| Review : |
The main review hit on the biggest flaw in this episode - just lazy writing, and the twist comes too abruptly at the end. It does raise some questions though, such as how much of the episode was Phlox hallucinating, and how much was real? Trip's remarks about the engine make it appear that there was a crisis of some kind, and Phlox managed to avert disaster, but can we trust that the anomaly did in fact expand? If it did, why? How come they were so far off in their calculations? It did become obvious that Phlox was hallucinating fairly quickly - noises in the engine room are one thing, but the events soon took on the obvious shape of his fear of failure (eg the somewhat absurd transformation of Hoshi). Once it is established that Phlox is stark raving, anything in the episode is open to question - including the existence of T'Pol. I thought Blalock and Billingsley did admirable jobs carrying this episode, and I think Blalock showed remarkable restraint - I feel when T'Pol is, for whatever reason, on the brink of emotional display, it seems to come to easily. In this episode we got the feel that she was still partially in control, but on the verge of losing it. If this episode had not already aired (Voyager's "One"), it might deserve a higher rating. |
