The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-10-18 at 4:22am:
  No major problems with this episode ;)
  Just a couple continuity/production problems:
  - Data orders food for Spot. The bowl that materializes contains a very small amount of something on the bottom. Yet, in the close-up, the bowl suddenly becomes over half filled with food.
  - The wedding glass O'Brien and Keiko drink from appears to be empty. The glass is translucent, so it is difficult to tell. If there was any liquid in the glass, I think it would show up.
• From djb on 2008-02-20 at 9:06am:
  - Notice how data's hands are twitching when he is explaining his findings about the transporter malfunction to the rest of the crew? I wonder if it as all related to Lore's facial tick. I'm more inclined to suspect it was just Brent Spiner being fidgety.
  
  - This is one of the funniest episodes I've seen so far. It's up there with "Deja Q" in terms of how often it made me laugh out loud. Data's logically coming to conclusions that we find so obvious is priceless. I bet Maddox will laugh his ass off when he gets the letter. Worf's assessment of human bonding rituals is also funny; it reminds me of his description of Klingon mating in "The Dauphin." ("...he reads love poetry... he ducks a lot.") Also, Data's big smile is something to remember.
  
  - Notice how Data's dance partner looks a lot like Tasha Yar? Seems appropriate given their connection. It wasn't Denise Crosby, but she sure did look similar.
  
  - Nice balance of character development and overall plot advancement. Very interesting existential questions brought up in line with "The Measure of a Man." It seems Data doesn't take personally Maddox's desire to disassemble him. But... since Data is not really a "person" in many senses, one wouldn't expect him to.
• From JRPoole on 2008-05-05 at 3:50pm:
  This is up there with the best TNG had to offer. I love episodes that give the viewer an idea about what goes on behind the scenes on a normal day aboard the Enterprise, so this one is a personal favorite. Data's attempts at uderstanding human behavior here are priceless, O'brien finally comes into his own, and overall this is phenomenal. My only (small) quibble is with the T'pel side-plot. It's interesting, and well-done, but it could have made a great episode of its own, and sometimes it cuts into the plot concering Data and the wedding a little too much. I still give this one a 10.
• From thaibites on 2011-06-27 at 3:16am:
  I've been watching TNG sequentially, and this is the WORST episode so far. I was shocked to see that so many people liked it. Another "soap opera" episode with very little sci-fi. And what's up with Kaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyko!?! What an emotionally unbalanced, useless twit! We have to treat that as an equal!?! If I was a woman who is striving for all women to be treated as equals, I would be angered and sickened by the writer's portrayal of Keiko as being a completely emotionally out of control woman. This episode is crap!
  
  In the review, the website creator says, "It seems Data holds no hard feelings for the man..." Excuse me...HELLO???? Data doesn't have ANY feelings at all for anybody or anything. That's one of the big points of this episode!
• From Kethinov on 2011-06-29 at 3:56pm:
  You don't need to have feelings to exhibit the qualities of bias toward an individual. It would be well within the realm of realism for Data to break contact with Maddox in an effort to avoid any further unpleasant dealings with him. In that respect, the phrase "hard feelings" need not be taken so literally.
• From Mike Chambers on 2013-11-22 at 4:25am:
  Very surprised to see this episode rated so highly by everyone. It's a cute little episode with a few laughs, but belongs nowhere near the top of the TNG heap!
  
  There's basically no sci-fi to be found, and it's not like we learn anything new about Data from it either. Overall just a very watchable, but go-nowhere filler episode that earns a very average 5 rating from me. Not something I'd put on heavy rotation. I did, however, enjoy seeing O'Brien get some more screen time finally.
• From Axel on 2015-02-28 at 9:02pm:
  The last thing Data says to Maddox in "Measure of a Man" is that Maddox should continue his research and that Data is ready to help in the right way. So, apparently Data had no negative views of Maddox even immediately after the hearing. I like that the writers handled it this way and picked up the Data-Maddox relationship for this episode. It makes sense for the character to view Maddox's research as intriguing rather than hold a grudge, which would be a purely human thing to do.
  
  Anyway, this episode had a lot of great stuff. It was funny, touching, and had several plots working together nicely from the perspective of Data.
  
  I do wonder a little bit about the T'Pel thing. You'd think the Federation would be aware that Romulans might try to impersonate Vulcans. They apparently have different life signs, and a Federation ambassador would have very high clearance level which would require rigorous screening. It's somewhat surprising to me that a Romulan could do this at all. I'm sure there are explanations, but it seems to me that T'Pel/Selok gets away with an awful lot more than she should have.
• From Chris on 2018-04-05 at 2:55pm:
  My only whine about this episode is that Data didn't have that goofy smile on his face during the real dance with the bride!
  
  I would have passed beer through my nose because I was waiting for it, but alas! :-(

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Whoa Nellie on 2007-04-15 at 6:56pm:
  This episode is a perfect 10! If you're going to have someone who is not a Trek fan or even a sci-fi fan watch an episode of TNG, this is the episode to have them watch. Like the TOS's 'Trouble with Tribbles,' Qpid is pure, unmitigated fun! Patrick Stewart's Picard doing Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, you just have to love that! Picard and Vash have a very compelling 'battle of wills' dynamic to their romantic relationship. The combination of Picard/Vash and Q is unbeatable. Star Trek at its character driven best!
• From DSOmo on 2007-08-26 at 8:15am:
  - When Q barges into Vash's room and discovers a rescue note to Riker, Q calls for the guards. The guards rush in, grab Vash, and march her out of the room. She's already in a cell in the tower. Just where are they taking her?
  - When Q returns the crew to the Enterprise, Picard immediately notices that Vash is missing. Picard taps his communicator and asks the computer to locate Vash. The computer replies that Vash is not on board the Enterprise. I thought the computer used the communicators to locate people. Vash doesn't have a communicator. So how does the computer know Vash isn't on board?
• From Dio on 2009-01-02 at 9:35pm:
  I had to rate this episode 10. Vash is a great character, representing both romance and adventure, so she automatically gives this episode 5 points. Q is always fantastic and adds another 2. The last 3 come from the humor, production and continuity.
  
  I wish Vash had made one more appearance in TNG. maybe this could have been a 2 parter with the second episode focusing more on Picard and Vash before Q whisks her away...
• From John on 2010-12-31 at 4:49pm:
  Worf saying "Nice legs. For a human." -- priceless.
• From CAlexander on 2011-05-27 at 12:45am:
  This episode feels aimless. Q pops in and argues with Picard, then puts him in some random situation for no apparent reason, then they act out part of an old movie. I did, however, like some of the funny bits, like Picard being embarrassed by Vash and Worf's reaction to becoming a merry man.
  - It is cool that Vash tries to use guile to manipulate the imaginary characters, which puzzles Q since he knows, as do we, that the Enterprise crew would be too principled for such a thing.
  
• From Mike Chambers on 2013-11-18 at 5:35am:
  Pointless, boring, cheesy episode with a few laughs scattered about. The only bad episode of TNG starring Q. This one gets a big fat ZERO from me. Vash is the worst TNG guest star. Even worse than the traveler, that creepy interdimensional space-pedo.
• From Axel on 2015-03-17 at 10:57pm:
  Either Q endowed Picard's team with special swordfighting skills for the purpose of this fantasy, or fencing is apparently a top past time for most of the senior officers :) I could see Picard himself learning to fence, and obviously Worf has a natural weapon proficiency. But LaForge? How the hell did he so good with a blade?
  
  Anyway, this is a pretty amusing episode. It was good to see Vash again as she is the perfect woman to trip up Picard a bit. There are a lot of scenes I also enjoyed in this one, aside from the ones listed by the OP. For some reason, the scene where Riker is fighting one of the soldiers while Q is munching on a piece of chicken really cracked me up.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2006-05-07 at 5:06pm:
  Half a Life takes the euthenasia issue and stuffs it into a Lwaxana Troi episode. While it is nice to see a more rounded characterization of Lwaxana, I was not moved by the many heavy conversations between her and Timicin, or between her and her daughter. This emotional disconnection is coupled with a bit of bad science. How can you alter a massive star with photon torpedos? The Enterprise has almost become a Death Star, able to wipe out whole systems with a push of a button. While I find the moral issues intriguing, I just wanted more out of this episode.
• From Frogshortening on 2006-08-25 at 10:24pm:
  I loved the way they pu the serious issue in with Lwaxanne- showed that she really did take some things seriously... and the contrast between her normal self and the one who was upset about Timicin's decision made it all the more dramatic! They WERE very moving scenes! (so there)!
• From DSOmo on 2007-08-29 at 12:01am:
  - When Timicin first beams aboard, Picard immediately sticks out his hand to greet him. This action confuses Timicin, and then he comments that he has heard humans shake hands to greet each other. For a man as well versed in diplomacy as Picard, this seems very out of character for him. Timicin comes from an isolationist planet. Why make him feel immediately uncomfortable by forcing him to participate in a human ritual? Prior to this episode, Picard initiates a handshake only one other time, and that was only in respond to a physical greeting from the other party ("Final Mission")
  - In this episode, Lwaxana orders Oskoid from the food replicator. When Timicin asks what it is, Lwaxana says it is a Betazed delicacy. But during the picnic in "Menage a Troi," Lwaxana offers Riker an Oskoid leaf and he acts like he's never had one before. Riker offers it to Troi, as if she'd never had one before. If Oskoid leaves are a Betazed delicacy, why do Riker and Troi act like they'd never eaten them before? Troi grew up on Betazed, and Riker was stationed there for several years.
  - When Timicin and Lwaxana transport to the planet they are holding hands. Their hands are outside the confinement beam but they manage to transport OK (see "Sarek")
  - After Timicin asks for asylum, Lwaxana and Troi have a talk. The scene opens with a shot of Lwaxana leaning against a mirror. As she walks away, the pole from the boom mic can be seen in the mirror. When the scene changes and follows Lwaxana walking across the room, the boom mic shadow can be seen moving across the wall.
• From djb on 2008-03-13 at 7:17am:
  This was a valuable episode in many ways.
  
  As others pointed out, I liked how Lwaxana's character was a bit more fleshed out in this episode. Usually she's just obnoxious and insufferable, but here we get to see something really, truly bother her, and see her go through some intense emotions. Much better.
  
  At first I thought it strange that Lwaxana would become so romantically attracted to a man (an alien, at that) at first sight, but I then remember that she's a telepath, an especially talented one at that, who can basically "read" the gestalt of a person in the first few moments of knowing them. What takes us humans months or years to find out takes her minutes instead. Makes you think about what Betazoid culture must be like, with basically no one able to lie to each other...
  
  I like how this episode brings up the issue of moral relativism. Normally I'm not a moral relativist; I think that there are some standard rights we can uphold for all of humanity. But what about when other sapient species come into play? The "Resolution" concept sounds to us like euthanasia taken to an unacceptable extreme, but I actually tend to agree with Timicin's daughter when she basically tells Lwaxana she has no place to judge their people's practices. Even though it sounds abhorrent to us, we're talking about a different species, planet, culture, psychology, history; enough to determine that we have no moral jurisdiction. Plus, it sets a bad precedent: species intervening on other species' practices they find offensive can lead down a totalitarian path pretty fast.
  
  So much of Star Trek is based upon speculation. We really have no idea what other species in this galaxy are going to be like. An episode devoted (partially)to one alien's personal dilemma makes me think about what fields of study will pop up once we start making contact with extra-terrestrial species. Basically take any field we have now and add the prefix "xeno," and you have a new field: Xenobiology, xenopsychology, xenosociology. Xenoethics. Xenotheology. Xenomusicology! The possibilities are endless...
  
  Good point someone made about the star subplot... The idea that a starship can make a star go nova with just a few specially-modified photon torpedoes, in minutes, is ludicrous (at least they made the nova look semi-believable, unlike "Evolution." They still don't get that novas appear for weeks, even months). If not ludicrous, extremely scary. The power not to destroy planets a la Death Star, but to cause the devastation of an entire solar system! This system had no inhabitants, but what about systems that do? If life on any of the planets survived the radiation and solar debris, how long would life last without the primary power source? How would they react gravitationally to a white dwarf (which will be less massive than the original star)? If this kind of stellar apocalypse is possible, why didn't the Romulans send a few cloaked ships into sector 001 and just decapitate the federation as soon as it became a threat?
  
  If anything I'd say that an unsuccessful result of this experiment would be no change in the star. I also think that if the experiment were successful, we wouldn't find out for months, even years. Remember we're talking about a body that's about 1 and a half sextillion (1.5x10^21) cubic meters in volume and about 2 nonillion kilograms (that's 2x10^30) in mass. Whatever effects our special little torpedoes might have is going to take quite some time in real life.
  
  Anyway, bad sci-fi, but great character study, great themes. Also, David Ogden Stiers is such a good actor that even though I've seen him in M*A*S*H countless times, I didn't realize it was him until I looked him up! Great guest star performance. An 8.
• From JRPoole on 2008-06-26 at 4:43am:
  I don't have much to add to the commentaries here. This is about as good as stand-along episodes get: interesting (if not very plausible) science, great guest actors, interesting themes, and finally a Lwaxana episode that doesn't annoy. I give it a 9. Did the Enterprise wait for Ms. Troi? Or is she staying here until she can hitch a ride back to Betazed?
• From John on 2010-12-31 at 8:36pm:
  You have to love how good an actor David Ogden-Stiers is. He renders his part with a quiet dignity that perfectly fits the character. I can't think of anyone better suited for the role. Certainly one of the best guest-stars TNG has ever had.
• From MJ on 2011-01-05 at 7:12pm:
  I also agree with the vast majority of the webmaster’s ratings, but I would give this one a 7. The lack of explanation of Tarses fate doesn’t ruin it for me, nor does the lack of sufficient explanation for what exactly he did wrong (was it falsifying the application or the fact that his grandparent is Romulan?).
  
  The drama of the episode is irresistible, and the issues it grapples with are both complex and timely; it would’ve been interesting to see how differently this might have been written in a post-9/11 world. I also don’t think everyone is quite out of character. Worf’s paranoia at the prospect of having a Romulan spy on board seems very fitting, for example.
  
  The only other snag which knocks the episode down somewhat is that it seems strange that Admiral Satie would’ve been able to use tactics like this in all her investigations without throwing up any red flags. Sometimes it seems everyone at Starfleet are blind, despicable fools compared to Picard and crew.
• From Robert Koenn on 2011-03-17 at 1:50pm:
  Some of the other comments are very pertinent. As far as the backup story about rejuvenating a star with photon torpedoes, that is technical bunk. Stars burn based on their internal hydrogen and other element components and the fusion induced by the mass and these components makeup. If this star had burned out of hydrogen a photon torpedo barrage is not going to make it spontaneously rejuvenate. This was only a device to allow for the fundamental plot line of euthanasia.
  
  Now that part was quite interesting to watch and quite pertinent in many ways to our present conditions. While there is the prime directive to not get involved in other species culture, if there was a cultural decision years ago to go this course that is not a reason to consider changing a flawed decision. However that would have to be instigated in person by Timicin but with support of Lwaxana and/or others. I wanted that to start out of basic morality but felt in the end Timicin was only returning to accept his preordained fate rather than starting a fundamental examination of a flawed law. He should have become the catalyst but it was not in his psyche. The same is so true of so many things on our planet at present, women's rights, children's rights, etc. If one person does not start a movement or does but gets not support it is fundamentally unjust. But for no one to even try then the conditions will simply stay the same flawed way. I do enjoy these episodes that examine fundamental human rights.
• From Lee on 2012-04-25 at 4:27pm:
  Since I don't care much for technical problems (as long as they aren't as severe as in VOY: Threshold of course), I could really enjoy this episode. It's also the chronologically first Lwaxana-episode I really like!
  
  It not only has the typical TNG-themes, it's also very sad and the acting of the guest star was magnificent! And although the science of the episode is probably not the best, it has still some awesome visuals.
  
  
• From Douglas on 2016-04-21 at 12:48pm:
  I've watched this episode many times but only just saw that when Georgi is at his console, the file number for the experiment is 4077. Nice in-joke since guest star David Ogden Stiers was in M.A.S.H. and the unit he was posted to was the 4077th.
• From QuasiGiani on 2018-04-18 at 7:38am:
  Not euthanasia.
  
  Just pure bureaucratic stupidity.
  
  Irritating episode. As formulaic as the preceding episode on witch-hunts. But at least that episode was addressing its intended subject. The only problem there was that it missed the opportunity it had so worked to go beyond the ordinary and extend an understanding to the witchfinder's pitiable foundation of fear... This episode just entirely mistakes its very subject... Not euthanasia. Just pure bureaucratic stupidity.
  
  
• From RodimusBen on 2020-10-05 at 1:22pm:
  Is it just me or does Majet Barrett act the heck out of this episode? More often than not I can't stand Lwaxana, but every now and then they give her a powerhouse ep (see "Dark Page" and DS9's "The Forsaken").
  
  There are only a few episodes of Trek that move me to tears but I got close to it listening to Lwaxana talk to Deanna about the trauma of aging in the transporter room. Perhaps because it is so real. This is a universal human experience that everyone can identify with (or will, sooner or later).

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-09-03 at 7:02am:
  - Near the beginning of the episode, Worf and Guinan practice together on the phaser range. Guinan tells Worf she had a bet with Picard that she could make Worf laugh before he made the rank of lieutenant commander. "Not a good bet today," he replies. The conversation seems to imply that Guinan has never made Worf laugh. In the opening scene of "Yesterday's Enterprise," Guinan did make Worf laugh. Was there an alternate reality that was caused in that episode by the older Enterprise coming through the time fissure and then returning so that Worf never laughed in Ten-Forward?
  - When Gowron first tells Picard of the Duras sisters' challenge, Picard asks for details. Gowron has none, stating that women cannot serve on the High Council. That must be a new rule, because Gowron offered K'Ehleyr a seat on the High Council in "Reunion."
  - As Worf prepares to leave the Enterprise, he packs his belongings in a large chest. Picard comes to his quarters for a chat. During the conversation, Picard says he will make sure Worf's belongings get transferred to the Klingon ship. Just before Picard escorts Worf to the transporter, Worf closes the lid on the chest and they walk out. However, while they were talking, a pan of the room showed Worf's bat'leth still hanging on the wall. In "Reunion," Worf explained to his son that the weapon had been in his family for ten generations. There is no way Worf would leave that behind. Was he hoping that Picard would remember to pack it also?
  - When the family of Duras attacks Gowron, two Klingon warships attack, pummeling Gowron's ship. Picard observes the battle as Data narrates. At one point, Data says, "[Gowron's ship] has lost her port shield. It is unlikely that they will withstand another hit in that quarter." The shot changes to the main viewer of the Enterprise. As Data continues narrating, the graphics show Gowron's ship taking not one, not two, not three, but four more phaser hits on the port side, and in each of those hits the blast disperses as if the port shield still functions!
• From JRPoole on 2008-07-02 at 1:00am:
  This two-parter would be a candidate for my best of trek award. The only small problem for me is the Romulan Tasha Yar, which, despite the explanation coming in the second part, is stretching it a little.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-09-03 at 8:59pm:
  - At the end of "Redemption," Worf was leaving to serve as weapons officer on Gowron's ship. Yet this episode opens with Worf serving under his brother Kurn on Kurn's ship. Did Worf get a demotion?
  - Worf's brother claims that the bar is filled both with men loyal to Duras and those loyal to Gowron. At one point, men loyal to Duras attack Worf in the bar. They knock him unconscious and drag him out. Why doesn't anyone come to Worf's aid?
  - Sela gives Picard an accurate recounting of the facts of "Yesterday's Enterprise." Specifically, she knows that her mother came from twenty-two years in the future. If the Romulans knew that Yar came from twenty-two years in the future, it is inconceivable that they would kill her. Yar was a tactical officer with in-depth knowledge of weapons systems. The Romulans had unlimited time to torture her until she cooperated. It makes no sense for them to throw away a resource like that just because she tried to escape.
  - After the sisters of Duras fail to convince Worf to join their cause, Sela appears on a viewscreen and gives them new orders. Worf calmly looks at the screen before they lead him away. Is Worf still groggy from the beating in the bar? The viewscreen shows the face of a woman he called a friend - a woman he thought died years ago. His reaction should have been similar to Picard's: shock and amazement.
  - Picard's entire plan for exposing Romulan involvement hinges on the successful detection of cloaked Romulan supply ships. The successful detection of the supply ships rests solely on the blockade using active tachyon beams. When the main computers on both the Enterprise and Sela's ship show the blockade, the graphics show lines connecting the Starfleet ships. If the Starfleet ships are using beams, they've got problems. The Romulans could detect the gaps and fly through them. To get the type of density they need, the Starfleet ships would have to be clustered very closely together. And if the ships are clutered that closely together, then the Romulans could simply fly around the blockade. Picard and the main computers on both the Enterprise and Sela's ship must be confused. The Starfleet ships must be sending out "waves" of tachyon emissions. This would fill in the gaps.
  - At one point, O'Brien tells Picard, "The detection net is picking up activity from the Romulans ... fifteen cloaked ships spreading out along the border." O'Brien says this before the Romulans cross into Klingon space. If the blockade could only detect a cloaked ship when it crossed a "beam," how does O'Brien know that there are fifteen cloaked ships getting ready to cross?
  - When Sela speaks with Picard, she asks why twenty-three Starfleet ships lie on the Romulan border. If there are twenty-three ships in the blockade, why do only seventeen show up on the viewscreens both on the Enterprise and Sela's ship?
  - After the Romulans flood the border with tachyon emissions, Picard orders the ships to fall back. Data realizes that the Romulan ships might be detectable for a short time. He gets to work immediately, disobeying a direct order from Picard. Aside from the fact that everything in Data's programming supports his full compliance with orders from a superior officer - Data's disobedience is totally unnecessary. In the time that Data spends arguing with his first officer about Picard's orders, Data could simply say, "Data to Captain Picard. There may be another way to detect the Romulans. Stand by." Data's disobedience is simply a plot contrivance to add tension.
  - Worf's resignation from Starfleet was a major component of the cliff-hanger of the finale for the fourth season. Then, just before this episode concludes, Worf turns to Picard and says, "Request permission to return to duty, sir." Picard says ok, and they leave together! That's it? That's all? A person can resign from Starfleet and all they have to do is say, "Oops, I've changed my mind," and everything's fine?
• From Bernard on 2008-05-26 at 12:09pm:
  I have to say that after such a great buildup in the first part in terms of klingon political intrigue what we get in this concluding part is an episode that deals mostly with a romulan/federation confrontation and a rather out of place storyline for data. Surely we're all thinking 'lets see klingons!!' all the way through the other scenes. Judging by the average scoring others no doubt disagree with me.
  
