The Inner Fight

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (The Inner Fight)

Likeable story, good twists, too much swearing, some fun little humour jolts - about what you'd expect for the average episode of this series. Throw in a special cameo at the very end, like Spock in the last scene of 'Unification I,' and it's a well-rounded package. On the downside, however, is the reveal of the season-long arc as Nicholas Locarno is shown to be piloting the mysterious attacker ship that's been nobbling vessels from various races over the course of the episodes, and while we're still in the dark about motive or means, I remember being rather disappointed by the whole angle. For one thing, it's a sad thing to find Locarno never learned from his mistakes, and much like Raffi in 'Picard,' has become a failure and given in to baser instincts. That's not apparent in this episode so I won't go into it this time, but we know he left Starfleet and became a pilot for hire, so that's not the usual story of redemption we'd hope and expect from Trek (well, used to, anyway). But this isn't really Locarno's story, it's Mariner's as we finally discover the secret of her rebellious nature and what prompted it all - only talking to a Klingon warrior whom she thinks will either shortly kill her, or be killed by her, as soon as the 'glass storm' of sheer knife shards raining down (love to know how they explain that scientifically...), is over. So she uncharacteristically opens up, and fortunately Ma'ah (Jon Curry in his third appearance in the role, along with a few other characters that have previously appeared), is a wise warrior and a careful listener to be able to bring her inner fight out into the open.

It rings so true that a Klingon would recognise someone with a divided inner nature and I'm sure he does a far better job than Migleemo would have, often portrayed as a fluffy idiot. I wasn't quite sure why Mariner had suddenly started acting more recklessly (shades of B'Elanna Torres in 'Extreme Risk' responding to news of the Maquis being wiped out by the Jem'Hadar - in fact it's not a million miles away from that story since Sito was Bajoran, killed by Cardassians, we believe, in one of the kind of incidents which created the Maquis in the first place), unless it was being reminded of Locarno in a recent episode which brought her memories of the Nova Squadron incident flooding back. Her bitterness over Sito dying on a mission wasn't entirely believable, but at least it gives us some depth to the character she was lacking and that we've seen added to her friends over time with Rutherford's rough pre-implant years and Tendi's shame and guilt over her Orion heritage. And it was possibly the most serious and heartfelt scene the series has done, as far as I can remember, since this is meant to be a comedy and they don't go out of their way to work towards character motivation and the kind of Trekky development we used to expect. But whether it fits or not, it was a fine scene and Mariner becomes something much more than a carefree rebel, even leading her to what could be the first genuinely rousing speech of modern Trek - many have tried (Burnham, Picard, etc), but none have rung true, while Mariner's exhortation to all these disparate races to work together to escape the hostile planet was in no way forced and entirely fitting and organic to events.

It's lovely to see all these familiar Trek races, especially the lesser used ones of recent years (or decades!), such as Cardassians and Bynars, and was like the 'Voyager' episode 'Flesh and Blood' in which a gang of holographic representations of Alpha Quadrant races are on a planet together, only this time it's in the flesh... and blood. Purple blood, when it comes to the Klingons. Not quite sure why they did the old 'Star Trek VI' trick of having that colour since I think every time since then (unless it's been on this series, perhaps), Klingon blood was shown to be red and it's been put down to the 'atmosphere' or something along those lines to suggest why the pink or purple colour came about. In real terms it was so the film could get a 'PG' rating, but I always liked the idea that Klingons had this garish blood running through their veins in the same way Vulcans and Romulans have green and Bolians and Andorians have blue - it fits. I didn't appreciate Ma'ah burying his face in the Bird-of-Prey Captain's blood, but that was the worst culprit of the episode and we don't actually see anything gory happen, it's all off screen (same with the Tremble-lizards and the 'Jurassic Park' theme of the teaser which really only served to demonstrate Mariner's reckless state of mind at this time).

It's questionable why a BOP would be shooting down a clearly marked Federation shuttle since the Klingons are allies, and I also found it strange Ma'ah says Mariner won the Dominion War since it was his people who played a decisive role, especially towards the end when Klingon ships were the only ones invulnerable to the Breen shield-sapping weapon and carried the major heft of the fighting for some time. But he clearly wasn't around for the war since he wishes he'd had the chance to fight Jem'Hadar, although I suppose he could mean that literally, in personal combat, but even then it would be odd for him to suggest the Federation won the war - it'd be more in keeping with Klingon bravado and bragging to claim credit, just one more sign I think that the writers aren't necessarily keeping up with the nuances of the history they're adding to, unless I'm forgetting something about him (was he too young, it was only a few short years before?). The BOP could have been a rogue ship, I suppose. Still, it was a rather risky tactic to bait it into swooping down and blasting the installation (which looked like the forest antenna building in 'Return of The Jedi,' perhaps intentionally), since it could just as easily have dove down without stopping, though I do love the visuals and sense of weight and speed when we see it drop through the clouds, a truly beautiful classic design that never gets old. It was all so the temporary alliance of aliens could jump onto the hull and somehow squeeze inside, an unlikely solution to their predicament!

The B-story gives Captain Freeman a chance to show she's not as dimwitted as she sometimes appears, cunningly making a show of her apparent stupidity at going down to a planet which resents Starfleet and stumbling around ineffectually, while Billups goes down as a bounty hunter to get the information on Locarno's whereabout, using the planet's bias against them, clever psychology. Because there are certain people that need to be brought back to Earth. Because of... the threat... from the mysterious ship? Yes, perhaps best to hand wave the motivation for the whole story away and just enjoy the joke that of the four Trek celebrities they mention, Seven of Nine, Beverly Crusher, Thomas Riker (confirming he survived a Cardassian prison camp in the Dominion War), and Nick Locarno, it's the unloved Locarno whom the Cerritos gets tasked with tracking down! As Tendi, asks: "Who?" The other gag I particularly enjoyed was the Balok's puppet creature so famous for being the last, glaring image in the end credits of 'TOS' for many episodes, one of those iconic faces that have endured for almost sixty years, like the Gorn and the 'green woman.' Well, we get all those in this episode (although the Gorn may not have been a Gorn, difficult to tell with those included for background colour), especially the green women. The joke is that Freeman assumes the short, ugly creature is a puppet until she finds out otherwise! Okay, it's only a simple subversion of expectation, but out of the blue like that it worked nicely.

They go to Mudds, which you'd assume has some connection to Harry Mudd, or else why bother, though there's no update on his legacy. I enjoyed Ransom telling the story of an example of Mariner's recent strange behaviour when she jumped out of a shuttle to fight a Borg only to find it was just a pile of junk - we didn't need to see it, it's easily imagined and all the more humorous for it! Then there's Rutherford discovering his Starfleet trousers have pockets when he never realised, a joke about how the actors always wanted pockets but never could have them (apparently, with the Cerritos' uniform at least, they were always there!). Even Mariner using the two-handed hammer punch when fighting her Klingon opponent was lovely to behold and it sounded like she was grunting Kirk's name with each strike! I also loved the attention to detail on the 'venom suits' at the scientific outpost, which looked like a cross between the environmental suits of 'TOS' and the sleek, 'modern' version first seen in 'First Contact' - it could also be seen as a comment on how there's a uniform for every occasion in modern Trek. Ma'ah was very true in his way of demeaning Federation antics as a desire 'to solve puzzles and mysteries,' something he may not be impressed with, but which Mariner's friend, Sito, gave her life in protection of. It sums up the different cultures well, while also jabbing home the point, which is exactly the Trekky way of doing things in the old days, and something I miss in the new stuff. Having Mariner and Sito Jaxa be friends ties up the whole series in a neat circle since it was obviously inspired by the episode of the same name, 'Lower Decks,' in 'TNG,' so if they weren't making any more it suggests a nice way for the series to wrap up, directly connecting with a character from that inspiration, and as the next episode would prove, even giving us flashbacks to that time. Some of the decisions may seem a little odd, and I may not have loved the conclusion to the arc, but I can still appreciate it for what it was, and look forward to the final season, too.

**

Caves

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Caves)

We've got one of those 'mixed' episodes where they have some fun, but it's somewhat undermined by the series' excesses in the language, gore and inappropriate humour stakes, otherwise it had the potential to have been another good one. As it is, it does at least improve on being a one-note joke: caves are seen in Trek a lot so Mariner comments on how she feels like she's been in this cave a hundred times, and it's like a third of their missions are in caves and so on and so forth. Caves were obviously a big part of Trek, mainly in the 80s and 90s (and even into the 2000s), when the famous 'Planet Hell' set was built for 'TNG' and continued to be revamped and reused for 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' so it's only fitting that this key piece of Trekness got its own episode, this being a comedic approach to Trek tropes. It's always fun when they bring in familiar elements like this and it had become something of a joke for regular viewers (in retrospect, not particularly in the moment), but at the same time they often did an excellent job disguising the set in various ways: altering the floor to be sandy or adding plants; making use of the upper level more; creating different lighting effects; smoke; constraint breeds creativity and as it was mostly the same people working in production they brought a steady stream of innovation to money-saving production budgets - 'Enterprise' took it even further with more elaborate sets, but there's something quite reassuring and comforting about beaming down to yet another cave, and after all, Trek being practically a series of stage plays, the setting itself could often be mere extraneous detail (see 'Spectre of The Gun' for the ultimate in that idea - it may not be a cave, but the point stands!).

