This was probably the most Star-Treky episode of the series so far. Apart from the season-long storyline stuff it could have been a mediocre episode of TNG - except that in TNG they were a lot better about talking to each other and sharing information.
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| You can tell this planet's safe because they didn't bring any disposable ensigns. |
The A plot concerns the mysterious red thingies that they're chasing this season, specifically one of them that they've pin pointed the location of. They need the spore drive to go there which they need to get special permission to use, but they just get permission and use it without any problems so I'm not sure what the point of that was. But this place is far away. And when they get there they find humans (like, from Earth), the descendants of people who were mysteriously transported there 200 years ago.
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| It's not clear what technology level the locals are actually at or aware of, but it's definitely pre-warp. |
For some stupid reason they decide the stupid prime directive applies so they have to go down there in disguise and not tell them about advanced technology. Even though this isn't some alien civilisation, it's humans who were kidnapped from Earth by mysterious aliens. And even though the prime directive is dumb as fuck. They're all followers of this religion that's a combination of all of Earth's most popular religions, except for one guy who's like "nah, you guys are definitely from space, right?" and they have to lie to him because the prime directive is fucking stupid.
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| We're abandoning these people here, but at least their church has lights now. |
Anyway, their church's power supply is dead and Pike eventually makes a deal with the sceptic to trade him a new one for his ancestor's video camera which supposedly has a recording of the exact moment they were transported to this planet, but is broken. But Pike brings it back tot he ship and fixes it and it shows one of those red angel things that this season is all about.
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| Michael said the angel was beautiful, but it kind of just looks like a normal human silhouette to me. But with wings. |
The B plot is all about Tilly. She's fucking around with the asteroid chunk they captured last episode when it blasts her with some sort of energy. No one seems particularly concerned about that, other than making sure Tilly's OK. Then this weird short woman shows up and starts talking to Tilly.
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| "Hello, I am perfectly ordinary and also everyone else can definitely see me. Please do not attempt to verify this." |
Tilly doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary to begin with, presumably because there are tons of people she doesn't personally know on this ship, and also because she's got to help save the planet from being destroyed by some technobabble. Which she does. But then she's like "Hey, I wonder who that woman was who I was talking to earlier?" and looks her up, only... dun dun dun! She's dead! Also she's someone Tilly knew as a child. So the ghost of her childhood friend is hanging around now? Because of dark matter?
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| Tilly, that is not appropriate work attire. |
This kind of thing does happen in Star Trek, but the episode finished without any resolution. Maybe the next episode will start with Tilly telling everyone about how she's being haunted by space ghosts, but it seems like she'd have done that at the end of this episode if she was going to. I think she's going to keep it secret, and that annoys me. But maybe I was just predisposed to be annoyed by all the prime directive stuff, because I hate the prime directive. I realise that if you're doing a Star Trek then you're kind of stuck with it, but it's still bad and dumb.
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| I feel like safety glasses might not be going far enough as far as protective gear goes. |
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