Star Trek Social Club

Glad to see Caleb hit paydirt on finding his mum. But... are we sure he's a genius if he never thought to try that moon's name as an encryption cypher? Maybe I'm expecting too much of people in a future burdened by a thousand years of cognitive debt from "AI" use.

I finally, completely bought the Caleb/Tarima romance when they cut the coy quippage and he simply told her she was like music to him. There was more raw, naked acting in that exchange than in their sex scene together.

You can tell a month has gone by from the length of Vance's beard. Nice touch, implying he's been too busy tracking down Braka to groom himself.

Suddenly, Ake and Kelrec seem direly unsuited for their jobs. "Oh hey, is that planet in the Federation now? You know the one, what's it called?" Come on, I'm pretty sure you expect your cadets to know that from day one!

Not sure how I feel about the Omega-47 threat. First, I'm sort of disappointed that Starfleet has been developing that kind of WMD. Boo, Science Division!

Second, it feels a bit like a retread of The Burn, at least in the way it leaves warp travel obsolete, if only locally. It's more of a threat to the franchise's premise than to the peoples inhabiting the fiction, you know?

But generally speaking, I actually liked this episode. Any last-but-one episode will be saddled with a lot of setup for the season finale, but it was pretty fun and organic how SAM, Genesis and Darem were drawn into Caleb's mad dash rescue attempt. SAM's personality changes could have used some more space to be explored, hopefully we'll see more of that next week.

It's fairly impressive that over the course of 8-9 episodes, the cadets' relationships have solidified to a degree that Caleb wanting to rejoin his mum over staying with his friends felt like a real betrayal. And his teardown of Darem and Genesis even more so. That was brutal.

I was more sorry to see Jay-Den and Tarima sidelined as this episode progressed, but I assume they're let out of Ake's office to join the action eventually. Holy shit, wait. Ake's office is in the saucer section, right?

Edited to add: I think I'm going to enjoy rewatching the scenes from the Ukeck market. I only caught a Ferengi or two at first glance, but there has to be other familiar aliens, right?