Mmm, Lotus. Spoilers.
Overall this was a pretty comprehensive miss of an episode. There were some nice concepts, like what would happen if you forgot everything every day. But the writing is clumsy, the performances are a bit over the top, and there aren’t any real stakes. We know that everyone will get memory back, and the ship will be OK, and there isn’t anyone else introduced to care about.
The setup is a good old fashioned under-cover prime directive episode. It feels like a combination of a TOS episode and a S1/S2 TNG episode – ‘the forgetting’ is just such an on-the-nose way of putting it.
There was a chance to do something interesting, about ‘who you are without memory in the way’. But that’s a story best told about one or two people at a time – when it’s everyone it just kind of gets lost. And finally, the Enterprise scenes are pretty unnecessary. It doesn’t seem to help Ortegas character vey much.
Quick hits:
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They’ve got an admiral commanding a survey of a star? Seems overkill.
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I feel like I should recognise Rigel VII.
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Lot of personal logs this episode. Ortegas seems to be writing for the movie adaptation of her life.
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La’an is normally better than lying about her condition.
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Seriously, these slave drivers are pretty bad at their jobs. Hardly any output, terrible guarding technique.
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The adaptations of the field people are quite interesting, and reasonably well thought out. I’m not sure people can really function without explicit memory, though.
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Phaser rifles can’t shoot through dinner plates?
897 down.