  Solid episode, but such a disappointment for me considering how well the first part sets things up.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-10-02 at 3:49pm:
  Problem: During the battle among the three Klingon Warbirds (one of which is commanded by Kurn, Worf's brother), Worf announces that the aft shields are gone. Immediately afterwards, the ship takes several direct phaser hits on the aft section. It would have been totally destroyed without shields. However, the shots are clearly deflected off the Warbird's aft shields. Which is of course inconsistent with the statement Worf just made.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-10-10 at 8:49am:
  - When the Enterprise first discovers the Dyson's sphere, Data states it is 200 million kilometers in diameter. Riker responds, "That's nearly as large as the Earth's orbit around the Sun." The Earth's orbit around the Sun is approximately 297 million kilometers. I leave it for you to decide if a difference of 97 million kilometers qualifies as "nearly."
  - When Scotty rematerializes, his arm is in a sling. Later, Crusher states that he has a hairline fracture of the humerus - the long bone of the upper arm. Surprisingly, Scotty seems to feel no pain as Geordi bumps the arm several times and gives it a good whack right where the injury is!
  - When Data discovers Scotty doesn't care for the taste of synthahol, he tells Scotty that Guinan keeps a store of true alcoholic beverages and proceeds around the bar to fetch some. Can anyone just help themselves to Guinan's provisions?
• From JRPoole on 2008-09-07 at 1:30am:
  I agree with everything here. One nice touch to this episode is Scotty's relationship with Worf. He refuses to shake Worf's hand at the end of the episode. I like this because it's true to his character and it's not a pollyanna feelgood ending, as some things never change.
• From KStrock on 2009-01-23 at 1:43pm:
  In reference to DSOmo and the alcohol.
  
  In Season 2's episode "Up the Long Ladder", Worf states that true alcohol can be replicated. Although then we would't be able to reference the "It is...green" scene.
• From Ali on 2009-03-22 at 6:04pm:
  When Scotty is first brought back, and Riker tells him he is from the Enterprise, Scotty assumes Kirk is commanding it, and Riker has to explain the time passage, etc.
  
  But Kirk is dead at this point (or believed to be by the world). According to the Generations movie, he was picked up by the Nexxus, and Scotty is one of the first ones to find out he is gone.
  
  So, did Scotty forget this? At first, I thought maybe Scotty had been placed in this beam before the Kirk incident, but then Scotty never returns to the earlier time from whence he came, so Kirk's death must have happened beforehand.
  
  Someone tell me if I am missing something here!
• From Someone Else on 2009-05-04 at 1:11am:
  Ali:
  
  No, you're right, and this is the main problem with this episode - however, bear in mind that this episode was filmed a considerable time before Generations. And, who knows? Maybe being stuck in the transporter buffer for half an aeon can lead to temporary amnesia or something.
• From Daniel Blessing on 2009-09-16 at 9:30pm:
  Beamings happen all of the time between Federation ships while shields are active. I am surprised you have not mentioned that as a problem in more of your episodes.
  My only reasonable explanation for these occurrences is that the Federation ships are all provided with either a universal transponder code, or they are provided with every commissioned ships transponder codes, including old, lost, and out dated ships. This could explain how they were able to beam the two of them out while the shields were up. They also are able in certain episodes to beam people aboard while their OWN shields are active... This could be a bit harder to explain, unless again, my theory is applied? They are able to beam thru the shields if they are aware of how to "penetrate" them.
• From direktbroker on 2009-10-06 at 12:13pm:
  Nice thought,but no good Daniel, just think of all the times they could not bring back their own teams because their own shields are up due to some terribly artificial threat in orbit.
• From rpeh on 2010-07-19 at 11:21am:
  I may be an old softy, but the bit on the holodeck where Scotty raises a glass to his all crew and toasts them with "Here's to ye, lads" always brings a tear to my eye.
  
  Of course, Bones was still alive in the very first episode and Spock's still around too, so it's not totally impossible that he could catch up with two of his best friends from the old Enterprise.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2010-08-18 at 4:22am:
  The Dyson Sphere, although a popular device in sci-fi, is not a "sci-fi concept"; it's a hypothetical structure proposed by the very real and very brilliant theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson.
  
  Good review, though and a fantastic site overall. Count me as your newest fan!
• From Zaphod on 2011-04-13 at 1:05pm:
  Dyson himself refered to that idea of him as a joke btw.
  
  I nevertheless wished they would have concentrated more on it and even the slightest bit on its creators and less on Scotty. I really like him but using such a wonderful idea as the Dyson Sphere only for the usual Star Trek problem of the week is a waste. So for me it's just an okay episode, way above the crap u would expect from a TNG episode though.
• From John on 2011-08-30 at 3:53am:
  Once again, DSOmo proves that he does not understand the concept of narrative writing. He also proves his desire to tear down things other people in enjoy with petty nitpicking.
  
  Riker's statement that the diameter of the Dyson sphere is "nearly the orbit of the earth around the sun" is meant to to fire the imagination of the viewer by planting the idea that the sphere may be habitable. We find out later that it is (or was). Perhaps it's not close enough to the mean orbital diameter of Earth to qualify as "nearly", but who cares?
• From Will on 2011-10-30 at 1:41am:
  Earths orbital radius may not be the same in 300 years for all we know.
• From Inga on 2012-01-12 at 12:51pm:
  I really wish they would explore the Dyson Sphere more, though.
  
  Also, maybe I just missed something here, but how did the Enterprise get free from the pull at the end of the episode?
  
  1. The helmsman said they've lost main power and the auxiliary power is down
  
  2. Then she stated that they were still being carried by the initial motion of the tractor beam and that the impulse engines were offline. She also said "I can't stop our momentum."
  
  3. They couldn't use the maneuvering thrusters, until they diverted the remaining auxiliary power to them.
  
  4. Then, they achieved orbit, yet it seems they couldn't escape it (?). I mean, why else would they wait until their shields went down and the solar flares would burn them up? Couldn't Picard order Data to scan for another exit from a safer location?
  
  5. So when Geordi contacted the Enterprise, how did they manage to escape?
  
  I feel like I just missed or misunderstood something, though :/
  
  
  
  
• From railohio on 2014-06-03 at 11:00pm:
  If anyone is disappointed by this episode, he should read the novel "relics." On top of including every single part and line of the episode, the book adds a whole section of information. In the novel, they actually send an away team down to the planet before making their escape through the jammed doors. The book goes through a great depth of description of the surface inside the sphere, as well as a deeper exploration of Scotty's inner consciousness. Even if reading is not your thing, I strongly recommend reading the novel based on this fantastic episode
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-02 at 3:26am:
  @Zaphod: the Dyson sphere concept was published in an academic paper in the journal science and it was definitely NOT a “joke”. What Dyson did say was that he was not “serious” – not in the sense that he was “joking” but in the sense that he didn’t think it was ever going to be a plausible technology for anyone to find useful. But he DEFINITELY thought such a sphere was technically possible. HOWEVER, his version of the “sphere” was not a solid structure like the ones you see in sci-fi, but rather, a collection of structures spread out over a region of space constituting a “sphere”.... so I guess, in way, we’ve come full circle and our host is (in a limited sense) correct in describing the star trek version of the sphere as a “sci-fi concept.”... touché...
• From ChristopherA on 2019-06-27 at 6:04am:
  When I first watched this episode a long time ago, I thought Scotty's problem was that he was a "fish out of water", unprepared for the time period. But now that I rewatch it, it is obvious that his real problem is that he is having a mid-life crisis, feeling old and out-of-touch, in a parallel to how Kirk was rusty, depressed, and out of touch in the movie era. TOS Scotty would act totally differently if he were transported to the future. It is arguably an interesting progression to see his life path progress from ernest and serious in the show, to goofy and laid back in the movies, to lonely and pathetically trying to be wanted.
  
  However, I mostly find "over-the-hill Scotty" annoying, so this isn't a top episode for me. But I do like the recreation of the TOS-era bridge, and Scotty getting to use his mad engineering skills at the beginning and end of the episode.
• From Andrew James on 2019-09-16 at 2:37pm:
  My problem with this episode is the idea that people were not interested in Scottie's stories about the old days. This man is no a living legend from one of the most famous ships ever, he would more likely be inundated by historians and fan boys and girls. The better plot work up is him not being interested in "reliving" the old days but by wanting to be an engineer and being obsolete. The trip to the old enterprise should have been to get away from the people who did not care who he was know but just wanted his old stories.
• From Chris Long on 2020-05-21 at 1:51am:
  With TNG being the way it is, the character stories are most interesting to me.
  This one is right there satisfying that 'element'!
  My big complaint about this episode is that the from any perspective showing the Enterprise with the sphere, one can see the curvature of it! What utter nonsense! There is no way anyone could discern anything remotely like some curvature from something that size!
  It bugs that they dropped the ball on the scale but I suppose maybe they simply didn't think about it.
  No one else here has made a comment on it so I'm alone in this.
  Meh... ;-)

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From DSOmo on 2007-11-12 at 7:58am:
  - Madred asks Picard the names and ranks of those who accompanied him on the raid. Picard responds with "Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher and Lieutenant Worf." Isn't "chief medical officer" more of a title than a rank? Crusher's rank is commander, in the same way that Riker's rank is commander and his title is first officer.
  - Both Part 1 and Part 2 of "Chain of Command" suggests that the Cardassians were able to lure Picard into their trap simply by using theta band emissions as the bait. Is Picard really the only person in Starfleet who knows about these kinds of subspace waves? What happened to the rest of the crew on the Stargazer? Data seems to address these questions when he says that Picard is "one of only three Starfleet captains with extensive experience in theta band devices. The other two are no longer in Starfleet." But is this the type of mission that Starfleet feels must be lead by a captain? Isn't this really just a commando raid to seek out and destroy a Cardassian lab? Does it seem reasonable to send the captain of the flagship of the Federation on a grenade-throwing mission? And does it seem reasonable that the Cardassians would expect that they could capture Picard simply by transmitting a bunch of theta waves?
• From wepeel on 2008-05-04 at 6:11pm:
  While DSOmo is once again on point with Picard saying the title Chief Medical Officer instead of Crusher's rank (like he was asked to), and is probably a writer oversight, one could make the argument that the writers deliberately wrote that line to illustrate the view that information extracted via torture is neither ethical nor reliable. Picard was simply too exhausted to give the most appropriate answer...
• From JRPoole on 2008-09-16 at 5:13pm:
  This is one of the stronger episodes of the series, and one that's often overlooked.
  
  The only problem I see here is that it seems a little unlikely that Star Fleet would choose to send it's flagship captain on such a dangerous mission. We're given some justification of that -- Picard is an expert on the techno-babble issue of the day-- but it still seems like a long shot for the Cardassians to lure him in this way. I can't imagine that Star Fleet couldn't simply train some special-ops task team on the subspace emissions and turn them loose rather than sending Picard. But that's a minor thing, and the this episode is more than worth the suspension of disbelief needed to get through it.
  
  The torture scenes are acted wonderfully by everybody involved, and they're some of the most gripping scenes of TNG. This episode also features a great guest turn by the actor playing Jellico, as well as the one portraying Gul Madred. We also get that rarest of TNG treats, a Ferengi character not so annoying and overdrawn that the Ferengi at large seem unrealistic. This is quality stuff, and I give the two-parter as a whole a 9.
• From rpeh on 2010-08-01 at 11:26pm:
  As far as I'm concerned, this is the best episode in the entire Trek oeuvre. The story is gripping from start to finish and then... Patrick Stewart.
  
  His acting in the torture scenes was nothing short of perfect, and the final line in the scene with Troi... well. Perfect again. This is one episode where the TNG writers finally realised that had a serious actor on their books and gave him a chance to show off his talent.
  
  It's almost as if every other actor steps up a gear given Stewart's performance. Frakes in particular loses some of his usual cardboard edge and gives a great show as Riker, and the others are almost as good.
  
  It was the memory of this episode that made me get the old DVDs down off the shelf and watch them all again. Absolutely brilliant.
• From nirutha on 2010-11-21 at 11:28pm:
  I really dig David Warner as Gul Madred. He has the perfect voice for that role, one that seems to belong to a man both sophisticated and sadistic. (He also voice-acted Jon Irenicus in a similiar role in the RPG classic Baldur's Gate 2.)
• From John on 2011-02-01 at 3:46pm:
  Once again, DSOmo manages to suck all the mystery and fun out of a fictional show. I bet he's a lot of fun at parties. And funerals.
• From anon on 2013-12-29 at 1:14pm:
  I feel kind of sorry for captain Picard at this stage. He's lived a very hard life. First he was a borg, then he lived a whole false life in 'Inner Light' (to suddenly discover your children and wife weren't real would be devastating) and now he has been tortured. Plus it appears that he has never been in a very serious relationship despite him appearing to want companionship.
• From Quando on 2014-03-19 at 9:47pm:
  The whole "how many lights do you see" thing was borrowed (stolen?) from George Orwell's great novel 1984, in which the protagonist Winston was being tortured by the state and asked repeatedly how many fingers the torturer was holding up (there were only four, but the torturer insisted that there were five). Like Picard, in the end Winston said that he really did believe that he saw five fingers, although there were only four.
• From Axel on 2015-03-22 at 3:59am:
  This two-parter was held back a bit by the scenes involving Jellico's interaction with the crew, but is redeemed by Picard's mission and subsequent captivity.
  
  The Enterprise crew comes off as very whiny in this episode. Sure, Jellico may be an abrasive captain, but what is he really asking? That the ship be prepared for an emergency combat situation and shut down its research missions to be fully ready for that? Surely the Enterprise has contingency plans for this kind of thing, so it can't be that unusual for the crew to step up its game a bit. I think the conflict between Jellico and the rest of the crew was forced. Jellico's negotiations with the Cardassians did make for some great scenes, along with the plan to place mines on the Cardassian ships.
  
  The Seltris III mission and Picard's captivity, though, are amazingly done. David Warner is one of the best guest cast members in all of TNG as Gul Madred. Patrick Stewart's research and preparation for this role pay off, and the two actors' performances are what make this two-parter pure gold. The final scene where Picard talks about seeing five lights was gripping and the perfect end to this story.
• From Emitter Array on 2016-08-20 at 2:13pm:
  I think this is one of TNG's finest episodes (although I do agree with DSOmo's comments about problems with the premise). David Warner is perfect in his role while Patrick Stewart gets to act out a bit more compared to the usual fare he gets on the show; just excellent all around and a joy to watch.
• From Mike on 2017-05-06 at 9:59pm:
  If you want the Enterprise to explore space, make contact with new civilizations, or even go into a confrontation hoping to work out a peaceful result, you go with Picard. If you have to send the Enterprise into a confrontation expecting to do battle, you want a Jellico.
  
  What's interesting to me about the Jellico part of this plot is that all we can really say is that Jellico and the senior staff had a hard time working together. The episode does a good job of not portraying Jellico as a bad captain, just a different captain who excels in a situation most of the TNG crew aren't used to. Ultimately, he does have to rely on Riker and the rest to complete the mission, humbling him a bit. But Starfleet's confidence in Jellico as a Cardassian expert is clearly justified.
  
  The scenes between Picard and Madred are superbly written and acted. It was a very gripping part of the plot, and again, what we get in Gul Madred is not a one-dimensionally evil interrogator, but a complex and somewhat tragic figure. Picard recognizes as much. I absolutely loved the final scene, too, where Picard is speaking with Troi. He didn't come away from this experience completely unchanged, just as with his abduction by the Borg.
• From jeffenator98 on 2019-06-04 at 5:19pm:
  David Warner played a Cardassian in this a Human in Star trek 5 and a Klingon in Star trek 6.
• From Chris on 2019-07-29 at 10:03pm:
  What a great episode!
  
  Awesome acting and drama at all stages!
  
  To me a perfect STNG episode, one of my favorites along with Fistful, Relics, I forget...
  
• From RodimusBen on 2020-10-25 at 2:27pm:
  I have a strong aversion to scenes of torture, so this episode is difficult to watch, but from a writing and acting standpoint it is excellently done. Most Star Trek episodes aren't fortunate enough to have two heavy-hitters for guest stars like David Warner and Ronny Cox. Both of them play their parts perfectly.
  
  I actually watched this episode after having watched some of Deep Space Nine, so it brought into crystal clear focus just how terrifying and sadistic of an antagonist the Cardassians can be. Suddenly the 50 years of occupation the Bajorans endured at their hands becomes all the more horrifying.
  
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2006-06-21 at 1:56am:
  It is always fun to watch this episode. The problem with Worf switching realities becomes worse and worse. You start to feel bad for him. The only drawback is that the solution was too easy. Get in your shuttle, emit this kind of field, and off you go. However, that part is long after all the cool things happen. I'll never forget the Enterprises filling space, or the Enterprise from Borg infested space, who's Captain Riker refuses to go back. This episode it a balls to the ground classic. I'm giving it a 9.
• From Wolfgang on 2006-06-29 at 8:48pm:
  The disappointing ending turns a nearly-perfect one into a superb one. I guess that a 2-part episode may have presented the room for a more dramatic final, although it could have been difficult not to frustrate the viewers, and to maintain the tension.
• From Jason on 2008-02-07 at 10:41am:
  Did you notice how in one of the timelines Data had blue eyes? Spooky!
• From Paul on 2010-08-17 at 10:13pm:
  Really enjoyed this episode, the scene with hundreds of thousands of enterprises! I also enjoyed the subtle changes that were unlaboured, like data's eyes and the picture on his wall constantly changing
• From Bronn on 2013-06-04 at 5:51am:
  Agree with others that the ending was disappointing and rushed. There were some serious changes in some of the timelines, and especially with the last one, which could have been explored more. Science Fiction fans always love to ask "What if?" This episode could have been a two parter.
  
  The first part could have ended with the revelation that Worf's shifting, and his inability to perform his duty had killed Geordi. That was a moment that was not very well explored in this episode. Deanna rather casually shows up in his quarters, lightheartedly mentioning that she'd heard he'd had some trouble on the bridge. It would have had real dramatic weight if she'd had this attitude of concern and nervousness in knowing that he'd screwed up badly enough that one of their dear friends and comrades had been seriously injured. The second of the two parts would have only had one timeshift, but it would have deal with Worf accepting some of the realities of his current universe in his attempt to get back. It's a different, and grimmer one, without Captain Picard or LaForge, and they'd end up losing Worf also (most likely, since we never see what happens in that timeframe after the shift back). The grim reality of a Deanna Troi forced to give up her husband and an Enterprise losing its first officer would have made for great drama. A second part of this episode would have been a greater contribution to Trek history than some of the later episodes in season 7, like Genesis and Sub Rosa.
• From TheAnt on 2013-11-04 at 3:33pm:
  A shuttle full of Worf's.
  
