archers incompetence [i.e. high level technology goes in normal pockets] and his failure to ever learn his lesson), but then eventually devolves into another excruciatingly unrealistic shootout at the O.K. Corral.
  
  If I didn't know from having read articles in the past, as well as a comment you left for me in a season 1 episode that the writing gets a lot better later on, I'd be seriously considering giving up on this show.
  
  It's a shame. I really do like the characters in this show, with the exception of Archer (the worst captain ever!). I hope they turn this around soon.
• From Subcommander O'bummer on 2023-02-21 at 8:20am:
  Come on Zorak, Archer has to be a bad captain, there was no training or experience for what does, and before that he was just a test pilot! It is to be expected that he could not compare to Picard or Janeway and the others.

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• From Rob on 2008-05-01 at 11:24pm:
  About the possible conundrum's caused by this and other "past history" episodes: There is a theory I read re: quantum-particle mechanics related to possible time travel that goes something like this (assuming for a second you could actually time travel to the past at all) - that it would not be possible to alter history (in 'real time' from your persepective) even if you went back in time to change something (like killing your own grandfather before your parent's birth, for instance) because the effects cannot occur until after the moment when the traveler left for the past. Now whether you would become a condundrum (still existing even though your parents would disappear from history) or whether you'd just vanish at that instant is another argument all together.
  
  In other words, these Borg and all information pertaining to them could not exist in the past until after Picard and the Enterprise-E followed the Borg back in time and returned. Until that moment, nothing that occurred in this episode could have been recorded as having happened (during the time frame of Best of Both Worlds for example) however, once the Ent-E returned, a look through their historical database would suddenly reveal this information even though no one would have seen it before because it wasn't until this point that it 'actually' occurred. The effects of the Enterprise/Borg's influence in the past could not be noted until the point when the actors in the past returned to a point in time after they originally left for the past.
  
  It's headache inducing and esoteric and I still don't quite grasp how all of this would work practically in the 'real world' (math is my weak point) but the theory could explain away why no one would have known about this episode's details until far into the future (after ST: First Contact and the return of the Ent-E to a point after they left for the past).
  
  Hopefully this makes just enough sense that you can see my point!
• From EvanT on 2011-06-24 at 7:55pm:
  You could assume that all the materials from the sphere and the computers from the outpost were used to augment that shuttle the Borg used (too convenient, granted, but plausible)
  
  However, what I consider far more interesting is how this episode changes the character of Q. There you have humanity in the 24th century, oblivious of a cybernetic threat that has just discovered the existence of Earth (or is about to), and Q comes along and conveniently sends the Enterprise-D to get a glimpse of the Borg. Q doesn't look as obnoxious as he did when "Q Who?" originally aired, does he (and Picard's suspicions about Q's intent get validated after all)
  
  I DID hate the thing where the nanoprobes were susceptible to O-radiation. If a 22nd century doctor could discover this, I'd imagine Dr. Crusher or the Doctor would have known about this as well (these WERE 24th century drones, after all).
• From Mitchell on 2013-10-19 at 12:08am:
  I love the score in this particular episode, the music is just brilliant.
• From Roger on 2015-07-23 at 5:58pm:
  Yes, it was an entertaining episode, but as Kethinov observed it really messed up continuity.
  
  First off, it seems that Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E did a really lousy job of cleaning up after the destruction of the Borg sphere in ST VIII. Pretty sloppy work, considering all the concern about preserving the time line in the movie.
  
  Next issue: so the debris from the sphere is able to make it through re-entry, crash in the arctic with some intact borg, flash frozen and ready to be revived? Since when are the Borg able to re-animate themselves - this never happened in either TNG or First Contact.
  
  These problems could have been avoided by better writing...say some Borg sphere debris is discovered floating in space, gets brought aboard for study and some nanites manage to infect a human who then starts the assimilation ball rolling...maybe not as dramatic though.
  
  The rate of assimilation seems to be inconsistent with the movie. Ensign Hawk got assimilated pretty quick (a matter of minutes) in the deflector dish scene.
  
  A minor point was that Reed and Archer got more phase pistol shots aboard the Borg shop, whereas on Enterprise security got fewer before the Borg adapted.
  
  Well, at least the transporter worked well in this episode. Why don't they use it more? Maybe we need a dramatic transporter malfunction with a 'red shirt' to make the technology look a little more risky...
  
• From Urdomen on 2022-03-10 at 9:10pm:
  The beginning of the episode with the research team in the Arctic circle encountering a strange, alien life form that defies known scientific limits, wakes up and starts attacking the researchers, seems to me like a homage to The Thing (from Another World).
  Would have loved to see Borg nanoprobes react to a piece of hot wire.

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• From TashaFan on 2008-10-15 at 1:06am:
  I thought when I first saw this episode that Archer might be saving that virus to use as a bio-weapon against the Xindi. Of course he knew he'd never get Phlox to cooperate so he just lies to him and makes up a reason to preserve the virus, one that sounds noble instead of calculating. If the writers had this in mind, I wish they would have brought it up at some future time as a desperation option... it could have been done in one of the "reset button" episodes that came later, such as the one with the duplicate past/future NX-01 or the one when Archer loses his memory due to parasites and Earth is destroyed, but then it all didn't happen... no harm in using the viruse since that timeline didn't "really" exist anyway.
• From Nick on 2017-06-04 at 2:15am:
  I laughed out loud when the alien captain said:
  
  "Your vessel is under quarantine. Prepare to be boarded"
  
  Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? Then the captain has a whole scene with Phlox where he details how easily the virus spread and the horrible consequences. The whole time they're standing in sickbay with no protective equipment.
  
  PHLOX: The Decon chamber's sealed. I assure you there's no danger.
  TRET: You wouldn't be so confident if you knew how easily this virus can spread. It infected tens of millions of people on my world. They all had to be destroyed.
  
  To top it off, he goes back to his ship!!
  
  Good stuff. Reminds me of all those high energy weapons tests from TNG that were done in engineering right next to the warp core, or with Data standing directly behind a phaser target while it's firing.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From James T. on 2008-09-08 at 5:04pm:
  "Continuity Coto" didn't write this script -- Mike Sussman did. Coto wrote the story for Part II. Just FYI.
• From Nicholas on 2011-11-20 at 10:23am:
  I went into this expecting to dislike it; indeed, I considered skipping the episode on the DVD to get to In a Mirror Darkly.
  
  However, I found it really enjoyable. Look beyond the simple "men are gushing over women" to the sci-fi aspect of the Orion women being able to influence and control them with pheromones. It led to some excellent scenes, particularly the sickbay one - Phlox was great to watch.
  
  I wish they'd played up the disgust of the woman at them a bit more, though - there were a few funny background moments, but nothing much.
  
  The Orion man also had the right blend of menace, sleaze and charm; very well-played.
  
  The joke scene with T'Pol capped it off perfectly, and gave it a real TOS feel.
  
  A pleasant surprise, as far as I'm concerned.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Claus on 2017-10-02 at 7:49pm:
  Amazing episode! Much better than the double pilot.
  
  Discovery looks fantastic, and we get to see a lot of different areas on the ship without any rush. The episode builds up to a story arc which seems very interesting so far. It reveals things little by little, but at the same time we don't know whether the explanations we get are true or not. It feels more like a sci-fi thriller than of old school Star Trek. And perhaps this is the new way to go.
  
  As for the monster scenes aboard the Glenn. Yes, we have seen these kind of "boarding incidents" many times before. But I felt the whole episode was very exhilarating and a little creepy in a good way.
  
• From Matthew on 2017-10-02 at 9:41pm:
  Great review, loved the Expanse references. I feel a bit kinder towards them on the 'problems' especially on design - there are some real buttons on the engineering consoles and there are bits that look like the Enterprise-A if not original Enterprise, but let them have some leeway on continuity with 60s set design (like we would the dodgier bits of 60s writing - no female captains!) I also can forgive the Spock mutiny thing. Yes Burnham is guilty, but it's going a bit far to say there was a mutiny on board since she never had full control of the ship, or at least we never properly found out.
  
  Some things had me groaning, namely Monster of the Week (double groan for it surviving til next week) and the general horror vibe (never something Trek does very well). But I find many reasons to be cheerful
  1) Sonequa Martin-Green is doing a great job
  2) Her character is intriguing as is the interpersonal conflict (very anti-Roddenberry) her backstory generates with most everyone - individual reactions to her in this episode helped us get to know other characters really quickly
  3) Saru's threat ganglia are great just for the name
  4) Tilly - fun, vulnerable, potential both to be kickass and have mismatch buddy comedy with her roommate while offering her a redemptive connect with your humanity arc
  5) We haven't even met Clem Fandango yet (Google it, then watch all of Toast of London immediately)
  6) Lorca is verging crazy in a fun 'which way will he go' way. Those fortune cookies make him seem a bit like Harvey Dent before the fall, and I guarantee the foreshadowed affair with Tory from BSG will not go well. (Given her absence from the credits, perhaps most of all for her.) I'll be disappointed if he is just a bit unorthodox / freewheeling since I strongly suspect that...
  7) ...the Section 31 angle will be massive - those mysterious black badges and the 'whatever it takes' brief given to Lorca. That is usually good news for quality as it has been a good story firewall, enabling Trek to get into entertainingly shady areas and still do optimism, all in one show; with fruitful clashes of ends justifies the means vs do what is right, to paraphrase Sloane.
• From JD on 2017-10-03 at 7:39am:
  I really enjoyed this episode, thought it was much better that the prologue episodes.
  I think discovery is definitely a Section 31 ship and Lorca is an agent.
  I didn't mind the Alien sequence on the Glenn, I thought it was well done and the "Helical injuries" were creepy too.
  I don't think Lorca is crazy as such, he's just given a free reign to do whatever he likes to win the war.
  I think there were some references to Iconian technology and it will be interesting if the research completely fails or disappears inside Section 31.
• From Connor on 2017-10-04 at 12:22pm:
  "Landry refers to Burnham as "Starfleet's first mutineer," but Spock states in TOS: The Tholian Web that there is no record of a mutiny on a starship before."
  
  That's true, but Spock himself led two mutinies in TOS; the problem therefore seems to arise from the fact that TOS did a poor job keeping track of its own continuity.
  
  If we're to ignore his error and assume that he was speaking factually, it may be possible that Burnham's mutiny is removed from records at a later point. Perhaps this will be dealt with in the show (though, I doubt it will). Spock was after all specific in that there are no "records" of a mutiny, not that there has never been one.
• From Coihue on 2017-10-09 at 3:49pm:
  Well, starting from the dreamy angles in the first episodes, and this kind of new travel technology. I will asume that all of this will end up in a time travel reboot. Micheal will not start the war, she will not mutiny, and maybe shecan also save her parents avoiding end up being Spock's sister.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Mike D on 2021-10-12 at 4:21am:
  I made it all the way through this episode and realized I didn't know what the story was. Poor writing? Or was I just bored? I also couldn't get over how awful that internal turbolift shot was--how is that the inside of the ship?! And the actor who plays Pike, jeez. He LOOKS that part, but the poor man just doesn't have any gravitas at all. I won't make it to episode 2.

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• From FH on 2020-11-14 at 8:57pm:
  For what it's worth, I thought "V'draysh" is simply the future slang name for the "Federation", that is, a slightly shortened version of the same word if pronounced quickly and sloppily enough.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Bob Dalley on 2008-02-05 at 1:27am:
  In this episode when Kirk is on the planet, his uniform has no insignia and even when he and his twin beam up there are no insignia on the uniform. A few scenes later, both Kirks have the insignia on their uniforms. Just wanted to point out this error. You may want to add this to your review.
• From Mark J on 2008-03-16 at 10:58pm:
  Shuttles were not introduced to starships until around the 'Galileo Seven' episode, which is rather later in Season 1. There was no fanfare to this effect as far as I know.
  
  Apart from perhaps being a little campy, and Shatner eating the scenery (which I quite enjoyed) and the production mistakes (scratches etc) I thought this was a wonderful episode, especially linking the two halves in with Spock's Vulcan/Human ancestry. OK so the pooch was nothing more than a plot device (where did it come from) but this is more than overwritten by the analysis of a man dealing with loss and the fear that he could lose his crew and himself.
• From TashaFan on 2008-09-09 at 1:10pm:
  I think the lack of insignia on Kirk's shirt is no accident. Since the evil Kirk is supposed to be a mirror image of the good Kirk (I believe the part in his hair is reversed when he first materializes) the insignia on the wrong side of the chest would have made it too obvious that something was wrong to anyone who saw him... I believe this error was deliberate to prevent a bigger problem that would have created a plot hole. The fact that they had to keep reversing the film also accounts for the confusion with the scratches on Kirk's face, most likely. As for not using the shuttle, I remember as a child yelling that at Spock... of course he couldn't hear me. :)
• From 411314 on 2009-06-15 at 1:43am:
  "They could have ruled shuttles out with an easy one liner, such as the atmosphere having a corrosive effect on shuttle hulls..."
  
  Even then, they should have explained why they didn't beam shelter down to Sulu and the other men on the planet to keep them safe untill they could rescue them. I mean, what was the worst that could happen, that the shelter would split into two of itself?
• From Andrew James on 2009-11-18 at 10:34pm:
  I loved the use of camera filters to make the "good" Kirk look beautific.
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-07 at 5:32am:
  I agree, I've always felt the concept here is better than the execution. I've been trying to analyze why. They talk about how it provides fascinating insight on a man's character. What we see is one Kirk with moments of painful indecision, and another Kirk who is decisive but ruled by emotions of lust, hate, and fear. Which I suppose is what they were going for. I think my problem is that I never felt these were two halves of Kirk. I felt that the Good Kirk was the real Kirk. Especially since he is only occasionally indecisive, and it never really hurts him much during the episode, he either gets help from his friends or uses his intellect to overcome it. While the bad Kirk feels like an imposter, not like the real Kirk at all (although he sure is the real Shatner!). We don't really learn anything meaningful about Kirk's character as promised, we see an episode where the crew has to deal with an evil doppelganger of the captain while the captain is suffering from a personal crisis. Which is OK, but not that great. It feels like a few good scenes and a lot of wasted time.
  
  - To 411314: I don't think we know enough about the exact conditions on the planet to complain about how they were keeping warm. They do seem to have beamed down thermal cloaks. Perhaps the crew found it more effective to sit right on the phaser-heated rocks rather than inside the structurally unsound duplicated shelters sent by the ship.
  
• From Mike Meares on 2012-02-17 at 3:49pm:
  "The Enemy Within is story with a high minded idea but poorly executed characterization." - I feel like there is a pattern developing here? lol.
  
  I thoughly enjoy your reviews Kethinov but I sense there is a little "this could have been done better" making it's way into almost every review. I just think this could be said about almost any TV show, especially one made 50 years prior to today.
  
  Despite all the criticisms listed here ( and again they are all valid ) I enjoy this episode very much. I rate it a 5 and I really wish I could rate it higher but the errors are far to glaring to ignore.
  
  I watched this episode again for the 100th time and I still enjoy it. But the techincal errors during the fliming are still a little irritating.
  
  But I beleive the lack of insignia on Kirk's shirt IS, indeed, an accident. When the "other" Kirk first materializes in the transporter room his hair is correctly parted on the left side. The flim was not reversed during this scene nor during the "teaser". So there would have been no need to leave off the insignia.
  
  In fact, the only time I think the flim was reversed was towards the end of the episode when the "kirk's" have their face off on the bridge. The close up of the other "Kirk" was reversed becasue the scratches are on the wrong side of his face. However, I feel this was done by the flim editor who realized that the scene was shot from the wrong angle and corrected it by reversing the flim. ( I guess they were hoping nobody would notice the scratches on the wrong cheek! lol. ) Also in this scene the top part of Kirk's face is cut from view so you really can't tell the part in his hair. It is still a mystery to me as to why the flim editor felt the need to reverse the film. They wanted the other "Kirk" looking left to right instead of right to left. But why is still a mystery?
  
  And the reason I think the lack of insignia was a big mistake was the fact that during the "teaser" neither Kirk had an insignia and during the first scene after that in the transporter room with crewman Wilson the other "Kirk" had no insignia. But the very next scene of Scotty escorting a dazed Kirk to his cabin there is an insignia on his shirt! In fact, from that moment on both "Kirks" have their insignias.
  
  The flim editing was extremely poor in this episode! I could name several scenes that are clearly out of place and moved around. If you are going to move scenes around at least make it look normal.
  
  Despite this though there are a few things I like about this episode. And, again, for me it is the develpoment of the secondary characters. I like the idea of two men manning the transporter. Wilson is a good character, as well as Fisher and Farrow as well. But just like Riley, they were on a couple of episodes and then gone. Too bad.
  
  Also several scenes stand out for me. When Spock tells Kirk he doesn't have the right to be vernable in the eyes of the crew that was very powerful. And again towards the end of the episode Spock explains "being spilt into two halves is no theory" for him. Great scene.
  
  And I resist calling the other "Kirk" evil because I don't think that is correct. Like Dr. McCoy said in the episode that the other "Kirk" isn't "really evil, he's human!" That whole explanation during that scene by the doctor is so great. McCoy was right. Both "Kirks" were the real Kirk.
  
  I don't feel the episode is a waste. But it definitely has it's problems. I do feel that with some rewriting and better flim editing this could have been an outstanding Star Trek episode.
  
  A small nitpick of mine. When Spock says "Thermal Heaters were transporter down, they duplicated. They won't operate." I have to ask myself, If I duplicate a piece of equipment why won't it work? The Transporter Malfunction seemed to be duplicating everything and separting their emotions. Eh........Manchines don't have emotions..... Hello!
  