It helps that we get all four of our characters alone together as if to prove they can still do those kinds of stories, and while it's a bit funny they'd all be assigned to this specific mission and no one else, who's to say it wouldn't happen? There are plenty of other things to level that criticism at... Take Steve Levy, the Cerritos' resident conspiracy theorist who always comes up with the wackiest ideas about what's 'really' going on. I find it hard to believe that anyone in Starfleet would be that suspicious or disbelieving, but then I think of people like Lieutenant Reg Barclay, the poster child for Starfleet officers that don't measure up to the social standards you'd expect, but make up for it with their skills in other areas. Levy isn't in the same bracket of characters like Raffi or Rios from 'Picard,' he's more in that Barclay vein so I was glad we at least got to know a little more about him, key being that he's a maths genius, that's why they put up with his 'crackpot with dangerous beliefs' persona. Obviously it's meant to be an amusing comment on the many who are taken in by internet misinformation, he even admits he goes on forums and makes stuff up, but I just feel like the world Roddenberry created wouldn't suffer from the same problems we do of having a surfeit of information and uncertainty. The difference is that we know we can't necessarily trust the organisations who have power in our lives, be they governments or corporations, but greater knowledge hasn't made people more intelligent, it's merely confused.

Having Steve Levy as a joke we can laugh at is a bit unkind, in keeping with modern Trek's more cynical attitude, but at least Rutherford and he do bond to some extent thanks to, well, Levy actually being right for once! Is this meant to placate the conspiracy-lovers in the audience or merely to turn the tables on expectations (it's clear even he didn't expect to be correct when predicting those wily old shapeshifting Vendorians from 'TAS' are behind it all with their 'morality test'!), either way I'm not entirely sure what the writing was trying to say - Boimler himself confesses he's not sure what lesson he's supposed to learn from it all: not to yell at Levy so much? I'd have preferred a more concrete idea of compassion for those with easily led minds instead of this impression of having a whipping boy upon which to show how much superior 'we' are who go merrily along accepting whatever we're told has been proved, but even in Trek we've seen numerous people in power who've been untrustworthy or have had nefarious agendas and even the very Federation itself is secretly supported by an underground society that is the stuff of conspiracies in Section 31. I suppose the answer to all this is that the so-called 'perfect' world Roddenberry reinforced for his 24th Century in 'TNG' had already been torn down long ago, undermined even within the series that spawned it, and Utopia once again crashes and burns because it's the impossible dream. The important thing is that there's some kind of understanding between Rutherford and Levy, and not to either entirely denigrate and leave room for questions is the more Trekky way.

Oddly enough, the least unpleasant flashback story of the four was actually the one featuring Dr. T'Ana when she and Rutherford were stuck in a cave where he gave birth to a cave baby. How many Trek connections can you spot here? It's a bit like 'The Passenger' from 'DS9' where a criminal passed on his consciousness to Bashir when dying, only this time the dying alien woman's touch creates a clone baby within him and he becomes a man who has to give birth (as in Trip in 'Unexpected' on 'Enterprise'). A relief they didn't actually show Rutherford being cut open with the laser scalpel and it soon becomes about T'Ana softening to this bouncing cave-baby and even to Rutherford, having complained she hates both babies and Engineers! There's even a surprising lack of swearing from her. No, they save most of that and the gore for Mariner's story when she recalls being stuck in a cave with Delta Shift, the gang with chips on their shoulders because they feel like they work on a different ship always doing nights and barely seeing anyone. I would've thought there must be some shift rotation and these wouldn't be permanently assigned to night duty, I'm sure we saw examples of some of our main characters sometimes working at night, like Harry Kim being in charge on the Bridge. The sci-fi side of it wasn't the issue - it's one of those chroniton fields as we'd seen in 'Timescape' where Picard reaches out for fruit and his hand withers, only here 'LD' has to take it beyond the bounds of good taste so that Mariner and her team are cracking up as their bones age too much for their weight, or even worse, one of them loses his already damaged leg.

I don't find that kind of humour funny, the 'gross-out' style of comedy just doesn't sit well with the optimistic tone that was Trek's hallmark, one of the reasons it simply doesn't feel very Trekky nowadays. And again we have yet another Starfleet officer displaying a bad attitude when Mariner's order is defied - it does get rather tiresome that such things are so common in modern Trek, and while I'll give this particular series credit for following the trend less fully, it still has its problems that prevent it from ever completely being the thing it's trying to ape, while yet often doing so well in many areas. I was expecting Tendi's story about being trapped in the Turbolift for hours post-rage virus on her first day aboard the Cerritos in the very first episode, a story she keeps trying to tell and is repeatedly interrupted or shot down, to be the key to their escape, so I'm glad that expectation was avoided as it seemed so obvious. Instead they put a nice little bow on proceedings by letting us see that this cave with the sentient moss (which speaks in the voice of one of those booming entities from 'TOS' - I didn't realise Jerry O'Connell (Ransom) was both the moss and a Vendorian in this, he doesn't often do other characters), is actually another Vendorian test and it was they that blocked communications (another trope of cave storytelling, as Mariner points out early on, rocks always beat centuries of technological progress - true!).

Adding to the lowered tone we have wee jokes and once again we see our people doing something to excess: namely drinking (hence the wee jokes when they're trapped in the Turbolift...), but I did at least appreciate they mentioned they thought they were imbibing Synthehol, which as we know from our 24th Century lore, is able to simulate the intoxication effects without the side effects, allowing a much higher level of control where people can snap out of the fug if they choose, except Mariner being Mariner she switched it for real alcohol. She says the catchphrase "Cerritos strong!" but I thought that came about in response to the Pakled encounters which would have occurred later in Season 1? Maybe they put it in deliberately for people like me to notice and speculate about? I'm starting to become Steve Levy! Maybe there wasn't all that much to the story and I'm not sure you could even say they really delved (delved!), into the cave trope sack all that deeply when you consider how many episodes there have been with people trapped in caves, let alone ones where they simply visited a cave (out of interest: how many are there, someone must have worked it out by now?), but it ends happily and has a nice reinforcement of their friendship.

The story isn't riddled with needless Trekferences, yet they manage to squeeze in their fair share (like Boimler's list of Levy's silly theories: Wolf 359 wasn't planned, Q exists, Picard isn't a hologram, Voyager's EMH is...), the delightful angular grey backpacks with the black straps so common in 90s Trek, Mariner saying Levy believes they're all trapped in the evil Mirror Universe, the Vendorians admitting they had nothing to do with the Klingon civil war, Rutherford says there are no natural stairways or hidden passageways from secret societies, even the grey alien lady's body disintegrating was reminiscent of Changelings when they die and desiccate, and even the Grafflax reminded me of the kind of overgrown predatory CGI creatures from the Kelvin Timeline films. Phasers get a new use as T'Ana vaporises the baby's poop bag, but can Tricorders really be used to translate and speak in an alien language? I'd have thought you'd need to tie it into the Combadge, but Rutherford didn't seem to do that. I also hate wheeled vehicles in Trek, they make no sense, just use a forcefield! I will say that sometimes reusing the voices of main cast members was a little jarring, with the lead Vendorian sounding exactly like Captain Freeman, and maybe they overuse Fred Tatasciore on this series - granted, most of the other characters didn't appear, so maybe they needed to save some money, but at least try and sound different! I'll give Fred credit where it's due: I never realised he was Levy and this was his third appearance after 'No Small Parts' and 'Trusted Sources,' I like that they bring back members of the crew: Asif (Asif Ali), was also on his third episode (Ali also doing the Grafflax' Tricorder voice), as was Karavitus (Artemis Pebdani), they've gone long enough they can refer back to characters and episodes and it's normal because so much time has passed now.

**

A Few Badgeys More

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (A Few Badgeys More)

A mathematically acceptable redemption: when I first began watching this current era of Trek there was so much wrong with it, and there still is, but at least to begin with I usually found a single episode to like each season. With 'DSC' it was 'The Vulcan Hello' in Season 1 and 'The Sound of Thunder' in Season 2. With 'Picard' it was 'Broken Pieces' in Season 1. In the case of 'SNW' it was the Season 1 finale, 'A Quality of Mercy.' Even 'Prodigy' Season 1 had its standout with 'Mindwalk.' Yet 'Lower Decks' didn't win me over during its Season 1 with not a single, solitary episode I could fully say I liked. But while rewatching all those other seasons almost always led me to revise my rating downwards (excepting 'A Quality of Mercy' - it was a remake of a 'TOS' episode, no wonder it feels so Trekky!), with Season 2 of 'LD' I came to find multiple episodes that stood out for me, including the finale which I rate as the best thing modern Trek has produced! Seasons 2 and 3 of the series really won me over with multiple quality episodes, a huge step up after all the other disappointments (which have been many: 'Picard' and 'SNW' Seasons 2 scraping the bottom of the boredom barrel). Unfortunately, things seemed to have taken a step backward for 'LD' with Season 4, as I've mentioned before, but one episode surprised me, and in a good way. You might even say in a 'Goodgey' way...

For all the fun and positive qualities of this series it still has its many detriments (not least the horrendously casual contemporary dialogue - even in this episode, Mariner, the worst offender, calls grapplers 'sick'! I mean really, no 'Enterprise' Trekference, but they can use such silly language? Ugh!), none more than the ugly villain characters they'd developed as recurring troubles for our Cerritos crew - in Peanut Hamper we had a nasty, selfish anti-Starfleet officer who made a mockery of the service and all good Exocomps everywhere, and in Badgey we were given a sort of Lore figure, angry and sadistic, desperate to cause as much pain and torture as possible, neither of which had an ounce of sympathy about them (and I prefer a villain who can be simultaneously evil and sympathetic). Whenever they were brought back it was the same thing, over the top disgusting evil, no redeeming qualities, nothing to show they were anything more than monsters - in short, extremely two-dimensional beings that were a stain on the goodness of 'LD.' I don't lump Agimus in with them because he did have the redeeming feature of being deliciously honeyed in his duplicity and scheming, he actually was amusing, in line with the humorous nature of this approach to Trek, and of course he was played by The Great Jeffrey Combs (sadly, the Drookmani Captain wasn't played by JG Hertzler to match the two Niners up, but they wouldn't have had any scenes together anyway), a striking return to Trek after all these years (though we're left awaiting his live action return - but if there's any chance this 'Star Trek: United' project gets made with Scott Bakula as President Archer can we really expect them to leave out Combs?).