  There's a bit too many episodes with time loops and alternative timelines in Star Trek.
  
  But if we would have to remove one such, this is not one of those that would have to go. Since even though it is weird, and of course completely impossible, the idea presented here is indeed found in actual scientific discussions. That for every action with a choice - two timelines would be created.
  Even the conservation of energy in creating the new split off universes would not be violated, in case the universe is a hologram - which is part of a hypothesis that have been introduced after this episode of TNG were made.
  (Not that I even for a split second think the universe works that way, but consider it to be one interesting model only.)
  
  The telling of the story is also better than for a few other alternative episodes in Start Trek. So with good science and one enjoyable story I give this episode a solid 8.
• From pzaz on 2017-08-19 at 5:25am:
  I don't get why Troi would have to "give up her husband"... once the Worf that we know goes back to his "proper" dimension, aren't all the dimensions put back to normal--and therefore, wouldn't alternative Troi's life with her husband Worf also be put back in place?
  
  hmm... this hole in the narrative logic meant I didn't feel sad for her

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From JRPoole on 2009-01-02 at 10:21pm:
  This is the beginning of the "real" DS9, and it's a good introduction. Thankfully, the writers didn't have Jake and Nog pull some sort of daring rescue of Sisko and Quark. The only (slight) problems I have with this episode are very minor:
  
  --It seems a little unlikely that the Jem'hadar could overlook Jake and Nog, especially when there's a shuttle orbiting the planet, but I guess that stands to reason because Sisko and Quark were meant to escape all along.
  
  -Just where is Eris beaming to at the end? How sophisticated is Dominion transporter technology?
• From BlueLabel on 2010-06-10 at 7:43am:
  The biggest problem I have with this episode, and in fact most star trek battle scenes, is how puny and frail Federation ships always seem to be during engagements like this. Seriously, watch the battle in this episode. The Jem'Hadar make one pass, firing a couple of shots at the Odyssey, then it cuts to the bridge and it's absolute chaos up there, exploding consoles and everything.
  
  The reverse case hardly ever happens. Which I think sucks. I mean, this is a Galaxy class ship right? And if they could take it out so easily, why not pick off the runabouts first?
• From Wes Thompson on 2011-01-14 at 7:56pm:
  I have to gladly agree with JRPoole that this marks the beginning of the rest of DS9. Again, I agree that the rest of DS9 is GREAT! There are those episodes here and there that have their own little, self-contained stories. I like a lot of them for the way the writers examine humanity and morals. However, my favorite part of DS9 is the Dominion story. I greatly enjoy the ongoing story. For me, the ongoing saga of episodes and seasons is what makes DS9 better than TNG. Don't get me wrong; there are many great stand-alone and two-part TNG episodes. But DS9 has a much better overall story and drama. This comes from someone who grew up loving TNG and almost detesting DS9 for trying to copy what TNG had done so well. After watching DS9, I have to say that I look forward to rewatching the episodes often.
• From Krs321 on 2011-02-01 at 8:19pm:
  Why doesn't Eris pause or at least say something about or to Odo? I guess they were already aware that a shapeshifter was on DS9 and it wasn't a big deal...?
• From Bernard on 2011-11-13 at 11:54am:
  As others have said, this episode marks the start of bad ass DS9. The transition to bad ass DS9 is completed by the start of season four when all the boxes are ticked.
  Sisko with bald head and goatee - check
  DS9 has it's own warship armed to the teeth - check
  Worf has arrived - check
  
  The episode is very introductory and so I don't think it can be hailed as a masterpiece. It does a great job introducing the Jem'Hader and the idea that the Dominion is going to be a nasty adversary.
  The plot involving Sisko, Jake, Nog and Quark is a nice little addition that plays out through the episode with Quark needling Sisko but then they need to work together and appreciate each other a bit more by the end giving the episode a much needed character arc. The two play off each other very nicely, as do Nog and Jake but then we know they do from many, many other episodes.
  
  I'd give this a 7 or maybe 8 depending on my mood.
• From Spencer Miller on 2012-04-10 at 9:09pm:
  Nice episode. I love the Quark character but he was just too insufferable on the camping trip/during captivity - I know thats the obvious intention but I found it a little aggravating.
  
  I also wanted to comment on the battle with the Odyssey. In Kethinov's review he comments: "The destruction of the USS Odyssey was downright shocking; to see a galaxy class starship taken down so easily!" But with regards to this, I felt the same way as BlueLabel...the Federation starships always seem sorely underpowered to me. The space battles often seem very one sided...either the Enterprise (in TNG) can easily take out their adversaries, or else its the whole "two hits and sparks are flying everywhere and people are flying all over the place". It gets a little aggravating for me when the protagonist faction's firepower is so impotent.
• From Troy on 2013-01-27 at 8:55am:
  Usually I either get aggravated or make a running gag out of how Federation ships shields are down after taking 2 hits, but in this particular episode it made sense to me. The Odyssey was being attacked by Phased Polaron beams which I doubt the Federation has ever really dealt with, and since Polaron beams are designed to penetrate shields the sparks flying right away is mostly justified. Now it did take quite a few hits and was still able to attempt a retreat with the final blow being a suicide run, so at the very least she was able to handle an incredible pounding before finally kicking it. It was indeed shocking and really showed off how this is Star Trek with consequences. Apart from the technobabble about starships I loved this episode, it indeed is the beginning of the best arc ever in Star Trek history.
• From Captain Keogh on 2013-03-24 at 2:05pm:
  Problems
  -As the Odyssey and the runabouts are retreating, the Jem'Hadar fighter makes a suicide run at the Odyssey, but when it moves to another shot, the fighter comes in at a different angle and the Odyssey is not moving, plus there is no sign of the runabouts.
  
  Remarkable scenes
  -- Quark asking Odo to let him use the station's monitors to run commercials for Quark's bar
  -The whole camping trip scene
  -The Odyssey vs the jem'hadar [could have been longer]
  -The suicide run
  -The Odyssey getting blown to hell.
  
  "...a galaxy class starship taken down easily", no surprise there lol.
• From Zorak on 2016-05-14 at 5:01pm:
  The captain of the Odyssey seemed like a really cool character. It's too bad he made such a short appearance.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-11-21 at 4:21am:
  @BlueLabel: There were numerous times in TNG when it was obvious that the Enterprise outmatched whoever they were dealing with, but since the Federation is typically not aggressive, they usually don't get in fights with anyone they can beat easily. ("Conundrum" comes to mind.) Thus we often them battle with ships as powerful or more powerful than theirs, who started the confrontation.
  
  @Krs321 I wonder if Eris even knew who Odo was. She may have known that the Founders sent several of their own out into the galaxy, but she wouldn't know what shape they would take. Odo is not immediately obvious as a shapeshifter. When we see Founders later, they've taken on similar features to Odo, seemingly out of convenience, consistency, or affection for him.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From djb on 2009-04-10 at 2:34am:
  Wow. This really ups the ante, doesn't it?
  
  I'm watching DS9 eps in order, so I don't know much about what comes next, except for a few spoilers I've read on Memory Alpha. So I'll try to keep this review from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about what's to come.
  
  First of all, the Defiant. Awesome. A Federation war ship! What a concept! This brings to mind a concern I've long held. I don't know if this is a problem with Roddenberry's vision, or a problem he intended there to be, or what, but basically it's this: the Federation is run by a bunch of bleeding-heart wimps. Now, I usually recoil from the term "bleeding-heart," as it implies things I don't like politically, but this is the best term. This was especially true in TNG. Examples: Season 3's premiere, "Evolution." Nanites become apparently intelligent and become a threat to the ship, and instead of eliminate them (as one character tries to do), they get all weird and act as if it has some kind of right to exist, even though it's threatening everyone on the ship.
  
  Anyway. The federation is all about exploration, but they don't seem to want to be realistic about the fact that very real threats exist out there and they have to be ready. They could be like the Swiss: peaceful yet armed to the teeth. But they're not. They didn't last half an hour against the Borg, with 39 ships (granted, the borg had Picard's knowledge on their side, but still). They start work on a warship, and once the Borg threat recedes, they abandon it? They should have a fleet of a hundred Defiants at the ready!
  
  And now, we're facing the Dominion, whose teeth (the Jem-Hadar) are even more ruthless/efficient/deadly, it would seem, than the Cardassians, who have weapons and transporters that make short work of Federation shields, and have no qualms about a suicide mission to gratuitously destroy a disabled retreating ship. Nothing to sneeze at. If I were the federation, I would re-open the Defiant project, perfect it, start building a ton of them, start training Federation-equivalents of Marines en masse, reopen development on a cloaking device, put a ton of energy in to weapons and defense development, and so on. This is all stuff they should have done long ago, but for whatever reason decided to act as if real threats like the Borg or the Dominion didn't exist out there.
  
  Anyway. I don't know what comes next, so the Federation may very well grow some balls over the next few seasons. I hope they do. But it's nice to see the Defiant and what it's capable of.
  
  Of course, a major highlight of the episode is Odo finding his own kind. I already know (spoilers ahead) that the Changelings are the Founders, but for someone who doesn't know what's to come, it's still a powerful moment. I'm still aching to find out what happens: why did the Changelings form the Dominion? What happened to Sisko and the others? Why does Odo go back to the Alpha quadrant and not stay with his own? If they all seem to occupy the same "lake" on their planet (a rogue planet?), do the Changelings have individual identities the way we do or not? What would they look like if they hadn't just matched Odo's default form? Do they have a default solid form? Why and how do they have genders?
  
  Anyway, I'm looking forward to the rest of the series immensely.
• From rpeh on 2010-07-28 at 7:39pm:
  A magnificent episode that really starts the new season with a bang.
  
  One minor problem: why is it when the Defiant is boarded by the Jem'Hadar that their first instinct is to use their guns as clubs? They were all locked and loaded and could have stunned the crew in an instant.
• From MJ on 2011-08-08 at 9:01pm:
  This episode would seem to establish that the Jem'Hadar cannot instinctively recognize Changelings unless seeing them shapeshift. In DS9: THe Adversary, the Jem'Hadar only recognizes Odo as a "Founder" after passing through him. Here, we see the Jem'Hadar attack Odo with the same ferocity as they did Kira, obviously unaware who or what he is.
  
  There is a minor annoyance in this episode...as in DS9: The Way of the Warrior, I have a very hard time believing that a bunch of humans can defeat Jem'Hadar (and Klingons) in hand to hand combat. In reality, I think the Jem-Hadar, who let's not forget are genetically engineered warriors, would likely have taken over the ship in a matter of seconds, given how accustomed they are to boarding attacks.
  
  That aside, this was one of the better starts to a DS9 season. It's got plenty of action and intrigue. The Odo subplot is very well done; Odo is already very disgruntled because of Starfleet's decision to "augment" him with Eddington, and when he sees the Omarii Nebula, it becomes a singular obsession that will reveal the most stunning discovery of his life!
  
  The Romulan assistant was in character: highly mistrustful, a bit cold, and also possessing one of the most interesting Romulan traits: that is, preferring to avoid brash, direct confrontation in favor of a strategic advantage and saving the fight for a different day. This trait will frustrate Starfleet and the Klingons during the Dominion War.
  
  The Defiant's introduction is brilliant, and it's easy to see why the ship gains the affection of Sisko from the get-go.
  
  Nicely done!
• From * on 2011-09-03 at 9:55pm:
  Dax' hair looks like a spray painted cinder block in this episode. Thank you for reassuring me that it won't last.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-10-27 at 7:30pm:
  T'Kul was played by Martha Hackett who also plays the (somewhat) major character Seska in ST: Voyager.
  
  Fully agree with comments on the Jem'Hadar. I also noticed in the previous episode (DS9: The Jem'Hadar) that the Jem'Hadar did an astonishingly poor job of subduing Sisko and Quark after they escaped confinement. At the beginning of the altercation, one of the Jem'Hadar attacked Sisko with a phaser rifle he was using as a club, similar to the Jem'Hadar attack not the Defiant in this episode. Possible explanation in that episode was that the entire escape was designed as a ploy to allow one of the Vorta to infiltrate DS9 as a spy. Still, Sisko reasonably should have noticed that the Jem'Hadar did not simply shoot him.
  
  Also agree that Dax's hair in this episode (as well as part 2) was not that nice.
• From peterwolf on 2013-11-08 at 11:07pm:
  I like this episode very much, in particular Odo´s quest for his origins and his altered behaviour. However, some inconsistencies concerning his shape-shifter abilites were never really resolved: He could perfectly imitate the feathers of a bird or the fur and the ears of a rat, but not human ears!?!
  I take it that these imperfect ears are simply symbols indicating that Odo or the female shapeshifter belong to a different species.
  Also, my only other dislike in this great episode is that the Defiant was to easily defaeted by the Jem Hadar. After failure of the cloaking device the defiant should have had enough firepower to take out more than one Jem Hadar ship. Her shields and armour (I am not quite sure when the ablative armour was introduced?) should made her more resilient than we saw it. Whatsoever, we may blame it to the quite unexperienced crew, like Dr. Bashir being abused as weapons officer ...

No fan commentary yet.

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• From Marissa on 2012-08-02 at 1:45am:
  I absolutely love the final scene of this episode, where we only see Odo's reflection in the mirror. It kind of makes the whole thing feel surreal. Odo's offer of friendship there is a beautiful moment for both of my two favorite characters of DS9, and the choice of camera angle was just perfect. Too bad I can't seem to find the proper words to describe exactly why I love this scene.
• From Dubhan on 2014-07-16 at 5:41am:
  This episode is pretty jam-packed. It's got action, subterfuge, sabotage, willful disobeyance of orders, a substantial space battle (!), and - the best part - great dramatic scenes between Garak and Odo to hit you in the feels. This is some of the best Trek has to offer.
• From Mike D. on 2017-01-25 at 6:50am:
  I've heard season 4 is when this series really takes off, and I hope this awesome two-parter is a taste of what's to come. Garak's wide-eyed stare is so effective, he really is a great character. I loved the special effects in this episode, both the peeling Odo and the big ship battle.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Praelat on 2009-05-13 at 5:07pm:
  "Why was Worf wearing an old-style TNG uniform?"
  Easy: When he arrived at the station, he was on a temporary assignment and therefore not part of the regular DS9 crew. When he joins the crew for good in the end, he switches to a regular DS9 uniform. That's it :)
  I loved the episode. I'm from Germany, and I watched this episode for the first time on video in England, when it was still a year away in Germany. I was so surprised with the "restart" of the series, bit I positively loved it and still do.
• From Wes on 2011-01-18 at 4:27pm:
  Every time there is someone on the station wearing a TNG-style uniform, you think it's some sin and put it in your "Problems" section. IT'S NOT A PROBLEM. It's consistency. Since "Emissary" it has been that way on DS9. If anyone comes to the station from a starship or starfleet command, they wear the TNG uniforms until next season. I wasn't ever a very big fan of it, but it is consistent throughout the series.
  This episode reminds me somewhat of TOS federation-klingon hostilities.
• From Bronn on 2011-11-07 at 3:34am:
  You're just caught up on the inconsistency in the fact that "Generations" had crew members occasionally in DS9 style uniforms, but that was solely because they were afraid the actual TNG uniforms weren't going to translate to the big screen, with visible zippers. But it wasn't an official style change. If you watch the film again, you'll see that the cast changes back and forth throughout the entire film between DS9 style uniforms and TNG style. Patrick Stewart is probably the only one who didn't change his uniform style at all, and that's just because he had a specially designed captain's uniform starting around the 4th season of TNG.
  
  Here's how it worked: Crew members on space stations had space-station style uniforms like DS9. Starfleet personnel serving on spaceships had TNG style uniforms. You see that any time someone visits the station from a ship up until the change-over to the "First Contact" style uniforms. It was a consistent rule, not something to be confused about.
• From DK on 2013-09-23 at 2:55am:
  More Star Trek stories should have been built around this model. Long story arcs, plenty of combat drama and lots of fight scenes make for very enjoyable episodes. I didn't even mind it so much when they had Kira beating up Kingons but really, I don't care how hard my sister hits me, I' m not going to fall to the deck. So that was either the biggest pussy in the history of the Kingon empire or.... Well, I guess that's it, the Kingpns she beat up were the biggest pussies of all time. The powers that be should really leave the hand to hand combat to the men.
• From Kenneth on 2014-04-13 at 3:43am:
  First impressions of episode and overall change in tone for the season is set right away from the new graphic and speeding up of the theme song. Some one in the graphics department decided to add some life to the images of the station. Sisko bald is bad ass. Jadzia and Kira showing some skin. Ds9 season four off to a good start
• From jbense on 2017-12-28 at 8:04pm:
  The new theme music for season four sure is different, but I disagree with your opinion that it is better.
  
  The original theme had an elegant austerity to it--horns building upon each other in counterpoint with a soft orchestral backing. It was beautiful, the best of all of Trek's theme songs IMO.
  
  The season four version is faster. The strings are shrill and detract from the intricate horn counterpoint, particularly by overpowering and obscuring some of the pleasing harmonies at the end of the tune. The new graphics, which I admitedly do not care for, unfortunately also come with irritating sound effects which further tarnish the music. Altogether, these changes subtract substantially from the bare appeal of the original theme.
  
  Of course this is all up for debate based on personal preference, but as a musician I was disappointed when the original theme was replaced.

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• From Orion Pimpdaddy on 2009-07-06 at 8:23pm:
  The scenes that have Worf talking about leaving Starfleet just don't work. The audience is not fooled for a minute, especially since his name is in the opening credits. I still like the episode though.
• From MJ on 2011-01-11 at 10:22pm:
  Watching DS9 up to this point, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the Federation's response to the Dominion. Don't get me wrong, I love the show. It was really coming into it's own, introducing new story arcs, adding further depth to its circle of characters, and really proving itself as a series to be on par with TOS and TNG, with the potential to outshine them. But within the story itself, the Federation has seemed impotent, while every other power in the region is realistic about the Dominion and doing what they can to stop them.
  
  Consider the Romulans. They have attempted to collapse the wormhole, and then launch a pre-emptive strike on the Dominion. The first plan was stopped by the Federation, and the second plan went forward with no Federation support. Now the Klingons plunge themselves into the fight, and again the Federation hesitates.
  
  The only justification I could come up with for the Federation's behavior is that its fight with the Borg has altered its strategy. Wolf 359 taught the Federation to be wary of massive confrontations, and the fact is, the Federation faced the Borg threat with very little help from the Klingons and none from the Romulans or Cardassians. Maybe in the eyes of the Federation, it's time the others stepped up to face the Dominion threat. That is understandable.
  
  Another thing I don't understand, is where are all the other Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers right now? The Sheliak, the Gorn, the Tholians...surely there is some involvement? This seems to have been the time for Star Trek to summon its prior alien encounters, since the Dominion is clearly something everybody should be concerned about!
  
  That being said, I love the angles DS9 is exploring; it is something unique that neither TOS or TNG have dealt with yet.
• From AW on 2015-12-15 at 7:26pm:
  The subspace realm Jake gets sucked into on his second to last try looked a lot like the place where Sisko met the creators of the wormhole in the Pilot.
• From tigertooth on 2016-10-18 at 4:03am:
  This certainly isn't unique to this episode, but as an example: right before the final attack on DS9, Gowron says something in Klingon. Worf then translates to "today is a good day to die".
  
  But why didn't the universal translator already translate it? I mean, Gowron wasn't speaking English that whole time, right? He was speaking Klingon.
  
  Anyway, great two-parter.

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• From Bronn on 2013-07-10 at 10:23pm:
  I can understand that Worf's black and white morality makes it difficult for him to know what to do with Quark. But any time there's a plot based upon a misunderstanding because of a lack of communication, it's a hackneyed plot. Odo says that he's not in the habit of talking about his long term undercover work-that's fine, but since Worf is ALREADY snooping around in the investigation, it's probably better to limit the damage. He mentioned that Worf's surveillance was useful in keeping up appearances...but if that was the case, he could have just told Worf the plan and asked him to cooperate, and it would have worked out fine.
  
  There's also a whole contingent of Starfleet security on the station at this point that nobody seems to have remembered. That doesn't really bother me, it's the culmination of events surrounding Worf. It's stupid that Odo's investigation fails not because Worf won't leave it alone, but because Odo refused to tell Worf what he was doing despite having plenty of golden opportunities to do so. And somehow Worf comes out looking like the idiot here.
  
