Reed and Tucker are stranded, convinced they’re going to die.
Rarely enough for this kind of episode they stay more or less on target the whole time. The cuts away to the Enterprise are kept to the minimum needed to make the plot work, and we spend the vast majority of the show on the shuttle. And despite the hints about microsingularities we don’t head off into any kind of technobabble solution to the problem, it’s the simple cold equations. The dream sequence was on balance a mistake, but only because it went on just a little too long I feel.
So it’s mainly the conflict between the guy convinced he’s going to die, and the guy who won’t give up hope. The show itself never picks a side, presenting both of them as rational responses to the situation. And we learn quite a bit about two characters who until now have mainly been the ciphers on the other side of ‘fire weapons’ or ‘let’s go to warp’. Probably the best episode of the show yet.
(Reed, with his British patriotism, is really growing on me).
Callbacks: The episode name harks back to *The Galileo Seven* from TOS.
653 down, 84 to go.