I knew these characters would return (well, maybe not Agimus since he was locked away with all the other megalomaniacal robots), and I wasn't looking forward to it. You may suggest my positive reaction to this episode was merely due to low expectations going into it, but this is the second time of viewing and it still works, mercifully! It's like they decided to undo all the wrongs they'd committed (well, not all, but the three nefarious characters especially created for evil villainy), and redeem all three of these series villains at once, in one big hug of love. And what's more: it worked! To begin with it seemed to be same old same old, typical Badgey, taking control of the Drookmani Captain like he's a Borg assimilating his victim, surviving only as the program in Rutherford's lost cybernetics eyepiece. He's just as mean and sadistic as ever and I wasn't looking forward to it. Typical they'd throw in both Peanut Hamper and Agimus at the same time, overdosing on evil, but while the two stories (PH and Aggy are partners in crime, while Badgey splits off into other versions of himself), are separate, just like in the good old days of Trek A- and B-stories in a single episode, they both reflect the realisation of redemption for all concerned and that was quite a weighty package of pleasantness that I was simply not expecting. Not only that, it's done mostly with the series' own lore rather than tons of Trekferences thrown in - there are some, but you can tell it's the story that matters most, and the characters, they really can tell a good story without resorting to mere nostalgia.

It's also one of the cleanest episodes with no gore, very little bad language or anything else offensive, again as if they decided now was the time to pull back on some of the series' trademark missteps and go (almost) full Trek on us. Not only that, they also manage to tie in the ongoing mystery ship arc and develop it further so Boimler realises from Agimus' drone recordings that this danger to the Quadrant isn't actually destroying ships, but storing them. I must admit I did assume Badgey was going to be behind it all, so it was a relief to find that wasn't the case, and actually his scenes (almost) all take place within the confines of the dull-looking Drookmani scavenger ship where he's become lord and master - at first I assumed only the Captain could see him since he's the one wearing the eyepiece (a bit like the Vorta Viewscreen aboard Dominion vessels where only they could see outside the ship, keeping their minion Jem'Hadar soldiers in the dark and blindly following orders), but later Badgey himself explains he's rigged scavenged holo-projectors all over the ship (surely that would have been his weakness - just take out the projectors!), so I liked that they bothered to explain it. Something else I really loved was seeing actual, proper Exocomps like we saw on 'TNG'! You know, the ones that communicate with beeps and bloops, not sarcastic backchat as in Peanut Hamper when she ends up going to work for her Father on the research station at Tyrus VIIA from 'TNG' where we first met them ('The Quality of Life'). It was just lovely to see Exocomps doing what they're supposed to do instead of the post-Trekern 'aren't we clever and funny' version.

Agimus is as delightful as ever in his insistent, untrustworthy playing of everyone, seemingly ignorant that they know he's not to be trusted - okay, so he did fool them into allowing him to have drones 'for gardening' when they were actually for scheming (Mwahahahahaaaaaaa!), and he does use them to take over the shuttle Tendi and Boimler are using to transport him (dear little things in the shape of miniature versions of the ones from 'The Arsenal of Freedom'), but I loved Boimler's patient world-weariness when dealing with his eccentricities, never losing focus on the objective to find out Agimus' drone intel on old mystery ship. It's funny without being uproarious, as is the moment Badgey blasts through Cerritos' shields and calls it a 'boop' on the nose, and Shaxs says they can't take many more boops. It's just so 'Lower Decks,' without resorting to the low humour or utter stupidity the series can often display. Why can't all episodes be this good? Maybe it's because they don't have... Goodgey [throws arms up in the air in gay abandon]! He's a result of Badgey fighting his good 'side' ('The Enemy Within' reference, perhaps, or just the old 'Jekyll and Hyde' situation?), and splitting off into two personalities. Same with Logicey, splitting off the logic of Rutherford asking what logical gain will he get from killing the Cerritos crew (in reality he would just call it revenge, and pain for pleasure's sake), so there's another Trekky trope of an artificial intelligence being talked into confusion from its own programming - Logicey sounds just like a Vulcan, too, hooray!

Even so, there are still some things that didn't add up - would the Cerritos really have neurozine gas stored throughout the ship for someone with codes to activate and kill all the crew? And do they know the difference between 'neurozine' (used as an anaesthetic to knock out), and 'neurocine' (lethal Cardassian gas)? I'm surprised they didn't make that into a joke in itself, but they seemed to be saying it was the lethal kind, so they appear to have got mixed up... I know we've seen prefix codes dating back to 'Star Trek II,' but it's a bit of a stretch an outside force could take control of the vessel so completely, even if it is a computer program! I also found it hard to buy a Daystrom Institute as prison for errant AI, complete with Phaser Rifle-wielding guards, etc. Rather puts the organisation into the wrong perspective, no matter that we know it all stemmed from a man who created a terrible artificial intelligence back in 'The Ultimate Computer' (both this and 'Picard' have rather ruined the Institute's reality). Then the big one is the fantastical ultimate redemption for Badgey where he says if he goes to warp 9.9 he can transfer himself across all of subspace and so take over every Starfleet ship and facility. I know it's meant to be some kind of hint towards Tom Paris' infamous warp ten experiment, and I suppose it does fit with the wackiness of the series, but how would he be able to go at warp 9.9 on that bucket of Drookmani bolts? It's all a little too ridiculous that it works out exactly as he planned, though of course I loved the fact he discovers something transcendent that changes how he thinks about everything - it may not be an actual God encounter, but it could suggest that direction, which for modern Trek is about as good as you're going to get! (Plus we see DS9 as one of the examples as Badgey spreads his energy everywhere, which was a lovely little surprise out of the blue).

There really isn't all that much to say about the episode, it achieves what you want to see, resolves the stories of the three bad apples and moves the ongoing arc a little further, as well as hinting that Rutherford and Tendi's closeness continues since when Mariner suggests something Tendi would have said in the situation it inspires Rutherford to the extent she's mildly nettled for not getting the credit for bringing it up! We're given our first ever view of a Bynar ship as the next in line to be 'collected' by the recurring villain ship. I did wonder if they'd have their own ships since you'd assume they'd be part of the Federation by now, but obviously not (and even so, we know other races still sometimes use their own ships even at this stage - we see the Vulcan ship again when Badgey goes all subspace light show, which was fun, and I think it was T'Lyn's home vessel). You could say a negative is that we don't get much of the crew beyond our main four, but that's another reason this feels more like proper Trek when they wouldn't always have everyone in an episode (T'Lyn, for example, doesn't appear once), and that's all to the good as they can mix and match, pair and prune. Perhaps my only trepidation at the end of the episode (amid the downside that you have to watch all the previous weaker episodes featuring these villains to get the impact of this story), is that there's one more season to come and I don't know whether they can control themselves or if they felt the need to undo all the good they did here and bring back one or more of these ex-villains to turn them evil once again...

***

Parth Ferengi's Heart Place

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Parth Ferengi's Heart Place)

Not a bad episode, but at the same time one of the bigger disappointments of the season, and now that I've seen it a second time I've come to realise why: we never get to see Rom and Leeta. Oh, I know we get both of them here with the original actors voicing their characters after a quarter of a century (leaving aside Chase Masterson's reprising Leeta for 'Star Trek Online,' which doesn't count in Trek continuity), something I'd really looked forward to. Not as much as the visit to DS9 last season, but the changing of the guard on Ferenginar with Rom becoming Grand Nagus and planning to radically change their way of life was just one of so many aspects of late-24th Century life in the Alpha Quadrant that 'DS9' left us wondering about and which 'Voyager' never satisfied, nor did 'Nemesis,' and as the final 24th Century-set productions there were many questions like this that made the time period ripe for exploration and continuation. Sadly, 'Picard' let us down greatly on that score, even its final season didn't go into detail on the state of the various races and planets, and even then it was decades later so we'd missed that immediate aftermath of the next few years, one reason 'LD' is pleasantly situated: to explore what things are like at this time.

We can debate how successfully or not they've done that - like all modern Treks they've tended to shy away from the political details and culture building as if with so many different time periods being produced at once they're shy of stepping on anyone's toes and contradicting what other series' are doing, a major stumbling block and good reason not to have so many different people working on so many different productions. But they have at least given us occasional updates and glimpses of the familiar, only this one was only partially successful. I said we didn't get to see Rom and Leeta, and I meant we don't see anything other than their public personas as negotiators for entry into the Federation. That they're trying to fleece our heroes, or at least try them out and see how much they can get away with at least shows that Rom's new Ferenginar isn't too far from the old and that he hasn't lost his yen for profit, although, actually, he never made a very good Ferengi - that was the point of putting him in power at the end of 'DS9,' so he could lead a gentler, fairer empire, as envisioned by his own Moogie, and with Leeta as his right hand (she's given the title 'First Clerk'), you'd think his reforms would have changed things much more radically than they seemed to have done. Instead he comes across as a bit of simpleminded buffoon, though that was always (well, almost always), an act on 'DS9' to disguise the fact he was actually pretty cunning in his own way when it came to what he really cared about.