  The A-plot for this episode, however, is awesome. There's conflict between Bashir and O'Brien, the tension of a young idealistic officer and a veteran non-commissioned officer. It's a complicated issue, and O'Brien raises a few valid concerns: What if freeing the Jem'Hadar dependency turns them into renegades? What if the Founders decide this interference is an act of war by the Federation? It's really a huge decision for a Lieutenant to take full responsibility for, even if his motives are completely pure. If only they'd sacrificed the stupid B-plot, they could have focused even more on this part of the episode.
• From peterwolf on 2013-11-23 at 10:26pm:
  Regarding the problems with "Goran'Agar doesn't eat, doesn't drink, ...": Goran'Agar explains to Bashir that he came back to the planet in order to cure his men like himself from the Ketracel White addiction. He thought the environment contained some healing factor. Roughly around minute 15 in the episode he clearly states "we breath the same air, eat the same food". Thus, the Jem Hadar do eat, although it is not mentioned whether Goran'Agar might have started eating after he stopped taking the drug. But then his body seems to produce always small amounts of the drug, as Bashir finds out. Also, it would be very unlikely to get all the energy the Jem'Hadar need from small doses of a drug.
• From Martin on 2016-03-10 at 10:30am:
  I understand Odo could've told Wolf about his long term plan, that could've saved them all the trouble. Still, there is a chain of command and Odo's the chief of security in that station. Worf was out of line to interfere with the investigation without explicitly telling Odo. Lesson lerned, we hope.
  About the other part of this episode, being this episode about black and white moral standars, i honestly think O'brian's a stupid man. After all those years looking up to Picard and another few years learing to change his beliefs about cardassians and other ethics related issues, he shoud NOT have decided to see the matter in a black and white manner. Bashir could see beyond his own experiences with the Jem'Hadar and that the matter was a big plain grey. They were dealing with a group of people trying to break free from slavery, trying to be free. Isn't that a top priority for the federation? To help people in such meaningful manners? What about TNG "I, Hugh"? They understood that Hugh was becoming an individual with his own rights to be, and chose to help him instead of taking the oportunity to cripple the Borg right there, taking his life. O'brian was right there, wasn't he? Shouldn't he have learnt the lesson? Damn him! Damn him i say!
• From Mike on 2016-10-31 at 9:49pm:
  Yes, this was definitely an episode that deserved a sequel of some sort where we find out something more about Goran'Agar's fate. The premise of the episode was too interesting to simply leave alone. Other episodes dealt with the Ketracel White addiction, but not in an interesting way like this one.
  
  Re: Martin, O'Brien makes it clear that the reason he opposes what Bashir is doing is because there's no way to predict what the Jem'Hadar will do once free of the White. Bashir is doing what we'd expect a Federation doctor to do, but O'Brien makes a good counter-point; they could indeed turn into a destructive, uncontrollable force that kills at will. Using the Hugh example, the next time we saw Hugh in TNG: Descent, he explained the confusion and chaos that resulted when those Borg were free of the collective.
  
  That's what makes all these episodes great, IMO. The Federation values of freeing sentient beings from things like the Borg collective or the Dominion are portrayed as the right path, but not an easy one and with plenty of opposing views and unforeseen consequences.

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• From RichD on 2006-06-08 at 1:32am:
  Armin Shimerman is one of the most underappreciated actors in all of Star Trek. He was the first actor on DS9 to develop his character. By the middle of the 1st season, quark was fully realized. He is one of my favorite characters. He makes poignant observations when you least expect it that really do strike a chord. I loved his comment and reaction when he was told that humans would smoke tobacco for recreaton...."you mean they poison their bodies on purpose?" Then, he has to ruin it by being Quark, "if they buy poison, they'll buy anything." This episode was hilarious from beginning to end. I also like the univeral translator malfunction. Little subtle things like that make this episode a charmer. One last thing. By making Nog appreciate humans more than ever, it gives him an added incentive to become a starfleet officer. Nice touch.
• From JRPoole on 2009-03-23 at 4:16pm:
  Does this episode estabish that the univeral translator is a device worn in the ear? I can't remember it ever being referred to this way, but it makes sense. It's still problematic, though: How would it broadcast in different languages?
  
  I know, I know...I need to just accept the UT as a plot device and let it be. But I do like episodes that at least acknowledge its existence, even if they do confuse the issue even more.
  
  This is a real winner all the way through. DS9 does humor episodes better than any other Trek series, probably because the Ferengi--usually the center of humor episodes--are all acted so well on DS9.
• From MJ on 2011-01-14 at 5:26pm:
  I agree with the webmaster's review, and with RichD. This episode is pure genius: writing, acting, everything.
  
  The setting was remarkably well done, with the classic dual human response to visiting aliens: the suspicious general who sees them as a military threat, and the "egghead" professor who sees them as peaceful and wants to communicate. The detail of the people's uniforms, the lighting...all of it set the perfect mood for 1940's Earth.
  
  The interactions were, of course, hilarious and fitting. Armin Shimmerman's performance in this episode was superb. He's always great as Quark, but this was award worthy. But Rom, Nog, and the guest cast of Americans all did outstanding, too. They all made this work brilliantly and played their characters perfectly.
  
  I was a little curious as to what would be the fate of the professor and the nurse since they helped the aliens escape quite possibly ruining their happy future, but it's possible this was overlooked in the overall secrecy of the Roswell incident. Speaking of that, I couldn't help but think Star Trek seems to be paying homage here: the Roswell incident is one of the things that contributed to the popularity of science fiction and human imagination about aliens.
  
  The beginning, too, was great. Nog's selling of his childhood possessions, especially the Ferengi tooth sharpener to Worf, added to the overall comedy of the episode. In fact, we get quite a nice dose of Ferengi culture here including the Ferengi language which was interesting to hear. I really cracked up when Quark was asking Nurse Garland for oomox.
  
  Outstanding stuff!
• From Jons on 2014-02-02 at 9:17pm:
  I really enjoyed that episode, but excuse-me, how is it NOT 100% filler??
  
  Nothing that happens here has any incidence on anything in the series. Nog gets to Earth, but you don't need to see that episode to know that...
• From Rob UK on 2023-12-01 at 9:59pm:
  I love this episode but we definitely have a problem, Odo can't shape shift into making good human hair (it is mentioned several times throughout the show run), but here he can make himself into a very convincing hairy German Shepheard style dog

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Sir Brando on 2006-05-15 at 6:03am:
  I agree that this episode is excellent. I really like the fact that they start to change their reputation here. They've made another friend, one of many to come.
• From hobospice on 2007-01-28 at 5:07am:
  This is a good episode, no doubt. But it seems that every episode on this site that gets a 9 or 10 is always a high stakes tactical/action episode. I want star trek, not Tom Clancy books. Having said that, I think this one is pretty cookie cutter and predictable. I mean obviously they are going to stop the bomb and obviously voyager won't be destoyed. The ending was complete uninspired. Frankly I would have been more impressed if Torres just fried the computer using just logic ;)
• From rpeh on 2010-08-19 at 9:33am:
  It's an exciting episode and Belana's battle with the computer is at different points, funny and fascinating.
  
  Two problems. How can Janeway set the self destruct on her own? Every other time it's been done it has needed at least two officers. And why does Belana start running out of breath after about 20 minutes? There's enough oxygen on something that size for one person to breathe for ages even with no regeneration.
  
  I'll give it a 7.
• From GDorn on 2011-09-29 at 8:29pm:
  Why would a missile have a bridge and life support? Why would it leave the life support on, consuming energy, when it didn't expect to have any lifeforms on board?
  
  Also, with the vastness of space, it's quite the coincidence that Voyager happened to come across wreckage of a ship the missile destroyed, decide to follow the trail and come across the missile merely hours before it was to reach its destination.
• From Rick on 2012-12-29 at 10:41pm:
  Fairly average episode that we have seen multiple times before. No offense to our reviewer but I think if this exact same episode was on TOS it would get a 3. You never seem to like irrational computers and this one is certainly that.
• From Kethinov on 2012-12-30 at 11:43am:
  I'm really not sure what you're on about, Rick. I compared this episode favorably to TOS: The Ultimate Computer, which got a similar score.
  
  But there are many "Kirk talks a computer to death" episodes and not all of them are as good as TOS: The Ultimate Computer. The stereotypical TOS episode with a computer as an antagonist that I slap around with a low rating would be something like TOS: The Changeling.
  
  Because seriously, do you think Nomad is anywhere near as cool as Dreadnought? I certainly don't. Aesthetics count for a lot in my ratings. Most of the TOS "Kirk talks a computer to death" episodes are painful to watch because the computer feels like a 1960s stereotype rather than a futuristic antagonist.
  
  Dreadnought holds up well. And so does TOS: The Ultimate Computer.
• From thaibites on 2013-11-06 at 12:05am:
  The biggest problem with episode is Torres. She's a smack-off. She's always running around bitching and complaining and angry about something. Any episode that focuses on her can never be good.
• From Mike on 2017-05-26 at 1:37pm:
  Not quite sure why the one reviewer felt this was more Clancy than Star Trek. This is a missile with a computer that has the power to calculate all kinds of probabilities, analyze them, interact with its users at advanced levels, make attempts at deception to preserve itself and its mission, and even "scout" its adversaries to test their motives. In other words, it's practically a sentient missile. Seems to fall well within the realm of cool Star Trek sci-fi to me.
  
  The suspense was well developed in this one. Just when you think Torres has found a way to disable the missile, it surprises her, outsmarts or anticipates her actions, and denies her victory. Even her attempts to reason with it ultimately backfire until finally, she finds its weakness through sheer determination. We knew that she would probably disable it in the end, but we didn't really know how or whether the missile would remain a future threat.
  
  I do agree with the original review that the Jonas scene is pointless and annoying. It seems to serve no other purpose than to tell us, "hey just in case you forgot, this guy is still secretly talking to the Kazon!" And maybe to establish that Seska's no longer the provided contact, although, again, there was really no logical reason given for them to contact Seska other than her being Cardassian and this is a Cardassian weapon....but, one that's been reappropriated by the Maquis.
  
  As far as needing two officers to set up self-destruct, there's one key difference between Voyager and the Enterprises/other ships: Janeway's first officer is a former Maquis. She no doubt trusts him with many things to give him that position, but maybe the self-destruct sequence was one area she wanted to keep firmly under Starfleet control. Tuvok would be a good second choice, but maybe there are rank/command requirements in order to set that up.

No fan commentary yet.

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• From Sean on 2010-07-07 at 7:11am:
  "If the Dominion come through the wormhole, the first battle will be fought here. And I intend to be ready for them."
  
  That's what Sisko said at the end of season two, and just when I thought we'd finally get the big battle we were promised... they turn and head towards Cardassia. Sigh. Still a terrific episode, though, amoung DS9's best.
• From peterwolf on 2013-12-13 at 11:21pm:
  An episode with many unexpected turns. After Cardassia joined the Dominion one of the best (quite surprising) moments was the Romulans joining a new alliance with Klingons and the Federation against the Dominion. They should have done this earlier. The Bashir-changeling with female voice is rather eerie. His determination to wipe out the solar system of Bajor is nearly too much. At least they would wipe out Odo too, although the founders may not consider him as part of the changelings any more.
  Another strong part was Worf not giving up against the 20th or so Jem Hadar warrior in hand-to-hand combat and made them "yield", because they could not gain victory against him. In parallel, Garak had to overcome his claustrophobia and inner fears to save the prisoners of the federation. The short scene in the runabout when Worf and Garak show some mutual respect is very well done.
• From dronkit on 2014-04-21 at 4:44am:
  The continuity with "Rapture" is notewrthy too. The "flock of locusts" skips Bajor and flies right away to Cardassia because Bajor is not Federation, thanks to Sisko's visions.
• From Dubhan on 2014-10-01 at 4:44am:
  This is also a fantastic Garak episode. We get another little glimpse at his background and he saves the day for those imprisoned by the Jem'Hadar.
  
  Is there any question that Andy Robinson is the best actor in DS9? Not in my mind.
• From tigertooth on 2016-12-03 at 5:08am:
  When Dukat announced to Kira that the Cardassians joined the Dominion, Kira's response was to say to Dax "Lock phasers and fire". This was when the huge Dominion fleet was starting to move away. When a huge hostile force is leaving, you don't shoot at them!
  
  I want to believe that Dax was lying when she said Dukat was out of range; she was just stopping Kira from going through with something that could have needlessly cost hundreds of lives.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete Miller on 2006-09-22 at 9:37pm:
  Why was Janeaway so eager to hear about the Krenim from future Kes? Uhhhhh...Prime Directive anyone?
• From Dejan on 2007-12-17 at 12:53pm:
  At Pete.
  This has nothing to do with prime directive. Maybe Temporal prime directive.
• From zooky on 2012-12-21 at 4:00am:
  Kes as a new-born baby has human ears. Not terribly plausible that the Ocampa develop their distinctive physiology later in life.
• From thaibites on 2014-04-13 at 7:18am:
  The only good thing about this episode is that Torres dies. It was awesome! I laughed, I cried, I ate salami. Then, after I thought I had found paradise, it was ripped away from me. Torres died in an alternate time-line. Now I know how Harry feels...
• From Jon C on 2017-08-04 at 3:55am:
  This all seems to be about Kes's hair in the end. A contrived way to get her to have long hair. If not then why didn't the episode reset at a time when she had short hair? And we're also left with the feeling we've missed out on a chunk of Voyager life with the jump from short to long hair. The long hair makes her look like a librarian instead of an alien. No wonder she fell out of favour.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Jeff Browning on 2011-11-27 at 10:33pm:
  Logic problem: in the opening sequence, the admiral tells Sisko that he is going to be at the star base for a long time - hence the need for an office.
  
  Immediately after the intro, the admiral announces that the Defiant crew is going to be taking the captured Jem Hadar fighter behind enemy lines. Soooo, apparently Sisko is not going to be at star base for a long time after all?
  
  In the context of the rest of the episode, the Admiral's comment makes no sense at all.
• From L on 2013-08-03 at 8:56am:
  This episode does a great job of setting up psychological and motivational tensions between Dukat and Weyoun, and also just the general stress the old DS9 crew are under.
  The scene with Odo reluctantly trading in his star power for favours with Weyoun was brilliant.
  As was that between Dukat and Kira. If she could only spit acid. I cringed at him touching her.
  As we've invested so much in the situation, everything was compelling in this episode.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Krs321 on 2011-08-24 at 12:38pm:
  This episode offered a ton of potential but squandered it on poor writing. The idea of a bunch of intelligence savants is intriguing but used kind of foolishly. They only had 1 hour to build an arc so I can't complain too much but the conflict/resolution could've been so much better.
  
  Never has an existing inside joke had a better chance at being used in an episode centered around Julian (and his relationship with O'Brien): the Battle of Britain.
  
  Instead of having Julian get punched and released by Deus Ex Sarina (b/c of Love? lame):
  - Julian wakes up and is found by Miles.
  - Miles says he was going to find Julian to go "play" (derisive joke from earlier) the Battle of Britain in the holosuite
  - Julian has an ah-ha moment
  - Cut to Julian intercepting the augments and dropping some logic on Jack about how all their statistical methods predicted certain defeat for England in the face of a German invasion in 1940. That way we can at least give some kind of credence to the fighting spirit of humanity/the Federation rather than Julian just proving the already obvious fact that probability estimates are just estimates. Zzzzz
  
  I wanted to like this episode and I'm glad they stayed away from the "Julian starts to over identify with the augments and everyone gets mad at him" trope, but they left a lot on the table.
• From John on 2011-09-24 at 6:30pm:
  I have to say I really enjoy this episode, though I do think the writing is a bit ridiculous.
  
  I like the way Jack is depicted as a sort of Mad Hatter, while Lauren is a genius nymphomaniac. Patrick is more along the lines of a classic, introverted autistic personality. We don't learn a lot about Sarina in this episode, but I'm glad they included her, because the later episodes will feature her more prominently.
  
  It's also interesting to note how the group of them become a sort of "Bletchley Park" for the Federation in the Dominion War. In case you don't know, in WW2, Bletchley Park was where the Allies had their code-breaking operation: a lot of mathematicians worked there, trying to crack the German Enigma codes -- by all accounts these analysts were brilliant, but quite quirky. Kind of neat to see the Federation with such an operation of their own.
  
  It does lose a point from me though, only because the savants (especially Jack) are written so over-the-top.
• From Zorak on 2016-06-22 at 6:31am:
  I didn't read Asimov's Foundation series until I was in my 20's, well after DS9 ended. When I did read it I could tell I'd seen it's theme referenced (or simply mirrored) by something I'd previously seen or read. It seems to have been this episode. Asimov's idea of predicting the future through probability and statistical data is very interesting, but it's a bad fit for Star Trek. Aside from that annoyance (which was made more annoying by how seriously it was taken, and then completely dismissed), this was a fun episode. I enjoy the group of misfit "mutants".
• From Armsauce on 2017-06-11 at 1:01am:
  When Sisko dismisses Bashir's surrender proposal, he should have brought up the prophet's actions in Sacrifice of Angels. There's no way the mutants could predict something like that, and it showed that there's no real way to know how the war will turn out.
  
  It really seems like something Bashir would have realized himself but it seems like everyone would rather forget about it.
  
  
• From Tooms on 2021-04-08 at 7:13am:
  A decent idea sunk by awful writing and even worse acting. Siddig wasn’t able to carry the episode and the mutant crew is just plain bad. The knockoff Twelve Monkeys Brad Pitt act is painful to watch. One of my least favorite DS9 episodes & I’m honestly puzzled that people liked it.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Scott on 2008-11-10 at 8:56pm:
  In my eyes this episode was a massive let down. Starts of well, get to see the hirogen, puts the doctor on another ship, see some romulans and the new starfleet ship that travels at warp 9.9. Thats where the good ends, and it becomes a joke. For one, why are the romulans acting like kason, there interregation of the doctor was laughable, says everythin bout the Tal Shiar. Comparing the vulcan cousins in this episode to Senator Vreenak in DS9 makes them seem shallow and stupid. Why did they kill everybody and yet leave some bodies in sickbay, one of them who was resuscitated only to die seconds later. good one doc. Lastly i hope to god these are rebel romulans, if not then why on earth do they have the ship instead of been camped in by the dominion or helping the feds in the dominion war. looks like this ship was too important for both factions than the alpha quadrent itself. And why do the fed ships go in all guns blazing against 3 warbirds and the most technologically advanced ship in their own fleet, just doesnt seem starfleet to me. Still none of the attack makes sense anyway. Imagine sisko when he finds out about this ship and that TWO defiant style ships went off to rescue it from romulans. He must be wondering why this information of new ship technology was not forthcoming when he's basically head of the station forefronting the war. Shockin continuity here in this episode, and you almost forget why the doctor was on the ship in the first place when they're gettin attacked. But its ok, this is just brushed aside in the last 3 minutes. You would be forgiven for thinking that the doctor went to an alternate universe alpha quadrant. In 7 seasons id say this was the biggest let down of all voyager episodes. Id even go as far as sayin its a disgrace but im obviously in a minority there. I just cant get over the lack of clever romulans, it just fails the episode in my opinion
• From Michael on 2011-10-23 at 9:44pm:
  I don't get how the computer can program an artificially sentient Leonardo da Vinci, Moriarty, etc. on it's own, but creating a doctor holodeck character requires years of programming by top holodeck engineers.
• From Rick on 2013-01-04 at 9:16pm:
  Problem: New EMH guy says that he is transferring all life support power to something else because they obviously dont need it. Good point, except for the fact that there were 27 unconscious Romulans that he killed by doing so.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-11 at 1:53pm:
  I wondered about that life support, too. Would they let the tranquilized Romulans die? Didn't they just recently treat wounded Romulans because, as doctors, they value the life and well-being of all species?
  
  Also, the 2 Federation officers who boarded the ship near the end weren't wearing environment suits... how did they survive/function on a vessel without life support? They didn't seem to be gasping or suffering in any way.
  
  I thought this episode had a lot of technical problems. But it was spirited, funny, hugely entertaining... as Doctor-centered episodes usually are! easily a 7 or 8.
  
• From Phil on 2015-09-01 at 1:48pm:
  Re: life support, I've always seen it as responsible for replenishing oxygen and keeping the ship warm enough for life. With only 27 unconscious humanoids onboard, it would take days to exhaust the oxygen in the ship's atmosphere, and the heat dissipation characteristics of these starships are never really explained in any detail.
  