  
  
  
• From Kethinov on 2012-02-18 at 9:08am:
  Of course "this could have been done better" makes its way into almost every review. Otherwise every episode would get a 10! :)
  
  For most episodes it's the reason for and degree to which it could have been better that's interesting to analyze. Anything else would just be shameless gushing or bashing.
  
  Since most people come here to find which episodes were the best (or worst) of Star Trek, I try to write carefully balanced reviews and highlight both the good and the bad in each episode.
  
  The rating will thus generally be weighted against the "what worked" and "what could have been better" analyses. The pattern is quite deliberate.
• From Ken on 2012-07-25 at 12:09pm:
  I believe Mike Meares has it correct. The scratches on the other side of the face, were a result of shooting bad Kirk's scene from the wrong angle. I believe they realized that his character would not have been speaking in the correct direction, so they had to reverse the image to make it seem so. However, putting the scratches on the other side of the face was even more noticable.
• From warpfactor 10.1 on 2012-08-08 at 10:19pm:
  One of the many splendid things about this episode is the animal that is presumably from the surface of the planet. Not only is it able to stand temperatures of - 120 at night but, remarkably, it also looks a bit like an earth dog onto which someone has stuck a horn and antennas.
  A little known piece of trivia is that when Margaret Thatcher was looking to use a Star Trek episode title as a catch phrase to demonise the trade unions she had decided on 'The devil in the dark' before Sir Geoffrey Howe, an avid Star Trek fan, convinced the rest of the cabinet that they should use 'The enemy within' instead. She never forgave him.
• From Glenn239 on 2012-11-06 at 4:44pm:
  ‘5’
  
  Sulu: We’re freezing to death down here captain. Can you send us a shuttle?
  
  Kirk: No, don’t be absurd. We can’t do that. We don’t want to break up our set. You don’t want us to have to start collecting all over again, do you?
  
  Sulu: No, but what about the hot coffee we were mentioning in the previous scene?
  
  Kirk: Are you mad? Too risky. What if you drink the angry coffee by accident?
  
  Sulu: Ok. Can you beam down a shelter?
  Blankets? How about a fireplace with a warm fire already burning in it? How about just heating stuff up from around the ship and beaming it down? Can you at least phaser out a hole in the ground so that we can get out of the wind?
  
  Kirk: No, no, no, no and no. Stop whining and be the dramatic tension of the episode like you’re trained to be. Oh – and those phasers you used to warm the rocks around you three scenes ago? Nice try mister. We’re beaming those up so that you can’t do that again.
  
  Sulu: Captain, this episode has a lot of holes in it.
  
  Kirk: I know. The most interesting premise was when evil Kirk was going to abandon you, but we even screwed that up by making sure that the whole crew knew it was the wrong Kirk. We’ll try again later this season. Next time we’ll explain the shuttle thing by having it be a shuttle accident. Instead of two of me, we’ll have some dickish Commodore. It’ll be great. Kirk out.
  
  Later that day…
  
  Kirk: So you see, Yeoman Rand, it wasn’t really me, it was just the evil part of me.
  
  Rand: Oh, yeah. Merely the half of you that wants to rape me. Nothing to worry about there.
  
  Kirk: Yes, that seething cauldron of raw aggression is safely back where it belongs – inside me, frothing just below the surface, and held in check only by the will of that super wimpy guy you saw who couldn’t decide his way out of a paper bag.
  
  Rand: Perfect.
  
  Kirk: Really?
  
  Rand: Yes, captain, you see I’m a women. I crave long-winded overly-rational explanations for all my relationship difficulties, and I do not hold grudges for past slights far into the future. I’m sure that you being slapped back together in some untested half-assed transporter experiment has worked perfectly well, and there’s no possible way that you’d have nodded your head to Spock indicating you were properly balanced if you were not. Nothing could possibly have gone wrong there.
  
  Kirk: Wow, this show really is out in space, isn’t it?
  
  Rand: Yes, and I look forward to being part of the adventures for many more seasons to come.
  
  Kirk: I’m sure you do.
  
• From Schreck on 2013-05-23 at 6:31pm:
  Our first transporter accident episode sees kirk split into two halves, the uninhibited and the meek…although this episode has a good premise the execution is poor…Shatner’s acting is good, but even that can’t save this episode…I give it a 6.25 and my brother has it as his third lowest of the original series coming in at a 5.5
• From Trekkie on 2013-06-21 at 4:43pm:
  This episode, in my opinion, was one of the better episodes. I liked how they showed both Kirk's evil and good side, and also how the episode states that we need to have a little of both (good and evil, that is) in order to make beneficial desicions and be stable.
• From Katie on 2013-07-07 at 6:24pm:
  Aside from all the other plot contrivances, why was it so hard to find "evil Kirk"? Why didn't "good Kirk" just stay on the bridge and announce that any "Kirk" not on the bridge was the imposter?
  
  I mean really.
• From 10toes on 2015-08-09 at 11:46pm:
  Actually, only the last pill was placebo. The ones before that were the real deal.
  Still, doesn't explain why that last pill changed her appearance...

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From djb on 2009-01-04 at 5:21am:
  Kind of a ho-hum episode. As you said, the best part of it was Kirk getting a message through to Spock through his double.
  
  Also, there seems to be some inconsistency as to what kind of "emotions" these droids are capable of. Also, androids wouldn't "forget" anything, only to have their memories jarred later on-- they would remember everything in perfect detail, unless they were actually programmed to forget, which they wouldn't be. Kinda weird.
  
  One nitpick too-- Andrea isn't technically an android. She's a gynoid. A rather comely one, at that!
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-15 at 4:38pm:
  Another episode which doesn't come together in execution. In retrospect, I think there could have been something interesting to this story - the idea of Korby saving his life by transferring his brain to an android, then realizing that he is no longer the same person after doing so. But much of the episode consists of Korby boasting about how great his plans are, and it didn't convey a lot of meaning. Nor was I interested in Nurse Chapel, or all that weird TOS stuff about robot logic. Still, it isn't all bad. I like the parts of the plot relating to the android Kirk. His revelation at the dining table is pretty creepy, and the real Kirk's use of "post-hypnotic suggestion" is clever.
  
  - I don't agree with the comments in the review. Korby lures down the Captain, murders two people, holds the captain hostage, and has Ruk impersonate him to cover up his crime. He then claims Kirk should bear with him, he has a good reason for it. To paraphrase, his reason is that people are too stupid to know what is good for them, so he needs to secretly take over the Federation so he can kill everyone and transfer their minds into a superior race of androids. Korby may sound mild-mannered, but actions speak louder than words, he has totally flipped out into Megalomaniacal Super-Villain territory. Kirk's sole responsibility is to stop Korby and save the Federation. That is my main complaint with the episode, that all the philosophical arguments are basically irrelevant because Korby has become such a monster.
  
• From Mike Meares on 2012-02-22 at 2:31am:
  My biggest problem with “What are little girls made of?” is that it never does seem to make a whole lot of sense. Nothing seems to add up during the entire episode.
  
  Now the idea of Machine vs. Man has been played out in many a Star Trek episode. It is always the emotionless machines who lose out to the warm blooded humans who demonstrate that they are more compassionate and understanding. Yea right, and if you believe that I have some swamp land I want to sell you.
  
  But to me the main problem with this episode is the story doesn’t ever really make sense.
  
  If Dr. Korby was indeed an android then how can he express emotions like he does? All the other androids act like they are emotionless programmed robots. But not Korby. That doesn’t make sense.
  
  If Andrea is an android, or a gynoid, then why does she kill the android Kirk just because he wouldn’t kiss her? That doesn’t make sense.
  
  This episode was shown just three weeks after the “Naked Time” when Christine expressed her undying love for Spock. The timing of this episode always seemed a little bit strange to me.
  
  This episode is by far and away the weakest one of the entire first year of TOS. I have tried to watch it a dozen times and I always get disappointed with it.
  
  I agree with CAlexander that Dr. Korby acts insane from day one and Captain Kirk doesn’t overreact at all. I think the comparisons to Hitler are good ones. Hitler wanted to create the master race, and Dr. Korby does too in a strange way.
  
  But even discussing the story seems weird because the story never seems to fit right.
  
  I agree that the cutest thing about this episode was the android Kirk yelling at Spock. But even that didn’t make sense. Being an android with a computer for a brain, why didn’t the android Kirk realize what he has just said to Mr. Spock?
  
  And right after the android Kirk yells at Spock he then turns right around and says to Spock in a very concerned tone, “You look upset Mr. Spock, is everything all right up here?”
  
  In the first place Spock didn’t look upset and even if he did ( which is debatable because after all he is a Vulcan! ) ………even if Spock was upset, would an android ask him if he was all right? I don’t think so! That really didn’t make sense!
  
  All in all a very forgettable episode! Well not totally forgettable! I did write this review! Maybe a nightmare of an episode would be a better choice of words.
• From mandeponium on 2012-08-25 at 4:55pm:
  I agree with the review and comments, not a great episode. But to me the most impacting parts of this episode were Andrea's outfit, followed by a naked Kirk spinning on a merry go round. Made the the whole episode worth it.
• From Alan Feldman on 2012-09-26 at 5:09pm:
  "What Are Little Girls Made Of"
  
  At 16:35, Kirk says, "That's why all this make no sense." Drop the "that's why" and it pretty much sums up this episode. Well, it starts out okay, but it makes less and less sense as it goes on. At the end, "making sense" gets entirely thrown out the window.
  
  Re mandeponium's commentary:
  
  The "most impacting part" of this episode is not Andrea's outfit; it's Andrea *in* Andrea's outfit!
  
  Speaking of outfits, Rock's is, uh, a bedspread? A space blanket?
  
  Rock is fun to watch. When he shows great strength throwing the Captain about, it's intense!
  
  The hand-held shot of Kirk walking down the corridor and into the turbo lift is also used in "The Man Trap". It's the same shot! The Man Trap: 21:28, Little Girls: 37:34.
  
  Mike Meares asks: "If Dr. Korby was indeed an android then how can he express emotions like he does?" The difference, I believe, is that Korby contains a "transplanted" consciousness, mind, soul, or whatever -- while the others do not. On the other hand, Rock showed anger toward "The Old Ones" and Korby, and exultation when he realized "existence -- survival must cancel out programming." Are these not emotions?
  
  Kirk strangling Dr. Korby? Yes, that's nonsensical. I guess we're not expected to remember that far back* in the episode once we learn he is an android. I suppose some do and some don't on a first-time viewing. And what caused the "skin" on the back of his hand to be sheared off? The wall, the door? Not very durable, after all!
  
  * About 9 minutes.
  
  The scene in which Korby kills Rock has Rock close to him, then far from him! The sequence of shots is not self-consistent. And why does he walk so slowly toward him? I guess he's struggling to override his programming to protect Korby. But the sequence is still inconsistent.
  
  The mind is what the brain does, so you can't transplant a mind, or one's consciousness, or whatever you want to call it. Copying, I can see. And here we have a mind (not brain) being "transferred" and "re-programmed", to boot! Talk about mind-altering!
  
  To comment on everything in this episode that doesn't make sense would fill a small book. Nevertheless, Rock and Andrea are fun to watch.
  
  AEF
• From Schreck on 2013-05-23 at 7:32pm:
  Another weak first season episode that fails to draw us in although I do enjoy a good Chapel episode…it bothers me that she was never considered a regular crew member along with Rand…I give it a 6.5 and my brother a 7
• From Bert on 2014-03-27 at 6:11pm:
  I'm going to have to go back and watch the episode, but I never had a problem with it. Part of it is, you have to think about the attitudes at the time. Robots and androids were generally considered scary monsters. In movies they were almost always either evil or messengers of doom. In novels and short stories, it's the same thing. It's the reason Asimov came up with his three laws, so mechanical men wouldn't realize they were smarter/faster/stronger and take over the world.
  
  When eveyone assumes something, you don't generally feel a need to spell it out. And when you discover a technology no one will trust, you hide or bury it.
• From Alan Feldman on 2014-04-16 at 11:36pm:
  djb writes: " Also, androids wouldn't "forget" anything, only to have their memories jarred later on-- they would remember everything in perfect detail, unless they were actually programmed to forget, which they wouldn't be. Kinda weird."
  
  You're assuming perfect programming and perfect hardware, neither of which exist (well, above a certain complexity level, anyway, which we have surely reached in this case!). The old memories are probably archived and are therefore not easily accessible. Also, cosmic rays can flip bits. Not very often, but Rock has been around a very long time. Furthermore, androids are supposed to resemble humans. In this case at least some of them are able to "import" another's very consciousness (which is kind of ridiculous), so must resemble humans in some sense. Perhaps Rock was of that type.
  
  OTOH, these androids are far more advanced that anything we have today. But they're still designed to be like humans.
  
  Anyway, the whole story is ridiculous. Another example: "Don't you see, Roger. Everything you've done proves it _isn't_ you." Ah, so A doesn't equal A. You're not you! You're someone else! This sentence is false! Right.
  
  The only reason to watch this ep, IMO, is Rock and Andrea in Andrea's outfit.
  
  AEF, a.k.a betaneptune
• From peterwolf on 2015-11-06 at 11:43pm:
  The complicated review searching for a point without really finding it proves that there is more to this story than a plain "man versus machine". Although I do not like the creation scene, when Kirk and the proto-biomass are spinning like crazy, the rest is rather entertaining and full of serious topics. Men (or the old ones) made copies of themselves, perhaps only machines or beings which could be sentient. In this episode, no one ever uses this word (I checked the transcript), which later becomes so important for Star Trek: "a sentient being". Ruk and Andrea seem to be just on the edge of being sentient, perhaps Kirk´s copy too? Ruk shows something like anger, Andrea something like love; both could be simple simulations/emulations, but Korby seems to have transferred his complete mind to his android body copy, and, thus, still himself. I think one idea of the episode, which is admittedly not perfect and lacks humour, is contained in the statement of copy-Kirk, who says "Thank you. I felt quite at home on the Enterprise." Would a purely logical computing machine say something like that? This episode is a forerunner of all the Data episodes and we should be grateful for it. Some eerie and very good scenes are the ones when the android Ruk uses different voices, and in particular, to deceive Kirk, who is knowingly responding to it. Such things were used in X-files episodes as well. Strange enough, the only humour is brought about by Spock, complaining that Kirk was using the rude expression halfbreed ...
• From Royy on 2016-11-16 at 7:05pm:
  I feel this is a greatly unappreciated episode. I think it is wonderful mainly three reasons:
  
  1. For me, it is the Star Trek equivalent of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. Like Conrad's Novella, the protagonist ( Kirk) goes in search of his hero, only to find he is not what he expects? The plot is subtle, and the diverse dillemma's that provoke alot of thought for me.
  
  2. The acting is superb. I especially love Dr Corby. I wish they had used him as a villain again e.g. Instead of Kahn.
  
  3. That female android ... She is gorgeous.
  
  I can watch this again and again. I pick new things up all the time.
  
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From John Bernhardt on 2010-01-12 at 5:44pm:
  This was the first episode produced after the two pilots.
• From Paul Loudon on 2010-10-01 at 2:22pm:
  Uhura is in a yellow uniform because it is only the third episode ever filmed, her first appearance and hence they were still working these finer points out.
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-11 at 4:13pm:
  I thought this was a solid episode, though certainly not perfect.
  
  - I thought Balok's behavior was strange too, but I interpret it differently. His ship was never really disabled. He was essentially a superbeing who was testing the crew. Superior races in Star Trek consistently have very picky opinions about what makes a lesser race worthy of contact. So I believe he was testing them to see if they "had evolved to a point" where they were worthy of a cultural exchange.
  - I agree that Balok's acting is way over the top. But I don't mind, it is part of the charm. Except that his repetitiousness gets monotonous after a while.
  - I agree that some of the scenes are stretched too long. On the other hand, it can be nice to see a show with a slower pace once in a while. After all, it is still a lot faster paced than real life.
  - My main complaint has always been that I was quite unimpressed with Kirk's bluff. Everyone acts like it is this daring poker bluff, but to me it sounds more like a caricature of a bluff. It is the sort of bluff I might create if I was writing a story about how great Kirk is at bluffing, but had no creativity myself to come up with a clever bluff, so instead I just write that Kirk says something ridiculous and the enemy believes it, "proving" that Kirk is a great bluffer. The bluff is ridiculous; his delivery is good, but not that good. Fortunately, the story doesn't depend on Balok believing the bluff; I assume he didn't, but just pretended that he did as part of the test.
  - I like the bantering between Kirk and McCoy. Except for the complaints about having a female yeoman – what is that all about?
  - Science Note: The cube is 107 meters on a side and 11000 metric tons. But Scotty says the cube is solid. That would make the density of the cube extremely low, around 1% of the density of water, so it is made of something very lightweight.
  
• From Mike Meares on 2012-02-26 at 3:03am:
  I thought this was a great episode! Maybe not perfect but is anything really perfect? I thought the Corbomite Maneuver was one of the best episodes from the first year!
  
  And considering it was only the third episode filmed in the series the execution was pretty darn good.
  
  What I thought was flawed was Kethinov’s review.
  
  The Corbomite Maneuver was taut, tense and dramatic and it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. What Kethinov calls the “incredibly slow pace” was actually what I loved most about this episode. You can almost feel the tension the crew is feeling as you are watching it. I always enjoyed it when Kirk and McCoy butted heads and their heated exchange in this episode is really good. You can even see the sweat on the crew’s faces which made it all the more realistic.
  
  When Kethinov complains about the pacing I can almost hear Bailey saying, “I don’t understand this. Spock’s wasting time. Everybody else just sitting around. Somebody’s got to do something!” The feeling Kethinov gets from watching the episode is exactly what the crew is feeling. And that is what good drama is all about.
  
