Review

Another clunker in a season full of clunkers. After spending some time with L'Rell's and Voq's/Tyler's son (so much for those theories that he might grow up to be "the albino" from DS9: Blood Oath), Pike becomes convinced that the vision he saw of ending up confined to a wheelchair is inevitable for no clear reason other than being told that it is inevitable. It's entirely unclear how taking a time crystal and having a conversation with a time monk deprives him of all free will for the rest of his life, but that appears to be what the writers expect us to believe. Gone is Pike's agency to resign from Starfleet, change careers, or simply kill himself before the impending accident. Foreknowledge of it as a possible outcome doesn't render it merely a possible outcome, but somehow a certainty.

Bad takes on the philosophy of free will aside, the whole notion that the Klingons are sitting on rich deposits of natural resources that can be used to build powerful time travel technology that they simply refuse to use because it wouldn't be honorable or something is utterly stupid. Countless Klingons would have no such scruples, yet for some completely asinine reason we're supposed to believe that this power is never exploited across centuries of Star Trek stories. The tendency for this series to grant superpowers in a prequel that history never recorded and not think through the implications of how they would ripple across canon is an endless source of frustration and one of the principal reasons why this whole show ought to be struck from canon with prejudice.

And somehow, overwrought time crystals are not even the stupidest detail of this story. That honor goes to the cliffhanger. They're being chased by a fleet of 30 ships, can't outrun them with warp drive, and need to buy time to figure out how to use the time crystals to defeat Control. So rather than do the overwhelmingly obvious thing of using the spore drive to jump across the galaxy—say—to Terralysium where it would take the enemy 150 years to catch up to them, they just suddenly forget that option for no coherent reason and decide blowing up the ship is all they can do, which is especially incoherent given that they used the spore drive earlier in the episode to travel to Boreth. But hey, at least we finally had a scene with Linus where he wasn't used to make a body humor joke.

Review

And another improvement in the writing. Ent: The Catwalk is the most original story since Ent: Minefield and Ent: Dead Stop. I liked that there are plenty of natural phenomena in the galaxy that can endanger Enterprise. Without shields and without a top speed of faster than warp 5, we see how vulnerable the ship really is compared to even TOS standards. There was good continuity with TOS: The Naked Time regarding how long it takes to cold start a warp engine. The warp engine trivia was good all around in fact. I enjoyed seeing the catwalk itself. A nicely constructed set. I wonder if the planet they were planning to explore in this episode was the planet Trip discovered in the last episode. The descriptions sound about the same. Would have been nice to insert a line of dialog confirming this. The alien takeover wasn't exactly original, but well played. I liked how the alien enemy captain guy had read Archer's logs. I also liked how Archer faked his attempt to destroy the ship so as to convince the aliens to leave. A question remains regarding why the aliens didn't come back when Enterprise very clearly changed course after the aliens disembarked. However, their sensors could have been fooled. That would have been another nice one liner to have in the episode. Overall, pretty average stuff, but it's certainly above Enterprise's average lately!

Review

Could have been a lot better. This episode reminds me quite a bit of DS9: Progress where Caylem is Mullibok and Janeway is Kira. Circumstances certainly differ. I liked hearing more about Voyager's "disreputable reputation", which is good continuity with previous episodes. Unfortunately, the plot is meager. Janeway and Caylem together made for some good acting, but did little to spice up a rather drab plot. The writers could have made a much more exciting plot out of Voyager's recurring fuel problem.

Review

Introducing Dr. Mora, the scientist who raised Odo. An exploration of Odo's past is certainly an interesting and expected storyline. This episode features another silicon based life form, the one on the planet Dr. Mora wanted to investigate. The first of this type was discovered in TOS: The Devil in the Dark, and again in TNG: Silicon Avatar. It's nice that the show is being largely consistent about this. The episode goes sour though when it ceases to be about Odo's origins and becomes dominated by the recycled mystery monster attacks the ship (or in this case station) plot cliche. Odo being the evil monster of the week was an interesting concept for a plot twist I suppose, but it didn't play well because it exacerbated the already overplayed tension between Odo and Mora. Had the episode been more about Odo researching his origins and less about Odo's angst it would have been more fun.

Review

A reasonably entertaining story mired by lousy science and faulty plot logic. Simply stated, a disease which causes the aging process to accelerate should be regarded as irreversibly terminal even in the fantastical Star Trek universe because McCoy's miracle cure is nothing short of a reversal of the aging process itself! To rationalize the story we have to make up a bunch of nonsense about how McCoy's miracle cure can only reverse artificial aging induced by the evil comet's radiation, so as to avoid the implications of the idea that McCoy has found some sort of anti-aging miracle drug. On top of that, the very idea that a mere injection could somehow reverse any kind of radiation damage in the first place is absurd to begin with, much less reversing the aging process itself.

Though I suppose if we assume that the Federation has access to cell damage reversal drugs beyond the wildest imagination of what science tells us is realistic technological advancement and we assume that the artificial aging induced by the comet is a somehow different and more innately reversible form of cell damage, then I suppose the science in this episode could be considered workable. However, if you've forced your audience to go into that level of depth to rationalize the events of your story, then you haven't written a very good story.

In addition to the science errors there are a number of wrinkles in the basic storytelling as well. For instance, why is Dr. Janet Wallace even aboard the ship? It's never once mentioned just what the hell she's even doing there. And why did we spend so much time on a competency hearing for Kirk in the middle of a crisis situation? Since he quite literally aged years waiting for the hearing to end, I had some sympathy for him when he condemned the procedures, regarding them as "the most fool thing I ever heard of. Competency hearing when there's work to be done!" Then finally there's the painfully absurd moment when Commodore Stocker orders the ship through the Neutral Zone despite Sulu's warning for completely no reason.

All that adds up to quite a stinker of a story for the most part, but there are charming aspects as well which render this one of the better picks of the bad episodes. The reuse of the Romulans as antagonists was a nice choice; especially the detail that we never actually see them face to face, in keeping with their tendency for a rather reserved and distant characterization as previously established in Balance of Terror. Another nice touch was Commodore Stocker's personality in general. Despite his completely boneheaded Neutral Zone mistake, he was a generally likable incompetent-Federation-bureaucrat-of-the-week, unlike most of the rest. Finally the reuse of the Corbomite Maneuver was a nice nod to the fans. All in all though this was a story with a lot of wasted potential.

Review

Really quite a dreadful episode. Between the technical problems and the juxtaposition of a book with a horrendous story as this episode's main plot, there is little to redeem this episode besides the occasional well placed humorous scenes. Even those however are difficult to appreciate with all the various cliches and lameness spread about. Most of this episode's single point comes from my appreciation of the characters too complaining about the book. It's almost as if the characters also despise the episode. ;)