The infamous Star Base 80 at last.Spoilers.
Overall a pretty enjoyable episode, with perhaps a bit of a weakness in that the total lack of subtlety to Mariner’s character arc in the episode was quite grating. I enjoyed seeing Star Base 80, and the episode told a fun enough story about the nature of the place. I was actually surprised at how well drawn the couple of additional characters for the episode were – they felt lived in and complete, unusual for one-episode roles in this show.
The two main ’twists’ – Gene is the engineer, the curse is from the Cerritos – were a little bit too easy to pick. The episode doesn’t hinge on the reveal particularly, but it did give me a bit of a feeling of ‘ugh, just get it over with and move on’.
No one outside of Mariner gets anything to do particularly – just a bit of moaning and licking the walls. And Mariner just didn’t feel very Mariner to me – she started from too ‘gee whiz Starfleet’, and then honestly turned around on Star Base 80 too quickly with the reveal. She lived and worked there for a while, and seems to have some trauma. On the other hand, I can celebrate Trek avoiding the buried trauma plot for once I suppose.
Quick hits:
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I was worried that we wouldn’t get the cetacean ops.
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Excellent ‘No’ from Mariner. Top marks.
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Decontamination gel. Enterprise’s worst idea. But they capture the ickiness of it wonderfully.
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The music cues and interstitial shots are beautifully done, Creating a nice tone.
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Lots of great subtle callbacks to old-style set dressing and equipment, all done without calling massive attention to themselves.
933 down.