  I laughed out loud at the replacement holographic doctor scenes because I've seen those same conversations happen between programmers and less savvy managers with unrealistic expectations. For once the technology in Star Trek isn't just "push a button and then it's all just magic", which I greatly appreciated.
• From Xall on 2017-05-10 at 5:56pm:
  My main issue with this whole episode is the whole Alpha/Beta quadrant debacle.
  
  At first, Seven says the ship's in the Alpha Quadrant; cue to visual representation which clearly shows in the Beta Quadrant. Thereafter, she says it's at the outer edges of the Alpha Quadrant.
  
  Even so, when The Doctor beams over to the Prometheus, the computer (!) acknowledges their presence as in the Alpha Quadrant. The show's writers really were a letdown as fas as this was concerned.
• From Mike on 2017-07-09 at 7:22pm:
  The Romulans definitely sent their goof troop to take over the Prometheus. They were a bit too bozo-like in this one, reminding me of the Ferengi in TNG. Maybe not quite that bad...but still.
  
  In response to Scott, I believe this one aired before DS9: In The Pale Moonlight, so the Romulans weren't yet in the Dominion War. If I remember, Andy Dick's character even mentions something about this,. But, since this episode begins with the Romulans taking over a ship and ends with multiple starships in a full-on battle, it does seem like a tricky thing to smooth over even when they become partners against the Dominion later on.
  
  I'm not a fan of Andy Dick and didn't think I'd like this one. But the Mark II worked well with the Doctor to create a good balance of humor and suspense. It was a nice episode for both the Doctor and Seven in their journeys to become more human, as the Doctor gets to see how far he's come in relation to a "normal" hologram, and Seven learns about how her abrasive communication pisses off her crew mates :)
  
  I was also curious about the wider Romulan motives here and also about the relay station. Who put it there? We (spoiler alert) learn later that the Hirogen merely use part of it, but it is clearly much older. Since it covers nearly half the galaxy, it opens up all kinds of possibilities about being the communications network for an ancient civilization that we never learn more about. Oh well. Still a good episode.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From GDorn on 2011-10-16 at 11:53pm:
  This episode has the classic shrinking problem shared with Honey I Shrunk The Kids and Inner Space. If you simply remove some of the empty space between atoms to decrease volume, the mass will remain the same and the density will increase. So even though the runabout is six inches long, it weighs the same as a normal sized runabout. O'Brien and Bashir walking around in the circuitry would have destroyed it, ramming the control panel would have destroyed it, and there would have been no need to fire torpedos at the Jem'Hadar - ramming them alone would have been more than sufficient.
  
  This leads to all kinds of physics abuses, like building a excessively large ship, shrinking it to normal size, and noticing that the ablative armor is almost completely immune to conventional weaponry due to sheer density...
• From Mike on 2016-10-28 at 6:21pm:
  Even with the point about increased density, I think Dax would've found firing a torpedo at the Jem'Hadar far less risky than ramming into him. It seems like having the Rubicon ram its way out of the plasma vent when they first entered the engine room was tricky enough.
  
  I also don't know that O'Brien and Bashir simply walking around the circuit would've destroyed it, but the mass/volume/density relationship would've probably allowed them to much more easily lift everything. That's hard to show on TV, however. I agree with the original review that getting the air molecule thing right is pretty impressive.
  
  Anyway, I enjoyed this one. It had some good action and an interesting story. I also prefer the episodes of DS9 where the Jem'Hadar are shown to be more than mindless hordes of soldiers.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From EKH on 2007-12-05 at 7:32am:
  So why did they rematerialize Omega?
• From Thomas on 2009-10-08 at 10:35pm:
  Wasn't that a bit unfair to the species which is doomed after their meeting with Voyager?
• From packman_jon on 2012-07-06 at 4:32am:
  Not the most entertaining, but this episode brings up a few thoughts, like the practical application of the Prime Directive. I don't get why the episode is getting a lot of low ratings - it's a fairly decent one
• From TheAnt on 2013-09-25 at 11:14pm:
  If you who read this have a 101 on science, or do wish that a story should be made believable as the actors at least appear to talk about actual science.
  Then ... stay clear of this episode and pretend it never happened.
  
  To hear the recurring term 'molecule' is annoying, since what it is referred to either have to be one elementary particle - or a super heavy element.
  
  Sp sadly it is one of the episodes where using the wrong term make me bite my nails up to my elbows.
  A 'molecule' is a compound of two or several elements. As such it could provide chemical energy - which falls far short of nuclear energy.
  
  This is completely inconsistent with the claims
  
  of the Borg who are said to have studied one Omega for a trillionth of a nanosecond. The short lifetime suggest Omega is either a super heavy element or one rare elementary particle.
  
  Then the storytelling make an even deeper plunge into pure nonsense when we get to learn that Omega were a primary source of energy for the Big bang. Matter in any form, elementary particles, super heavy element even less molecules cannot exist before the Big bang, so how the heck could Omega have been powering it?
  
  Sadly it's just one example where the scriptwriters failed to come up with a believable story, and just a short reading on some wild speculations in theoretical physics could have provided some really good alternatives to use.
  Such as 'quagma' which is a quark-gluon plasma which could have such dangerous properties as is described here.
  
  
  
• From L on 2013-12-29 at 1:54am:
  If it existed for a fraction of a second and then obliterated the research station where it was discovered, how do they know what was responsible, as surely all the data of the experiment would have been destroyed? There would have been absolutely nothing to indicate what was responsible, it may as well have been spontaneous combustion or act of god.
  I suppose this means experimental data records are streamed live to remote servers, and they are capable of recording things that happen in fractions of fractions of a second.
  
  And one trillionth of a nano-second is not 'stabilised' by any stretch of the imagination.
  Unless they want us to believe its 'natural' existence is even less than that.
  Really just an excuse for a cool line that shows how insane this 'molecule' is, nevermind the logic.
  
  Whatever, I guess it's a fun premise for an episode, if implausible.
  
• From L on 2013-12-29 at 2:56am:
  This made me interested in how we detect short-lived particles, so my lack of knowledge about this subject may have led to misguided incredulity on some details.
  
  http://www.phy.duke.edu/~kolena/modern/roesle.html
  
  "Almost all known particles are unstable, from the neutron with an average lifetime of fifteen minutes to the pi meson which lasts less than a tenth of a microsecond. There is strong experimental evidence, however, that there are many more particles that have lifetimes of less than ten to the minus twenty-third seconds. These particles are called resonance particles because of one of the methods used to detect their presence. Their average lifetimes are so short that normal methods, such as bubble chambers, can not be used to detect them.
  
  Particles are usually detected by using some means of making them leave trails in some medium. Particles in bubble chambers leave bubbles in a superheated liquid, particles in cloud chambers leave trails of fog in supercooled gas, and particles in spark chambers leave a trail of sparks behind them between electrically charged plates. However, a particle lasting less than an attosecond will move less than a third of a nanometer, even when traveling at nearly the speed of light. Most resonance particles have lives much shorter than a whole attosecond. That distance is much too small to cause any trail or spark to form in any particle detector.
  
  A resonance particle can be detected in particle decays when the sum of the energies of some of the resulting particles tend towards certain values. When the total energy (meaning kinetic energy as well as rest mass energy) of a group of resulting particles tends to be a certain value, it is said to be because the result of the decay producing those particles actually produced an ultra-short-lived particle, which then broke down into those more long-lived particles. Their total energy adds up to the energy of the intermediate particle, which is constant."
• From Mike on 2017-05-30 at 12:29am:
  The physics and the reference to Omega being a "molecule" are excusable to me. Then again, I'm a doctor, not a physicist. And by doctor, I mean my character in the Star Wars online game was a Jedi healer :)
  
  Anyway, what bugs me most about this is that it focuses too much on Seven's near-worship of the particle and less on the aliens who were working to synthesize it in the first place. We don't know much about them and we're robbed of the chance for any more interaction beyond Seven's sickbay scene with the lead scientist. Their wounded are returned and they quietly exit the stage.
  
  Wouldn't they just try this whole thing all over again? Probably. Was an agreement reached with them that they'd abandon their research? Doubtful, given how things ended. Did they have any further grievance with the Federation for swooping in and destroying what was apparently going to be their sole energy source? Did they forgive Voyager for that or are they at war? Does Janeway ever try to inform Starfleet that there is a species which has successfully synthesized something considered so dangerous by the Federation that destroying it was to trump any starship's deep space mission?
  
  All of these questions are unanswered and it drove me nuts about this episode. But, I guess it's cool that Seven had some kind of spiritual moment of clarity. So while the premise is intriguing, the loose ends are too much for me to call this one of the best.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From TheAnt on 2013-09-18 at 8:13pm:
  This is the episode where DS9 really loose track and derails completely.
  Our favourite Cardassian villain becomes some sort of ersatz 'Dart Dukat' and Sisko feeling a disturbance in 'The force' etc etc.
  I have no idea what the scriptwriters thought they were doing, or had they taken a vacation and left the stage to some juvenile fan of another fiction universe?
  A lot of 'Boom crash bang & fireworks' and very little substance.
  Many fans have been screaming blue murder over this episode, so do I.
• From MJ on 2019-03-11 at 11:21pm:
  ROSS: "Starfleet has chosen you to plan the invasion of Cardassia."
  
  Um, wouldn't an operation like this involve a bunch of admirals with years of experience coordinating fleets of starships, rather than a captain who'd been running a space harbor and serving as a Bajoran liaison? Don't get me wrong, I like the Sisko character, but having him plan something like this is a stretch. It's like if Eisenhower had told Lt Col Rudder that he was responsible for planning the Normandy invasion.
  
  The storyline involving the Chintaka battle was pretty cool. I liked watching the difficulties in getting all three alliance members on board with the same plan. Seems pretty realistic. The orbital weapon platforms were a cool idea. The Dukat storyline was a bit of a bore, but that may be because I agree with Ant that this Pah-Wraith stuff is where Dukat goes off the deep end.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Azduel on 2010-03-31 at 2:16am:
  This is one of my favourite episodes ever. A 10/10! This episode gives an in depth look at the unwavering devotion of the Vorta to the Founders. The meta exploration into the relationship of the Vorta and the Founders is brilliantly conducted through Weyoun's interaction with Odo, where Weyoun's obvious jubilation of simply being in his presence Odo is depicted. This episode further exceeds my expectations with its unorthodox delivery of insight to one of my favourite antagonist powers, the Dominion, and one of my favourite antagonist characters, Weyoun. To top off this 'magnus opus' of DS9 season 7, 'stubborn old Odo' in the end gives Weyoun what he so desperately wants, his blessing. In the end, Odo's blessing of Weyoun 6 brings meaning to his existence. Bravo!
  ...and the side story is entertaining to boot, offering much needed comic relief to the intrigue and intensity of the Odo Weyoun study.
• From MJ on 2011-03-03 at 6:33pm:
  I enjoyed everything about this episode.
  
  Jeffrey Combs has the role of a Vorta down so well it makes one wonder if he came up with the concept for the race. The smooth speaking delivery, the cautious, diplomatic language, the ability to feign sincerity in both word and expression, and unflinching devotion to the Founders...he does it all flawlessly.
  
  This episode was an interesting twist for the Weyoun character, exploring whether his (or rather, Weyoun 6) doubt of the Founders is partly due to a cloning flaw, or if, despite their cloning, the Vorta are capable of questioning their gods. It also was a nice continuation of the very complex relationship Odo has with his people.
  
  The subplot was a perfect balance to the main plot. Nog's skillful navigation of the "Great River" was hilarious and very...Ferengi-like. I guess there's a little Ferengi in all of us!
• From hugo on 2013-02-28 at 6:46pm:
  i understand it as all communication through the wormhole is cut off for the dominiom, including reinforcements.
  
  Then - how do they know that the Great Link is contaminated?
  
  Otherwise a great ep!
• From spline on 2013-09-10 at 9:45am:
  Hugo, Wayoun likely got the information from the female changeling that is on Cardassia at this time, who knows of the sickness because she is herself sick, and the extent of it due to information revealed later in the season...
• From Axel on 2015-05-17 at 7:49am:
  I enjoyed the Nog/O'Brien subplot immensely. Throughout much of TNG and DS9, the Ferengi obsession with profit has been portrayed in a negative light, and given Star Trek values, this is understandable. But here we have a situation where Ferengi skills prove highly useful, and it adds another dimension to their race. It was really imaginative on the part of the writers to add the "Material Continuum" element, giving the Ferengi some cultural depth. And, it's all done in a light and funny way that makes for an enjoyable storyline.
  
  Alongside this, we get a better glimpse of the Vorta in this episode as well. We find out about their background, about their cloning process, and about their utter reverence for the Founders. Jeffrey Combs, who seems to have been born to play the role of a Vorta, again just nails it in this episode and shows his versatility by acting as both Weyoun clones.
• From tigertooth on 2017-01-20 at 8:08pm:
  This is another episode where I feel like the average rating is rigged. Most of the user ratings are quite high... except for the fact that there's over 100 zero votes.
  
  You might think about dumping those zeros since it seems likely somebody spammed the rating.
• From Kethinov on 2017-01-21 at 7:27pm:
  There is a big update to the site coming in February and I will be doing exactly that among other things.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From MJ on 2011-02-13 at 12:30pm:
  DS9 was ahead of its time, really. The '90's were a time of peace, so the topics the series grappled with-the horrors and stresses of war, injuries in combat, and losing comrades-were incomprehensible to most Western viewers. Since 9/11 and the Iraq War, these issues have been thrust into public discourse, at least more so than they were in the recent past. This makes it very interesting to go back and watch DS9 episodes like the Siege of AAR-558.
  
  The episode gets a lot of things right, and is surprisingly realistic given the time period in which it was produced. I agree that Nog's loss of a leg is not the same in the future as it would be today, although I do think the injury is at least more relevant to the viewer this way. The real beauty of this episode is the changing Nog. Nog has always been pretty gung-ho about joining Starfleet, but this will shake him to the core. Nog is actually one of my favorite characters for the same reasons Worf was in TNG: the first of his kind to join Starfleet, somewhat scorned by his people for doing so, and the issues he faces along the way.
  
  On another note, I really enjoyed the lighting of this episode. I notice things like this because of my profession, and providing lighting in an environment that is supposed to look dark can be challenging, but I really thought they did a great job with this set.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Mitch on 2013-07-30 at 8:52am:
  "But as far as I know, synthehol isn't supposed to get you drunk!"
  
  I think the explanation lies in the TNG episode "Relics". Data tells Scotty that the intoxicating effects of synthehol can be easily dismissed, which would indicate you can indeed be intoxicated by it.
• From Rick on 2013-10-24 at 5:41pm:
  In regards to your full impulse problem: isnt full impulse describing how much force the engines are creating? Yes, that results in near light speeds in space but full impulse in an atmosphere would be much slower. With a shallow enough angle of impact its possible voyager would survive.
• From SilverDragonRed on 2014-02-03 at 3:29pm:
  This episode was an excellent character piece for Harry Kim and Chakotay (mostly Harry). It was nice to see the writers do something with the character since 'The Killing Game'.
  
  My only problem with this episode, once again, has to do with the quantum slipstream. It was bad enough that the writers just casually threw that into 'Hope and Fear' without thinking of the ramifications of it; but now, they made it even more ridiculous by making a modified version that is 111x faster than the original alien design. Once again, no thoughts to the repercussions of this insane speed; just treat the revoluntionary device as if it was just another casual machine.
  
  They say in the episode that the ship would only be able to maintain the slipstream for ten seconds. In actuality, Voyager held it for three minutes before the future abort code forced them out. According to Janeway's log after this, the test flight covered 10,000 light years.
  
  So, this MODIFIED slipstream drive has a speed of 1,752,000,000 c that can traverse the entire Milky Way galaxy in only half an hour. If there is a new series set in the old continuity, they need to address the impact this thing will have on the Federation and its neighbors.
• From Dstyle on 2015-06-22 at 3:17pm:
  I find it incredibly hard to believe that they popped the champagne before anyone did any holosimulations of the new quantum slipstream drive. That just seems like it would be a no-brainer standard procedure for something like this.
  
  Also, why couldn't they contact Seven the day before they used the slipstream with a simply decoded message that said, "Hey, don't do this, you're all going to die?" Although I guess doing it this way shaved 10 years off their journey.
• From Andy on 2015-07-26 at 10:31pm:
  "Full impulse is pretty close to the speed of light. There wouldn't have been a ship left to excavate if they hit the ice that fast. Just an impact crater."
  
  At full impulse, there wouldn't be a planet anymore.
• From Rick on 2016-04-18 at 4:55am:
  In response to your third problem about consecutive slipstream jumps......It took me awhile to think of this but I think that Harry had to give them precise phase corrections that would "safely" throw Voyager out of the slipstream. If they tried this again all of the relevant factors (whatever they are) would be different and Harry wouldnt know what phase corrections would safely throw Voyager out of the slipstream. The only reason he knew the first time is that he had a decade to study the situation.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Paul on 2010-08-31 at 10:09pm:
  I thought it was a little disappointing that the aliens were exactly like humans, but I guess it's possible that they had ridges on their bum or something instead of their nose /forehead :)
  
  However I thought the son'a aliens were very effective, I liked the creepiness of their stretched skin and the bodyshop procedures they had to endure.
  
  
• From Nick on 2010-09-01 at 1:03am:
  The worst trek film by far. The way it systematically converts the Next Generation cast into comic relief is so disrespectful.
  
  Not to mention how much of a hypocrite Picard's character becomes. Remember, in the series he was forced to relocate another alien species whose planet fell under Cardassian territory. He went along with his orders, begrudgingly, because they all would have just been killed by the Cardassians if he hadn't.
  
  In this case the Baku planet fell under Sona'a territory, and even though Picard thwarted the few ships they had in the Briar Patch at the time, they could have easily sent in a whole fleet afterwards, killed the Baku, and used the planet's rings or whatever to develop a cure for aging. The Sona'aa were allied with the Dominion, just like the Cardassians. It's not like the Federation could just flick them away... they were a very hostile spacefaring race.
  
  (It looks even worse when you consider the planet on the show had a bunch of Indians, and in Insurrection the Baku were a bunch of white people... hmm....)
• From George on 2010-12-25 at 3:51am:
  Not to quibble with what Nick said, but the Baku planet was not in Son'a territory. Admiral Dougherty has a line to the effect of "we had the planet, they had the technology" or something along those lines. It was a Federation planet which they teamed up with the Son'a to exploit. For that reason, there's a distinct difference from the TNG episode Nick referenced. I thought Picard's stand was pretty good on principle, but ultimately I was slightly overwhelmed by the movie as a whole, no disrespect to our erstwhile webmaster. Still a good flick.
• From MJ on 2011-02-25 at 9:26pm:
  What bothers me most about this movie is how easily Picard and his crew come to their decision to take off the uniforms and go against the Federation's plans. The real struggle in this movie belongs entirely to Admiral Dougherty, who is trying to weigh the benefits of this new resource to the Federation against what it will cost the Bak'u. For him, it is a moral struggle. Not so for Picard, who takes the apparent moral high ground with ease and has little, if any, hesitation. This from a man who has agonized over decisions to violate or uphold the Prime Directive on many occasions, not to mention other situations that involved ethical dilemmas. This movie robbed TNG of its greatest strength; that being situations in which there are multiple points of view, each of them valid and justifiable, and yet irreconcilable with each other. Usually, an entire TV episode is devoted to flushing out all these points of view. Here, the position of the Bak'u is quite clearly portrayed as the "correct" one, and the Son'a plan is sinister; Dougherty's struggle between the two is shown to be a sign of weakness and ultimately, he makes the "wrong" choice.
  
  Obviously, the movie provided what a TV episode cannot: stunning visual effects, interesting costume design and make-up, unique and high quality camera shots, and humor and jokes that have a wider appeal. All of this helps the movie tremendously, but does not completely make up for the fact that something went fundamentally wrong in the transition from the TV to the movie screen in TNG.
• From Tallifer on 2011-04-22 at 10:30pm:
  The plastic surgery aliens were the only really good thing about this.
  
  Despite a few good moments, this whole movie is a failure because all of its premises are mistaken:
  
  1. There are only 600 people on a huge planet. Why not just establish several unintrusive colonies? Negotiate with the natives, especially when we learn that they are not ignorant savages, but warp-capable geniuses.
  
  2. Why would the Sona bother with niceties? The Federation is involved in a war for its life. Just insert some covert commandos and wipe out the tiny village. By the time the Federation notices, it will be too late, and the negotiations can begin.
  