I didn't buy that Leeta had become this hard-nosed negotiator, she was always soft and uninterested in such things generally, and we never saw them together in a domestic setting where they might be discussing the talks and whether the Starfleet delegation were falling for their tricks. And obviously no mention of Nog or the wider Ferengi family, so I felt a real disconnect as if we weren't being afforded the chance to really get to know them again and hear what's been going on in their lives and how they've adapted to life in such powerful positions. It's the usual problem of putting mysteries or twists ahead of actual drama and character in modern Trek (or in general!), and I felt sad such a major opportunity was misspent like a Latinum chocolate teapot. We're left on the outside so Freeman can get her clever trick off and get the contract back on track. It's also somewhat disappointing that they didn't pull the trigger on a Ferenginar that's part of the Federation (though we see Ferengi in Starfleet in the 32nd Century of 'DSC'). Perhaps it was a sort of inside joke about the fact 'DS9' took seven years of ostensibly bringing Bajor to the point where they joined, and yet never did, but I think it just as likely they didn't want to do anything too drastic in an animated series that would affect all that came after. They've tended to shy away from any big developments and concentrated on smaller races like the Pakleds which hadn't been all that developed in the first place.

At least they got the general Ferengi culture right, whether it was the rain coming down (as it should), the garish signs and lights, the rounded, opulent architecture, it was true to the impression we'd had. Monuments to lost profit that are awarded equal status with Dominion War Memorials, Dabo and other gambling filling the library, even down to the detail of Rom having a Hupyrian servant (female!), was a nice touch, not to mention the machine that charges you to pay for the various hotel facilities! And they weren't shy about the Trekferences - not that they ever are, but despite it being mostly set on Ferenginar they squeeze in all kinds of things, like Quark's Federation Experience Bar and Grill (he's obviously got a good deal from Rom since he also has Uncle Quark's Youth Casino, too!), featuring various connections and backdrops to, mainly 'TOS,' but also 'TNG,' or Mariner's fiddling about with one of the famous self-sealing stem bolts from 'DS9.' At the same time there was a weird insistence on having Earth culture be so prevalent, whether it be the Federation Experience or the Ferengi 'biker gang' that Mariner starts a fight with when out with her old friend Quimp (from 'Envoys' in Season 1), and especially the TV shows Boimler becomes addicted to (like Neelix in 'Future's End') where all the characters wear 20th Century Earth clothing - I could understand if they were making more of a comment on human culture, but it just seemed a bit too lazy (in much the way all our characters speak in such contemporary lingo), unless... I could believe the programmed content was specially selected to most appeal to the viewer, and as Boimler is from Earth everything was chosen to hook him?

Those Ferengi are the masters of manipulation when it comes to garnering a profit, and lest we assume our Starfleet characters wouldn't have come with Latinum, Mariner even states that Starfleet will 'foot the bill' for their activities on Ferenginar. Ordinarily I'd be finding fault with such a statement, but this is the home of the Ferengi, after all, where everything costs, so it was highly probable! There are other improbables such as Starfleet assigning officers to create travel guides, since surely that would be a bit beneath the duty of a Starfleet officer. Then there was the reveal from Ransom that there are no married couples on the Cerritos. At all! That's very farfetched unless they're saying only the sad and lonely get assigned to the California-class (in which case you can also say these second-class vessels would be more likely to be responsible for low-level assignments such as travel guide duty...), or it may just be the series reflecting our current times where less and less people make that formal commitment? But still, on a ship that size and with that many crewmembers... The real reason was to give Tendi and Rutherford a situation where they have to pretend to be husband and wife while masking their true feelings that they are rather more fond of each other than they'd ordinarily like to admit, with much embarrassment ensuing (shouldn't Tendi blush green?), some of which stemmed from things becoming a little too crude and inappropriate, but in general it was a nice, sweet subplot to play around with and I wonder if it's one that will develop further.

Boimler doesn't really have a subplot, TV addiction keeping him out of play (though he does get the best gag of the piece when he laughs at the absurdity that even the crime drama he's watching has adverts within it, then we notice the picture on the wall above his head in the shape of the Paramount mountain with stars above it that suddenly twinkle!). We find out a little more about Mariner (and a little more than she wants to know about herself, it would seem!), when Quimp challenges her when she says he's changed, with the good line about change being what happens when you aren't stuck in a perpetual state of immature rebellion - if even a Ferengi can recognise the state she's in it makes you wonder! We hear she's been a Lieutenant, JG before, but was demoted after crashing an Oberth-class ship, so that must be an interesting story, pray tell? She's not at her best, drinking too much, throwing up, being rowdy, and Quimp's right, if she doesn't change she's going to be in this unregenerate state all her life and that's not really going to make for very good Trek where the point of the characters is that they solve problems, including their own, not languish in the doldrums like Raffi. It's not good to see her failing so badly, but at least it does lead to that personal understanding, even if Quimp somewhat regrets being so truthful. The downside was that she doesn't get any punishment at all, Ransom has almost nothing to say on the matter when it should have been a diplomatic incident, at best a personal one, bringing Starfleet into disrepute - she should have been given a dressing down, but it seems the makers of current Trek think all kinds of irresponsible behaviour is fine and dandy these days, discipline being a major missing piece in general (even while 'LD' is a little better at it than the others).

The idea that Ferengi are banned from arms sales is an early reminder of the kind of changes Rom was going to bring into his society, and they do at least tie the ongoing arc of various ships being attacked into the main story, but it is a little tenuous: would Rom really be 'desperate' for Federation resources because of one little ship 'disrupting' trade routes? I find it hard to believe it would make much difference, it can't be in all places at all times and it really seems to have had a very low impact across the season other than an ongoing linking threat. I also didn't feel Rom would come across so incompetent and childlike, almost a parody of what the writers think he was like, but I have to put it down to being an act on his behalf in order to hoodwink Starfleet. And it was a good twist that Freeman was able to trick them into signing with the caveat they had to bring the Klingons into the Federation, too! Although, why did Rom scrawl his name across a PADD like he's signing for a contemporary delivery rather than the usual form of a thumb scan (which I think even takes a tiny blood sample to seal the deal, if I'm not mistaken), as seen many times on 'DS9.' It's just another of those little niggles where you wonder if the writers knew their Trek all that well... And while I'm griping, I don't like modern Trek's insistence on Genesis devices being a common weapon or piece of technology. They've done it before in this series, I think, and they had one in 'Picard,' too, I just feel like the research for that was abandoned after the shocking events of the Trek films which showed its matrix was unstable and was too dangerous for its potential use as a weapon anyway.

The reference to Rom being the next 'Lonz' I thought at first was talking about Quark's action figures, but he was called Lorg Latinum I believe, so Lonz was a mystery to me, maybe that was intentional? But Moab IV was a good Trekference (made by Admiral Vassery in his third appearance after 'Moist Vessel' and 'Crisis Point' - I don't think Fred Tatasciore's Shaxs had any lines this time), though I had to look it up in the Encyclopedia since it'd been a long time since I'd last watched 'The Masterpiece Society' on 'TNG.' However you look at it, Rom and Leeta's return was always going to be the key part of the episode, and as much as it was lovely to see such important 'DS9' characters brought back it wasn't in the way I'd have preferred. Like other Trek actors reprising their roles as voice-only I felt Chase didn't sound much like Leeta at all, not that she had any Leeta lines to bring her back to it. At one time it would have been enough for me to simply have the joy of much-loved characters returning no matter whether they were used well or not, but I'm not so easily pleased these days and we've seen too many old characters abused or mischaracterised, or simply changed, even recast as they can't allow any to simply end now that Trek is more like malleable comic book fare than quality science fiction drama with a 'real' history. I suppose on balance I'm in favour of these appearances since time is running out before we'll be losing all these older actors, but please, give them something worthy of their legacy, don't merely slap an idea together for the sake of it. Not that that's likely to be much of a problem as we go from huge Trek to minuscule Trek now the wheels have fallen off the money train, and if this is the last we ever see of Rom and Leeta perhaps this will come to carry more meaning. Perhaps.

**

Empathological Fallacies

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Empathological Fallacies)

One of those where it's difficult to decide how I feel about it: is it a crude, inappropriate mess leavened with machine-gunned Trekferences? Or is it a cleverly subversive turn on expectations taking into account the seasoned Trekker's knowledge of the universe? It's clearly both, but the real question is where the balance falls on the scale between these two points - in the same way that T'Lyn preaches emotional balance, does the episode get dragged down by its flaws or is it successful in getting off its story despite them? In many ways this is the eternal question of the series and I wish it were not so. In other words I would prefer if they could control their darker impulses and allow us to experience good Trek without the staining. The episode just about succeeds in the end because of the positive ending, and for not simply recreating the many telepathic trials we'd seen before, most obviously in the 'DS9' episode 'Fascination' (or 'A Midsummer Night's Trek-Dream'). In that we learned something new about the fate of some mature Betazoid women and so it's easy to assume the problems associated with the crew's emotions are down to the three exuberant Betazoid ambassadors being escorted from Angel One to Risa. That this is a red herring and it turns out to be our currently resident Vulcan, T'Lyn behind the outbursts was an enjoyable twist, especially so when this is an actual T'Lyn episode: she's the focus, and while Boimler takes the B-plot with his lack of self esteem and need to relax, T'Lyn does retain much of the running time.

She's a great character, a real Vulcan, and the humour comes from her being so Vulcan so much of the time. That she wants to express her request to return to the Vulcan fleet rather than remain aboard gives the episode stakes, and that she decides against her original plan creates the happy ending. Her issue is typically Vulcan: this slight irritation at being unable to send the message due to a comms blackout during the ambassadors' stay (in itself an unlikely stipulation, the series once again choosing to bend the reality of Starfleet to suit a story, but not more than other modern Trek does, and in its defence it does at least show a strong knowledge of the subject matter), creates an emotional 'turmoil' within her which is inadvertently broadcast and affects the crew. We never actually discovered the cause of this telepathic effect, since it's another unlikely result from such a small stimulus that hadn't been shown before - they mention Bendii Syndrome (Mariner even saying Spock's Father had it, though I'd imagine with Vulcan reserve and the shame around the condition, it would have been a revelation locked up tight), but seem to discount it as T'Lyn is 'only' sixty-two and it affects older Vulcans (plus that would be a rather devastating twist as it would limit her lifespan and potential as an ongoing character). We don't have to have a justification for it all, maybe her telepathy was exacerbated by the effects of a nearby nebula or a new filter in the Replicator changed her glass of water, room temperature, a degree cooler or warmer. The important thing is that she's responsible rather than the Betazoids we were expecting.