  Granted the corny figure of Balok leaves a lot to be desired, but look at the shoestring budget the network had them on. Cut them some slack please. A chessy sci-fi radio show from the 50’s probably had a bigger budget.
  
  And as for Balok’s motives I totally agree with Calexander here. Balok was from an advanced race and the whole thing was a test to see how the Enterprise would respond. Did we really believe that Balok would destroy the Enterprise at the end of the ten minutes? I thought so at the time but looking back I can now see he had no intention of ever doing that. When he allowed the Enterprise to “supposedly” disable his ship this again was another test. If the Enterprise left him to die on his own then he knew this was not a race Balok’s people wanted to have any contact with.
  
  Fortunately, the writers had the Enterprise, or more correctly James Kirk, make the right choice. That of placing the safety of alien life above the safety of his own life. This kind of moral is what DID SET ( past tense!!!! ) Star Trek above all other science fiction films and TV. And why I enjoyed the first two seasons of Star Trek ( and a couple of the Star Trek movies )so much.
  
  As for the bluff, I loved it. I still do. I still crack up every time I hear Spock say, “A very interesting game, this poker.”
  
  And I always wondered if McCoy ever did teach Spock to play poker? LOL.
  
  As for Kirk’s complains about the female yeoman, I think he was just venting to McCoy about Rand “hovering” over him like a mother. Which brings me to my only complaint of this episode, and really it is a complaint of the series as a whole. And that is the role of the yeoman was always played by a woman. I felt this was sexiest. I think you will find in the U.S Navy over half the yeomen are exactly that MEN! Nowhere that I have ever seen has there ever been a male yeoman in Star Trek and I think it is a weakness of the series as a whole.
  
  All in all a thoroughly enjoyable episode and one I would highly recommend to anyone starting out watching Star Trek!
• From Alan Feldman on 2012-09-23 at 6:17pm:
  The Corbomite Maneuver
  
  Terrible story, but with some fun moments here and there.
  
  In short, the main problem with this episode is that Balok is incredibly cruel and unreasonable -- and that this is somehow justified by the claim that he was only "testing" the Enterprise crew, albeit with faulty logic, to determine their "true intentions".
  
  Re Kethinov's review: I mostly agree with it, but I think that his final paragraph goes too easy on the episode.
  
  >----o----<
  
  On to the story:
  
  The Enterprise is minding its own business when a "space buoy" chases our heroes down and holds them trapped for what will be 18 hours. (What did they do during that 18 hours?)
  
  OK, they convene in the briefing room. Uhura looks like she's sitting through a long, really boring class. And Sulu has his head down on the table! Were they in that briefing room the entire 18 hours?
  
  I like this dialogue:
  
  [In the briefing room]
  
  KIRK: Anything further, gentlemen?
  SPOCK: I believe it adds up to either one of two possibilities. First, a space buoy of some kind.
  KIRK: Second?
  SPOCK: Flypaper.
  KIRK: And you don't recommend sticking around.
  SPOCK: Negative. It would make us appear too weak.
  KIRK: It's time for action, gentlemen. Mister Bailey . . .
  
  So it took 18 hours to get to this point?
  
  OK. Kirk finally decides it's time for action. He decides to try to get away from the thing in a spiral course. So Balok tightens his grip on the ship and then has his "space buoy" bombard the Enterprise with deadly radiation. Kirk recklessly waits until near-lethal levels are reached and then finally fires phasers to destroy it. (Just what exactly was he waiting for? I found myself screaming at him, "Fire the phasers already!") And then Balok has the chutzpah to complain!
  
  "Having ignored a warning buoy, and having then destroyed it, has demonstrated your intention is not peaceful."
  
  What? Acting in self-preservation somehow demonstrates hostility?
  
  OK, after destroying the cube, the Enterprise goes forward.
  
  Then the giant flagship Fesarius puts a tractor beam on them, takes control of the ship, gives them 10 minutes to pray or what, after which they will be destroyed. The Enterprise ejects a recorder marker but Balok destroys it. Bailey loses it. Then the bluff trick. But what if Kirk hadn't made the bluff? What would Balok have done? Destroy them? Probably not. But the Enterprise crew didn't know that! That leaves, "Ha ha, just joking!" Seems pretty damn cruel to me. And couldn't they have dispatched a "subspace" message instead?
  
  Then more crap from Balok with the small tow ship and such. And Kirk nearly ruins his ship to pull free. This scene goes on for too long. And somehow the Captain knows the "maximum temperature" is way off. OK, maybe there is a huge safety factor implicit in the "maximum temperature. Nonetheless, we have Kirk being totally reckless again.
  
  Now, after all this crap Balok put them through, Kirk is supposed to respond favorably to a distress call? This is all some kind of test? Test of what? To see how much crap they'll put up with and still respond to a distress call?
  
  It's like you and your comrades are POW's of a ruthless enemy. You've been horribly mistreated. Then you are forced at gunpoint to line up against a wall, face the wall, after which you are told you are to be shot. Then the soldiers lay down their guns, pick up some cameras, and shoot photos of them. This is effectively what Balok did to the crew of the Enterprise. Would you want friends like this?
  
  And how about testing Balok? Is his behavior somehow acceptable? NO! It's cruel. Pure and simple. I mean, why can't we test _him_ for _his_ intentions? What would _you_ conclude from his behavior? Granted, it was the Enterprise that was trespassing, but the crew had no reason to believe that. And once Balok confronted them with the spinning cube, he proved that _he_ was the one who had hostile intentions and was being totally unreasonable, to boot!
  
  There's too quick a resolution too late in the show. It feels like a cheat. Similar to a "deus ex machina", though I'm not sure whether this is really the same thing or not. Regardless -- I mean, really: Balok: "It was a pleasure testing you." . . . Kirk: "I see." That's it? And that, all of a sudden, makes everything hunky-dory? Couldn't Balok at least have apologized: "Sorry, gentlemen, for scaring you half to death and nearly destroying you and your ship, but it was 'only a test', and I got a real kick out of it." Yeah.
  
  It's annoying enough having a sudden last-minute out-of-nowhere save like this, but to help someone who put you through such hell for no good reason? Hell, on that note I'd think an alien with this much power need not fear the Enterprise in the first place.
  
  And then they leave Bailey behind! Who's to say Balok won't put him through hell just like he did the Enterprise and crew? How do they know that Balok will ever let Bailey return? And what about the cuisine?!
  
  Would _you_ want to hang out with this Balok dude?
  
  >----o----<
  
  A few short points:
  
  Bailey reports that the buoy is 1593 meters distant. That's about a mile! It's clearly a lot closer than that. (I only have the re-mastered version, unfortunately. So I don't know if it's the same in the original.) And based on the ship being 289 m long and the spinning cube being 107 m on a side, the scale of everything is _way off_ anyway.
  
  It's funny when Janice places the napkin on Kirk's lap. How could Grace Lee Whitney do that with a straight face? Now that's acting!
  
  Spock says that Balok is "in some manner reminiscent of [his] father". Say what? Totally absurd. Please. This must have been some desperate "filler" material.
  
  Uhura says "hailing frequencies open" some seven times, and practically nothing else until the end when she tells us about Balok's "distress signal".
  
  About that shot of Sulu turning around at about 7m20s: Is this the same shot seen in many other episodes?
  
  Rand with the coffee: Nice random element to throw in. Nice contrast to the gravity of the situation.
  
  This Balok dude is really into curtains, no? His "ship" doesn't look much like a ship. It looks like a curtain store. Must be a budget-saving device.
  
  Which ship was which? When I first saw this episode literally decades ago I thought the small ship was not manned by Balok. Balok stayed on the big ship, safe from any possible Corbomite device and thereby thwarting Kirk's bluff! But as I watch it now it looks like he _was_ on the little tow ship. So what was the point of that? And why does he have the big ship?
  
  Memory Alpha has a page about the Fesarius: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Fesarius. Among other things, it explains that the special effects to make the large ship was so difficult that it held up the episode, resulting in it being the tenth to be shown.
  
  Balok says he thought his distress signal was "quite clever". In isolation it _was_ clever, as the distress call was aimed at "the mother ship", and likely not strong enough to be heard (though I'm not sure how you could determine these things). But this is not a dude deserving rescue.
  
  Spock was clearly unhappy about not finding a solution to the problem. Is this not emotion?
  
  Boy, it didn't take long for Scotty to evaluate the engines!
  
  >----o----<
  
  On the bright side:
  
  o Yeoman Rand serving greens to Kirk.
  o The look of evil Balok.
  o Spock, Bailey, and Sulu in the adrenaline-gland scene.
  o The hilarity of the briefing-room scene.
  o The chess and poker bit. Spock: "A very interesting game, this poker."
  o Yeoman Rand serving coffee.
  
  >----o----<
  
  On readers' comments:
  
  John Bernhardt pointed out that this was the 1st post-pilot production. Quite believable, as Spock is still using his "loud voice" from time to time (and complains about Bailey raising his!). He clearly still has at least some of the mannerisms of "early Spock" from the pilot episodes, though to a lesser degree.
  
  I agree with CAlexander about Kirk's bluff being not that good and such.
  
  A similar Corbomite bluff was used in "The Deadly Years", but was better-played and more believable as a severe-overkill self-destruct mechanism, as opposed to the "reverse reaction" mechanism we see here.
  
  Re Mike Meares' comments:
  
  There's "keeping you on the edge of your seat", and there's "let's get on with it already". I found this episode to be more of the latter.
  
  Why should one place the safety of alien life above one's own? (And this goes double for such a cruel alien.) Behavior like that would quickly doom a species to extinction.
  
  AEF
• From Strider on 2012-10-06 at 6:01am:
  This is one of my favorite episodes, and I watch it frequently, all the way up to the last segment with Balok. I always turn it off when they're going into the transporter. I actually love Clint Howard as an actor, but I hate that last segment.
  
  But up to that, I think it's one of the best episodes in the series. Kirk completely owns this episode. He's human enough to be anxious about the fate of his ship and crew, but he's the one that comes up with all the solutions. Even Spock is ashamed that he can't come up with any logical solutions. And for once, they get out not because some all-powerful entity decides to let them go, but because Kirk is ingenious and courageous. The crew is in awe of him; you can see it on the faces of everyone on the bridge from Spock to Sulu.
  
  I never found the pacing slow. I, too, found that it built tension throughout the episode. When they counted down the 10 minutes and then they didn't die, that was a huge moment! You can't create moments like that without investing some time in it.
• From Dos Flores on 2012-12-28 at 5:36am:
  Oh dear. I was nodding along with each of your episodes reviews and ratings, right up to this one - one of my favorite!
  I thought the pacing, really quite different from typical original series fare, was one of its selling points. Was Balok's behavior and response over-the-top theatrical in its Booming Menace and Evil? Well, yes! Because it *was* an act, one-dimensional and heavy-handed, designed precisely to be unreasonable, in order to put them through a dramatic wringer, psychologically, and see how they'd react under duress. And the disabled ship may have been, as someone suggested, a poor way to test their altruism, considering what he had just put them through, but it was a great way to test their level of aggression or vindictiveness, precisely BECAUSE of what he had just put them through. There was a third option, after all, besides either aiding or not aiding a helpless and disabled enemy vessel... what would a Klingon commander have done in that exact situation, for example?
  This episode was also some of Shatner's most restrained acting, and it's a nice reminder of the fact that, when ego and diet pills weren't making him, well, Shatner, he really *could* act. I liked this completely grown-up Captain Kirk, and can actually see him with some emotional weight on him in that command chair. His interactions with McCoy, including quietly snarling at him under pressure, feel real, as do his frustrated attempts to get through to an obviously overmatched bridge crew member. ("Promoted too fast"... uhm, ya think?) He certainly would have made my short list of people to maroon with a strange alien...
  
  And more! The scenes between Spock and Kirk this early in the series are a huge selling point for the episode, laying such fine groundwork for what is already being shaded as a deep connection. When Kirk, stressed out by the unreasonable countdown to destruction, verbally cuts at Spock for not having a magic-bullet solution, Nimoy just nails the response. You can see his sense of having personally failed the Captain, and it hurts. Plot holes? For sure. But no more than I think are typical for the series overall, and with some nice tension and pacing for distraction!
• From Schreck on 2013-05-23 at 9:08pm:
  A very early episode that is very slow moving, but offers a few nice moments that clearly show where the crew and Kirk will be going in the future…plus we get Clint Howard!!! I give it a 7 and my brother a 6.25
• From CAlexander on 2013-09-03 at 10:07pm:
  There has been some discussion about whether Balok’s behavior is reasonable or unreasonable, but I would like to point out that our judgment of Balok’s behavior makes no difference to the episode. We have to keep in mind what Kirk’s mission is. Kirk’s mission is to establish peaceful relations with Balok’s people. If Balok’s culture considers it appropriate to put strangers in mortal danger as a test of character, it isn’t Kirk’s job to tell them that their cultural customs suck. How does it benefit the Federation to needlessly antagonize foreign cultures by denigrating their value systems as inferior to that of the Federation? Kirk’s job is to suck it up, smile, and make good relations with the strange representative of an extremely powerful and dangerous foreign government.
• From Alan Feldman on 2013-11-17 at 2:42am:
  To Dos Flores:
  
  Regardless of whether this was a great way to test Kirk and crew (and I claim it wasn't), how can you possibly justify such cruelty? You seem to have absolutely no concern for the well being of our heroes. Take the radiation attack, for example. Even though it did not kill them then right there and then, it must have surely caused numerous cases of radiation sickness. (Realistically, it would have. Well, I suppose it turns on just what Spock meant by "tolerance level" and "lethal zone". It's not like everyone would instantaneously drop dead at any point, but having entered the "lethal zone" it seems to me that many should have gotten radiation sickness and cancer and what not. Hey, just for the test, right?) And the Enterprise might have easily been destroyed at some point. A lot of wear and tear, at least. These things are somehow insignificant and justified?
  
  To Dos Flores and CAlexander:
  
  What would you have thought if Captain Kirk and crew did all this to a technologically inferior culture who were just minding their own business, just like the Enterprise was? What if either of them did it to you? And if you have children, them? Your kids getting radiation sickness? Just for the test, eh?
  
  This was like an elephant testing the intentions of a mouse.
  
  To CAlexander:
  
  Balok was way beyond unreasonable. He was evil, pure and simple. And he deserved zero good will, irrespective of anything else. Severe punishment would be appropriate. He bombarded the Enterprise with lethal radiation for crying out loud! That's pretty damn hostile, if you ask me.
  
  What about the Axis powers? Would you have tried to establish peaceful relations with them? Hmmm. Someone tried with one of them. It didn't turn out too well. So you would say that maybe they were just testing us? That our job was to suck it up and let the Axis powers have their way?
  
  Kirk frequently denigrated alien cultures' customs. He also did something about it! Here's a list.
  
  Romulans and Klingons in any episode they appear in.
  
  Balance of Terror
  The Return of the Archons
  Space Seed (well, the culture of Kahn and his crew)
  A Taste of Armageddon
  Who Mourns for Adonais?
  The Apple
  I, Mudd (the androids' culture)
  The Gamesters of Triskelion
  A Piece of the Action
  Patterns of Force
  By Any Other Name
  The Omega Glory
  Spock's Brain
  For the World Is Hollow
  Plato's Stepchildren
  Wink of an Eye
  The Empath
  The Cloud Minders
  The Savage Curtain
  
  In all these episodes he not only judged and disapproved of the alien cultures; when he could, he put things right, as he should have. And the Federation had no problem with it, to boot.
  
  AEF, a.k.a. betaneptune
• From Rick on 2014-08-26 at 5:03pm:
  At Alan Feldman:
  
  I dont think you understand the way that "superior" beings are portrayed on Star Trek. From the view of the inferior beings (in this case humans) their actions may seem cruel but that does not make them cruel by their standards (presumably because we cannot understand their standards). Q is a great example of this. Heck, the Federation is a great example of this! Dont you think the prime directive seems extremely cruel to the inferior beings that it negatively affects?
  
  Anyway, Balok's portrayal is very consistent with the portrayal of superior beings on Star Trek, and therefore shouldnt be considered a negative to this episode in particular.
• From Alan Feldman on 2014-09-14 at 9:50pm:
  At Rick:
  
  "I dont think you understand the way that "superior" beings are portrayed on Star Trek. From the view of the inferior beings (in this case humans) their actions may seem cruel but that does not make them cruel by their standards (presumably because we cannot understand their standards)."
  
  Sorry, I don't buy your explanation. It's a cop-out. Cruel is cruel.
  
  I think you used the last occurrence of the word _cruel_ above to mean immoral. Regardless, I find Balok to be both cruel and immoral.
  
  Now, morality is a slippery term, and I don't want to get into an extended philosophical discussion here, but I think the following is beyond question:
  
  Balok was cruel, hostile, highly unreasonable, and hypocritical.
  
  So what bothers me so much is how all this was just hunky dory in the end, and how this testing was somehow legitimate and justifiable. Imagine if our heroes did the same to some inferior race or species.
  
  What Balok did was awful and he deserves jail, not friends. And why should we go by his standards, anyway? Criminals and psychopaths have their own standards. Would you give _them_ a pass? What's not to understand?
  
  "Q is a great example of this."
  
  I know next to nothing about Q. I have seen probably not more than one or two episodes of each of the spin-offs. I care primarily about Star Trek TOS. The rest is of little or no interest to me. Even the Star Trek TOS movies don't interest me as much as the TOS TV show. Q and such is not Star Trek to me.
  