  3. The crew of the Enterprise received the benefits of the radiation even while in orbit: just allow tourists to fly through the rings.
  
  
• From EvanT on 2011-06-24 at 11:30pm:
  I absolutely loathe this film. It's like a negative of "Journey's End" and a rehash of the same episode, all in one.
  
  In "Journey's End" we had Federation Citizens not wanting to leave a planet they had lived on for generations that the Federation just gave up in a treaty. Wesley tries to help them and gets shot down by Picard ("as long you wear that uniform, you'll follow orders!") and Wesley resigns.
  
  Here we have a group of 600 non-indigenous(!) people (warp-capable too) trespassing on a Federation planet which holds a precious resource and hogging it (their longevity isn't even natural) Now Picard is adamant that they must be protected, orders be damned. Gee, I wonder why? Could it have something to do with that Baku lady?
  
  Is it me or is he ridiculously out of character? (and most of this happens before he gets affected by the radiation)
  
  As RedLetterMedia put it, I doubt Picard would have an insurrection for that old indian guy :P in "Journey's End". They should call the next film "Star Trek; His Erection" (he's got great reviews of all TNG films).
  
  I agree that the concept and the basic morals the script tries to send across are good and solid for Star Trek, but the execution is dreadful, full of holes and riddled with continuity errors (not to mention logical inconsistencies). I can't give this more than 3/10.
• From Sean on 2011-08-10 at 9:22am:
  For a long time, "Insurrection" was always the weakest TNG film for me. I only saw the film once in theatres, but I found it slow and boring. However, I think the problem for me (and a lot of other people) was that they were expecting First Contact II. The film's marketing campaign really did not help, making it look much more action-packed than it really was (even re-using footage from ST:FC in the trailers!).
  
  So, I re-watched "Insurrection" with an open mind, and I liked it. I've heard it compared to TNG: Journey's End, where Picard makes exactly the opposite decision that he does in "Insurrection", and whine that this is out of character. However, I think what this film subtly does at the beginning is remind the audience that the Federation is not what it once was. The Cardassians, the Borg and especially the Dominion are crippling the once mighty Federation. In fact, when the Evora are accepted into the Federation, the cast mention that the Federation needs all the friends they can get. To me, in TNG: Journey's End, Picard rationalised moving the Native Americans because the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. Now, several years later, and with the Federation in the middle of a bloody war, Picard has come to the realisation that if the Federation is to survive, they can't be seen as oppressive and dominating - and above all else, they cannot play God (hmm, does that sound like the Prime Directive?). "Who the hell are we to determine the next course of evolution for these people?", indeed. I actually prefer the outcome of this movie to TNG: Journey's End.
  
  Also, it's nice that all the crew get something to do other than just "yes sir!", and it's obvious they were having a lot of fun while shooting this film. It's not as masterful as "First Contact", but it's still a fine film.
• From Jake on 2012-12-01 at 3:55am:
  wasn't there a reference to Data falling into a lake and having to walk for miles to the shore in one of the episodes? Why didn't he inflate?
• From Rick on 2013-05-13 at 4:32am:
  In response to everyone comparing this to the tng native american relocation episode: they are quite different.
  
  Insurrection is about a planet within the borders of the federation that is being sold out to highest bidder in order to benefit others. The tng episode is about a disputed planet that is eventually determined to be cardassian as a part of treaty to avoid a war. In fact, during the episode I think that Picard even said they knew the planet was disputed when they settled there.
• From Axel on 2018-08-05 at 2:19am:
  I think a lot of fans forget that in order for movies to achieve the financial success the studio wants, they have to appeal to a wider audience. It's not enough for the production to simply create a movie-screen version of a TNG episode; it has to appeal to a much larger, and indeed international, audience. So while it's annoying for fans to see Worf become little more than the comic relief of this movie, or the movie to only make brief mentions of the Dominion War that hardcore fans have been watching on TV for years, the film has to be a standalone story that everybody can watch.
  
  Looked at that way, I think it's a good movie. Not as good as First Contact, but definitely the second-best TNG movie. And it included enough TNG backstory to appeal to fans of the show: we see Troi and Riker get back together, Geordi have a touching moment with his eyesight, and of course, fan-favorite Data in action.
  
  I agree the visual elements are incredible and that the Bak'u could look at least a little alien. Overall, though, I did enjoy this one. Or, maybe it just looks better in hindsight compared to the absolute trainwreck of a TNG movie that'd watch a couple years later called Nemesis.
• From Graham Bessellieu on 2019-07-25 at 5:08pm:
  I'm in agreement with Kethinov here, "Insurrection" is not only one of the most beautifully shot Trek films, I now consider it one of the most successful "Trek" films at its heart. By that I mean, while "First Contact" is an excellent film, thrilling and bold, it lacks the principled themes which define the heart of Trek, such as the ethics of cultural imperialism explored in this film.
  
  One could argue the regenerative / medicinal theme of the Ba'ku to be underdeveloped, the "face-stretching" of the Son'a awkward, Picard's love interest a bit cliche, or the frequent comedic one-liners to be contrived, but I'm willing to overlook these, for the most part.
  
  It's lovely to see Riker and Troi rekindle their romance, Data's relationship to the Ba'ku boy is endearing, and the overall mystery of uncovering what's going on between the Federation and the Ba'ku keeps the viewer curious.
  
  While "Insurrection" may be akin to a TNG episode, in many respects, perhaps that is its very strength.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-09-12 at 6:38am:
  I know I saw this movie once before, because I remember the Riker/Troi bath shaving scene. But it must have been when it came out, because I had forgotten virtually all of it!
  
  I was pleasantly surprised to come away from this film feeling pretty good about it. Clearly, it's not universally loved, but I went in with basically no expectations, so it wasn't hard for it to let me down. It wasn't a sweeping epic with huge stakes like the other TNG cast films. No destruction of the Enterprise or Kirk dying, no near-assimilation of Earth, no Romulan political intrigue. It feels a bit more like a long, expensive, cinematically-shot episode. But honestly, that's fine. After First Contact, it makes sense to switch gears a little bit. As Kethinov pointed out, it's a really beautiful film. The fact that Jonathan Frakes directed both this and First Contact speaks to his range as a director. The film has a lot of nice moments, but one that particularly moved me was Geordi getting to see with real eyes for the first time. Oh, Geordi. You deserve it.
  
  All that said, I think the various criticisms and plot holes are valid observations. It's true that many of the implications are not fully thought-out. Why can only 600 non-indigenous people live on a whole planet? How did the Son'a come to produce Ketracel White? Why don't we see the rings of the planet from the surface? Shouldn't the features of the Briar Patch be visible at night? Also, the "boobs getting firmer" exchange was dumb. Sorta funny, but annoying and undermines the film. Data would know that Worf doesn't have boobs. (eyeroll) Unfortunately, the women of the regular cast have comparatively little to actually DO in this film aside from sort of just ... be there. At least they were good shots with the phaser rifles. *sighs in cynical feminist* I know, it was '98. A different time. I reserve the right to be salty!
  
  Even though it's pretty self-contained, I think this film does also add some important plot development regarding the decline of the Federation -- likely much to do with the Dominion War, but continuing well after. We see this tackled head-on in Picard (of which I've only seen five episodes at present). I'm reminded of Picard's line in the premiere, telling why he resigned (which he did only ten years after the events of this film): "Because it was no longer Starfleet!" While not all fans might like to see the Great and Lovable Federation lose its moral compass, I think that's a great way to explore how the Federation and Starfleet could eventually be redeemed, and perhaps become even stronger and more morally upright than it was before. In past TNG episodes, there have often been individual problematic admirals, but rarely is the Federation as a whole implicated.
  
  It was nice seeing Riker and Troi rekindle their romance. I've always loved their relationship. It didn't need to go this direction, but it did. I'll say too, Riker looks much better beardless here than he did in Season 1! I'm not sure if it's his age or that Frakes has gotten more comfortable playing the character.
  
  For a film, it's a beautiful and solid episode!

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Dave on 2009-08-03 at 6:36am:
  Not quite so sure I would dismiss the continuity problems with TNG's Borg history quite so easily. I'm sure they can be rationalised away - perhaps it would have been nice for Janeway or one of the crew to have at least expressed some curiosity about it. After all, in Scorpion, Janeway does say "from the moment Q flung the Enterprise into the path of that first cube" - meaning it was still believed Picard had first contact with the Borg.
  Besides that - having just seen The Raven again, I'm puzzled. Janeway says files from the USS Raven have been "gathering dust" in Voyager's database for a year. Really? When were these obtained? Presumably from the encounter with the Raven, of course, but how exactly? Neither Seven nor Tuvok had time to download them, as the ship was under attack from the Bomar aliens of the week. And once they left the ship, they saw the Raven fall to pieces before being beamed out by Paris. Hardly an episode breaker - but a bit annoying!
• From Spacebard on 2012-10-28 at 10:13pm:
  Not too long after the Doctor had deleted the Crell Moset hologram on ethical grounds in “Nothing Human”, he is seen enthusing over a piece of Borg medical equipment presumably derived from the forced assimilation of billions of sentient beings. Then, under Janeway’s direction, the crew formulate a plan to steal a Borg transwarp coil with seemingly no ethical qualms. A touch of double standards, methinks.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Kenobie on 2011-04-13 at 5:22pm:
  What kind of person gives this episode a Rating of 0. I would love to hear there reason. Personally I think that if you did not enjoy this 2 parter then you can't really be a fan of Star Trek.
• From Tallifer on 2011-04-24 at 10:25pm:
  My favourite scenes were the scientific examinations of the Hansens. Like real life zoologists risking life and limb to study tigers up close. Except even more dangerous and thrilling.
  
  There were many other good things about this: the Borg harbour; Naomi Wildman; assimilation scenes; the wonderful queen.
• From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-07 at 7:31pm:
  One problem you missed: the Borg Queen states that Seven is the first Borg to become an individual. But we know that's not true. Voyager has encountered Borg individuals before, and so did Enterprise. Remember Hugh?
• From Alan on 2012-01-22 at 11:17am:
  Good point Jeff, but what about Picard in 'Best of both worlds' in TNG season3. He was assimilated by the Borg , but was saved and turned back into a human.
• From thaibites on 2015-01-02 at 10:55am:
  I thought this 2-parter was the best I've seen from Voyager yet (chronologically). The writing was crisp, the story moved at a brisk pace with very little padding, there was action, suspense, and mystery - outstanding! The scenes where the people were being assimilated were really disturbing because of the constant screams of agony in the background - very unsettling. Even the vile holodeck worked well in this episode.
  I'm a happy boy!
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-22 at 5:34pm:
  I have to second the sentiments above. How can someone possibly give THIS episode a 0? How can there be THIRTEEN such people? What are they smoking?
  
  Borg queen assembly, transwarp in action, Seven's "betrayal", Seven's resistance, the Hansens, Janeway at her courageous best... the queen and Janeway fighting over Seven, Naomi (who has quickly grown into an impressively strong performer and can hold her own alongside anyone), all moving, exciting, terrifying, touching, blood roiling... amazing. But, the most poignant moment for me was when Seven received Janeway's transmission "we're searching for you, try to hang on" and involuntarily responded "Captain"... wow. It was so overwhelming, I had to hit pause!
  
  If it wasn't for a slight, continuity-related discomfort, this two-parter would be a 10. But as is, it's a 9 or 9.5, for sure.
  
  Also, a bit of a treat for me, was seeing an episode of this magnitude where the major players were all women, without gender being an issue. The hero, the villain, the prodigal (and brilliant) protégé, all smart, all bad ass, all morally and emotionally deep (and/or complicated).... it’s not often you see such robust and dynamic women characters in a story with no male leads unless sex/gender is an explicit issue and/or the women are totally androgynous. This storyline could have easily fit male “action” stars, but just happened to be female ones. These are strong and capable women, but not “masculine” ones. And the great this is, it doesn’t matter at all to the storyline whether they’re men or women! I love that! Don’t get me wrong, I love my guys (Data, Spock, Picard, Tuvok, Doctor, Giordi, Worf, Wesley, McCoy, Trip, Odo, Kirk, Sisko,... etc. etc.... all of them), but it’s really, really, great to see the girls get a fair shake too. Here is gender equality as a matter of COURSE, not a matter of “exception”! At long last!!! Thank you, Star Trek!
  
• From Dstyle on 2015-07-07 at 2:04pm:
  Do you want to know why someone would rate this episode so low? It completely defangs the Borg.
  
  So a lone, isolated Federation ship is stranded in the Delta Quadrant, cut off from the support and resources of the Federation (which incidentally lost a whole fleet of ships at Wolf 395 to a single, undamaged Borg cube), and yet somehow this lost Federation ship is able to fly a shuttlecraft undetected into the heart of Borg territory and get within transporter range of the Borg Queen? No thanks. I like my Borg terrifyingly unbeatable. Janeway, like the Hansens, got cocky: they should have been crushed like bugs.
  
  Also, you'd think the Borg would have at some point assimilated a species that could move a little quicker, wouldn't you think? The Borg move like shuffling 1930s movie monsters.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-07-13 at 3:03am:
  
  Two words my sibling: David. Goliath. Most of us just can NOT root for David to keep losing so that Goliath can keep terrifying us to ecstasy.
  
  Yes,the Borg are great when scary, but only cuz it's so much more awesome when our intrepid heroes find a way to best them! They were 'beaten' in Best of Both Worlds, too, and First Contact. Did you have problems with those too? Or is it just that this is a lone ship in the delta quadrant? It is the essence of heroic tales the bad guys are bigger and badder, not so that they can beat the good guys in the end but so that it's that much more satisfying when the good guys beat them!
  
  Also, a 'low score' is one thing, but a zero??
• From Rick on 2017-05-22 at 11:30pm:
  I agree with Dstyle (although its not a 0, Id give it a 5, which is really bad for me). The motivations of the Borg make no sense and the worst part for me is how the Delta Flyer got away. They are numerous cubes chasing them but none of them go to transwarp to catch and destroy them and voyager. Why not? Only one tiny ship sneaks into the Delta Flyer's transwarp conduit, but why dont all the other ships create their own? It makes absolutely no sense. The cubes shouldve followed the Delta Flyer and destroyed them all. You cant just outrun the Borg.
• From Mike on 2017-06-07 at 4:15am:
  I've just never understood why they ever had to come up with a Borg Queen. I didn't like it in First Contact, and I hated it even more in this series.
  
  The obvious answer is that they are expanding on the notion that the Borg are like bees, and giving us a villain with a face. The Hansens even say in this episode that the Borg Queen acts like the queen of an insect colony. Except that in colonies of ants or bee hives, queens don't coordinate and direct the activities of the others. They are there almost entirely for reproduction, to birth the colony's offspring. Bees and ants activities are directed by instinct and a web of communication. In other words, they act collectively, just like the Borg did when they were first conceived. They were interested only in assimilating technology and life forms. They were apolitical and amoral, with no ambitions or quest for power and resources, no cause or culture. You couldn't negotiate, make peace, or reason with them. The only way to defeat them was to somehow use their collective communication and existence against them, which is exactly what happened in TNG: Best of Both Worlds. The existence of a Queen gives the Borg a leader with almost personal, individual motives. It takes away what made them so ominous, and it also makes them much easier to defeat. THey were better when they were faceless drones.
  
  Anyway, that's my anti-Borg Queen rant. I do like this episode for what it does with Seven's character. The dilemma she faces of hearing the collective calling her back and choosing whether to remain with her family on Voyager was a great premise for the story, and it works well overall. The assimilation of Species 10026 definitely brought back that ominous dimension to the Borg. It was so brutally efficient and so unconcerned with the individuality of the people...and left you with the eerie reminder that they've done this to thousands of worlds.

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Rob on 2008-04-27 at 1:46am:
  I love how Ezri's analysis takes in all of Worf's history and, in effect, all of the history of the Klingon Empire. Not in only DS9, but all the way back to the third season of TNG and Duras' involvement in the High Council. Fantastic long-term continuity...!
  
  
• From Pemmer Harge on 2010-03-22 at 11:56pm:
  The best episode of the Final Chapter by quite some distance. Most of the others are at least good, but this one is just better written and more intelligent.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Vincent on 2011-10-10 at 2:58am:
  In this episode, Braxton cites his time in the 20h century as a reason to try to eliminate Voyager from the timeline. However, if I recall correctly, after the events of Future's End, Braxton says he never experienced that timeline. This is only a minor problem in a very entertaining episode.
• From Wes on 2012-03-02 at 2:29pm:
  Isn't it a problem that Seven went to Voyager in dry dock in the beginning and the weapon was already placed, yet it was already placed? Then, she went into the FUTURE (to the battle with the Kazon) not into the PAST to find when the device was placed. What!? You go into the future to find the guy placing the device who actually placed the device in the past. That's a real temporal paradox--one that seems like it was more of a major problem that the writers chose to look over to include Utopia Planetia in this episode and something familiar to us (the Kazon battle).
• From JR on 2012-07-11 at 5:49am:
  I like how the "present" 29th century Braxton is arrested for something he might do in the future. That particular "future" Braxton did commit time crimes, but as we know from episodes like Parallels, STXI, etc, there are infinite possible futures.
  
  Therefore, arresting "present" Braxton and merging him with that particular "future" Braxton seems kinda like punishing "present" Braxton for a thought-crime...or maybe a possible future thought-crime.
  
  Anyway, I liked seeing Dutch from The Shield. It's interesting how certain actors get typecast. He was sort of a detective here, and will be again in at least two shows I recall.
• From Mitch89 on 2013-03-24 at 10:30pm:
  I found Carey's chat with Seven in engineering somewhat amusing, considering he's married with children!
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-06-29 at 8:50pm:
  I’m with JR; it’s highly disturbing that Braxton would be arrested for a crime he has not yet committed nor even has the present intent to commit! For all the federation’s claims of enlightenment, this is the kind of draconian future they have to look forward to? And no one in-universe is troubled by this?
• From Dstyle on 2015-07-16 at 7:55pm:
  I don't mind a good time travel episode--really, I don't--but I wish I din't always have to turn off the part of my brain that processing things intelligently and logically in order to enjoy it. Seriously, every Star Trek time travel episode always seems to have one character who is grappling sophomorically with the whole thing, trying to spell it out simply for the folks at home, and someone usually tells that character something to the effect of, "It's best if you just don't think too hard on it." This episode was FULL of "just don't think too hard about it" moments. This episode was just a mess. Probably one of the weakest time travel episodes I've seen, honestly.
• From QuasiGiani on 2017-09-02 at 3:21pm:
  If you want to "intelligently and logically" in enjoy anything to do with time-travel you MUST BEST JUST "don't think too hard on it."
  
  This is the point; these are the facts. Even with the slightest bit of intelligent logic, time-travel is always going to be caught in a "mess" of paradox.
  
  This is the joke. This is the fun. This is the funny. This is why this is a really great Voyager episode. Because Janeway, of all characters, of all time(!), is especially aware of and attuned to this and here we have her dropped right slipstream of what a might be the most convoluted such and such... of all time!
  
  Honestly!
  
  Excellent Episode.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Hugo on 2013-05-03 at 6:12am:
  So the Dominion is retreating into Cardassian space - what about the Breen - couldn't the Federation et al attack Breen space (or is it too far away?)
• From Damien Bradley on 2013-09-28 at 7:55am:
  A minor problem: When Kasidy reveals she's pregnant, they say something about one of them forgetting an injection, presumably the modern method of birth control for men and women. Sisko admits it must have been him. But both partners have to be taking an injection for it to work? That doesn't make sense. If both partners were on it, it would serve as redundant protection in case one person forgets. Even now, we have methods that work for months or years at a time; wouldn't they have permanent reversible birth control for both sexes by the 24th century?
  
  Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the suspense leading up to the finale! I've been making my way through DS9 (with breaks here and there) for a few years now. Enough time to start the series over again! This time leaving out the bad filler (so thanks for your filler quotient ratings!).
• From ChristopherA on 2021-08-26 at 2:36am:
  The story of the Cardassian rebels continues to be exciting and well done.
  
  They are starting to wrap up the series, starting with the Ferengi, but I don't really see why they thought it was necessary to wrap up the Ferengi at all. It was a good idea to complete the “women’s liberation” storyline because the idea of naked Ferengi females is basically of an awkward legacy of the silly cartoonish TNG-style Ferengi. It was really inconvenient that you could not film Ferengi females because they were naked and thus could barely have female Ferengi at all. And the whole idea didn't seem to fit well at all with the DS9 recharacterization of the Ferengi. Their purpose was to be absurdly ruthless businessmen, having them be misogynists didn't add anything interesting to this and was mostly just annoying. So it made a lot of sense to just wrap this up and get rid of it.
  