Even they are more than what they were projecting, playing Lwaxana-like roles that jive with our experience of older Betazoid women (well, just Lwaxana, really - that's one element that should have been explored with Deanna Troi in 'Picard,' but sadly wasn't, in the usual apathy toward alienness in modern Trek. It would've been nice if at least one of them had been played by a Trek name, perhaps even Marina Sirtis, but maybe budget didn't permit?). It turns out they're undercover operatives from the BIA (Betazoid Intelligence... Authority? Surely with Betazed part of the Federation they'd be part of Starfleet Intelligence?), tying this episode into the season's arc of a mysterious vessel taking out various races (also cleverly disguised by the lack of a teaser this time), as they're planet-hopping in a telepathic search for clues. It rings true since they can read most races' minds, and have unearthed a grainy image of the offending ship to incrementally advance the story. They, too, were being affected by T'Lyn so they really weren't responsible for amping up the stereotypes of their kind. A little much that they carry stun rod weapons disguised as lipsticks, but we have to remember where we are: it's a comedy. For all its silliness it does still feel so much more Trekky than most of these series' manage so I'm more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Boimler's story is also quite silly to some degree, with Rutherford nominating him for 'The Programme,' Shaxs and the Security team entertaining him to give him a break from his self-imposed high standards (in this case memorising every crewmember's name - we find out there at least three Merps which adds to the series' internal reality!).

The important thing about Boimler's story is that it's a warmhearted tale of compassion - we know Shaxs is a particularly soft man when it comes to feelings, despite his huge size and deadly skills as Chief of Security, and he's a great character. It makes sense he'd have a jigsaw of Malcolm Reed and the NX-01 (if 24th Century people still did jigsaws - it comes across as rather another contemporary reference to our own culture more than anything, but it was fun to see Malcolm get a reference, his first, I think!). Wasn't so pleased to see he's also got Bajoran tarot cards which have no place in Trek at all, but at least they weren't real, instead entertainingly in the form of 'DS9' references, the most intriguing being an image of the Emissary decked out in a white version of the kind of robes a Vedek might have worn. Shame this is probably the closest we'll ever come to seeing Sisko again, or perhaps that's a relief after what this era has done to too many classic Trek characters in recent years. We also get poetry about Worf and Kayshon miming Odo in a game of charades, so it's a fun time for Niners like me, even if I may complain it sometimes seems like there's more Trekferences than story. The interesting part was Shaxs' holistic view of his Security department's role: that they're just as responsible for the crew's emotional wellbeing as their physical protection. I wouldn't agree, it's another joke about the softness of modern views on dealing with things, but it is, as I said, goodhearted and positive, far from the cynicism that pervades even this corner of Trekdom.

It may not be an accurate example of the way Starfleet Security is taught its responsibilities to its crews, but I can believe Shaxs having this attitude, and it is meant to be humorous, I don't think they're genuinely making a statement that any future Treks would follow - it's a joke! There are still things that go too far, however: the yellow mop bucket complete with 'Caution' and an image of a figure falling over, as you get in modern cleaning apparatus, is just totally ridiculous, both in form and function, and I wish they could have got the Odo idea across more elegantly. They still betray their modern Trek leanings, even if they do succeed at subtle mocking on occasion (the moment Captain Freeman states her crew don't just get emotional for no reason immediately brings to mind the 'DSC' crew, intentionally, I'm sure, since their over-emotionalism has long been one of the biggest complaints about the series!), which can be most amusing. There's also one of the ambassadors complimenting the Captain on Starfleet carpeting, something missing from all the other modern Treks which have eschewed tradition and made all the floors ugly and shiny for the sake of modern TV visual effect (just one more reason why this series is superior - who'd have thought carpet would make that much difference!).

The funniest moment comes near the end when the course towards the Romulan Neutral Zone which the Betazoids had put the Cerritos on (not entirely sure why - some kind of shortcut, a test, or where their investigations had been leading them?), is foiled at the last moment and we see a Romulan Warbird de-cloak from lurking on the border, the crew voicing cries of dismay they didn't cross over. It's funny because you can believe Romulans would do that - surely they shouldn't be in the Neutral Zone themselves, but they always would be. It's also quite nice because it reminds us that this series keeps to Trek continuity, and at this time in the early 2380s Romulus remains alive and well, if only for a few more years before the ridiculous supernova wipes out the planet. I still want to know more about that and its aftermath for the Quadrant, but sadly, with 'LD' ending we'll likely not get another series set in this time period on the cusp of such major galactic changes and shifts in power, which 'Picard' could and should have been about, but instead was quite a weak examination of the subject - all that sticks in the mind is a Romulan challenging elderly Picard to a duel, then getting his head cut off, a shame such a graphic scene is more memorable than anything substantial, and for all the wrong reasons. This episode, by contrast was actually fine, visually. The incessant swearing as Mariner and others lose their cool was oppressive (especially having T'Lyn swear in the most disgusting way for the sake of puncturing anything 'sacred'), as were moments of heavy innuendo, but the story itself played out well - I loved seeing T'Lyn perform a nerve pinch on Barnes when she goes to shut down the engines so they can party longer.

Similarly, she does something akin to a mind meld on Mariner to balance her emotions. Lore-wise I'm not sure what that was, since she claimed it wasn't a mind meld, but I don't think we'd ever seen that before, and indeed had seen a meld performed in order to calm emotions: interestingly, Tuvok did it to Suder, a Betazoid. Either she was lying about it being a meld or it wasn't a full meld, just a brief telepathic brush of minds. Why she'd be able to do that if her own mind was accidentally splashing out emotion on others, I don't know, but I wasn't too concerned, despite being someone that really cares about the Vulcan lore. Also fun to note T'Lyn voice actress Gabrielle Ruiz voices her other character, Castro, for the third time. Other things I liked: the mention of Zanthi Fever, the infamous mature female Betazoid condition learned in 'Fascination;' Boimler asking if Shaxs was going to teach him Tsunkatse; the painting of the statues from 'TMP' in T'Lyn's Quarters (I don't think we'd seen her living space before), and Mariner talking about Boimler's quarter-life crisis, saying he turned twenty-five and grew a moustache - this points to one hundred being the average life expectancy of a human at this time, something always hinted at, but not stated so blatantly. I almost didn't even register the Neutral Zone map with its Romulus and Romii (not to mention Cheron), drawn out just like in 'TOS,' and that's because I expect the canon expertise from this series, and really appreciate it when they accomplish the basics of Trek as they should! It's good they concentrate on two or three of the main characters, Rutherford and Tendi having lesser roles, affected by emotion, allowing T'Lyn to take more of the lion's share with Mariner as companion and friend, and it all made for a good mix. We get to see that even the 'low' Security of a California-class ship can be tough Starfleet officers, and it reminds that Starfleet is the best, no matter what grade of fleet they serve in.

**

Something Borrowed, Something Green

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (Something Borrowed, Something Green)

The kind of episodes where Trek explored one of their previously established races, be that first tier (Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans), second tier (Borg, Cardassians, Bajorans), or third tier (Breen, Andorians, Orions), seemed to have been largely lost to a different era of storytelling, probably due to the increased serialisation which left little room for cultural exploration when mysteries and buildup to the next cliffhanger were the order of the day. This is one of those rare examples of a modern Trek episode that does feature, if not quite examine a culture, albeit in the extremes of silliness over reality as befitting the series in which it was made. Would I have liked a properly serious examination of Orion society in an episode of 'Picard' that gave us a much stronger sense of their culture than we'd seen before? Of course, but the Orion plots they've done on 'LD' have served reasonably well to expand what has always been a race lacking in exploration. Perhaps it was because they were outlandishly green and therefore tied to the famous image of Vina from the original pilot, 'The Cage' (or more specifically, in the spirit of 'LD,' 'The Menagerie' and its use of the material since 'The Cage' didn't get seen commonly until the late-80s!). It set people wondering about such an animal-like humanoid that was so strikingly costumed and coloured - in reality, Vina was only playing an Orion (an Orion Animal Woman, to be precise!), and though it was a striking image, it wasn't necessarily something to expand upon.

That never really changed, the Orions were the also-rans of 'TOS,' showing up once more (a different shade - the first hint of depth to the race, if you can call it that), bypassed in the films and 'TNG,' where even the similarly 'image more than substance' race of Andorians were at least seen. Mentioned in 'DS9,' with the Orion Syndicate even coming into the odd story, they were still entirely absent onscreen, presumably as part of the Berman-era edict for keeping humanoid aliens more human-like, or simply less wacky than 1950s B-film sci-fi that many in 'TOS' could be argued to have their DNA in. It wasn't until a new era opened up and things became a little more connected to 'TOS' with 'Enterprise' that the race was finally shown, even if not greatly explored and from then on they've appeared in most Treks, be that live-action, films or animation. It made sense for this series to include an Orion in the main cast as it was trying to ape the style of 90s Treks, and they tended to include at least one alien from a race that could do with learning more about, like Trill, Bajorans and Ferengi in 'DS9,' or simply connecting to Alpha Quadrant races with Klingons and Vulcans in 'Voyager,' so Tendi fit right in, especially as she was, in common with the usual Trek trope, an outsider both in Starfleet for being uncommon, but also for not quite fitting into her own people's ways.