  As far as being inferior: In this case it's just a matter of technology. It's not like a human compared to a worm or a single-cell organism.
  
  "Heck, the Federation is a great example of this! Dont you think the prime directive seems extremely cruel to the inferior beings that it negatively affects?"
  
  Re the Prime Directive:
  
  Even D.C. Fontana, when asked about it said, "You mean the one Kirk violated all the time?" [Ref. http://youtu.be/ZtEBNNkouck starting at 2:34.]
  
  There are approximately 11 episodes where the Prime Directive might apply. In only eight of them is it mentioned explicitly (Archons, Apple, Piece of Action, Private Little War, Patterns, Omega, Bread, and Hollow). In almost all of them, Kirk interferes. In fact, Spock asks Kirk in many of these episodes if they had violated (or should violate) the Prime Directive, with Kirk always making up some answer that may or may not pass muster. In a few he tried to undo damage that was already done by others. The Directive was taken most seriously, regardless of consequences to our heroes, in "A Private Little War," and most especially in "Bread and Circuses."
  
  So where's the damage? [Perhaps you're thinking of the one TNG episode I actually saw in its entirety, in which Picard refuses to interfere, even though the civilization in question was doomed to extinction without some outside help. But this is the TOS forum.]
  
  "Anyway, Balok's portrayal is very consistent with the portrayal of superior beings on Star Trek, and therefore shouldnt be considered a negative to this episode in particular."
  
  The closest I can see to Balok in TOS are the Melkotians and the Vians. But the Melkotians had some justification because they made it crystal clear to Kirk right at the outset that the Enterprise was trespassing and should promptly go away. Balok had no justification whatsoever. He was hostile from the outset. The Vians were also pretty bad, but at least they weren't rescued or befriended in the end. Oh, the Metrons also did some testing -- a rather complicated morality case I choose not analyze at this time.
  
  In TOS, each case of "superior beings" is different. I don't see how you can classify them so narrowly. Trelane was immature, a hypocrite and a psychopath. Gorgan was power-hungry. Apollo was overly egotistical and selfish. The Salt Monster, the fog creature in "Obsession," the huge "cell" in "The Immunity Syndrome," and the ravioli monsters were basically just dangerous animals. The Organians were peaceful and super powerful. The entity in "Day of the Dove" was pretty much evil, don't you think? Sargon was good, Felicia teetered, and Hannock was evil. Jack the Ripper in "Wolf in the Fold" was pure psychopath. I'll skip the rest. All the evil beings were either destroyed, incapacitated, or taken away by others, the exception being Balok.
  
  What bothers me the most in this episode is Kirk's rescue attempt and befriending of such a contemptible person. That is contrary to what he did with every other evil entity in the show.
  
• From Rick on 2015-02-27 at 7:41pm:
  " [Perhaps you're thinking of the one TNG episode I actually saw in its entirety, in which Picard refuses to interfere, even though the civilization in question was doomed to extinction without some outside help. But this is the TOS forum.]"
  
  Actually there are multiple episodes in TNG where the Enterprise lets a species go extinct. Additionally, in "The Last Outpost" Riker specifically states that the Federation has let numerous races go extinct even though they could have intervened to save them. I imagine if those people that were needlessly killed knew the Federation couldve saved them they mightve thought it was a tad cruel.
• From thaibites on 2015-09-30 at 8:08pm:
  The best thing about this episode is creepy, little Clint Howard. If you didn't grow up with this episode, you will never understand. I love when he laughs and drinks Tranya - it's so fake, it's awesome! Clint should've gotten and Emmy for this. Love those wacky teeth, too.
  
  I need some Tranya...
• From Alan Feldman on 2015-11-14 at 3:47am:
  Yet more on "The Corbomite Maneuver".
  
  In reply to Rick on 2015-02-27 at 7:41pm:
  
  Letting a civilization needlessly go extinct _is_ cruel. And it makes no sense, to boot.
  
  Yet another strike against TNG.
  
  >----o----<
  
  On my list of Prime Directive episodes, a few should be removed, like "Space Seed" and "By Any Other Name". Maybe one could make a case for non-interference in a few of them of the ones still on the list. But I think blind unthinking adherence to it, as if it were perfectly constructed by lawmakers of infallible wisdom, is foolhardy.
  
  AEF
• From CAlexander on 2017-04-09 at 3:06pm:
  To Alan: The Klingons (like the Axis, etc.) are a good example. They did far, far, far, far worse things than Balok, but the Federation still made peace with them by TNG, even though they were unrepentent. And it is easy to see why – as per Yesterday’s Enterprise, if they hadn’t, the Federation would have been conquered. The Federation is quite capable of engaging in diplomacy with violent cultures when it is in its own best interests. While Kirk certainly loved interfering with alien cultures when he got a chance, but they were different situations for many reasons I’d love to discuss but don’t want to spend the space on, but generally involving foes either still actively threatening the Federation or actively continuing to engage in reprehensible conduct or Kirk being in a position of power, none of which was the case with Balok.
  However, thinking more on this I believe I may have missed something important here. If I recall, the setup was that the Enterprise was on a mission to invade First Federation space to establish contact, and ignored express warnings to not to enter. If interstellar law works like international law on Earth, the First Federation would be well within its right to destroy the Enterprise (remember the Soviet Union shot down U2 spy planes that weren’t even armed, the Enterprise could have reduced the First Federation planets to radioactive slag if unopposed). The Enterprise must have known they were risking a war by entering, and after discovering Balok incredible power, they must have been overjoyed by the end that he wasn’t going to retaliate and that, in fact, they had succeeded on their mission with far less loss of life than they may have anticipated.
  
• From Alan Feldman on 2017-07-08 at 6:41pm:
  To CAlexander:
  
  Well, the Enterprise did not know it was intruding on anyone's territory. The cube came out of nowhere and held them "still" for 18 hours. The Enterprise was minding its own business -- mapping uncharted regions of the galaxy. Hardly a crime! (I put "still" in quotation marks, as Star Trek's concept of motion is pre-Newtonian physics. I could go on, "but I digress.") As for the U-2 spy plane, they knew they were flying over the Soviet Union. Kirk et al. knew nothing. It's one thing to negotiate. It's another to walk into the lion's den.
  
  TNG is not TOS. I don't know what "Yesterday's Enterprise" is. I guess that's an episode of TNG. Not relevant in my book.
  
  And when Balok faked the distress call, what if it were a trap? That's not exactly an invitation for negotiation! Clearly not a good-faith gesture!!!
  
  C'mon. I seriously doubt the Enterprise was even the slightest threat to the First Foundation. In fact, Balok himself said so! So why bother with the test? Especially given how cruel it was.
  
  Again, would you sanction the Enterprise doing the same things to an inferior civilization? Really?
  
  Again, Balok was hypocritical in that it was okay for him to test our heroes, but not the other way around. Why should Kirk and company trust Balok without testing _him_? In fact, it was Balok who was _clearly_ (no test needed!) showing hostile intentions. If anything . . . cripes, we're talking hypocrisy of the first order. Sorry, but this is not a situation amenable to negotiation.
  
  Retaliate for what? Self-defense?
  
  I don't think I can explain it any better.
• From Chris Long on 2018-12-10 at 2:21am:
  Shy does a kid this young with obviously rich parents have so many filling?!?!?
  
  I guess the 'rich parents' is the key...
  
  Christ! the boy was messed up before he started and still scores H-Wood roles?
  Please try not to tell me it was because he was "SUPER TALENTED!!!", because he wasn't and I, being much better looking would've been a million more times charming. Just sayin'... and my teeth wouldn't have been an embarrassment in later years!
  
  ... but I'm not bitter.
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2010-04-05 at 8:28pm:
  I like this episode because it has a traditional robot instead of an android. I also like the cold responses the robot gave: "Non-sequitur," "insufficient response," etc.
  
  The biggest letdown while watching this episode is the whole "Uhura's brain got erased" subplot. How absurd is it to think that Nurse Chapel is going to reteach Uhura EVERYTHING, and she's going to do it just in time for the next episode. How is Uhura going to perform her duties on the bridge if she can't even pronounce the word "blue"? What a joke!
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2010-09-10 at 2:59am:
  Pimpdaddy is right (now there's a statement I never would have imagined myself making)!
  
  It's totally absurd to think Uhura will just be "re-educated" to be a fullly functional starfleet officer. But even if we can make peace with the idea that she'll somehow learn all the job-related functions (she's an astronaut, so she probably started out a with a pretty good brain, right? Stay with me, my fellow retconners)... but how is she supposed to resume her LIFE without any personal memories? What about her family, friends, memories of growing up, etc.? Somebody should look for instances in subsequent episodes where she refers to things she should not be able to recall.
  
  You know, if this were TNG, you can be sure that Dr. Crusher and/or Data would have found a way to "restore" her original brain contents by the end of the episode :-)
• From Alex on 2012-05-24 at 12:08am:
  I thought this was a 7. In the 2nd tier of shows in the second season. Nomad and how its purpose changed is excellent. That main plot was great. Erasing the brain was cool, but the reeducation was unbelieveable even for star date 4,000.
• From warpfactor 10.1 on 2012-09-19 at 10:14pm:
  It seems clear on even the most cursory of inspections that Nomad started life as a patio heater. There are several of these 'units' in the garden of the pub near where I live and I tried to destroy them in the way that Kirk destroyed Nomad but they outwitted me by ignoring me completely. They did however have an off switch on the side.
  Pity about the sub-plot with Uhura which was pointless and had so many holes in it.
• From Jasper on 2013-11-03 at 10:17am:
  This episode does, however, invalidate a recent popular memegif: Scotty was *not* the only redshirt never to be killed. He just got resurrected when he did.
  
  I would imagine, watching it at the time, if you'd noticed the redshirt tendency, his death might have had some impact for the original audience that it doesn't for the watchers today.
• From Chris Long on 2017-11-18 at 10:24pm:
  The biggest problem with Uhura's memory wipe aside from everyone else's complaints was that she was fluent in Swahili. I'm kind of surprised that no one else mentioned this little bit of idiocy.
• From ChristopherA on 2021-01-17 at 5:38am:
  I totally agree with you and everyone else here that Uhura losing her memory is completely ridiculous in terms of continuity. The issue is blatant enough to detract from the quality of the episode, it is just weird that there are no further consequences for this. Still, it is just a continuity error, not a flaw with the internal logic of the episode.
  
  I agree it is really confusing stating that nomad’s attacks have the power of 90 photon torpedoes and then showing the Enterprise surviving hits from them. While the statement is pretty silly and does strain your suspension of disbelief, it isn't impossible to make up an explanation for this. It could be they have 90 times the energy of a photon torpedo without being 90 times as effective as a weapon, in that photon torpedoes are likely specifically designed to expend their energy in the most effective way to penetrate shields and damage a starship, while Nomad may have never fought a starship and may simply be shooting huge bolts that waste most of their energy on empty space. For instance, a speeding car can have 90 times the energy of a bullet without being 90 times as lethal.
  
  You didn't mention the point that is even more weird, which is that the Enterprise survives an attack as powerful as 90 photon torpedoes, then complains when Nomad absorbs the energy from ONE photon torpedo by saying it is impossible to withstand a photon torpedo blast. Huh? I can make up an explanation for this by saying that the Federation knows how to build ships which can “survive” photon torpedoes with only shield damage, but has no idea how to build something that can “absorb” the power of a photon torpedo with no visible effect at all.
  
  If Spock can mind meld with a silicon based lifeform with some sort of weird silicon based brain, it isn't totally impossible that he could mind meld with something that used to be a computer but has now evolved into something new and different. Still, I would agree that in terms of continuity it is rather odd that you can establish telepathic contact with Nomad but not with Data. But since they never explain how telepathic powers are supposed to work, it just ends up being that they work on whatever the writer wants them to work on, but they consistently don't work on any sort of sentient computer built with technology available to the Federation.
  
  I don't agree at all that Nomad is vulnerable when it is inside the Enterprise, the opposite is true, it is our heroes who are more vulnerable. When Nomad is outside this ship the Enterprise can bring to bear enough firepower to sterilize the surface of an entire planet, and it still isn't enough to do anything. Inside the ship all they have are puny hand phasers and a transporter system which we know is easily defended against and has never been shown to simply dismantle starship-level threats. Whereas Nomad is still just as powerful inside the ship as outside and can easily destroy the Enterprise from within at any time. Even if it drops the force field that prevents Spock from establishing a mind meld, this is still a device that can absorb the entire energy of a photon torpedo into nothingness, a hand phaser is not a threat. And even if it is possible that, despite all of Nomad’s ludicrous powers, Kirk could find some weapon that it doesn’t have mysterious defenses against, you can't really fault that he made a command decision not to risk the instant destruction of his ship by continuing to antagonize it with attacks, and took on a different approach which ultimately worked.
  
  While this isn't particularly my favorite episode and has some flaws, I don't think it is a particularly bad episode either, I liked the drama and how they slowly figured out what it was and how to deal with it. It is played out in a hammy and over-the-top way, but that is part of the charm of the original series.
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From J. Poole on 2006-04-20 at 5:43pm:
  This is an episode that I remembered fondly from my childhood, but it stood out as one of the worst when I watched the series again recently on dvd (God bless Netflix).
  
  For the most part, I agree with the review of this episode featured on this site--the problems with the prime directive, the mass murder of the redshirts, etc. are all indicitive of bad TOS episodes. I don't buy McCoy's arrogance when he's debating with Spock about saving these people from their idyll, but I guess you can ultimately justify breaking the Prime Directive because the ship was in danger.
  
  That aside, though, there are still some real problems with this episode, namely the cliched aliens du jour and the "nothing can kill Spock" attitude this episode takes toward the first officer.
  
  The aliens (aside from looking silly with their flowers and make up and spray-on tans) are ridiculous. I like the idea of their "Eden," even if it is a bit over-used, but I just don't buy these guys. And why, why, why does the Enterprise have orders to contact them just because of "strange readings?" This episode tramples on the Prime Directive from the very beginning. And you'd think that the crew would have learned to stay away from alien flowers by now.
  
  The problem with Spock bothers me as well. I realize that he's physiologically different--stronger, able to mentally heal himself, etc.--but he should have died twice in this episode. I can buy the spore-thorns not killing him because of his different physiology, but a lightning strick capable of not only killing but actually vaporizing a red shirt ensign simply gives him some second-degree burns that are never mentioned again. Give me a break.
  
  This episode is a real candidate for my personal "Worst Of" list. The only thing that saves it for me is Spock's analysis after the Feeders of Vaal try to kill the crew: if McCoy was worried about their stagnation, their lack of humanity, he need worry no longer because they have now taken a vital step by learning to kill.
• From Arianwen on 2010-07-26 at 11:43pm:
  Gentlemen/women/variations thereupon, I submit to you one Yeoman Martha Landon, who wears a short dress, is in love with one of the crewmen and shows concern for the natives' well-being. And flattens large, muscular men. Twice.
  
  This is only the third time I remember seeing a woman take physical action against another person and succeed - without screaming. One of the redeeming features of this episode.
  
  I agree with your review - the story is annoying and has many flaws. But it had potential, and with better handling (and laying off Spock for a few minutes) it might have turned out very well. I quite liked the natives - not the hippiness, but the physical portrayal, the facepaints (but don't look too hard at the hairstyles). It would have been more interesting if they had found out just what that machine was, rather than just destroying it and strolling off happily. Although I have a feeling it would have resulted in Kirk talking yet another computer into oblivion. The man is a menace.
• From jd_juggler on 2015-03-22 at 4:09pm:
  No, the saving of one's ship is not a justification for violating the Prime Directive. In one of the Captains Log entries from "The Omega Glory" Kirk notes that the prime directive even includes sacrificing the entire crew rather than interfere with the native culture. By the way, remember the redshirt who tripped on a rock and was blown up? The stuntman was severely injured and in fact was hospitalized.
• From Chris on 2018-01-14 at 10:50pm:
  This episode bugged me for a lot of reasons and I wonder how Nichelle Nicols felt when Roddenberry (or whoever) described the natives in this episode. Tanned, blonde, muscular surfer looking types, you know typical good-looking folks.
  I was often fascinated how Star Trek portrayed the good/innocent inhabitants of various worlds... like the Yangs or the Hill People of Neural. All white and good looking with goofy hairdos.
  
  Considering that Roddenberry was an atheist, they sure used a lot of Bible references in their episodes!
  
  Other problems with this episode aside from the ones mentioned are:
  - Spock breaking the stone landmine without it going off in his hands!
  - Spock being selected to give a sex-ed lesson when there is a perfectly good doctor on hand who is far more qualified on the subject. Especially human sex! Yes, I understand the 'humor' wouldn't work my way...
  - McCoy continually unprepared to handle Vulcan physiology, continuously using human drugs on aliens.
  
  There are numerous other problems as well...
  
  I laughed at the 'argument' between Chekov and Spock! "Vhat do you vant, violins?
  
  A factoid that should be listed is that Kirk establishes that the warp nacelles can be jettisoned from the main body of the ship! That's mentioned in another episode as well but I can't remember which... Later in Season 3, I believe.
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2010-05-03 at 8:13pm:
  I liked this episode a little. It is one of the rare episodes where Kirk spends a great deal of time regetting the loss of his fellow redshirted crewmember, the one who dies a minute after beaming down. He even chews out McCoy with his misplaced anger. Also, McCoy's semi-romance with the pregnant woman is interesting.
  
  Eventually, the show falters as it shifts into cliche action sequences out in the rocks. This is the only time I know where a communicator is used to create an avalanche.
  