  But having Ishka completely transform the whole society and political system in, apparently, a year or two just seemed trite and hard to believe and entirely unnecessary, it only seems to weaken the usefulness of the Ferengi as an element in future stories. And making Rom the Grand Nagus is, again, overly trite. Sure, it does cap off the long running storyline that Rom starts as the dumb subservient brother and grows into the smarter, more dynamic brother. But it has been well established this is partly because Rom’s genius lies in engineering rather than business. And while he has been shown to have grown courage at standing up to his brother to promote social causes, he is still an engineer with self-confidence, not a politician. It would be more believable to assume that Moogie is now the real Grand Nagus behind the scenes, with Rom as her nepotism puppet.
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Alan on 2012-01-26 at 4:08pm:
  Kethinov , I have to agree with you. This episode is a hoot. I've just watched it for the first time , since the original air date . It has to be in my top five of Star Trek episodes. The opening scene with Robert Picardo is total genius. The potato aliens are funny as hell.
  I give this episode a 10. :)
• From Susan on 2020-12-05 at 8:22am:
  Thanks for that YouTube link. Almost as much fun as the ep.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From JR on 2012-07-11 at 6:48am:
  I really liked this episode. To me, it seems Seasons 5 and 6, particularly this beginning of season 6, has been the best of Voyager so far.
  
  I liked seeing Troi again and it is frankly amazing how she keeps looking better with age. I had to grin a couple times though, as I think I heard an accent (Manchester?) slipping out in a few different scenes.
• From Hugo Ahlenius on 2015-04-21 at 8:42pm:
  A nice episode, great with the TNG cross-over and how it is told from outside Voyager (the ship). I have never been a fan of Barclay though, him being over the top. I guess he is more human and realistic than most other characters though - he has flaws!
• From Luke on 2022-06-21 at 9:27am:
  What really irritates me about Voyager, which generally is a show I grew up watching and always enjoy, is how they always seem to be travelling at impulse when the external view of the ship is shown.
  
  WHY?
  
  Presumably they would be going as fast as possible at all times, why, before anything happens in the episode, would they be at impulse?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Steve Mohns on 2010-08-27 at 3:20am:
  Can someone explain to me why, in this and perhaps other episodes, they have such an dilemma with sending the doctor's data somewhere? He's data - what's the problem sending a copy? At worst there'd be a delta between the experiences of him having two experiences at the same time, which could surely be merged later. Have they ever described it as being some kind of ethical issue? I'd think not, as he doesn't seem to have the same rights as, say, Data had.
  I'd have been happier if they hadn't made an issue of not wanting to sending him because Voyageur'd be without him, and it was dangerous.
• From Kethinov on 2010-08-27 at 8:09am:
  Upfront disclosure: I don't think the writers had their computer science fundamentals quite locked down when they wrote this stuff. The same problem is happening on the new BSG series Caprica right now. The writers on that show make frequent computer science errors, unfortunately. I suppose tech errors are a fact of life on science fiction shows.
  
  That said, the "copy the doctor" issue on Voyager isn't as bad as you might think. It's well established that he takes up so much computer memory that they can't have more than one copy of him on Voyager's computer at any one time. In order for two doctors to delta their experiences and merge into a single codebase, they'd have to be diffed, which requires having both copies of the doctor in computer memory at the same time.
  
  Voyager simply lacks the computer memory for this, so after they transmitted him, they must have deleted him from their computer as a safety precaution so they'd have enough room for him when he got back.
  
  You might wonder why they didn't keep a copy of the doctor around just in case of emergencies while the original was gone and then delete the copy on Voyager just before the other doctor got back, but that raises ethical issues. Should the doctor that remained on Voyager be deleted so that the other may live? Doesn't sound very Federationy.
  
  They *can* store him in a backup module, but again, in order for two doctors to diff and merge their experiences, they both have to exist in the memory of a single computer at the same time. So, on the whole, it seems like the writers accidentally managed to get this one right, just barely. Throughout Voyager's run, I was constantly worried that they would break this rationalization. But they never did! :)
• From dillingham on 2012-01-04 at 9:32am:
  This may or may not be an episode problem: Zimmerman tells the doctor, "I didn't program you for sarcasm!" But if that's true, then the doc learned it exceptionally quickly. I'm pretty sure he was sarcastic from day one, (literally). Rather than an actual episode problem, one could interpret this as a good example of Zimmerman's conflicted and somewhat myopic nature - he's conflicted about his own personality and accomplishments just as he's conflicted about the Mach One (and by extension about the doc). Sarcasm is probably one of those character traits he wasn't quite aware of when he designed the Mach One, and that slipped into the programming unintentionally (like his own arrogance and hot-headedness and all the rest).
  
  (Good epside, btw.)
• From packman_jon on 2012-06-09 at 5:23am:
  Loved this episode. Picardo is brilliant in this episode. The more I watch Voyager, the more I love Picardo
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2015-07-11 at 2:00pm:
  
  It always bothered me too that they can’t copy the doctor. I can’t really accept the explanation that Voyager doesn’t have enough memory for more than one copy at a time, when they had enough to run the whole town of ‘Fair Haven’ continuously for days (or was it weeks?)!
  
  This particular episode has bigger problems, though. E.g. why in the world would 675 EMHs be used to scrub plasma conduits? There’s gotta be less resource-intensive ways to do this – like simple robotic arms or holograms designed specifically for scrubbing (that don’t require extra memory to run subroutines for “faces”). It’s not like the Mark One copies were pieces of equipment that they had to repurpose because they didn’t know what else to do with them. These are just computer files, why not just delete?
  
  Also Troi losing her cool and calling her patients “jerks” was totally absurd. She’s a veteran counselor, with a distinguished career on the federation’s flagship, and she can’t handle a couple of squabbling patients without throwing a tantrum herself? Annoyed the hell out of me.
  
• From tigertooth on 2017-01-07 at 3:57pm:
  I was going to skip this episode, but I saw our host gave it a 9, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Glad I did. They did a good job of keeping it light, adding some drama in, but not overdoing it.
  
  And of course you get Picardo vs Picardo, which I should have known would be fun. It's somewhat a shame that the plot necessitates that he couldn't play Zimmerman very differently than the Doctor (as opposed to, say, Data vs Noonian Soong or Lore), but he got some subtleties in there.
  
  I felt like Barcalay and Troi kind of got shoved in the background, which is odd for TNG characters, but I'm not wild about either of them (though I am a Dwight Schultz fan), so no major loss. That said, their role reversal plan between Zimmerman and the Doctor was pretty great.
  
  And really, Zimmerman's whole plight of his personality being deemed faulty (essentially) was a great hook for the plot.
  
  

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Wes on 2012-02-25 at 5:12pm:
  @kethinov, in your analysis of the Voyager series you said it was established in TNG that Borg space is between where Voyager was in the Delta quadrant and Federation space. Do you recall in which episode of TNG that was established? I'd love to watch that episode again. I always thought it was just a nice coincidence the writers came up with for Voyager to run into the Borg.
  
  Additionally, I like these two episodes. I'd probably give them both an 8 or 9 because I agree with you that they could have this episode for the end of season 4 or sometime soon thereafter. There are so many pointless fillers in Voy. But I may also be a bit jaded by my love of DS9's arcs and TNG's lack of needing to get somewhere (e.g. home).
• From Kethinov on 2012-02-25 at 10:57pm:
  Wes,
  
  The first on-screen confirmation that the Borg are delta quadrant residents comes from the TNG film Star Trek: First Contact. However, fan speculation about the subject was commonplace as far back as the early 1990s and many non-canon novels quasi-established this as fact, which the producers of Star Trek were eventually inclined to absorb as canon.
  
  It was so common to assume this as canon that during Star Trek Voyager's pre-production phases in the early 1990s, Michael Okuda is reputed to have told Rick Berman that "since the gamma quadrant is the province of ships from DS9, [then] this new show [should] be set in the delta quadrant. One of the few things we know about the delta quadrant is that the Borg homeworld is located somewhere there. This might present opportunities for the Borg to be recurring bad guys."
• From Wes on 2012-03-16 at 2:37pm:
  After watching a lot of Voyager in the past little while--thank you, Netflix--I've noticed another gripe I have. Out of the three series I have really watched (TNG, DS9 and Voyager) Voyagers class is the weakest. In fact, I am often annoyed with the acting of Voyager's cast. I do not discredit their hard work, by any means. However, Jeri Ryan, Robert Picardo and Tim Russ are the only above-soap-opera-caliber actors on Voyager. I'll admit that some of my frustration may simply be due to the writing, but I counter that with the idea that I believe the writers write the characters to the actor's abilities.
  
  Since I wasn't alive during the run of TOS, it's hard for me to criticize their acting since I don't really know how it compared to the acting of the day. Although, I thought their acting was pretty good in Star Trek IV and VI.
  
  I feel quite secure in saying the actors of TNG were the best actors of all. They were each fabulous in their roles and in the movies. You could rarely say that it seemed like they were acting. Instead, it more often seemed like they actually were the character they portrayed.
  
  The DS9 cast is a close second to TNG's cast, for me.
  
  So, while I like some of Voyager's episodes (mostly the ones Kethinov has rated high), the acting annoys me far too often to be a really great series for me.
• From Nightwish on 2014-12-15 at 2:41am:
  Well... from having tried to watch it twice before and really not liking it to seeing it all in a year and feeling emotional in the end went quite a distance. Sure, some characters were annoying and never did anything right, and other's were inconsistent, but I felt happy for them all in the end. And I'll miss them.
  All and all, not a bad trek series after all. I wonder when we'll get something similar again.
  And I've found that I mostly agree with your likes and dislikes, which is nice.
• From Dstyle on 2015-08-13 at 1:59pm:
  Without any "reunion" scenes at the end of the episode, it definitely left me feeling like we, as invested viewers, were denied closure. After all the years trying to get back to Earth, we at least deserved a chance to see Tom reuniting with Admiral Paris, Tuvok's unemotional reunion with his wife and children, Seven's reunion with her Earth family, Harry's long-awaiting reunion with his fiance UH I MEAN PARENTS HIS PARENTS RIGHT I FORGOT WE ALL AGREED TO FORGET THAT HARRY WAS ENGAGED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SERIES. Ending the series the way it did just left me feeling empty.
• From Andrew on 2016-12-12 at 4:13pm:
  I just finished watching the entire series on Saturday. After 172 episodes, I definitely enjoyed seeing the future versions of the characters since I feel a strong bond with each.
  
  For that same reason, I share Kethinov's disappointment that we don't see any of what occurs on Earth after they return. Yes, I understand that the show was about "the journey." Yes, I understand that you always want to leave viewers wanting more, but I could not shake the empty feeling that I got when the final shot of the show was Voyager approaching Earth from space.
  
  Voyager could have easily returned in mid to late season 5 (or even season 6) and then used season 6 and/or 7 to explore the crew's lives on Earth. How would Seven of Nine and the Doctor adjust to Earth? How would the new technology and experiences affect Starfleet? What kind of homecoming would the crew receive?
  
  Anyway...I loved the episode and I loved this series. Definitely captures the brilliance of TNG and DS9, but clearly not on the same level. I was just disappointed with the way they left it. Seemed so sudden!
  
  
• From Mike on 2017-06-07 at 3:28am:
  TNG: All Good Things. Still the best finale in all of Star Trek. This one almost became a close second if they'd just given us some idea what happens after the real return of Voyager. Now I'm in the awkward position of liking a finale with Vic Fontaine more than this one.
  
  In addition to all the things left out of the finale you mention, I'm also bothered by the destruction of the transwarp hub. It's one thing to want to get rid of the Borg, but that is too cool of a phenomenon to just get rid of mere minutes after we find out about it. It also raises the question of why we never got to see a Borg-Dominion War. Plus, the destruction of the hub and the success of the pathogen, though unexpected, seemed a bit too easily achieved. It was a pretty quick denoument after so much build-up.
  
  I do like the twist this finale gave us of showing a potential future for all the characters, and then altering it based on the episode's outcome. That was very similar to TNG: All Good Things, where we know the events that "future Picard" experienced will change. So in this finale, as with that one, I say...if JJ Abrams can muck up the Star Trek timeline, why can't Star Trek play games with its own timeline?
  
  In response to Wes: the acting of the TOS cast was one of that show's strengths. They had an on-screen chemistry that I don't think any of the other series reached. Each series had some amazing actors, but as a group, I think TOS was the best.
  
  It made up for the fact that the storylines on several episodes were pretty weak. Some were downright ridiculous. I'd even say that overall, the science fiction on Voyager was better. But then again, TOS was itself a sci-fi innovation and it all had to start somewhere.
• From McCoy on 2017-11-12 at 10:27am:
  I think it was a decent closure. I like it more than DS9 (which is a better series, but all that Star Wars-like duel between jedi Sisko and Darth Dukat was... horrible). Don't think we should see the reunions between crew and their families. Final shot with Voyager approaching Earth was great. I'm satisfied:)
• From President Obummer on 2020-01-19 at 10:06am:
  Maybe not the families, but they could have at least made the final scene near earth longer than 30 seconds.
  Also, what's the big deal about destroying the borg hub? The Borg have 5 more and they build them once, they can build them again...

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Hkelukka on 2008-01-29 at 8:50pm:
  I think archers whole argument imploder the second the cogenitor asked for political asylum. It became obvious that the starfleet of the day was not in the business of being a humanitarian, it was in the business of doing what archer wants. It is okay to stop a species from hunting another if the hunted gives Archer a vision of the girl of his wet dreams. But its not okay to grant political sanctuary to a creature who is kept solely as a sexual object with no rights and no education and when that person asks to be protected against his/her abusers she gets turned away as a indifferent "its not our problem, we just want the technology" and when that person then proceeds to kill him/herself archer gets angry at the one person in his/her entire lifetime to show compassion to him/her.
  
  Personally i love this episode but archers charade about morality and all that made me see red. If i was Trip i would have decked archer by that speech even if i was to be cour martialed and shot.
• From Bob on 2009-07-03 at 3:34pm:
  Archer's decision was correct and followed the not yet constructed prime directive. The third gender makes up only 3% of the Vissian population. Imagine the effect on their population growth if this third gender did not spend all of its time aiding in reproduction. Human concepts of morality are not universal, and obviously a culture that obtained warp drive 1000 years prior to humans has carefully weighed its options, and humans have no right to judge and try to change their culture after meeting them for 3 days.
• From carsonist on 2010-06-18 at 9:51pm:
  I'm rather amazed no one seems to agree with Trip on this one. The cogenitors are slaves, pure and simple. The fact that they're necessary to reproduce doesn't mean they should be enslaved. Surely if there were only two sexes, and there were only three percent women, we'd object to treating them as property?
  
  Just because it's a different culture doesn't mean they can't be wrong.
• From Pete on 2010-08-06 at 1:45am:
  The message that this episode seemed to promote was offensive to me. "Preserving culture is more important than basic human rights" seemed to be the gist of it.
  
  Star Trek, and science fiction in general, has always been about allegory. To me, this episode was a defense of American slavery, radical Islam, and any other "culture" that impinges on human rights.
  
  And to top it all off, Archer berates Tripp at the end to try and make him feel guilty for a suicide that could have been completely avoided had Archer saved the congenitor from a lifetime of slavery.
  
  This episode was not thoughtful. It was not a discussion of "moral issues". The only character who even wanted to have a discussion about any moral issues was Tripp--portrayed as the naive, impulsive, stereotypical southerner, whose white knighting was quickly scoffed at by every other character on the show. Not what I have come to expect from Star Trek, but indeed, everything that I have come to expect from Bermaga.
• From Jadzia Guinan Smith on 2010-09-02 at 5:32am:
  I agree with the other commenters who found Archer's lecture troubling. It's fine to acknowledge the difficulties of navigating first contact situations and respecting alien cultures that present moral dilemmas, but why must he insist that those moral dilemmas shouldn't even exist? And to do it self-righteously, as though he had the moral high ground? It was painful.
  
  By the way, taking a stance against the enslavement of a sentient being is not a species-specific "human" cultural preference. It's one of those few moral issues that really are universal. It really pisses me off when the yahoos that write this stuff dispose of these "human rights" questions with the tautological response that the relevant person is "not human." That's a cop out. This is about the rights of SENTIENTS. It would be much more interesting if the characters had the minimal sophistication to engage the question at that level.
  
  It's true that a complex question developed with all its nuance intact can't be resolved in one episode. I think I speak for a lot of Tfans when I say that I would MUCH rather have an intellectually and morally satisfying LOOK into an issue and live with the lack of its resolution. I think Star Trek at its best does explore ideas that are too difficult to answer in an hour. To paraphrase what T'Pol once said to Hoshi: "if I hold you to a higher standard, Star Trek, it's because I think you're capable of achieving it."
  
  By the way, why did T'Pol keep referring to the cogenitor as "she" after noting the error on Trip's part? It seems out of character. I think she stick to "the cogenitor" if not "it." This is really sloppy writing.
  
  I would give this episode a 9 for addresing a very tantalizing topic but a 3 for executing it poorly. Final average = 6.
• From siukong on 2011-01-31 at 9:06pm:
  I agree that the cogenitor was having its rights as a sentient violated, but I also think that granting it asylum was the less ethical choice.
  
  Sure, the Vissians are friendly to other species, but how do they treat each other? Have they had a past history of equality movements (between males and females, or between some other categorization)? How often do they reproduce, and what are the specifics of their reproductive cycle? If the cogenitors reproduced less often, would the population crash? Have the cogenitors always been such a minority, and have they always had such mental capabilities (maybe they had very small brains at one point)?
  
  My point is that knowing so little about their society, granting the cogenitor asylum could have had many unforeseen repercussions. Perhaps doing so would have led to a backlash, with the cogenitors becoming even more oppressed. Perhaps there was already an equality movement in its infancy and this would have quashed it for another few decades. Perhaps it would have led to civil war, and the deaths of millions or perhaps even extinction. Would the freedom of one individual be worth the suffering of many?
  
  I think by the time Archer had returned things had developed such that both alternatives were not particularly "moral" choices. If I had been in Trip's position I would have been much more gentle with the situation once it was apparent that the cogenitor's mental potential was the same as the other Vissians. Share the cognitive scans with them, and have an exchange on the relevant social history of both humans and Vissians (perhaps both could educate one another about gender politics). They seem like a enlightened, rational and compassionate species and would probably be open to a dialogue about it which could possibly nudge them towards change. Change rarely happens overnight (apart from revolutions, which are often chaotic and violent), so it would be necessary to overlook the inequality in the short-term in an effort to improve it in the long-term and on a broad scale.
• From Tallifer on 2011-05-14 at 9:37pm:
  I could understand the cold cruelty of T'pol, but Archer's passionate (!) defense of chattel slavery was infuriating. The writers also completely failed when they portrayed Tucker meekly accepting responsibility for the suicide: it is clear to any of us viewers that Archer was the one who could have prevented the suicide.
  
  If the episode had portrayed the cogenitor in a more positive light, like a happy sentient puppy, it could have been argued that slavery was just another role in their society. But from the first scene in the dining room, it was clear that the cogenitor was dejected and hopeless. She was filled with joy and life once Trip intervened.
• From -_Name_- on 2013-07-04 at 6:33pm:
  I have another factoid for your enjoyment:
  
  The Enterprise Motion Picture Library has "The Bride of Chaotica" in its Science Fiction database! Nice little throwback to Voyager. (pause frame at 29:03)
  
  - - -
  
  This was a rather stunning and unexpected episode... I'm not even sure what to add to the discussion. It *is* a little troubling that the episode seems to steer the viewer into cultural relativism... The message does seem to be: "don't do what compassion clearly tells you to do, b/c there may be things you don't understand and unforeseen consequences." On a gut level I have to disagree with this, but the interesting thing about this episode is that it is not entirely clear cut, at least not in this case...
  
  As others have pointed out, there may be an almost biological necessity to this morally iffy situation... I'm reminded a little of how the males of cats and some other species have barbed penises (to make sure the sexual act is completed once initiated) and basically have to force the female into submission (the sexual struggle being one means of selecting for stronger genes). It seems cruel and unnecessary but this is what evolutionary adaptation has arrived at in some cases - it's what's required for the perpetuation of some species.
  
  The analogy isn't by any means perfect, but nevertheless... That the cogenitors make up such a tiny percentage of the population and are necessary for the propagation of the species does make one pause, the biological issue does complicate the moral one.
  