Can we say they've developed her to the same extent as those 90s characters? No, of course not, the series is at heart a short, comedy series, they don't get a lot of time to do that kind of detail, but at least it's there. In fact I'd say this is a good example of a story which uses most of the characters' existing history and the knowledge we've learned of them to enhance it, as you'd expect by this time in the series' lifespan: T'Lyn, quite the fresh, new face in relative terms is used nicely - we may not know all that much about her personally, but she's here to represent Vulcans and their unemotional nature, and once again she's given some nice lines ("Celebrating a lack of purpose is illogical," when Tendi and Mariner are expressing pleasure at the thought of finishing their work; or describing Boimler and Rutherford's new rapport as roommates with, "Their emotional closeness is unpleasant"), that really express the Vulcan attitude far more than we've seen in any other modern Trek, to the extent I'm becoming enthusiastic about her involvement in a given episode, in a way she would most disapprove of. True, she also goes down the sickly 'you are who you choose to be' route when Tendi's unhappy about her pirate assassin heritage, both cliched and not necessarily true, although quite Trekky in sentiment, but she retains her calm and poise at all times within this very expressive, violent culture she finds herself in (perhaps the only thing missing was seeing the similarities between Orion and ancient Vulcan culture, so they didn't hit everything possible).

Things are slightly different in that the colleagues she visits Orion with aren't teasing her or butting up against her Vulcan nature and attitudes, something that happened a lot with Spock and Tuvok and which had the side effect of showing how cool Vulcans really are that they can deal with all this stuff, including peer pressure, and still come out apparently comfortable in any situation, seemingly effortlessly (one reason they're my favourite race). My favourite moment for T'Lyn was when Tendi was fighting with D'Erica, her sister, and she's trapped, her sister saying Tendi abandoned her for science, and only then does T'Lyn stand up as if she's about to get involved, only paused by Mariner! So true to the person and her race, funny at the same time, even though it wasn't played up, just a small observation on character. And she did the old thing of a Vulcan relenting on strict protocol and procedure when she realises it's more fitting to the moment to abandon a report made for the purposes of curiosity at the expense of her friend's concerns, even coming up with the argument it would be unethical to submit such a report without the subject's consent - not sure I agree as it wouldn't be objective if that were the case, but again, I liked the sentiment, and how it was done with T'Lyn having to raise her voice over the sound of the ship flying in atmosphere, her hair ruffled while she remains the unflinching eye of the storm, cool and calm as ever.

Boimler and Rutherford were similarly treated quite well, as utterly silly as their storyline was: they're calling themselves 'Brutherford' since they're best mates now they live in the same Quarters without the girls (room to display their Mirror Archer and Spock action figures or model DS9 which they couldn't do when restricted to corridor living), yet they're also quarrelling over little things such as who gets to spray the bonsai tree. The arguments were an example of a well-observed knowledge of the characters and their unique history: Rutherford says his implant tells him exactly when and how much the tree needs, while Boimler makes the equally valid point he has green fingers from growing up on the vineyard, nice they're bringing things up intelligently rather than just throwing them in. That they resolve their differences by acting out Samuel Clemens on the Holodeck is just great fun as a Trekference to 'TNG,' but also becomes this surreal thing in its own right where they later suggest it as a mediation solution to a strained diplomatic situation with Coqqor the Chalnoth, where both Captain and adversary face off dressed as Clemens! It's completely ludicrous, nonsensical, and yet has a kind of internal logic that fits right in this series - crucially it doesn't work, ending up with Coqqor becoming violent until he hears of the bonsai and then after eating it and drinking the spray bottle, acquiesces to their demand to study the nebula. Even that little scene in their Quarters had attention to continuity since Shaxs had just been chucked over by the Chalnoth in the Holodeck so Kayshon is in his place here for Security - we don't know what happened to Shaxs but can assume he was injured, and that it happens offscreen allows our imagination to fill in the details.

Even the pre-credits teaser which continues the season's ongoing arc of various races' ships and crews being apparently destroyed ties in to the main plot of the episode and subtly furthers the arc since this is the first time there's been any acknowledgment by one of our characters (Freeman), that a ship has been lost - it didn't make sense to me that the Captain would be coming personally to tell Tendi she'd been given leave of absence to attend her sister's wedding, until we learn there's a diplomatic angle to it with Starfleet wanting to be cautious after the recent ship's disappearance. I'm not sure why Starfleet would care about keeping in good relations with a criminal organisation (it seems to suggest the Orion Syndicate does run their home planet, with Tendi part of the fifth most powerful family), but as far as it goes it made sense for our characters, at least. Not everything about the episode works so well, it all goes very 'Star Wars' with the sweeping orchestral 'here's a new planet' swoop over Orion showing the shuttle coming in, but at least they made up for it later with some proper Trek danger music when our little band makes an old hijacked Federation starship operational to get back in time for the wedding (unlikely it would be so easy to get off the ground, but I did like the detail it's an old-style of vessel like the one Seven of Nine's parents used, the SS Raven, fitting it to an older time period).

Wasn't so keen on all the girly talk such as at the Orion night club, as much as it's a parody of all we know of Orion culture previously, and there are some nice little jokes based on Trekferences surrounding the culture, with the best being Mariner repeating Tendi's obfuscation about how pheromones were made up by Starfleet to explain how a Captain could be taken out by some Orion showgirls (they don't mention Captain Archer or the NX-01 by name, but it's clearly referring to 'Bound,' one of the few Orion episodes in 'Enterprise'), so I enjoyed the obscure humour. All the stuff about it actually being a female-controlled society comes up even though it seems like the men are in charge (the majority female crew of the Orion ship in the teaser, or Tendi's Mother seeming to have more pull than her Father), and the raider crew even talk about how someone just got metal plates and bolts stuck to their shaved head (something we never see other than in their 'Enterprise' iteration which was uniquely brought to the table as a new aesthetic of Orion culture since we'd never seen the males before, other than the silly 'TAS' version!). I like that we do get all these different shades of green, covering the gamut of previous appearances (something they should've done for the Klingons with the flathead, crustacean-head, bumpy-head and dome-heads of various productions). Perhaps we still don't delve all that deeply into the culture, it takes many episodes and subjects to do that, and while it wasn't quite as good as 'We'll Always Have Tom Paris,' it was on the right lines, and Tendi always works quite well as this reluctant expert in combat and nefarious activities.

There weren't many issues, perhaps having T'Lyn along helped the writing to remain more logical (not that it's necessarily helped before...), but I did have a couple of mere observations: Tendi talks about them wanting photos of them in their wedding outfits and we even see some of the photos taken at the wedding at the end, but would they really use photos at this stage? I know the Doctor on 'Voyager' was really into holo-photography so he could show his 2D images on the 3D Holodeck (which never made much sense to me - why would you create two-dimensional images if you can show them in three dimensions?), but it's like they're just modern people with tablets or phones and the digital photos they've taken! Also, with T'Lyn's PADD that she throws out of the ship so her report won't be read, wouldn't it constantly backup to the nearest Starfleet computer automatically? I'm just speculating here, but that would make sense, though in this case she may not have been near the Cerritos enough for that to be the case even if that's what happens with the technology, and the ship they were in, though Federation, may not have been operational in all areas (I loved the 'Voyager' look of the consoles and design!). And what about the Holodeck exit: Rutherford enters at one end of the steamer's bar, but when he and Boimler leave, the exit appears right at their table. I'd assume it was for timing reasons, and of course the room could shift around, but I found it distracting since the exit usually has a set location in a program.

Mildly disappointing the Chalnoth wasn't voiced by J.G. Hertzler as I initially thought, even though it's a shame that when they do use him for various roles, it's never the actual, real Martok... But another 'DS9' actor does return, and one who'd been one of the few on that series to do a voice-only role: Debra Wilson! She played Captain Cusack in 'The Sound of Her Voice' ('Her' being her), and while I didn't recognise the voice (and I'm assuming the rules for actresses in animation is the same as in live action that you can only have one person with that name, so it must be her), it's nice to realise another longtime Trek performer has made it into the modern era, though I assume it was completely unrelated to her having been in a Trek before or they might have woven in a subtle joke about her previous role. I don't know who Z'oto was, so it couldn't have been a substantial role, but still, the more connections to the old actors the better for me. It seemed the season was finally on the right track, getting closer to the quality I was expecting...

**

Magic Pockets

 

 

Amiga 1200, Magic Pockets (1991) game

Why do I do this to myself? I've had a run of pretty average games in recent months so I should probably have gone for a certified winner or at least something that was relatively easy, but instead, on a whim I fancied playing this game as one of few that would actually work on a 1200. It's a 2D platformer of the kind you have to complete in one sitting, which means many sessions of getting just that little bit further before losing the limited lives and plunging all the way back to the beginning again! No passwords, no saves, not even infinite continues as in 'Aunt Arctic Adventure,' just the long, hard, painful slog of trial and error... The way the lives work in this game is that you get five at the start of a level and if you lose them you have three continues. You can pick up baby bottles to refill one life or milk bottles which will max you out to five again, and if you can scrape by to the Exit you'll be refilled again at the start of the next level. And at every 100,000 points your lives also refill to maximum (and your weapon comes out faster and more numerously, be it whirlwinds, clouds, ice blocks or snowballs). But there's no way to increase the number of continues you have so you have to be very careful not to lose that last life because that really will set you back and lower your chances of progression.

Why am I going on about the lives? Because they're the gauge by which you measure how likely you'll get anywhere in the game - though the 100,000 point marker seems like an encouragement to go for as many points as possible rather than the shortest or safest route, there really is next to no incentive in that direction since you can't control when your life will be refilled, so you could easily 'waste' the achievement by reaching that many points when you've already got full lives, which is very annoying. I learned it's much better to simply play it safe, don't go out of your way in search of a high score, concentrate on preserving those lives as long as possible, keeping track of how close you are to unlocking more milk, and hopefully making it to the end of a level without using a continue. When I say route, there aren't really multiple ways through levels, it's pretty linear, but you can go off in slight deviations which may house more goodies, but unless you're in need of another life it's rarely worth the exploration and replaying levels over and over allowed me to determine the shortest route through each level making it slightly less of a chore to get through. According to the manual there is a way of doing something in the first level of each World which will warp you to the first of the next World, but I have no idea what it was you're supposed to do: I couldn't find any hidden passages in The Cave, I tried destroying every enemy in the level, but nothing I did made it apparent how to find this mysterious warp capability. I even got as many Transport Helmets as I could, and on the third was taken to a cave housing a single bronze chalice - I thought that would be it, but no, even then I never warped...