  One more thing, there's something distrubing when you hear McCoy saying Ochie Woochie Koochi Koo; it's sounds dubbed.
• From Peter Collins on 2015-03-18 at 2:34pm:
  Pretty poor episode, but just one thing: isn't there a line about how McCoy spent some time on the planet getting to know the locals, which is how he has some in-depth knowledge?
• From Rick on 2017-02-08 at 3:22am:
  "On top of that the diplomacy in this episode is terrible in a couple of places. First and foremost, the entire premise of this episode is a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, again much like Errand of Mercy. Second, even if we assume that the Federation had made an exception to the Prime Directive due to the importance of securing the resources on this planet"
  
  Eventually I assumed that you would figure out that the Prime Directive does not apply to worlds where the Klingons will conquer and destroy unless you intervene. The point of the Prime Directive is to allow worlds to develop naturally. If you have advance knowledge that a race (i.e. the Klingons) are going to conquer, use, and destroy a planet, then yes, you can intervene because the Klingons are going to intervene regardless of whether you do. Come on man. Stop being so uselessly hard on TOS. We all clearly realize that you dont like TOS in favor of the precious continuity of the much lesser DS9 and the like.
• From Rick on 2017-02-08 at 3:53am:
  In addition to the above, come on, give some credit to the ending. The antagonist of the entire episode finally comes to the realization that the Klingon that he has been supporting is in fact a fraud, and decides to sacrifice himself for the good of his people. That is the kind of antagonist I can get behind and the kind of one that makes a great episode.
• From Chris on 2018-01-17 at 7:08pm:
  I wasn't going to comment on this episode but feel the need to interject something re: The Prime Directive.
  That regulation was blown out of the water at the episode's beginning with McCoy having already visiting the planet and learning about its people.
  
  For that to have even been allowed to happen means that in earlier years, this planet had been visited and the natives already knew of aliens from the sky. They already knew about Federation weapons, communicators, etc...
  
  I see no problem with the PD in this episode at all.
  
  I do have a problem with Kirk's rationale that they violated no customs and so on! Is he high?!?Ridiculous for him to even go after Bones!
  
  I always hate that TOS made the Klingons out to be such conniving sissies!
• From Chris on 2019-02-09 at 10:56pm:
  As usual... Another follow up.
  
  I loved the interactions between McCoy and Eleen when slap each other! That S___ Eating grin on her face is priceless!
  
  I also always like when Kirk baits Spock with "Well, if you don't think it'll work, maybe we shouldn't try..."
  
  Did anyone else notice the Klingon falling down as they were approaching? They even kept the follow-up scene where he is recovering from his fall!
  
  I'm consistently annoyed by their warp factor choices! The plague on New Makus when after Spock and the remains of the Galileo Seven get back on board, Kirk heads off at Warp 1! WTF?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From rhea on 2008-04-27 at 10:07pm:
  True, in a lot of ways it is The Doomsday Machine II, but on the level of character interaction, we still learn something new. The captain is (all too briefly) in captain mode, deciding which of his friends to send to death. The inability of McCoy to wish Spock luck but being worried nonetheless is quite telling, more clearly defining their love-hate-relationship. Spock is remarkable in his stoic expectation of death. What annoyed me was that it was again Kirk who saved the Enterprise with the idea of the antibody and the antimatter bomb, when clearly Spock had the same idea before (but was unable to communicate it). Why not once give the credit to him?
• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2010-06-07 at 2:09am:
  I just watched the Blu-Ray version and I thought they did a great job with the new visuals. They didn't do a complete redesign of the organism; they just show more detail. That's a good thing.
  
  As far as my overall opinion of this episode, I'd say it's a good one. There's a lot of tension and drama. Spock embarks on a dangerous mission, Kirk has to make tough decisions, Scotty's having troubles with the ship, etc. I think we see real suffering with the crew, as opposed to manufactured suffering.
• From Glenn239 on 2012-09-27 at 1:10pm:
  A solid drama-based episode that is in the top 1/3rd. That it was a rehash of the Doomsday Machine speaks for it, not against it. Star Trek repacked everything and I'd rather it reprise its great moments than its weak ones. I find much of what is called 'character building' in the series to be exercises in piling onto pre-existing cliques. I'm much more interested in a story establishing an interesting premise to which the crew responds - like this one does – and then examining the relationships between each member along the way, only as is necessary to resolve the problem. Yes, we get it. McCoy backbites Spock every chance he gets and Kirk and Spock are secretly in love or whatever. Now, can we please go phaser the Klingons? That’s why this episode is a ‘9’; good premise, good resolution, and good character interaction along the way.
• From Chris on 2018-08-15 at 5:22am:
  What I hate about this episode is...
  - When they clearly went into the 'dark zone' and Kirk is mystified as to where the stars went! What????
  - McCoy might have survived if he'd been wearing a helmet and a seatbelt!
  - Spock's clearly smug attitude towards McCoy about superior whatever... abilities...
  
  I do think that Kirk just took a key from Spock's last transmission and figured out what he was trying to say. I don't think he came up with it on his own.
  
  I liked the McCoy-Spock interactions and thought that part was excellently done! ... for the most part.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From TashaFan on 2008-09-19 at 1:46am:
  Another thing I noticed about this is how at the very end Spock shows up with one Redshirt(tm) and one quick phaser shot destroys the computer that was creating the artificial women. (Although it continues to spin in crazy patterns, just more slowly). An awfully quick solution so the danger certainly seems to have been manufactured and then conveniently disposed of once it's time to end the episode, I quite agree. So here's another supercomputer destroyed. But shouldn't Kirk have argued it to death?
• From Arianwen on 2010-09-01 at 10:45pm:
  Another remarkable scene - or rather sequence - from this episode: Scotty's time in the crawlway. The tension it generates is palpable and the final moments, when he's panicking over the magnetic probe ("it's stuck!") are pure gold. It feels very real; on the whole, a great episode for Scotty.
  
  Also good to see a female goldshirt actually being efficient on the flight-deck, and doing her job, her whole job and nothing but her job. (With a little bit of panicking to keep the crew company.)
• From Strider on 2012-07-01 at 4:48am:
  I was also very excited to see the female navigator! That actor was also one of the Native American women from "The Paradise Syndrome." While she was portrayed as a competent helmsman, you could also see that she was new to bridge duty and probably to working with Spock, because she makes a few mistakes that a person used to this dirty wouldn't have made. Though it's true tat ST has a mixed record in portraying women, I found these details to be realistic and not necessarily based on Radha's gender.
  
  
  I liked how big a role D'Amato played before his (inevitable) death--he really seemed to fit into the landing party, like he'd been with them before. And he got to offer some real expertise in his field, as well. Unlike all the doomed redshirts, I was sorry to see D'Amato go. He'd have been a good addition to the supporting cast. The actor who played him, Arthur Batanides, became a very accomplished television actor.
  
  Spock is awfully "Spocky" in this episode, isn't he? None of the irritated humor of "The Mark of Gideon," and none of the stress we usually see when he's worried about Kirk. However, it's my observation that the more deeply Spock feels emotions, the more Vulcan he becomes in response. Also, in this episode, he has what's essentially a science problem to solve, and that's what he's best at.
  
  Lots of good Scotty scenes in this episode as well. I loved when Scotty had just saved the ship against all odds (again) and Spock starts lecturing him on humans' need for gratitude, and Scotty just collapses in the crawlway in relief.
  
  Otherwise this episode's plot is weak, and the disco ball/cube computer corny. And I wanted Spock to tell Kirk, "Dude, we got the Enterprise up to warp 14.1! It was AWESOME!"
• From Alan Feldman on 2014-03-27 at 2:07am:
  "THAT WHICH SURVIVES"
  
  A solar hour is 1/24th of a solar day. A solar day is how long it takes the earth to rotate once relative to the sun. (Note that a sidereal day is how long it takes for the earth to rotate once relative to the fixed stars, which is about 23h56m. Since the earth has moved about 1 degree in its orbit over that time, the sun appears in a different place, and it takes about 4 extra minutes for the earth to rotate that additional degree.)
  
  So a solar day is 24 hours long.
  
  On a starship carrying humans it makes sense to emulate 24-hour days. In "The Conscience of the King" Kirk even says that's what they do. Hence, solar days on Star Trek.
  
  I like the scene where Scotty saves the ship. But why doesn't Spock say thank you? He says that in other episodes. Anyway, it works here, so that's good.
  
  Yeah, lame episode. What's the point of custom killer women who all look exactly the same? And the light-show computer? Bizarre.
  
  What's with that additional piece of Miss America's costume covering up her belly button? Looks silly. It's purpose is just so blatantly obvious. Didn't we see Nichelle Nichols' navel in "Mirror, Mirror"? And Nancy Kovack's (Nona) in "A Private Little War"?
  
  AEF, a.k.a. betaneptune
  
  
• From jeffenator98 on 2019-05-06 at 5:38pm:
  Why didn't she have to say "I'm for you transporter room guy"?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Lt. Fitz on 2012-06-20 at 8:24pm:
  Horrible episode. I had to watch it like 5 times to get through it without falling asleep. Even the actors looked bored. It looked like Kirk was falling asleep in the conference room. I still don't know why they figured that putting her in a pressure cooker would solve the problem of alien possession. And, what were those pressure cookers for, anyway? They use replicators for food. Thank goodness those otherwise useless devices were put on the ship.
  
  - Kirk's intense whisper: "Pressure, Spock. Pressure." And, then: "Pressure."
  - Bones: "The pressure's dangerously high, Captain!" Good writing. Glad that he said that to remind the audience that there is a threat in this snoozer of a plot.
  - Spock: "We may tax Mr. Scott's patience, Doctor." That's OK. He's been taxing my patience the entire episode.
• From James Ingalls on 2014-11-12 at 9:55pm:
  What happened to the great screencaps in these last few episodes?
• From Kethinov on 2014-11-13 at 5:41am:
  This was the last episode I could get to before other projects unrelated to this site began consuming my time.
  
  I actually do have a complete set of new 1080p screenshots to post for the rest of TOS and all the films, but I just haven't gotten around to putting them up yet.
  
  Stay tuned, it will come! That, and a brand new completely updated design for this entire site is in the pipeline. :)
• From jd_juggler on 2015-03-22 at 3:14pm:
  Phasers are fired into the entity and Mira collapses in pain. Scotty reports to the bridge that just one more such shot would kill Mira. Kirk seems to believe this without question, without even any medical examination. Yet, having heard all this, Sulu STILL says "phasers ready for firing". At this point I usually audibly mutter at Sulu "you cold-hearted bastard!"
  
  The aliens certainly must realize that putting Mira into that pressure chamber was an attempt to destroy them. So why didn't they leave Mira's body? The inhabitants of memory alpha were all killed; how did the crew of the enterprise escape this fate?
• From Chris on 2019-01-13 at 2:13am:
  If you ask me! ... and you didn't this episode just pissed me off from start to finish with Scott's insufferable attention to Mira at the expense of everyone else!!!
  Starship Officers are allowed to act this way? EVER?!?!
  
  Aside from the absolute nonsense bitched about in the other reviews, this episode was close to vomit inducing for me!
  
  Hey! What happened to Karyn!
• From Chris on 2019-01-17 at 2:00am:
  If you ask me! ... and you didn't this episode just pissed me off from start to finish with Scott's insufferable attention to Mira at the expense of everyone else!!!
  Starship Officers are allowed to act this way? EVER?!?!
  
  Aside from the absolute nonsense bitched about in the other reviews, this episode was close to vomit inducing for me!
  
  Hey! What happened to Karyn!
• From Anan8 on 2020-10-18 at 2:03pm:
  Take it easy on the "data is easily copied" comment. I was alive in 1966 and it was not easy to copy data, nor cheap. They may not have realized that some day we would have memory sticks and online data storage. We didn't even have good copiers until the '80s. Before that we used what was called a Mimeograph machine. Loved the smell, but they were a mess.
  I never understood why the Zetarians just didn't escape the pressure chamber and move on. They easily penetrated the hull. Maybe they should have made the hull out of the material they made the pressure chamber.
  And I can't figure out why they make Scotty look like a bumbling 7th grader when he's featured in an episode with women.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Crystal on 2012-06-19 at 1:55pm:
  I am not sure why Spock felt the need to make him forget this girl of the week, and not Edith or Elaan.
  I agree that there should have been more focus on the plague, since it threatened the entire crew of the Enterprise.
• From jd_juggler on 2015-03-28 at 4:41pm:
  Arguably the worst episode of the entire series. Shatner's acting, and the inane dialogue is almost painful to watch, especially when he is "falling in love" with an android. And we know what most of those historic characters Flint claims to have been looked like. And they didn't all look alike. And if we are to suppose that none of those famous people actually died, they all must have simply "disappeared" - again, not credible. Nor would any of them (except his first incarnation) have had a childhood.
• From Harrison on 2015-11-22 at 6:22pm:
  While there is a fair bit of appalling acting, this episode has some redeeming and memorable virtues. For one thing, Nemoy delivers a very strong performance Spock's revelation of Flint's genius and past identities unfolds exactly as it should, thanks o some pretty elegant dialogue. James Daly is quite convincing as the inscrutable Flint. Louise Sorel is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but delivers some undeniably entrancing lines ("It is a flower dying in the desert"). Even Kirk's philandering campiness doesn't entirely lack amusement value. There's some classic Star trek to be had here, adn ti certainly isn't the worst episode of the original series.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From TashaFan on 2008-09-13 at 6:25pm:
  You ask how can there be so many superior aliens while the Federation appears to dominate so much space. I think the superior lifeforms largely ignore us. For example, we think of ourselves as vastly superior to ants. To the ants, it may seem that they dominate everywhere. Only when the ants become an annoyance do we go out and poison them. They see our houses and may try to get some food and as long as we don't notice they are left alone. But once we see them marching across the kitchen out come the baits and the anthill gets poison poured down it. And of course our kids might burn a few ants with a magnifying glass now and then. Just like the occasional Trelayne toying with the Enterprise crew. In the meantime, there are still millions of ants living everywhere that we live. Do they dominate the space? Do we?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Terry A. Hurlbut on 2016-07-15 at 10:19pm:
  Alan Dean Foster, who adapted all the animated episodes to prose, realized the one redeeming value of this particular episode. He expanded on the Bem narrative--greatly. In his version, the Enterprise travels to Pandro (Bem's home world), where Bem and Captain Kirk both have to stretch themselves to the limit to deal with a uniquely Pandronian crisis. (See "Star Trek Long Nine," New York: Del Rey Books, 1977.)

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-05-27 at 7:49am:
  - While presenting Lutan with the horse statue, Picard says that he is aware of the Ligonian culture's unique similarity to an ancient Earth culture that he "admires." However, later in the episode, Picard states that the customs of the Ligonian culture are the "same kind of pompous strutting charades that endangered our own species a few centuries ago."
  - Just before the battle to the death, we are told: "The rules are known. Let combat continue until there is a victory. It will not be interrupted." But during the battle, when Yareena loses her weapon, Lutan stops the fight. I thought the battle would not be interrupted!! And why is Lutan stopping the fight to return the weapon to Yareena? Doesn't he want Yar to kill his wife so he can inherit her wealth?
• From Bernard on 2007-09-21 at 10:31pm:
  Another good early effort, that holds up to repeat viewings well. Maybe I'm one of the few that agree with you there!
  
  Probably one of two episodes where yar is brought to the fore.. she was an interesting enough character with a good background story just a shame denise crosby didn't hang in there for longer
  
  one aside here, tng at this point is still very much working on the OS premise of 'planet of the week' episodes (coupled with the aliens that look identical to humans)
• From CAlexander on 2011-03-06 at 10:25pm:
  I'm one who never liked this episode, but it doesn't seem quite as awful now as it did the first time I watched it. The basic concept is not that bad. I think my problems are twofold:
  1. The acting from everyone is painful at the beginning of the episode. It felt like they hadn't gotten the hang of how to do TNG yet and were overreacting to everything in a way reminiscent of TOS, and this didn't work in the context of TNG.
  2. The episode led up to the fight scene at the end, which I found to be quite underwhelming. When rewatching this I had no expectations for the fight scene so it didn't bother me.
• From Axel on 2018-06-09 at 2:55am:
  The only way the portrayal of the Ligonians could've been more racist is if the actors had been white people in blackface. Whenever I re-watch TNG's first couple seasons and see aliens in hilariously dumb costumes, I think of these guys and realize it only went uphill.
  
  Data refers to French as an "obscure language" which of course sets off Picard. This is a bit weird since Data, having the crew's personnel records, would no doubt be aware that Picard has French ancestry and is presumably familiar with the language. But Picard's response must've had some effect, because in "Time's Arrow" we see that Data now speaks fluent French.
  
  During the fight, Yareena's spikey glove flies off her hand and strikes a spectator. A few seconds later, he keels over, dies, and is carried away by other Ligonians almost as if they were expecting it. Is it also considered honorable in Ligonian society to die from watching honorable combat? Otherwise, poor bastard didn't get the benefits of the Enterprise medical treatment.
• From Harrison on 2020-01-26 at 6:02pm:
  Political correctness has long demanded that this episode be viewed as an offensive aberration. That's nonsense, of course. Sure, the episode has some typical early TNG plot foibles (eg, the Ligonians were able to develop transport technology?) and the combat scene is a little silly, but overall it is actually a solid effort that explores some interesting themes. Stewart and Crosby are both in great form. It's far more engaging than many early TNG clunkers (like the episode that follows, "The Last Outpost".)
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-03 at 7:23am:
  I basically agree this episode is terrible, but for me, watching it again for the first time in years, it's ventured into "so bad it's good" territory. While I agree it's pretty skippable, I'd say if you're a newbie to TNG, do watch this episode at least once and revel in the cringe. (Protip: you don't have to be sober.)
  