  The one thing I would've liked was more uncertainty and inner conflict on Archer's part... This very complicated issue gets a a very simplistic and unambiguous last word. Trip obviously questions his assumptions by the end of the episode, and it would've been nice if Archer did the same, at least a little bit.
• From OmicronthetaDeltaPhi on 2015-11-01 at 6:22am:
  It would have been a much better episode, easily worthy of a "10", if it somehow hinted at Vissian reproduction actually being dependent on cogenitor discrimination.
  
  For example, after Trip taught the cogenitor to read, the Vissians could have told him that stimulating the cogenitor's brain in this manner destroyed its reproductive abilities. Naturally neither Trip nor Archer would believe them, but then Phlox would come in and confirm it.
  
  Now *that* could have been a truly incredible episode. And it could serve as a nice "Prelude to the Prime Directive" background story, too.
• From Zorak on 2016-10-04 at 11:36pm:
  Though it was a somewhat predictable episode (you could tell from the second they showed a side view of the progenitor sitting at the table that the entire episode would be about "it"), it didn't quite go in the ultimate direction I expected. I expected Archer to impose his will on these people like he always does.
  
  It seems lately that the writers have decided to keep the same theme of imposing Archers will on the galaxy, but injecting it into other characters. First Travis, then Phlox and Trip, and now entirely Trip.
  
  If anything this makes Archer look like even more of a twat as they've now turned him into a complete hypocrite. He basically chewed out Trip for acting exactly like Archer himself acts in every previous episode.
  
  I did not like this episode. By the end though, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. The writers simply shouldn't try tackling an issue they are completely unable to do any justice for, as they so often do.
  
  The only real saving grace for this episode is that it didn't end on the typical grandstanding "happy go lucky, we are Archer, savior of the universe and all knowing guiding hand of all things righteous and good, all hail the great and holy Archer and praise be his name, Amen" ending we often get with these ridiculous morality plays the writers insist on.
  
  Have I mentioned I don't like Archer?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete on 2011-01-05 at 3:25am:
  Eh, a 9 is a bit generous for a Reset Button Episode. I think this was mainly an excuse for them to blow up Earth and the bridge of Enterprise. I would not put it in the same category as The Visitor (DS9).
• From Zorak on 2016-10-09 at 9:28am:
  It took the destruction of Earth, the near genocide of the human species and what is truly one of the most heartbreaking of medical conditions to make me feel some level of sympathy for Jonathan Archer.
  
  I have always been fascinated and quite moved by cases of loss of long term memory formation. I was pretty shocked to see them explore it here. I was even more shocked that the story centered around it was actually quite coherent, not to mention interesting and moving.
  
  It's a nice change of pace to see Enterprise tackling an issue other then "-ism's are bad" and do something challenging.
  
  The only thing that really bothered me was the (inevitable) use of the only way to make Archer seem like a good captain, which is to make the people around him incompetent by comparison. This is why T'pol and Trip had to be "bad captains". I understand they had to lose to the Xindi and I don't even blame them for writing this into the episode. It's just a reminder in a great episode that I am still watching a poorly (often, not always) written series.
  
  I agree though, this was a great episode. I don't even mind that it is a "reset button" episode. They tried to make "The Inner Light" and "The Visitor", and for Enterprise, they did a good job of it. I also agree that it would have been nice to have Archer retain some shadow of a memory of what happened. A total reset was uncalled for (a bit ironic though, now that I think about it.. given the premise).

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Pete on 2011-01-11 at 12:55am:
  Hmmm...Major Hayes was killed in a similar manner as the character Dobby was killed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Did J.K. Rowling plagiarize from the great Brannon Braga? We will never know!

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From EvanT on 2011-06-24 at 8:51pm:
  I think it's fair to say that Vulcans already had warp travel during the Awakening. After all this is the time that the Romulans leave Vulcan ("those that marched beneath the raptor's wings"?) and obviously they didn't reach Romulus on sub-light speeds.
  
  It's reasonable to assume that Vulcans suspended their deep space exploration until they could rebuild and 1500 years is what? 30 something generations? (perhaps less) It's not that much time to rebuild a society and restructure it around an entirely new philosophy, working out the problems as they went. And I DO believe that the general tone in Star Trek is that Vulcans take things slow and don't rush (similar to D&D elves) simply because they can afford it due to their lifespans.
• From Mitch89 on 2013-01-04 at 11:38am:
  The parallels to the DS9 two parter "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" is astounding, right down to the actor playing the crazy power hungry leader trying to take control of everything!

No fan commentary yet.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Mike Chambers on 2017-09-25 at 2:57pm:
  Here I am the morning after Discovery debuts, thinking "I wonder if there's a review on kethinov.com yet", and of course there is! You're definitely on top of things.
  
  I've had my worries about how this show would turn out for multiple reasons, and I'm happy to report that so far, my fears have largely been allayed! I am extremely impressed with the first two episodes. It feels very much like Star Trek, but perhaps with a bit of a darker tone than previous series. I may be disappointed in the future if it turns out that the entire series is this dark, as Star Trek is supposed to be optimistic overall.
  
  There is excellent drama here, and they have done a fantastic job so far with building these characters. I'm looking forward to seeing how their situations evolve from this point, and I am now officially excited to see future episodes.
  
  My only real problem is political in nature. They appear to be using the Klingons as an allegory for nationalists, but are mishandling it. They seem to be ascribing a bit of a racial purist motive to it, rather than the cultural and civic nationalism ideals to which the vast majority of nationalists actually adhere to. It's annoying, but this is a product of the entertainment industry, after all. It would be asking a bit much for them to understand the country outside of their bubble, so I'm not letting it ruin my experience.
  
  I have thoroughly enjoyed Discovery so far, and I want more!
• From Rick on 2017-09-25 at 9:56pm:
  Star Trek being all about war is not Star Trek to me. It appears that this series will be about as far from Roddenberry's vision as possible, as all new productions since Enterprise have been. I understand that these type of stories are the modern tv way, but that way is not for me and apparently Star Trek no longer is either.
• From Matthew on 2017-09-26 at 7:16pm:
  I found this gripping, particularly the last act of this part which sums up both my excitement and concern for how this series could go.
  
  It features principle and bravery plus the protagonists' plan not going their way with (crucially) very real consequences - that feels quite liberating in that it opens up a rich seam of story-telling. Even 'In the Pale Moonlight' (DS9) doesn't quite go that far (though that's a great episode and I bet the writers took some inspiration from that great 'It's a FAAAAKE' moment!) That could be the foundation of a great series. On the other hand, I worry slightly about the world-building and tone being undermined by aesthetic choices about it being a 'darker' show. That crass scene with the judges' faces in shadow was seriously grating and I'm glad it didn't just bother me.
  
  We'll see how it evolves - I'll definitely be watching (and I'm glad that we don't have to pay 6 dollars a month on top of Netflix to get it in the UK - my other big worry is that the economics don't work out for CBS and that it dies a death nothing to do with its creative merits!)
• From Graham Bessellieu on 2019-07-14 at 7:50am:
  All about flash; lacks the heart of the best of Trek.
• From Mike Chambers on 2020-08-22 at 2:01am:
  I happened to be browsing this site again three years after I made that comment up above, and I think I need to officially retract everything I said about Discovery.
  
  I couldn't make it past around halfway through the first season. The depressing darkness and violence just never let up, and I ended up not really caring about the characters.
  
  I agree with Rick and Graham. This is not Star Trek as it should be. The Star Trek we've all come to love. Some might say that things can change. Yeah? I guess, but if this is how it's going to be, CBS can count me out as a continuing fan.
  
  Picard isn't good either, and a lot of the reasons overlap. Kurtzman's gotta go.
• From Azalea Jane on 2021-09-06 at 4:25am:
  It's weird having it stated/assumed that Burnham somehow started this war. No she didn't. T'Kuvma was determined to start a conflict. He damaged that relay to lure the Federation out to the beacon and attack them. I don't think Burnham's "shoot first" strategy would have worked either; that would have just convinced T'Kuvma even more that the Federation was out for them. The Klingons were going to start shooting either way. No, I think that, short of the Shenzhou high-tailing it out of there immediately, there was nothing that was going to prevent a conflict. Burnham is just a scapegoat. Moreover, despite various comments I've read that accuse her of this, Burnham isn't responsible for Georgiou's death; Georgiou is. As the captain, she made the call to take Burnham's advice of attempting to capture T'Kuvma. She knew the risk and took it.
  
  Life in prison seems super harsh! I could understand being dishonorably discharged, and perhaps face some other consequence, but life in prison?? That's for premeditated murder or something. Burnham didn't murder anyone; she accidentally killed the torchbearer and then she killed T'Kuvma in battle. Mutiny isn't a life offense. Neither is a Vulcan neck pinch. You'd think that, 250ish years into humanity's future, we would have moved beyond such blatantly punitive "justice". Life in prison or quarantine should really be reserved only for people who truly cannot be rehabilitated or reintegrated into civil society without posing a danger. Well, maybe subsequent episodes will help this make sense more. So far I've only watched these two. (And yeah, the shadowy courtroom was cheesy as hell.)
  
  I thought the connection to Sarek was interesting. In 2256, Sarek would have been 91 and Spock 26. I agree the thousand-lightyear telepathic phone call was stretching it, but I suppose stranger things have happened in Trek.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Matthew on 2017-11-15 at 7:25pm:
  I am feeling much better after this one - it's starting to come together, after a rather abrupt start.
  
  The cliffhanger is more meaningful where you consider where they probably are - i.e. the mirror universe, as covered around the web. I am completely convinced Lorca is actually Mirror Lorca, and that this will make sense of a number of things, like his sleeping with a phaser (consistent with the mirror universe love of shipboard assassination), praising the warrior aspect over science and exploration (his valedictory speech on the bridge was a weird bit in this episode, even taking the fact they're at war into account) and the fact that Cornwell finds him a stranger to her (with some unexplained scars).
  
  I've found myself thinking back to stuff he says in previous episodes in this context. What really strikes me is his attitude to Burnham. You can see that he's overridden the spore drive in a screengrab of his captain's chair console from this episode, so he clearly wants to get to one of the alternate dimensions that he talks Stamets through. But he clearly also wants Burnham, above all, to come with him. Nothing else explains his extraordinarily protective attitude to her in this episode - if he just wanted her on his team to help win the war, then her going over to the ship of the dead would just be her fulfilling that mission. But he doesn't want her there, he wants her safe until they jump dimensions. Also go back to the episode where he gets her on board and she's saying "I'm Starfleet, you can't break my principles" and he says "I know who you are, Michael Burnham" - my take is that while she obviously takes it as a figurative character assessment, he's being completely literal. He does know Burnham, very well, from the Mirror timeline. Tyler too, possibly, though who knows. A lot of his other random man management can be put down to him just being a bit of a do-whatever-it-takes merchant.
  
  My guess is that they have jumped to the Mirror universe but he's been out of stream for a while so is genuinely confused by what he's seeing when he gets there, rather than just putting it on.
  
  Maybe we are in for some juicy flashbacks with what actually happened with Lorca and the Buran - could have been Mirror Lorca engineering Prime Lorca's death then passing himself off as surviving Prime Lorca. BSG Razer style full episode flashback, anyone? Chance to bring BSG Tory back from the dead (also dead suspicious on the Mirror Universe front - would redeem her ridiculous death slightly if she was an aggressive xenophobic Terran Empire type). Also it would pay BSG back for giving us more Ro Laren!
  
  The whole Tyler/Voq thing is coming good, fingers crossed. L'Rell is just a fantastic actress and great character. Tyler appears totally confused and to have a split personality. I am inclined to think the nightmare flashback is not quite what it appears. Wild guess - L'Rell snatched Tyler and somehow implanted Voq's consciousness into him, which is now warring with the native mind. The flashbacks could imply an actual physical transformation (instead of torture) but I don't really see how that would pass the inevitable medical scans.
  
  Also let's not forget those weird black badges. I'm still hoping that's Section 31 though their role in this - who knows. Put themselves there to monitor Lorca given immense potential of the ship's technology; or even they are actually behind getting him from the Mirror universe because they saw the Federation might otherwise lose the war?
  
  Anyway - however these are resolved there is plenty to look forward to next season. There was some better character stuff in the later part of these episodes, particularly this one and Lethe. And I hope they keep variety - it's all a bit frenetic, and while the planet one before this was flawed in some ways I enjoyed the change of pace and tone.
  
• From tigertooth on 2017-11-21 at 3:05am:
  The "just one more jump" thing was painfully bad. So, so obvious - almost a parody. And they didn't even have a particularly good reason for it. Lorca didn't insist on it. They could have just used warp, but no -- we'll just do this incredibly dangerous thing ONE more time.
  
  Lorca was trying to unlock the secret of the cloak, not merely destroy the Ship of the Dead. If he beams a bomb over, that takes care of the one ship, but not all the others in the Klingon fleet. So that worked for me.
  
  Did they show how Burnham got onto the bridge? It seemed implausible that she could get on the bridge undetected and set up the machine. Then again, that huge bridge is quite unlike the small, simple bridges we're used to seeing on Klingon ships.
  
  So the Klingon ship cloaks and prepares to warp away. Then Burnham shows up and the entire bridge forgets that there's a Starfleet vessel popping from place to place all around them. Seems that would raise some alarms, but instead the entire bridge crew ignores their sensors and turns into the thunderdome. Ridiculous.
  
  I didn't like the "Tyler is the Manchurian Candidate" idea, but assuming that Voq is indeed related, I might come around on it.
  
  I hope they can start making the characters, especially the Klingons, act in ways that show some common sense.
• From T. Buchholz on 2017-11-28 at 7:39pm:
  Hi there Mr Kethinov! Have you considered reviewing The Orville? I think it captures the spirit of classic Trek quite well though it can be a bit silly at times. is there any particular reason not to review it other than time constraints?
• From Kethinvo on 2017-11-28 at 9:54pm:
  Time constraints is the only reason.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From Mike C on 2020-02-02 at 7:12am:
  It's not horrible, but the writing and script is not great so far. It's better than Discovery, but all I want is a return to the classic episodic, alien-of-the-week format that Star Trek is known for. I also want less dramatic fluff/filler.
  
  I suppose streaming has killed that format, though. The media corporations are addicted to producing binge-watching material now. If everything in an episode is tidily wrapped up in 45-60 minutes, there's less incentive for the viewer to immediately watch the next episode.
  
  It would also be nice for there to be a more overall hopeful feeling to it, rather than constant conflict. That's why I loved Star Trek while growing up. There was always some kind of conflict, but it also always wrapped up in a way that filled me with optimism and faith. That doesn't seem to exist in modern Trek. It's all bad, all the time.
  
  Oh, and there's way too much verbal exposition so far. That's one of the hallmarks of lazy/inept writers.
  
  Rating: Meh/10

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

• From technobabble on 2010-11-23 at 12:03am:
  I enjoyed this episode very much as well, lighthearted romp in a pastoral backdrop after a tense space battle.
  
  Only explanation for Kirk's Finegan reaction after McCoy's death is the fantasy world's hallucinations may had an affect on psychologically distracting the crew. Like Sulu shooting the firearm and fascinated with it without being cautious.
  
  
  
  
• From CAlexander on 2011-04-23 at 5:24pm:
  The main plot is effective if you accept the premises. Not an episode of great significance, but memorable.
  
  - The episode is sort of a variant of the Naked Time, revealing the hidden fantasies of the characters.
  - I came to the same conclusions as the previous comment. The crew acts irrationally from the very beginning, paying little attention to the peculiar inconsistencies of the planet. Everyone acts like they are intoxicated by the visions they see. The show seems to imply that this is a normal part of being a humor episode, but if you want to look at things logically, it makes a lot more sense if you assume that the planet can influence minds as well as read them.
  
• From Mike Meares on 2012-04-10 at 7:44am:
  A highly entertaining episode of Star Trek, which I thoughly enjoy. And still enjoy watching it, despite the many, many, many flaws in the script.
  
  I loved the concept of the show. And much like the Enterprise crew I become mesmerized by what I am seeing appearing right before my eyes.
  
  But if we take a step back and look at this episode "logically" it is really a very weak story, filled with a lot of mistakes.
  
  I rate this episode a six because of it's entertaining value. But it could have been produced much better.
  
  Over the years some of the writers have admitted that this episode, as well as many other episodes, went though so many re-writes that the flow of the story suffered greatly. It is said Roddenberry was re-writing scenes as they were actually being shot. Not sure how true that is, but it would explain some of the problems in the story.
  
  The biggest problem in the script is the death of Dr. McCoy. The story explains that this race is so advanced that it can "repair" or bring someone back to life who is stabbed to death in the chest! REALLY? And we are suppose to beleive this just because they say so! I am sorry the explaination leaves something to be desired!
  
  And while we are on the subject, this knowledge is something the Federation is not really interested in? Give me a break please! No one seems to care that this race can actually bring back the dead! I get more reaction from somebody when I show I can open a bag of bagels.
  
  To make matters worse, this "advanced" race doesn't realize that the crew of the Enterprise doesn't understand what is going on the whole time! You have to ask yourself: why doesn't this advanced race show themselves after McCoy's death? Instead they "sneak" away McCoy's body without explaining to the rest of the crew what they are doing! The race continues with their illusions even though it is clear to a two year old human ( we must assume their two year olds are smarter than our two year olds! ) that at that point the crew of the Enterprise had abosolutely no idea what the hell was going on around them.
  
  And the crew's communications were interferred with because of transmissions of this "advanced race". Even the transporter power aboard the Enterprise. REALLY? And this "advanced race" doesn't realize this at all? You have got to be kidding me?
  
  Spock even says that the power was so strong that he reasoned that they only enough energy to beam down one more person before they lost the use of the transporter. Gee how lucky for them. I ain't buying it.
  
  And as Spock is beaming down Sulu makes a staement that I am still scratching my head about. Sulu says, "Someone beaming down from the BRIDGE." Oh really? And how does Sulu know where the person is beaming down from? Spock could be beaming down from the Sick Bay for all Sulu knows. Correct me if I am wrong, but if you saw someone beaming down wouldn't you just assume they are beaming down from the.... eh.... oh I don't know.... THE TRANSPORTER ROOM!
  
  All of these mistakes are due to the writing and should have been corrected before fliming. And they are all weak plot devices used to make the story workable, but they are just not every creative.
  
  Everytime I watch this episode I have to ignore these aspects of the story or else I can't enjoy the show.
  
  It is very odd but this episode can be summed up in three words. Enjoyable but flawed!
  
  
  
  
• From Scott Hearon on 2014-03-05 at 11:48pm:
  Just watched this episode, and I agree with much of what "Kethinov" has to say. It gets annoying to see the downed crew members give Spock so much flack. It was a bit overdone (presumably in the name of selling this particular element of the episode), but I liked the basic premise and dynamic.
  
  Yeah, that ambassador was a real jag-off. Could have been much less heavy-handed with that character.
  
  The choice of giant, hairy primitives seems odd. I can't help but think that this was a bit of dumbing down, possibly by the network, so things didn't get too (gasp!)...intelligent or creative!!
  
  Overall, though, it's a decent enough episode. Nice job touching up the visuals, too. What year did they do that, anyway? They look damn good.
• From Yonagonaf on 2016-04-23 at 7:07pm:
  There is a word in the sentence “The yeoman's broken uniform was broken on the wrong side after she changed back into it after taking off the Medieval dress.” that needs to be changed.
  
  The word “broken” is incorrect.
  
  The words “torn” or “ripped” are used when describing damage done to material.
  
  In this case a uniform.
  
• From Kelly on 2017-08-17 at 11:15am:
  A very fun and scenic episode, that is not really deep, but simply meant to be a getaway fantasy episode. Just watched it 2 times in a row, over the last few days, but found several small but still irking mistakes!
  On a planet with supposedly no life or animals or bugs, a few close ups show flies around the faces of characters, especially the scene with Ruth.
  There are tree stumps, and logs on the ground that are obviouly chainsaw cut.
  The grass is freshly cut and there are even trails leading around, and one thing no one seems to ever catch, a BUILDING in one scene with Kirk and Spock walking around the glade. Look again its a hut that appears to have a natural look made from maybe logs and plant material, but none the less an actual building. I Know the crew was all excited, but no one saw any of this??
  Most likely obvious mistakes, but could have been better hidden!
  
• From Jake on 2019-11-23 at 2:04am:
  I think some take this episode a bit too seriously. But if you watch the show closely you can catch all sorts of little things. Like the chain on the tiger's paw. Or that the strafing plane is one time a Navy Corsair, and then suddenly a Japanese Zero. Or the changing dress tear. But this, like many others, just needs to be watched for entertainment which it did provide.