As it is, I got World 1 down to about fifteen minutes, which is five levels and a bicycle race against some blue rock ogres, though it didn't matter if you won that or not. The Jungle was much harder and took me around half an hour to get through the six levels there, but then you face this huge hairy gorilla in a boxing match and after forty-five minutes to get there he'd wipe me out in seconds so it was very demoralising to spend all that time with no reward. It was at this point I began to seriously question if I had a chance of beating the game if I found it so hard and time-consuming even to get to the halfway point and became quite disillusioned by it. I hate to abandon a game, especially for being too hard, but I was seriously wondering if I may have to. Fortunately I have a good temperament when it comes to repetitive tasks and eventually found a way to beat the gorilla: you can't really avoid his attacks so you just have to go all in and whenever you've been hit you have to run over while you have a few seconds of invulnerability to lay as many hits on him as you can, and it was only around nine before he was beaten. From then on I had hope I could eventually succeed, helped by World 3 being relatively easier. The Cave was easiest, as you'd expect from the first level, third World, The Lake I'd rank second (though you have to take it slow and keep your wits about you, especially when dropping down to a part of the level you can't see), fourth and final World, The Mountain I'd have said third originally, with Jungle being the toughest, but it took me so many attempts to clear Mountain it showed it really was the hardest, as you'd expect from a final World: times when you'd start a level and be unable to escape a snowman, or the final level proper where you have all manner of nasties and almost no way to escape!

When I finally did it, succeeded at one of the toughest games I've played, completing it, getting through that final section after the last level, bouncing past the evil snowmen, dodging the bubble as it pursued me to the final Exit, I thought I'd experience euphoria, since it had been almost exactly a month to the day I'd begun this game. Some games you play for fun, others you play for the challenge. This became 100% the latter and 0% the former - it didn't begin that way, but it was such a tough, unforgiving master that although I made progress over time, getting to later and later levels, it was an upward curve at the end that felt like climbing a literal mountain: I'd get to level 25, but then there was one more. I'd reach level 26 and suffer instant death after all the Bad Things (as enemies were designated - each World had it's most dangerous, the rock ogres in 1, the wasps in 2, the pearl-spitting oysters in 3, and snowmen chucking deadly snowballs in 4), swarm you and there's nowhere to go - until you realise the best tactic is to rush past them, accepting damage and then leaping up to the first platform, jumping off it to create the spin attack which will take out a few around you, then doing it again until you'd dispatched them all, carefully navigating what was otherwise a small, simple vertical level.

Even then it's not over, you have the final section of a walled off area with pits containing a Bad Thing in each, and the ledge between where another is, but if you wait too long the dreaded bubble comes for you with instant death (where in every other level it merely trapped you for a few seconds). So then you think you have to get through as quickly as possible, but no, there's a dead end, so what do you do? Ah, of course, you must create a Transport Helmet - to do that you need to kill a certain number of enemies which cycles through each power-up until you get a Silver Star, a quite unique system since you can go between simply shooting an enemy or trapping him within your full-power projectile, until you touch it and it turns into either sweets or power-up. You do the same until you can get a Gold Star and only then do you transport out to the last of the last areas with bouncing snowmen to deal with and a run to the Exit where all you're rewarded with is The Bitmap Kid standing over the four collected toys from each World to the sound of applause. Applause is nice, but not even a new piece of music over the scene? No end credits scrolling down? No message to tell you to turn off your computer and go to sleep, turn off your computer and go to sleep? No. Anticlimax isn't the word for it, but if I'm expecting too much (it is from 1991...), I was at least (and at last), relieved! Also from 1991: glitches such as falling down to a part of an earlier level you can't get out of... urk! Fortunately rare, though.

It wouldn't have been possible unless the game had been uncharacteristically kind: I only had two continues left (I thought I only had one), so was expecting to be finished, but for some reason, maybe because I scored to the nearest 100,000 points during that final section (though I don't know why that would make any difference because it didn't in any other level, other than powering up your projectiles, but for whatever reason...), it never took away another continue and it was down to that, and that alone, I was able to finally put this to rest after around twenty-seven years (it didn't take me that long, that's just the earliest record I have of playing it!), applying adult patience where childish attention span and lack of application denied me much progress back in the 90s. The infinite continues were entirely necessary, I found, because after more than two hours to reach the final section it would've been completely dispiriting to discover I'd have to work out the exact arrangement of kills in order to get my Silver and Gold Stars to unlock the Helmet and transport out of there. I don't know how many attempts I made, but it must have been almost an hour of experimentation until I finally hit on the correct sequence, since there were only a certain number of enemies so if you didn't get it right early on (I think it was something like kill first snowman, trap next enemy, repeat), you wouldn't be able to go through the power-up sequence. If you think you only had two or three bites at the cherry I don't know if even my saintly gaming patience would have stood having to be repeatedly stymied.

It reminded me of another Amiga title, 'The Legend of Kyrandia,' a Point-and-Click puzzler in which a particular puzzle relied on the most extreme trial and error of collecting items and putting them in the right order - not fun, a cynical way to extend a game's life by throwing in a ridiculously hard and time-consuming struggle. That's how this would have been - in that case I looked up the solution in an old Amiga magazine, in this I was fortunate the game had pity on me for no real reason, so maybe I could be said to have cheated (though I staunchly refused to look up the solution for this game, nor even the time-shortening shortcut that supposedly allows you to jump from the first level of each World to the next, which would've made it a lot easier), but I stubbornly refused to give in! It may have been because the specific disk I was using was a 'cracked' copy, so maybe they altered the code somehow (I had a legitimate copy, but unfortunately it was a bit glitchy and wouldn't let me get past a certain point so had to stick with the unofficial). I know when I first played it on this play-through, when I got to the second World, The Jungle, I was somehow awarded infinite continues, but I had no idea how I'd activated it since it never occurred again and I was forced into perseverance and finding the quickest way through each of the twenty-six levels.

This was yet another Amiga game I'd played occasionally when growing up, but had never got out of the second World (I wasn't even sure I ever made it to the Exit at the end of the first level until I checked past records!). I had much less patience and skill in those days and unlike most platform games I played on the system the main character was so lumpen and handled like a breeze block, clattering to the ground if you jumped from higher than one platform up. I came to regard the Kid's ability to fall from any height without damage (a rare choice in the genre, in my experience), as an essential tactic for success, especially since he becomes a weapon when flying through the air (unless you forget that when wearing certain power-ups, such as the diving helmet, he won't spin, leaving you more open to attack), and when he's clattering across the ground at the end of his fall, usefully taking out any enemies he touches. But he was still unwieldy to control, though I wouldn't say this was yet another game with issues of poor control, it just takes a little time to get used to the idea of using his pocket weapon to bounce him up in the air and turn him into a weapon himself. Having to replay the early levels so many times means you also become proficient at them, knowing exactly what best to do, and when, and actually the greatest threat to your lives is complacency and being in a rush to get through the areas you know as quickly as possible when a laidback, but alert approach is more likely to succeed.

What lessened the appeal back in the day was a complete lack of music in the levels, something I was used to in other examples of the genre (although, saying that, the best ever 2D platformer, 'Flashback,' mostly had no background music also), but I came to see it as somewhat useful as it is beneficial to hear the sound effects, such as when you launch your pocket weapon out into the unknown and hear it suck up an enemy or stun them, so you know there's a platform or an enemy offscreen. I'd still rather hear some jaunty tunes as I platform, but it wasn't as much of a put-off as it had been. The graphics are really the area where the game attracts - I just love that kind of pixel artwork and sprites, it's all very beautiful. Not that it was in any way spectacular, nothing like 'Flashback,' the pinnacle on the Amiga (in every way: control, music, effects, visuals, story), little more than functional, but still nice to look at and as always with these very old games that I never got very far with, a real pleasure to at last see later levels for the first time all these years after, connecting with a moment from my own gaming history of so long ago, touching on childhood in a new way. And that's the appeal of something like this. Not that in itself it's a good experience (though satisfying to beat), but that it takes you back. It would still be a better use of my time to play something I know I love, such as 'The Settlers,' but coming back around in later life and completing things I started, or played briefly or occasionally, gives a strong sense of closing the circle as I get older and the young me would no doubt be impressed and overjoyed to see himself succeed at something like that so many years in the future!

For that reason I don't give it the bare minimum of one star, even though there were times when I just wanted it to end - my palms were getting red from holding the Joystick, I wasn't even sure if the Fire Button would hold out and I'm sure the excessive use did make it less responsive the more I played, and even now I'm not entirely happy I had to rely on the game's uncharacteristic generosity in giving me so many chances at the end, nor that I didn't take the time to kill all the bouncing snowmen in the last moment since I just wanted to be sure of finishing for good and all, but like so many games you force yourself to spend time with and power through the hard times, I'm sure it will remain with me as a pleasant memory overall. But I won't be playing it in another thirty years with my no doubt arthritic hands.