  A few things I think make it worth a watch:
  - Wes sitting at ops for the first time. Significant, and hilariously awkward. The way it's handled, I can't tell if the producers were *going* for the awkwardness, or not.
  - Has a bit of iconic dialogue that made it into the famous "Picard song" where Troi answers "you're the captain, sir; you're entitled."
  - focus on Yar, which is unfortunately scarce in TNG.
  - the over -the-top cheesy music. It's almost TOS-level campy.
  - Data's attempts at humor. Or rather, the writers' and Brent Spiner's attempts to get a bead on Data's relationship to humor.
  - "Troi, I'm your friend, and you tricked me!
  
  Problem: Where was Worf? They could have made a lot of use of his character, being from a culture that also places a high emphasis on honor. Very disappointing they didn't work Worf into the plot somehow. (Maybe, just as in "Starship Mine," he called dibs on not having to show up in this episode.)
  
  It's a strange feeling, watching an episode centered around "the vaccine!" now in mid-2021. Knowing a bit more now about how vaccines are developed and how they work, it seems kind of silly for this episode's MacGuffin to be a vaccine, considering the people on this planet are a different species, and thus would not be able to develop, test, or manufacture a vaccine for any offworld species, let alone manufacture millions of them. They could have had some plant or rare compound used in an antidote, or something. A nitpick, sure, but it's damn lazy writing!
  
  negative 5/7.
• From Chuck the Canuck on 2023-05-19 at 1:17pm:
  Yes, yes, this episode holds up extremely poorly especially with our post-2020 hindsight. That said, I don't believe in judging it by modern standards; I think even in 1987 it was a bit much, especially when you look back at The Original Series twenty years earlier. Kind of a slap in the face to the progress TOS had made with Uhura.
  
  I agree this episode is worth watching mainly to see how the actors and writers were working to figure out the show and characters. Spiner and the writing team didn't just create the beloved Data we know from the beginning. It took some trial and error mainly in the first season to sort it out. Same with Picard, who is very, noticeably different in the first season in terms of dialogue and temperament. That exchange with Troi that Azalea Jane mentioned is also a flash of later Picard.
  
  On a side note, Garrett Wang routinely roasts this episode when he appears at conventions. Apparently, it was the first and only episode of TNG he saw prior to getting cast as Ensign Kim on VOY. So, he came into that show thinking TNG had set a pretty low bar. It wasn't until later that he watched more TNG and became a fan.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-05-29 at 1:47am:
  Data: "Could you please continue the 'petty bickering'?" :)
  
  - The slow approach of the Tarellian ship ... as the vessel draws closer, the tension increases. Picard calmly waits for the plague ship while the Haven government is going crazy. He even allows the ship to get within transporter range. Why doesn't Picard take the Enterprise out of orbit and meet the incoming ship?
  - For a chameleon rose, it doesn't change colors very much. During the time Troi is holding the rose, she becomes visibly upset and embarrassed, the rose stays white.
  - When we first get to see Ariana on the viewscreen, there is a man to her right, sitting in a chair. The chair is made of several spheres. In future episodes, this chair will be seen in Worf's quarters.
• From Joey Poole on 2007-07-12 at 2:41pm:
  While I agree with many of the concerns listed in the main review, I have a real soft spot for this episode. Lwaxana Troi is a great character, and this is a good introduction to her. As pure entertainment, this episode works, due mostly to the interaction between Troi, her mother, and Picard. I also like Riker's reaction to the whole marriage business. I view it as one of the "humor" episodes, and one of the best of those at that.
  
  My only real problem with this episode is the lame, seemingly random connection between Wyatt (who's a bit of douchebag, by the way) and Ariana. Plus, for the dying remanants of a people killed off by an incurable plague, the Tarellians don't seem very sick.
• From Bernard on 2008-01-19 at 6:20pm:
  I don't treat this episode with too much scorn, it is to me... average.
  
  The main problem for me is that I do not care about the terellians or wyatt. If you do not care about either of those by the climax of the story then to me the whole build up has been pointless.
  
  I do however love majel barrett as lwaxana, and also Mr. Homm. Some really funny bits in this one too as Datas role in comedy is used to good effect here as the perfect straight man.
• From djb on 2008-01-25 at 3:05am:
  It's true that this episode is not one of the best, but what I find absolutely remarkable about it is this dialog:
  
  Lwaxana: "Now the answer to the puzzle of Arianna and you is so simple, it's too simple for most humans to understand."
  Wyatt: "Too simple."
  Lwaxana: "Of course. It's something they all know instinctively yet go to great effort to reject or build complicated superstitions about. All life, Wyatt, all consciousness, is indissolubly bound together, indeed, it's all part of the same thing."
  
  I was amazed and extremely pleased to find such a fundamental mystical truth exposed in a relatively agnostic TV show!
• From thaibites on 2009-08-14 at 2:37am:
  This is one of the worst TNGs I've ever seen. It's one of those episodes where they need to take a break and save some money. Lwaxana is the most unlikeable character in the ST universe. As an American, I've gotten enough bossy, ignorant, demanding white women to last me a lifetime. I certainly don't need it when I just want to be entertained!
• From CAlexander on 2011-02-20 at 6:18am:
  This episode suffers from a common problem - two plots, one of which you wish they had left out completely. I had no real problem with the wedding plot, it is OK. But the Terellian plot is quite inadequately developed.
  - Totally agree with DSOmo that Picard should have tractored the Terellians long before they reached Haven.
  - No reasonable explanation given for the central point of the episode, the connection between Wyatt and Ariana.
  - No explanation given for why the Terellians appear perfectly healthy. I can explain this (the virus lies dormant until it kills you), but I shouldn't have to, the episode should have done so.
  - It is unclear what the Terellian motivations really were. They make a point of rejecting all communication as they come to infect Haven, then when they are stopped, they start chatting as if they are pleasant people who had done nothing suspicious.
• From Omcn7 on 2012-01-28 at 6:58pm:
  Ariana? Please stop the hair. I have nightmares about the hair. Wyatt is a moron to want to go with this freak hairdo women. I thought this episode was great for the character development. However, as many have said the plot was sub-par in the least.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-07 at 7:23am:
  This time, I found this episode oddly entertaining and more interesting than I had anticipated.
  
  Boy oh boy, has my mind changed on some things, though. I commented here as "djb" (old initials) in 2008 and now I completely disagree with myself. It's not a "mystical truth," it's quasi-spiritual mumbo jumbo! But, then again, the Star Trek universe does have tons of mumbo jumbo in it, so... it's not untrue in-universe, I suppose.
  
  Putting on my "killjoy feminist" hat for a second: Overall this show is refreshingly not-sexist for the 80s. Hell, there are much later shows that are unwatchable because of the sexism (BBT anyone?). But I like noticing the tiny things that sneak through--not as a "show bad" sort of thing, more of a curiosity. A study of evolving cultural norms, if you will.
  
  Take Wyatt's commenting more than once on Troi's looks instead of her intelligence, accomplishments, maturity, depth, etc. Or the ridiculous outfit worn by Ariana. Like, don't get me wrong, my lesbian brain is like PRETTY LADY!!1! but her outfit is such obvious pandering and so strikingly unrealistic that it kinda harshes my mellow, as weird as that may seem. Or makes me laugh, depending on my mood. ... Then again, maybe she wanted to look extra nice for the man of her dreams, so she put on her most alluring outfit for him. I'd buy that.
  <takes hat off>
  
  Data's emotion-spotting: During the reception where the parents fight, Data looks positively amused. Given his "please keep bickering" comment (maybe the best line in the episode), Data seems to be programmed with a rapt interest in petty humanoid conflicts!
  
  This episode is a must-watch for anyone interested in Riker/Troi's relationship. Here we hear "imzadi" for the first time since the pilot, and find out what it means. I do enjoy their relationship throughout the series. You don't see relationships like theirs on every show, and I think it's handled pretty well.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-06-02 at 6:42pm:
  - A bridge crew can relieve the captain if they unanimously agree that the captain is acting oddly. Also, a doctor can relieve the captain if the doctor thinks the captain is medically unfit for command. Shouldn't the same thing apply to mission commanders? Picard finds out that Jameson: 1) took double the recommended dosage of an alien drug 2) confesses to a direct violation of the Prime Directive (giving weapons) 3) proposes a raid that Picard thinks is questionable. Yet, Picard acts like he has no other recourse but to obey.
  - the drug is "radically changing the cellular structure of his body and rewriting his DNA." Doesn't it seem likely that the drug would also wipe out the scar tissue in Jameson's body?
  - The transporter pad certainly isn't wheelchair-accessible. Jameson, who is confined to a futuristic wheelchair, is beemed on to the transporter pad. How does he get off the pad?
  - When Picard and Riker leaves the bridge to greet Jameson, look very carefully, Picard contorts his entire face just before he enters the turbolift (an outtake??)
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-20 at 6:10pm:
  The Admiral's wife (we never learn her name) had some of the worst acting and most annoying dialog in Star Trek history. The Admiral is plagued with advanced Iverson's disease, a degenerative, incurable and terminal disease that rob it's victim of quality of life before it kills him. The Admiral finds a potential cure that incidental makes him young while saving his life. Is his wife pleased? Not at all. Why? Because she wants to spend more time with husband (while watching him die horribly). It stretches credulity.
• From Inga on 2011-12-21 at 11:12am:
  Jeff, the Admiral's wife's name is Anne. She was called by her name a couple of times in the episode and at the very end, just before he died, the Admiral called her "Annie with the golden hair"
• From John on 2012-03-05 at 4:03am:
  I think maybe what Jeff meant was that we learn her name, but we don't care enough to remember it, because this episode sucks.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-06-24 at 4:15am:
  - At the beginning of the show, Wesley is helping Geordi in Engineering. At this time, Picard is talking with Anya. Before beaming aboard, Anya asks what species they are. From events later in the episode, it is obvious why Anya asked this question. Wesley realizes this fact in one of his last conversations with Salia. But how did Wesley know that Anya asked the question of species in the first place? He was in Engineering at the time, and the question itself is seemingly pointless, not the type of thing to be repeated readily.
  - As Picard escorts Anya and Salia to their quarters, Wesley steps off a turbolift, carrying the SCM Model 3, and sees Salia for the time. The numbers on the turbolift doors are "22." What is Wesley doing on deck 22? He already has the SCM, shouldn't he be headed back to Engineering on deck 36?
  - Why is Wesley so offended to learn that Salia could change her shape? I think it would be fun, "Let's try blonde today, maybe a little taller, how about some bigger ...." ;)
  - During the episode "Where No One Has Gone Before," Kozinski states that in the past three hundred years, humanity has charted only 11 percent of the galaxy. Wesley tells Salia that they have charted 19 percent of the galaxy. The Federation has been busy!! (or someone is wrong)
  - When the Enterprise arrives at Daled IV, the atmosphere of the planet interferes with their communications. The Enterprise can't even talk to these people, and they can still transport Salia down? Isn't the transporter usually the first thing to go? It seems reasonable that transporting living beings would be a lot more difficult to accomplish than communication.
• From JRPoole on 2008-01-25 at 5:58pm:
  I gave this episode a 1.
  
  "The Dauphin" offends my sensibilities for a couple of reasons. First, virtually all Wesley-centered episodes (especially the earlier ones) are terrible and this is no exception. I realize that Wesley is an adolescent, but his actions in this episode are ridiculous. He loves this girl? Please. They've known each other for about, what 3 days? Why doesn't Geordi snatch a knot in Wesley's ass for not having his head in the game when they're performing maintence on the engines? Again, I realize Wesley's an adolescent, but he's also a serving ensign on the ship, and he can worry about poontang when the work's done. Isn't that the very kind of thing he's supposed to be learning? It seems he already knows everything there is to know about the Enterprise.
  
  The Wesley episodes always leave me cold because they're a waste of a character. Instead of doing something worthwhile with the character, they churn out shlock. His wide-eyed boy wonder sthick gets old really fast, and this episode is an prime example.
  
  In additon to the problems already mentioned, I submit the following:
  
  --I don't buy the sickbay scene. If these shape-shifter beings are really some sort of "light energy" beings, are they really in danger from a virus?
  
  --Why is the crew incredulous that shape-shifting beings exist? They act like they've got the Loch Ness monster or Sasquatch on their hands, but this has been established before. Iman's character in Star Trek III is a shapeshifter, and there are a few more examples as well.
  
  --The teddy bear incarnation of Anya is incredibly stupid.
  
  --This isn't necessarily a problem, but it's underdeveloped. At one point, Picard (I think it was Picard, anyway) hopes that the Federation can establish "formal relations" with Daled IV. Isn't ferrying their new leader around the galaxy something that should qualify as "formal relations"? How is it that the flagship of the Federation comes to be the personal taxi service of a planet they don't seem to know anything about at all?
  
  --Is it just me, or does the scene between Guinan and Riker just not jive with Guinan's character somehow?
  
  --Worf's final exchange with Anya is painful to watch.
• From rpeh on 2010-08-25 at 11:52am:
  For some reason, I quite like this episode. There's a decent amount of technobabble like "In a moment, the harmonic resonance from the neutrino clouds will become synchronous"(!!!!!). There are basic mistakes - you already mentioned the sound in space, but how about you can see the planet rotating? It would fly apart if it was spinning that fast. There are bad alien costumes.
  
  But... it works. For some reason I don't find Wesley objectionable in this one, and the love story is quite believable. I like the interaction between Anya and Worf. I'm not claiming it's brilliant, but I'll give it a 6.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-22 at 11:54pm:
  Some of the worst special effects in the history of Star Trek. Even much of TOS was better than this! The shape shifting scenes were embarrassing.
• From Inga on 2011-12-30 at 10:34pm:
  Salia's true form somehow reminds me of the Companion from the TOS episode "Metamorphosis".
  
  Also, I agree with JRPoole - Worf's final exchange with Anya WAS painful to watch :/
• From One Moon Circles eyes in the dark on 2012-02-27 at 5:40am:
  Falling in love your first time as an adolescent actually does happen when not even knowing each other and it can happen in just 2 days. I can testify to this from personal experience. :) Other than that this episode is just so wrong in so many ways I don't even know where to start. I gave this one a 1. The last episode was a hard one to follow but this one didn't even make an attempt.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-16 at 2:12am:
  Ah, young love. It's true, adolescent experiences of "love" can seem trivial through the mists of time, but for them it's pretty damn powerful. And yes, it's possible to get *very* attached to someone over just a few days! Even at 39, I'm not too jaded to watch the scenes between Wes and Salia and feel a little bit of it myself. I think the two actors did quite well together. I even teared up when Wes came to say goodbye, but I'm a sap and I accept that. Kudos to Geordi for realizing Wes was gonna be useless for a little while and validating to Wes how intense puberty is.
  
  I have a soft spot for this ep for a couple reasons, and NONE of them have anything to do with having a huge crush on Salia, nope! How dare you even suggest that!
  
  - Worf's rather licentious description of Klingon sex.
  "what does the man do?"
  "he reads love poetry. ... he ducks a lot."
  Cracks me up every time.
  
  - Guinan's and Riker's (mock?) flirting. Fantastic. Almost sounds like they're reciting a famous play or something. Guinan: "shut up, kid." Thirsty Guinan, rare form!
  
  - Guinan's insight to Wes at the end. I've always loved it. "Each one feels different" may sound like a basic lesson in love, but it's one worth hearing anyway. Wes won't feel the same way again, and that's OK. Salia will be unique to him in that way.
  
  It's not a great episode, but I don't think it tries to be. For me it's enjoyable for what it is.
  
  Worf: "do not be fooled by her looks. The body is just a shell." Indeed.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-07-01 at 6:49am:
  - Given Lwaxana's dislike and distrust for transporters, why are they beaming her aboard the ship? She is traveling in a "small transport craft." A shuttle craft? Why not just dock the craft in one of the shuttle bays and let her walk off. But then we wouldn't have had the "Legs, where are the legs?" scene.
  - Doesn't Troi have a dress uniform? Every time the delegates come or go, Captain Picard gets in his dress uniform, but Troi wears the same outfit for the whole show.
  - Troi takes her mother out into the hall to have an intimate conversation about her mother's condition (because Mr. Homm is in Lwaxana's quarters). On top of that, they have the conversation out loud when they could communicate telepathically. Not a very private conversation!
  - After exposing the Antedian assassins, Lwaxana states that it was quite easy for her to read their minds. If it was so easy, why wasn't Troi at least able to get a sense that the Antedians were up to no good?
  - In "The Big Good-bye," Picard begins coughing immediately after lighting up a cigarette. In this episode, Picard just starts puffing away.
  - Also, in "The Big Good-bye" Picard wore his uniform into the holodeck the first time he entered. Several holodeck creations commented that he looked like a bellboy. In this episode, Riker wears his uniform into Rex's bar and no one gives it a second look.
• From JRPoole on 2008-02-15 at 3:20pm:
  I agree with the overall sentiment on this episode, but it makes me smile, so I can't hate it altogether.
  
  I have a hard time believing that Lwaxana doesn't know what a holodeck is, but the bit with she and Picard in her quarters is priceless. The alien-of-the-week here was ridiculous as well.
• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2009-05-04 at 3:11pm:
  The first half of the show has a lot of funny moments that are fun to rewatch. The seconf half, after Picard steps onto the holodeck for some Dixon Hill, is very boring.
• From Rob Herbert on 2010-06-22 at 2:11pm:
  It's worth noting that Robert O'Reilly, who plays the wide-eyed villain who grabs Dix/Picard's lapels in the Holodeck returns in the future, still with wild, staring eyes, as Gowron.
• From Ry-Fi on 2010-08-14 at 9:39am:
  After Lwaxana passes on choosing Worf as a mate, saying "Pity, you'd have made a fine choice", the shot switches to Worf for a second, then back to her. Is it just me, or does she look down at his crotch for a split second and smile before looking back up and turning around?
  
