I enjoyed this one, though I feel it could have been better. The metaphor in the title and used in the episode is a perfect one for the situation.
I was convinced up until the reveal that the "alien" was a sort of scavenging species 0 of the Borg, with the robotic look and the ability to adapt to phaser fire. I'm not sure how I feel about the writers going in a different direction. It fits with the theme OK, but the ending scene where they're all reminiscing about this forgotten crew of humans past didn't go down well for me. It's a generational ship, none of the original "good guys" were still on it, and it is very tempting to do the maths that for the 7000 on that ship, many thousands more have probably died and would die on the planets they've killed.
The ultimate lesson, of needing to have empathy even for your enemies is a very important one. Seeing how that is used to help Kirk grow is nice, and from what I remember, it is something he embodies quite a lot in his captaining. However, I am very confused why everyone is so bothered by the fact that they were humans. Surely they didn't need to be humans for this lesson to be learnt. They're all part of a federation of different species, and Kirk's captain literally is not a human.
The phone setup is a hilarious, and really clever solution to a problem, but plot-wise it fails to achieve anything because when the Enterprise crew actually need to use the phones, the alien ship and the comms jamming has already been disabled. But they use the phones anyway. I question whether a closed airlock decompressing would have quite enough inertia to balance out a chemical thruster, and if it was, why did they need the chemical thrusters at all in the first place. I felt like what was going on on the Enterprise was much less interesting than what we saw in the Farragut. I wonder how the episode might have turned out if it was shot entirely from the Farragut's perspective, with no hints of what happened on the enterprise.
Random other thoughts:
- Getting to see more of Scotty is really nice, especially his acerbic dialogue.
- Doctor M'benga, head medical officer, warzone survivor, having little screentime other than running phone cables and joysticks around is funny.
- Ortegas getting a light scolding for being a wee bit suicidal is all we got for her ongoing sub-plot.
- La'an has shown a previous liking for Kirk, but we didn't really have a chance to explore what her new thing with Spock means for that.
- I hope the transporter buffer wasn't affected by all this now that it's holding a literal horror from beyond in it
I really did not enjoy this one.
The "documentary" that ends up being made feels like the worst kind of propaganda that tries to feign a sense of "there's two sides to every argument", all while clearly pushing in favour of the agenda the documentary initially tried to critique anyway. It felt at moments like a military recruitment advertisement. I would not choose to watch such a documentary in real life, and watching it within a star trek episode just feels like I've wasted my time.
The writing makes use of the idea of military censorship and a film that jump cuts around to not so cleverly hide the fact that the writers are missing a plot. We are presented with a people in conflict, who abuse a creature to create a weapon. We have no other information about the conflict, beyond "there's mass casualties". No explanation of why starfleet is involved beyond "starfleet is here to help". No explanation why they chose to make that kind of weapon in particular. On the matter of the alien war we are left to fill the gaps ourselves entirely, and because our in-universe director is acting in the role of an unreliable narrator, we have no idea if any of what ended up in the film they ended up making can even be trusted. That FOIA disclaimer at the start could be just as real as those films that say "based on a true story" when they are anything but.
We did get some good character development, particularly with Ortegas finally being up front and open about what she's been through recently. But not really enough for it to feel like it matters. Ditto Uhura and Spock. Furthermore, despite self-harm and suicide being a central theme of the episode, other than an incredibly brief argument with the alien scientists about whether thier victim should be allowed to commit suicide, it's not really debated. The crew just accept that they need to do an assisted suicide, and that's that. Fair enough, if that's how human morals work centuries from now, but then it leads again to an episode without a useful plot. For contrast, multiple past star trek series have had their take on this topic and done a much better job.
After watching this I am left unsure what wider contribution this episode is meant to make to the series. For all the silliness of the comedy episodes, at least they were entertaining to watch and usually had at least one major plot development by the end. This one could have been cut from the season roster and nothing would have been lost.
Random assorted notes:
Looking forward to the next one, it can't possibly be worse than this.