**

In The Cradle of Vexilon

 Blu-ray, Lower Decks S4 (In The Cradle of Vexilon)

An improvement after the last one, I was almost tempted to boost it up an extra star, but for a couple of reasons, namely the foul-mouthed Betazoid Gift Box (when it first appeared I wished Armin Shimerman had been brought in to voice it since he did the original on 'TNG,' but then I was glad they hadn't wasted him on such a sweary character), and the undercutting of the optimistic, if slightly naive lesson at the end of the story where our people are sitting around talking about the events and realising it's better to assume the best about people rather than the worst (even though in reality, while I'd go with that, you have to be wise enough to see the difference and that sometimes people are being their worst!), don't mistake people's intentions based on how you feel (a good message for internet posting, perhaps...). It was refreshing to have a genuinely good message, but then Dirk (in his fourth appearance), the guy who's been giving them such unpalatable tasks to do as scanning every isolinear chip in a room (including the... gasp, second layer!), shows he actually was hazing them as they first thought. I don't like that kind of nasty humour when the goodness and true character of the Starfleet world is made to look as cynically unpleasant as the real world. There can be misunderstandings and misrepresentation, but I don't want to see wilful maliciousness for the sake of a joke between superior officers, that's just the kind of attitude that sinks the higher nature of Trek in this series, and it stinks.

For all that, it does at least clear up a couple of problems I had: Dirk claims he got trapped in a Wadi Chula game when he was a child, but this is set in the early 2380s, the Wadi were first encountered in 2369 during 'DS9' Season 1, so that's got to be fourteen years at most, and with Dirk's high forehead and higher rank I got the impression he's around thirty. I suppose he could have been treating the word 'kid' to include teens, or maybe he's younger than he looks (it is tricky to tell with animation), but the actual reason his story was fine is because he made it up! That still should have tipped off at least Mariner that there was something fishy, since she served on DS9 in the years after that and should know the timeline of events... The other major nitpick was something else Dirk warned about how if even one of those isolinear chips failed it could be catastrophic for the ship, but we've heard before about Starfleet's famous systems of multiple redundancy (with Klingons its their internal organs, with Starfleet it's their technology!), so that doesn't add up (again, I'd have expected better from Mariner, she was off her game this time), but once again he's just making it up so we can sweep that problem into the Jefferies Tube, too.

It was most enjoyable that they brought back Chula, especially amusing that Rutherford rushes through it, having apparently read all the reports from DS9 senior staff on what it involved (or played it before), and it was lovely to see those sets, characters and tasks recreated in animated form. You see, for many people 'Move Along Home' is one of, if not the worst episode of 'DS9' (I'd probably go with 'Let He Who Is Without Sin...' or 'Profit and Lace,' myself), and so, in the tradition of 'LD' to draw attention to the silliest aspects of Trek of course they're going to bring it back somehow (only this time Rutherford's got to carry around the Gift Box to make it even more ridiculous), just as they like to touch on 'Threshold' from 'Voyager' or the many wacky elements of 'TOS.' But for me, the 'DS9' episode is one of my favourites from the early years - I don't know if it was the first I saw on TV in late 1995, but it would have been one of the earliest and I'm pretty sure I did see it because I always loved the 'Weird Stuff' stories in Trek, that old questioning of reality and being uncertain of whether you could trust in your senses, so it stuck in my mind. I can see what others dislike about it, it is strange, almost cartoonish, but for me, seeing Sisko, Kira and Dax dancing out a hopscotch and singing 'Allamaraine, count to four, Allamaraine, then three more,' is akin to Kirk's crew being forced into undignified horseplay for the amusement of more powerful beings in 'Plato's Stepchildren' - in that case it was more a sense of horror, while in 'DS9' it was the absurdity of seeing these serious people have to humble themselves to solve a problem.

And the fact that it's about solving problems, too, something I adore about Trek and often miss in the modern variations. The point I'm making is that referring to Chula and the Wadi was all about strong Trek connections to me, and I liked the angle of Rutherford treating it as ordinary or commonplace in contrast to the weirdness of its original, sinister and mysterious appearance in 'DS9' and so enhanced my appreciation of a story that I'd been unsure about. There's no teaser for a start, and I quite like it when they do have one, in keeping with the 90s Trek they're often trying to ape, but perhaps in this case it worked better because they didn't try to fit in any scenes connecting the episode to the ongoing arc of ships being attacked and 'disappeared' by a mysterious assailant, so that worked in its favour (knowing what it was about, and how disappointing it turned out to be), and gave them more time to tell their story. I wasn't initially sold as the setup seemed a bit non-Trek sci-fi generica: Corazonia sounds a bit too much like Coruscant of 'Star Wars' (though it may partly be the pronunciation), and the idea of this giant ring world brought to mind the Matt Damon film 'Elysium' (I'm sure it's a staple sci-fi concept, but that's what sprang to mind as relatively recent), then we've got the Captain and Ransom dealing with another planetary computer, this time an environmental system, so it was all a bit too cliched, even if that's one of the points of 'LD' to play with, and in, these tropes.

I'll give them that they did something different with it, it wasn't automatically an evil subjugation machine like Landru (and many others), and really it's more of a setting upon which to hang Boimler's first mission (or errand, as T'Lyn calls it), which teaches him more about command than he's trying to teach the lowly Ensigns under him and ultimately gives him validation through saving the day when he has to clear out his team and take the toughest job himself, getting blown up for his troubles. I do wish there had been more consequence for him, as while it's just as horrible to have to send others to their potential deaths, if not more, having to run into a burning building and getting blown up for your actions is a tough school. It is a cartoon so he just gets blasted into the air and ends up looking like he's been in an explosion from 'Looney Tunes' - all blackened with a bandage on his head. I felt it should've been touch and go for a while in Sickbay, maybe he has to be out of action for a few days otherwise it does look too easy and 'quick, we have to wrap it up in twenty-five minutes, we can't carry it over to the next episode.' But I did enjoy his trials as mission leader with T'Lyn there to provide support as Science Officer (that would make him James T.!), and she was at her best, providing blunt advice and emotionless expression, but not leaping in to force her views on him (other than saving an explosive canister from hitting the ground), which is the kind of cool that only a Vulcan can bring.

His little team was also interesting, with 'Big Murf,' the blue guy (any relation to Murf of 'Prodigy' or completely coincidental? Seeing it written down it's apparently 'Merp'), who could be an animation expression of a Zaldan from 'Coming of Age' in 'TNG' (they weren't blue, but they had webbed hands which made them fishy), some Antipodean girl called Meredith (who'd apparently been in 'Room For Growth'), and Taylor the Kzinti, always fun to see for the link to 'TAS.' You can see their simplicity, yet also growing frustration at Boimler doing everything himself. It was just a nice group setup which I enjoyed and very much felt true to the way Boimler would act when 'disarming a building-sized bomb' as he puts it. It didn't make much sense that the Captain and First Officer would take on the task of fixing a planet-wide computer system themselves, but at least Ransom makes the point that they have Engineers, so why not use them? But Freeman sees it as a chance to use her knowledge of 'Archaic Technology' from the Academy days and almost messes everything up. She does bring down Chief Engineer Billups eventually (mainly for him to tell an Engineer's joke: calling it a classic setup and asking if it's 'Unitronic,' which raised a smile for its weakness - actually there were a few smiles raised throughout the episode, it was generally more pleasantly funny than nasty or horrible and I much prefer that), but it's something he says that inspires her to a solution and of course Boimler is integral in carrying off the fix, so it was good to see the teamwork.

This would seem to be the first we've ever heard of Billups keeping a ferret called Lancelot. It would be nice to learn more about our characters so we can play with the built-up backstory as the series progresses, but that's one issue I have with it, that they don't do enough in that regard, even if they do sometimes. Fill out these secondary characters like 'DS9' and (to an extent), 'Voyager' and 'TNG' did and it only opens up the story possibilities even more and makes for a much more satisfying experience, drawing you into this world. But it's really about the main four (Shaxs didn't even appear this time, which is fine since the 90s Treks wouldn't have every character in every episode, different mixes of characters like Boimler and T'Lyn, and made for more of a feeling of variety), and it works all round. Boimler's insecurities and lack of understanding of the need for formality shows how far he has yet to go, and while he's been promoted, at heart he's still very much a lower decker. I liked what T'Lyn had to say (pearls of wisdom such as 'leading by example has proven to be inefficient,' or, 'danger is an accepted risk of Starfleet duty'), but who had the toughest job in the episode? Rutherford has to go through the Wadi game, Tendi has to rescan all the chips on her own, but Mariner had it worst: she had to keep Dirk from going back to his Quarters where they'd rigged up a Chula set to get back at him, and has to feign interest in his favourite subject of Tellarite Slop Jazz - exactly the sort of thing I imagine non-Trekkers feel when they've set me off talking about Trek, so it rang true and gave me a smile!

One thing I really appreciated and is a shame it stuck out when it should come as standard, was when T'Lyn reminds an Ensign the Lieutenant has given an order and she must obey, when Boimler orders them out and she says they can help. That's exactly the kind of hierarchical status quo I want to see more of when so much in modern Trek it's about people doing what they want or feel is necessary when obedience can be the split second between success or failure, death and life. If I was to nitpick anything else I'd be surprised at our people's excitement at having access to the 'anomaly storage room' since we've seen them dealing with this kind of stuff before (wasn't that how Tendi got turned into a giant scorpion in 'The Spy Humongous'?), even in the very first episode we saw a cupboard full of old bits and pieces of tech (though I was intrigued by the idea of an adventure where Billups was turned into a church tower by wearing a hat!). Was the surreal room Boimler dreams of where the mystical koala sits meant to be a tribute to '2001: A Space Odyssey' or just standard dream room set? They didn't have Shimerman play the Gift Box, but they could at least have said something like it reminding them of Quark as a deeper cut kind of joke that they don't seem to do so much any more, instead of getting the 'humour' from lowering the tone with its swearing 'hilarity' - and they really missed an opportunity for a classic cameo as the voice of the computer, like bringing back Jeffrey Combs for Agimus - how about Marc Alaimo or someone like that (Joel Brooks for the Wadi connection?), but otherwise this episode was on the right track, er, Trek.

**