  I burst out laughing when I saw that! It would in no way surprise me if that was an intentioned little flair that Majel threw in there. What an AMAZING woman she is! Her acting nuances are sublime!
  
  :-D
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-15 at 3:12pm:
  There are a couple of cute scenes, but basically this episode is pointless. Not to mention that I find Lwaxana painful to watch.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-10-20 at 7:48pm:
  Everyone is always hating' on Lwaxana,when I love her! I suppose she is an acquired taste, though.
  
  This girl has an organizing principle to her life: She just wants to get laid. She is so deliciously ranchy and blatant in her sexual appetites.
  
  The problem is: With her level of nobility, sex must be accompanied by marriage. (I love it when she recites her titles: "daughter of the seventh house, holder of the sacred chalice of reeks, heir to the rings of Betazed". It's particularly great when Deanna points out that the sacred chalice of reeks is just "an old clay pot with mold growing in it".)
  
  You get the imoression that she would love it if she could just blow all of that off and go shag someone.
• From John on 2012-03-08 at 3:59pm:
  re-watching this episode and I just noticed something: when Riker is on the bridge telling Wesley and Data about Ms. Troi complimenting the captain about his legs, Data is shown laughing.
  
  I repeat: DATA IS LAUGHING. At this point he doesn't have an emotion chip and Q isn't helping him, so why is this not a big deal to any of the other crew members. I'm guessing Spiner just maybe adlibbed it or something? Still, it's very odd that it's not a big deal, given that one of Data's goals is to learn to laugh.
• From Dstyle on 2013-08-21 at 8:48pm:
  Maybe I missed a similar interaction in the first Lwaxana episode, but I love the moment when she interacts with the ship's computer. Majel Barrett acting opposite Majel Barrett!
• From Arianwen on 2018-07-26 at 1:38pm:
  @John re. Data laughing: in an earlier episode this season Data is shown practicing laughter, so I think this is only continuity. It sounds quite unnatural, too ("Ha ha ha ha!") and you can even see the moment where he goes "ah, this is a place where laughter is socially appropriate".
  
  ...oh god, this is my life now.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-22 at 6:33am:
  Egads, Lwaxana is over the top. This "phase" she's supposedly in doesn't just make her horny; it makes her *stupid.* (Protip to the writers: those are different things!)
  
  Data emotionspotting: do you see how excited he is to get into character and get back on the holodeck? He's like a little kid! It's rather cute.
  
  Those fish-like aliens are fascinating to look at.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-08-19 at 6:03pm:
  - In Riker's future, Troi has left the Enterprise to work at Starfleet command. Was he lying when he tells her, "I can't imagine you ever leaving the Enterprise"? Evidently he could image her leaving, since Riker's thoughts are driving the holographic generators!
  - Troi says Riker will sign the new treaty between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Riker will sign the treaty? He's just a captain of a starship. Leaders and diplomats sign treaties, not captains.
  - Everyone shows signs of age in the "imperfect future." Everyone, except for Ogawa. She looks unchanged.
  - When the boy takes Riker to his secret hiding place, he pulls out plans that he made of the tunnels. In the long shot, the plans are made out of a transparent plastic. In the close-up, the plans are on a thick white paper (not transparent.)
• From CAlexander on 2011-03-21 at 1:25am:
  I generally liked watching this episode, it was interesting and suspenseful until the ending. The ending itself, however, was quite disappointing. A good plot twist should make the preceding events make perfect sense. But the second plot twist doesn't any sense out of the events before the first plot twist. If the alien boy just wanted a companion, why the convoluted future which seemed to be trying to get Riker to trust the Romulans and betray the location of Outpost 23? It seemed like the writers built up an episode that would require a really clever ending to make sense of, then couldn't think of a clever ending.
• From tigertooth on 2011-05-31 at 12:48am:
  I really liked the double-twist of the ending. To answer CAlexander, perhaps the kid knew that Riker would sense that this wasn't real, so he concocted a double-twist figuring that Riker would see through the first one, but not realize there was a second layer of deception.
  
  Also, it was a kid. Maybe he wasn't the most cunning adversary Riker has ever faced.
• From rwe on 2011-08-17 at 8:14am:
  The only real shortcoming of this episode is the true appearance of the alien at the very end. It is ridiculous. It's like one of the aliens from Close Encounter of the Third Kind, complete with large bug eyes and long, twitchy fingers, but even more ludicrous.
  
  The episode itself was very well done, even though it doesn't really tie into any ongoing arcs or story lines (so it's essentially what the reviewer would call filler).
  
  I like the new look of the uniforms and seeing people in new positions - "Admiral" Picard for instance. The very concept of having the entire star trek TNG universe instantly moved forward 16 years was great (even though fraudulent).
  
  The revelations and plot twists were excellent. Just the first one about it all being a Romulan deception would've been satisfactory, but the writers up the ante and twist it all one more time in the end. Really quite fantastic.
  
  I like the clues about it all being a hologram - how the ship's computer was lagged and how Troi couldn't come up with a fully convincing reason for leaving the Enterprise... I do take some issue with the main clue, the one about Minuet...
  
  ...it's a bit fuzzy how the holographic process (whether it's Ethan doing it, or the equipment itself, or some mixture of the two, it's not clear) could recreate everything and cast the Enterprise crew so perfectly, and yet screw up on Minuet.
  
  But maybe it makes sense, I don't even know. In any case, this is a fun episode.
  
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-30 at 11:09pm:
  A couple of issues:
  
  1. At the beginning of the episode, Geordi says he is detecting traces of "organic gases, including nitrous oxide, hydrogen sulfide, and methane". Of these three, only methane is organic. The other two are inorganic.
  
  2. The ability of the alien to scan Riker's thoughts and construct a false reality was only partially explained. The alien shows Riker the devices ( similar to holoemitters ) that allow the alternate reality to be created. But the ability to scan Riker's thoughts is never explained.
• From Jason on 2011-10-14 at 9:02pm:
  Great overall episode, but the last 30 seconds with the reveal of the alien is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I've ever witnessed.
• From Axel on 2018-06-01 at 2:33am:
  Yes, the alien looked ridiculous, but keep in mind this episode was produced in 1990. People had been watching Spielberg movies for years, and were used to seeing aliens like this. Digital animation was still a long way off, and TV shows with limited budgets usually had to dress up their aliens in costume. I don't really knock this episode much for the true appearance of the alien, although I did laugh as well when I first saw it. Or maybe it was when I heard it speak using its natural voice.
  
  Anyway, the ending is a disappointment but it was an interesting concept and had a fairly gripping plot for about 95% of the episode. The part where Riker first discovers that he's in a fantasy was really well done, and featured some nice continuity with 11001001. I give it a 6.
• From CAlexander on 2019-04-01 at 4:13am:
  I re-watched the episode carefully and realized another factor that makes no sense. If Ethan's goal is to spend more time with Riker, adding the Romulan plot to the fantasy is counter-productive, as it causes Riker to spend more time dealing with the "negotiations" and less time with his "family".
  
  Nevertheless, I do quite enjoy the first 75% of the episode and the whole idea of waking up in the future.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2006-05-12 at 2:02am:
  Problem:
  In some of the scences where Troi is "flying" you can clearly see strings attached to her butt.
  
• From DSOmo on 2007-08-24 at 11:31pm:
  - When the crew looks for a way to create a massive explosion and escape the rift, no one mentions setting the Brattain to self-destruct. Wouldn't an uncontrolled overload of a warp drive system cause a pretty good bang?
  - When looking for a message to send the aliens, Data scans through the available elements on the Enterprise. One shot shows the elements zipping by, from bottom to top. When Troi spots hydrogen, she tells Data to stop and go back. The next shot shows the elements scrolling slower, but they are still scrolling from bottom to top. It would confuse the hell out of me, going forward or backward through information and having it move in the same direction.
• From Mark McC on 2008-12-30 at 4:42pm:
  At one point we're told the ship doesn't have enough power left to replicate any explosive elements. Maybe if they shut down all those replicators producing synthahol in Ten-Forward they might have had more power and saved themselves the embarassment of a bar-room brawl.
  
  It was convenient that Data decided to visually review the elements available on the offchance that Troi would look over his shoulder and spot something that correlated with her dream. Normally he would have just accessed his memory banks for the information instead of slowly (by his speed) scrolling through them on a terminal.
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-29 at 4:16am:
  The plot of the episode is good in the abstract. But I agree that it progresses rather slowly and without a lot of interesting things happening. And Troi's silly-looking dream sequences are definitely not the high point of the episode.
• From ok@ok.ok on 2011-08-26 at 8:32am:
  This was a fairly decent episode. I like the explanation behind what was happening, and I like how we never actually see the aliens or get a clear shot of their ship... all we get is some indication that they were in the exact same quandary, and could only communicate briefly and indirectly, hoping on a whim that someone will figure out what's needed...
  
  Seeing Data as acting captain was awesome.
  
  Seeing Guinan pull out some crazy plasma rifle from behind the counter was amusing.
  
  As for everyone going more or less insane, well I feel like there were a few missed opportunities here... but at the same time there were some nice subtleties, for instance Crusher trying to tap her com badge and missing the first time (there were a few of these very subtle, easily missed things). Also Wharf being late to a meeting. Things like that which vaguely hint that something just isn't right.
  
  So, maybe not great but certainly not awful, and the premise and explanation hold up and are surprising and interesting enough.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-30 at 8:52pm:
  This episode had two basic problems, in my view:
  
  1. The plot was too simplistic. There just wasn't enough here. Almost all good star trek episodes consist of two story lines woven together. For example, in TNG: Family you have the threads of Picard on Earth with his brother's family, and Worf on the Enterprise with his adoptive parents. (In that episode you even get a bit of a third with Wesley and his father's holorecording.) Another great example is TNG: Galaxy's Child where you have the two threads of the space creature and Geordi's relationship with the holographic Dr. Leah Brahms. In this episode we have just a tiny bit of that with the crew's struggle with lack of REM sleep and Troi's issue with nightmares. But effectively these issues are one and the same. Thus, there is just not enough storyline here to sustain a one hour episode. Effectively, the plot summary becomes:
  
  A. Enterprise gets stuck.
  B. The crew's condition deteriorates.
  C. Trio has bad dreams in which she flies around in a very unflattering outfit.
  D. Repeat steps B and C a truly mind numbing number of times.
  E. Enterprise gets unstuck.
  
  2. The music sucks. Not only was it very consistent ( reinforcing the repetitive nature of the episode itself ), but it consists almost entirely of this depressing dirge. It certainly did not help to improve the episode.
• From Bronn on 2013-11-08 at 1:04am:
  The Troi flying stuff is what really ruined this for me. It's not that I hate every episode in which she's featured, it's just that when she's featured, the writers often had her saying stuff repeatedly, with highest level possible of melodrama. "I have to find you! I have to tell you...!" That was a terrible climax for this episode. Face of the Enemy was a great episode in which she was featured because she wasn't constantly repeating herself, or using a melodramatic delivery.
  
  The funny thing is, that was a beautifully creepy dream sequence if they didn't have her take off flying. The effects were fairly nice-greenish clouds with the moon circling, always in her line of sight. Having her constantly walking through it with that music playing actually WORKS as a nightmarish dream sequence. Having her flying around in that leotard turns it on its head. It's also ridiculous that it took them all the way until season six to realize that they needed to give her a uniform.
• From Axel on 2015-03-24 at 3:28am:
  Great concept for an episode, but poorly executed. This had the makings of a really good Troi moment. Instead of always saying things that are blindingly obvious or telling the captain she senses...something...from some aliens, Troi is the key to solving a dilemma that the ship is facing. It's a situation for which her Betazoid powers are perfectly suited.
  
  Unfortunately, she puts too much drama into the role. There are also scripting problems. Her telepathic dialogue with the other Betazoid and aliens stuck in the rift sounds awkward and child-like.
  
  Overall I like the story for this one. But this is a rare case where the cast's acting just doesn't seem on point. They do this eery sci-fi type of stuff quite well in other episodes, but here it's fumbled.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete Miller on 2006-04-15 at 11:10pm:
  This episode just plain sucks, and a 2 is way too generous. First of all, Wesley coming back from Starfleet academy to discover that his mother and everyone else he loves are basically heroin addicts is just ridiculously cruel. What a horrific welcome back episode. Secondly, the Lefler character is so charismatic, beautiful, and just damn likeable and they NEVER bring her back. She had the potential to be one of the best minor characters ever. Thanks Rick.
  
  Thirdly, the premise is stupid. A game is just sooo addictive that everyone on the whole enterprise is seduced by it. I can buy Riker getting addicted, and maybe even Picard (although probably not), but WORF??? No way in hell Worf would ever play the game. For the sake of justification, perhaps Picard ordered him to play it. Either way, it's just stupid beyond reason.
  
  Lastly, no one ever apologizes. Yes, I know that they weren't "themselves", but they seemed to remember what they did. Therefore, the idea that Wesley would leave without so much as an apology from anyone is completely absurd. Then again, this episode is completely absurd, and it pisses me off every time I watch it. The only thing saving it from a zero is that at least it doesn't break canon, and Lefler is a thoroughly enjoyable character.
• From DSOmo on 2007-09-06 at 8:47am:
  - When Riker wants to introduce the game to Troi, he finds her in Ten-Forward. He finds her enjoying a bowl of chocolate ice cream. She proceeds to describe for him the ritual of eating chocolate. Isn't it a little late in the series for new expositional material between Troi and Riker? Riker acts like he's never seen Troi eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream before. She is doing it in Ten-Forward. Obviously this isn't a ritual she observes only in private. This is the fifth season, and Troi and Riker supposedly knew and dated each other before either joined the Enterprise. How could he never have seen this before?
  - Picard tells Riker that Wesley will arrive by shuttle. Yet when Wesley does arrive, he beams in from a science vessel.
  - When Robin tells Wesley he needs to calibrate the sensors manually, he balks. He then tells Robin that the computer must do it. Of course, she proves him wrong by marching over and demonstrating. Has Starfleet Academy ruined Wesley? This is the same guy who turned a tractor beam into a repulser beam in his head when everyone said it was impossible. This is also the guy who helped the engineers reroute power when an alien entity took over the ship. He did both of these things when merely a child, and now that he's in Starfleet Academy he doesn't know how to calibrate a sensor manually?
  - Does it strike anyone else as odd that Picard will play the game but Wesley won't?
  - When Crusher and Worf come looking for Wesley, they find Wesley and Robin on Wesley's bed, simulating the game-playing using mock-ups. Crusher and Worf leave satisfied. Wesley never puts the mock-up on again. Wouldn't it make more sense for him and Robin to continue to wear the game and fake the pleasure?
  - While Wesley prepares to elude the crew, he tells Robin that he programmed a site-to-site transport program. This all makes sense because it would allow Wesley to beam from anywhere to anywhere on the ship. In the actual beaming, Wesley beams from a hallway to a transporter pad! That's not site-to-site, that's normal transport. In fact, because Wesley uses normal transport, Geordi can locate him, telling Picard that Wesley ended up on deck 6.
• From djb on 2008-03-26 at 7:43am:
  For some reason, this is one of my favorite episodes. Probably has something to do with childhood memories.
  
  The premise and ramifications of such a simple brainwashing device are a bit scary. I think they could have made it more believable with a few modifications. Also, it's good to see Wesley back for an ep, but sadly it's yet another installment in the "Wesley and/or Data save the day" vein, of which there have been far too many. Lefler is a great character (and Ashley Judd's looks certainly don't hurt), but it's a shame we don't see that character again. I guess we can add her to the long list of guest stars we'd love to see more of but we never hear from again, of which, there are, again, far too many. (Probably a budget thing.)
  
  That being said, this episode has a lot of good moments. Riker's face when he first gets a hit from the game is great. Wesley flirting with Robin is great, but then again, I'm a romantic. Seeing all the characters brainwashed is a freaky sight! People we know and love and trust week after week, all turned into evil zombies. Contrived, but fun. Watching our cute couple figure out what the "Game" really does, figuring out what's wrong with Data, and pretending to be brainwashed, is fun and entirely believable, given how brilliant both of them are. I also liked the chase scene. It reminded me of The Hunted from season 3.
  
  Data's coming on the bridge and snapping everyone out of it is a pretty badass moment. Even though Data saving the ship (yet again) is an old plot device, it is still believable, and fun to watch.
  
  One little nitpicky thing-- when Worf and Riker force Wesley's eyes open. He blinks, indicating they haven't really got his eyes forced open. That's a pretty difficult thing to do; you pretty much need a speculum if you want to do it without actually touching/hurting the person's eyes (as in "A Clockwork Orange"). But they could at least have used a take where he didn't blink.
  
  I'd have to agree with the problems in plot/execution that others have mentioned; taking all that into account I'd normally give it a 4, but tilt it up to 5 or 6 because... well, I liked it. Flawed in concept, but well-executed, and memorable.
• From Rob UK on 2014-02-03 at 4:47am:
  Sad to say i am also a hater of this episode but no surprise here it is for completely unusual reasons.
  
  Firstly, the potential for drugs(or technology that alters the chemicals of the brain responsible for perception) that alter the mind in sci-fi is phenomenal (just look at farscape), it is totally wasted here with a lackluster effort, the crazy leaps that the viewer must make to understand how each character other than beardy Bill the sex fiend got tricked into playing long enough to get hooked, Bill was getting booty when he got hooked, be honest who hasn't been there in life more times than they care to remember, deviant sexual interest with a big bag of naughty that you promised yourself you were not going to have any of and definitely go to work monday morning?
  
  I think you could call that a sidetrack, anyway where was i?
  
  For me what made this episode the most painful was all the orgasms faces we had to endure as our crew 'score goals' in the game, Dr Krushers were particularly excruciating but i literally thanked the powers that be when we were spared Picard's 'jizzface' when he put the game on just after Wes tried to get a shipwide investigation going, just thank the heavens and the hells that he wasn't very good at it I say. Sadly i was not saved as i have a visceral imagination that has a mind of it's own and as the scene cuts away with Picard looking like he is gonna take a shit with concentration the minds eye continues the scene on until he gets his release, i apologise profusely to anyone reading this who also has a vivid imagination that can run away with itself visually and did with that imagery.
• From Mike on 2016-10-27 at 7:39am:
  I was hoping that the ending of this episode would be Wesley waking up and realizing that this game business was just a horrifying nightmare, as it was for us, the fans. Only in a dream could the entire crew be reduced to worthless imbeciles while Wesley and a young Ashley Judd save the day.
  
  This is the first of two episodes (the other being "Rascals") in which the Enterprise is easily taken over by buffoonery. Not proud moments for the Federation flagship.
• From Keefaz on 2017-01-08 at 12:31am:
  My girlfriend and I are watching through all the TNG on Netflix, and I think this is the first episode we really struggled to sit all the way through. 2 or 3 times we almost turned it off.
  
  It is so bad, and all the creepy close-ups and orgasm faces are painful to watch. The Troi ice-cream scene is especially eye-numbingly terrible. The only saving grace is the cute romance between Wes and Lefler, and you're really clutching at straws when that could be a highlight.
• From ChristopherA on 2019-04-30 at 2:22pm:
  I noticed many of the issues others have complained about with this episode, but I liked it anyway. I thought Wesley and Robin were likeable, the possessed Enterprise crew were creepy, and the episode was exciting to watch. Not my favorite, it does have a lot of issues, but a fine average episode.
• From jeffenator 98 on 2019-09-06 at 5:19pm:
  Law #103 All Wesley saves the ship episodes suck. 2/10
• From Chuck the Canuck on 2023-05-12 at 5:38pm:
  "I'd like to know more about it before I try it," says Wesley. I guess aside from Lefler, none of the 1000+ other people aboard the ship thought of that.
  
  I think the biggest plot hole here is that Crusher and Riker call Geordi to look at Data before they get him addicted to the game. Wouldn't he have done the exact same thing Wesley does later in order to figure out what's wrong with Data? Wesley even says he's one of the experts on Data.
  
  The most entertaining parts of this episode are the looks and sounds people make as they play the game.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete Miller on 2006-04-23 at 12:50am:
  I didn't care for this one. I agree that it is absurd. And with all due respect to the writers, it's extremely predictable to the average trek fan. Once I saw the MacDuff character, I thought for a moment that it was some redshirt, but then the three pips on the collar, and the whole plot came into focus.
  
  Also, it's very cheap that Guinan just happens to be absent from this episode. Judging from previous episodes, she would undoubtably know exactly what is going on. But then I guess there would be no episode :)
  
  The one thing I did enjoy was worf and riker kicking that guy's ass at the end.
• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2006-05-15 at 10:32pm:
  Conundrum is classic Star Trek. The characters get to explore themselves in a way that has never been done. The enemy is powerful, smart, and desperate. There is fun too, as the crew tries to figure out who is in charge.
  
  Unlike other episodes, it is hard to find problems with the science in this one. Everything seems plausible to an extent.
  
  The only down part is that Riker comes across as a male pig. Regardless, this episode is a definite 9.
  
• From Wolfgang on 2006-07-11 at 12:28pm:
  It is unbelievable, that Data loses his memories as well and no single alien aboard the ship could retain its memories.
• From DSOmo on 2007-09-27 at 8:17am:
  After the first encounter with the Lysians, Picard tells MacDuff his doubts about their mission. The fact that the Federation greatly outmatches the Lysians troubles Picard. Then, at the end of the episode, Picard seems to indicate that the Lysians and the Sartaaran have approximately the same level of weapons technology. If the Sartaaran are at that level, how could MacDuff so easily overcome the shields of the Enterprise? The entire episode gives us several hints that the Sartaaran are very powerful. At the end of the show, Riker expresses it best when he says, "With all the power that MacDuff had to alter our brain chemistry and manipulate the computer, it's hard to believe he needed the Enterprise." Very well said!
• From djb on 2008-04-07 at 2:23am:
  My reaction to this episode is twofold.
  
  First, the scifi. It's not the best I've seen, and that's an understatement. Somehow a race who can't muster a photon torpedo can get around a starship's shields and cause its crew to lose their memories? AND falsify the ship's records? AND plant a spy on the ship, perfectly disguised as a human? I don't buy it. I also thought the resolution was rather abrupt; after the climactic scene on the bridge with "MacDuff" going nuts, all of a sudden everything's back to normal! That being said, I did like how MacDuff was introduced: no menacing music or evil glares (as in "Violations". Just another officer on the bridge, with (!) three pips? Hmm. I do like how the erroneous war plot kind of sneaks in on you; first we're just trying to recover from amnesia, then ! Who's this guy MacDuff? The federation is at war??! Slow down!
  
  The other aspect of this episode, which I enjoyed immensely, was the character-driven aspect. As was first explored a bit in "Clues" (which also had some gaping holes in the plot), how do we act when we lose our memory? In this case, every memory of who we are or who others are?
  
  This episode had so many interesting moments: Ro figures out she's the pilot, but I like how Picard doesn't assume command. True to how he acts normally, he accepts authority and wields it well, but doesn't crave it or flaunt it. Here, he doesn't assume authority until the computer tells them he's the captain. Worf, on the other hand, seems to have a desire for leadership, but also a strong sense of duty. He assumes command but immediately relinquishes it when he finds he's in error. He also is loyal to the captain even though MacDuff attempts to play on his warrior sensibilities. I found myself wondering which way he was going to go, which is consistent with his character. It turns out Riker and Ro have some attraction for each other under the "battle of wills" facade! Troi's "emotional memory" of her relationship with Riker is fitting, and the drastic difference in how she and Ro approach Riker is quite interesting. Poor Riker feels like an idiot at the end: Ro is amused, and Troi is pissed off (Sirtis plays that "pissed-off smile" extremely well), and it will always be the elephant in the room when the three of them are around each other again.
  
  I can't help but wonder what I would do in such a situation; it would surely give me some insight as to what parts of my personality are more conditioned and happen naturally, without the aid of previous memories; and what parts are learned and kept in place by memories. Ideally, of course, the more desirable traits I try to engender in myself eventually become rote and would survive amnesia, but it's impossible to accurately tell unless amnesia or something like it actually occurs.
  
  So, good character development, so-so scifi. I think the basic premise, mass amnesia, is plausible, so it's somewhat redeemed by that. I'd give it a 5 or 6.
• From JRPoole on 2008-08-06 at 3:06pm:
  Uggh. There are some redeeming points here. The Riker/Ro/Troi stuff is funny, Data's turn at bartending was cool, and the silent reactions of the bridge crew finally learning their names and ranks is well-acted and in character for everyone.
  
  This is yet another episode in which Riker is revealed to be the complete douchebag that he really is.
• From 2 Of 14 on 2008-08-21 at 4:48pm:
  Addressing the criticism that MacDuff could just have made himself captain, he might have thought it would look a bit silly having such a young person in command whilst the much older Picard was a lesser rank. More importantly, he would need to have removed Picard’s uniform or removed a circle from Picard’s collar to make it look convincing. As nobody was unconscious during the memory loss, this was not possible.
  
  
• From mem@who on 2011-09-19 at 4:13am:
  Wow, I was surprised to see how low the reviewer scored this episode, but not surprised by the high fan rating.
  
  I think the episode explores an interesting concept and does a fairly good job, with plenty of good humor, as mentioned. It's interesting how different some of the interpersonal dynamics were simply because of a different context - no established history, no prejudices, and only vague, tentative acceptance of rank and status. An interesting study, from a psychological/philosophical perspective.
  
  On the other hand, the whole thing is definitely full of absurd elements. That the alien didn't make himself captain is the first and most serious, as the reviewer mentioned. The problems with Data are another. Besides losing at chess, which certainly raised an eyebrow, Data's probability calculations should've probably deduced exactly what the heck was going on. Everyone started getting suspicious when it was revealed just how selective the memory loss and computer failures were. Data should've been much more than suspicious - he should've presented the Captain with the low probabilities of this being a random bi-product of an alien attack, versus the high probability that they were being intentionally manipulated.
  
  At this point it would've been reasonable to "break radio silence" and contact Starfleet, especially given the low level of resistance they encountered and the lack of any credible threat.
  
  Those are the main flaws, and they are pretty serious.
  
  I think it would've also been interesting to see the hidden desires of some of the other crew members. Ro Laren and Riker had a steamy affair. Data mused about belonging to a race and culture of artificial lifeforms. Troi pursued Riker. Wolf tried to assume command. Those were all interesting to watch. What about Geordi, Picard, Crusher...O'Brien? Would've been cool to see them act differently or express some latent desires.
  
  So, not without its faults, some serious, but with plenty of redeeming elements. I'd give it like a 6 or 7, which is about the fan average.
• From philthy animal on 2011-10-17 at 11:03pm:
  I really like this episode. There's some great character stuff in there that was allowed to be ecplored in a unique way due to the circumstances of the premise; for instance, Picard maintaining an air of quiet authority even as he seems to relinquish control to Worf. It's very true to his character in general and the point that the probe leaves the abiity to discharge one's duties in tact. In Picard's case, his leadership qualities.
  
  Also the chemistry between Riker and Ro once their mutual animosity was removed was enjoyable to watch. And let's face it, we can all diss Riker as much as we like but who can honestly say they wouldn't relish two highly attractive women competing for their attention? Plus it's pretty well established if not ever directly stated, that Trek takes place in a future of great sexual liberation, free of the stigma of 'pigs' and 'sluts'.
  
  Finally, and at the risk of being labelled a male pig, it would take a far better man than me to resist Ro's offer of a sleepless night...
• From Daniel on 2014-01-27 at 6:28pm:
  First of all, to address your statement that Data could not lose at chess - to Troi - that is explained correctly by Troi when she says "chess isn't just a game of ploys and gambits, it's a game of intuition." As an empathic Betazoid, Troi must have a highly evolved intuition, whereas Data has not mastered human intuition. While I like the premise of placing the crew in a crisis situation after being stripped of their identities and memory to see how they might respond, I see a certain flaw in the story logic - aside from the many flaws already pointed out by other comments herein. The problem I see in this episode is the opening set-up; first, the green scanning beam affects Data, but not Troi or anyone else in Ten Forward. Troi can clearly see the scan and its effect, therefore, she should have immediately warned Picard. Then, another green scan sweeps over the whole bridge crew, and only then does Commander MacDuff appear on the bridge. Even if the ship's computer was affected by the scan, where it had no "voice interface", it still had the necessary data to manage all shipboard operations. Therefore, wouldn't the ship's computer have immediately recognized the presence of an alien crew member (MacDuff) and report it with some kind of warning? Even so, we know that, at least, Troi was not scanned or affected immediately. Perhaps, she could have warned the others of this scan, and she might have known MacDuff was not human (with her empathic abilities). But, the storyline dismissed her (and Data) from the rest of the story, focusing instead on only the bridge crew. If the computer could not display crew information, how did Worf (after assuming command) know to address Dr. Crusher as "doctor" when she came onto the bridge from the turbo lift the first time? Then, there's the whole premise of MacDuff... As pointed out in another comment here, it does tend to bring about the old premise that the crew member in the red suit is the one to die or be the alien. So, it was no surprise to any viewer that MacDuff was out of place... Especially if you noticed that his appearance on the bridge only occurs after the scan. It may have been a better episode if they had instead used a regular crew member and made the alien presence take over that crew member, similar to the episode in which the Romulans reprogram Geordi to act as an assassin, or in any other episode when an alien presence possesses the mind and body of a crew member. Though alien possession of a crew member has been done many times in Star Trek stories, it is a premise that works well, if written well. The trick is not to use a new and never-seen-before crew member... And not have that new crew member actually be the alien.
• From Kethinov on 2014-01-28 at 11:45pm:
  Chess isn't about intuition. It's about math. That's why computers are now capable of defeating even the best chess players in the world. Data shouldn't be able to lose to Troi, period.
• From Axel on 2015-03-29 at 5:14pm:
  I don't think it's that implausible the Sartaarans would be so advanced in manipulating brain chemistry but lack the technology to make a powerful starship. Technology is driven by a lot of factors. The Inca built one of the most advanced systems of agriculture in world history, but never came to invent the wheel. We think of the wheel as a simple invention, but the Inca simply never had the need for it to the extent others did. The medieval Japanese first acquired and then later abandoned gunpowder because it just didn't take hold. There are all kinds of reasons why a society might have huge gaps in levels of technology. This TNG episode is a bit of a stretch but I don't think it makes the episode unbelievable.
  
  The premise still made for an exciting plot, and some humor thrown in as well. The main problem was the addition of another senior officer, which did make things a little obvious. I agree it would've been more interesting to see what would've happened if he made himself captain.
• From ChristopherA on 2020-01-15 at 6:27am:
  I quite like this episode, I like the concept of losing your memory and being told you are on a mission to kill enemies you can’t even remember having any reason to fight. The setup is a little hard to believe but the exploration of the concept is cool.
  
  I may be biased, though, as I was quite lucky in the way I first watched this episode. By some fluke, this was the first episode I watched after having skipped many previous episodes, so I actually wasn’t sure whether MacDuff was a real crewmember or not, which added a lot to the mystery.
  
• From Ensign Ro bummer on 2021-08-08 at 3:25pm:
  Was the space station at the end the guardian of the Edo?
  
  The Ro-Riker thing was not surprising, he likes strong women who take what they want! The only one he ever turned down was that submissive servant girl.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-10-02 at 6:42am:
  At the beginning of the episode, Clara states that Isabella has pierced ears. When Isabella materializes, her appearance exactly matches Clara's description, except Isabella doesn't have pierced ears.
• From djb on 2008-04-20 at 12:03am:
  This episode was largely a waste, except for a couple things:
  
  Data says the "clouds" look distinctly like a bunny rabbit!
  
  The girl who plays "Isabella" is delightfully freaky. She gives me the creeps!
• From curt on 2010-04-07 at 8:57pm:
  DSOmo is that supposed to a plothole or something? Everything you identify as a problem is so ridiculously unimportant or not a plothole at all. You say it as if you've uncovered something amazing, and crucial to the episode.
• From CAlexander on 2011-03-26 at 4:43am:
  The only part of this episode I liked was the end, where Picard figures out how to pacify the aliens and makes his little speech. I thought the idea of aliens judging humanity through children could have been the plot of an interesting episode." But not this episode, which was more of a children's story about how an evil ghost, who grownups don't believe in, gets you into trouble.
• From Bronn on 2012-12-01 at 7:21am:
  Actually think there's some unintended hilarity in this. We know how Picard hates children (though this comes after episodes like "Disaster" where he starts dealing with them more prevalently).
  
  When he hails Worf over the comm, asking for security to be on the lookout for a dangerous alien masquerading as an 11 year old blond girl, Worf seems to take it completely in stride. I had to laugh and imagine that it's not the first time that the Captain has asked for security to detain children that he didn't want to deal with.
• From Mike on 2017-04-23 at 7:13pm:
  Well, hopefully Clara doesn't need too much therapy after this. I'm sure Ensign Sutter is happy that psychological treatment is free on a 24th Century Federation starship.
  
  I'd put this one at about a 3. It suffers from the same problem as several of the more mediocre Trek episodes. The crew encounters an intriguing new phenomenon, alien, or problem of some kind which takes up about 45 minutes of the episode. It reaches the denouement and tries to wrap it all up in about 3-5 minutes, usually poorly. I liked Picard's confrontation with "Isabella" but it would've been nice to learn a little more about these life forms rather than spending so much time on Clara's imaginary friend issue. I get it, though. TNG did try at times to cater to the younger age group, so they occasionally have these messages directed toward kids. That's the only explanation I could come up with for why we have multiple scenes where Guinan talks about her own imaginary friend.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Bernard on 2009-12-03 at 10:28pm:
  Two moments of sheer genius in this episode, otherwise it is atrocious.
  
  The first is Nog's practical joke involving the bucket...
  
  The second is the knife fight involving Bashir, O'Brien and the bajoran! Watch it again, it's like something from Naked Gun!
  
  What I love about the relationship between Bashir and O'Brien at this point in the series is that they are written to be idiots. O'Brien is outrageously rude to Bashir in this episode whilst Bashir is so self important up to this point. That's where DS9 is such an improvement on TNG, the characters are flawed and therefore seem more real and you can relate to them.
• From John on 2011-12-06 at 2:26pm:
  One question kept nagging at me the whole time I was watching this episode: How can the Bajorans possibly have a 10,000-year-old, warp-capable civilization when their people are this stupid?
  
  Sadly, we will see numerous other instances of stupid, easily-led Bajorans throughout the series, so this aspect of the show never really improves.
• From Abigail on 2019-08-29 at 10:27pm:
  This one was pretty absurd. The idea of inventing a monster to fight every so often - which only one person knows is not actually a real monster - in order to bring people together is .... questionable. If nothing else, surely the townspeople would figure out it was all a hoax at some point??