It’s been a stressful few months for the Enterprise crew and they want, well, demand, shore leave. Choosing a tech-free planet with natural psychedelics in the atmosphere, the command crew take a shuttle down, take in all the wonders the world provides. And then it all goes a bit wonky…
Writers: Skylar Ojeda & Dana Horgan
Director: Meera Menon
Aside from orbiting a star who’s radiation gives an altered perspective of light, Mat’aar XII is a world occupied by Klingon overlords. Having taken control of the population, and implemented strict monitoring and restrictions on movement, the Klingon’s rule with fear, torture and by creating division. Like any good occupiers, they’ve given cushy jobs to some locals including their top Lieutenant, Navatte, a local who proudly wears her silver Klingon armband and interrogates anyone who oppose the Empire.
Or so the Klingons think. Despite her outward loyalty to the Empire’s representative Commander Kor, she uses her position to help free people from persecution and ferry them off the planet towards a better life filled with happiness, freedom and the full colour spectrum. If that wasn’t enough, she’s also a dead ringer for Commander Chin-Reilly. Which is a bit awkward as, while trying to lay low and not be noticed, our Number One ends up being whisked away and brought to the centre of the resistance while Uhura struggles to cope with blending into whats become a covert operation and M’Benga just brings his wise super killer spy mentality to the table.
Despite some massively contrived plot points – mostly Una and Navette being so identically similar that not even facial recognition tech can tell she’s an imposter – the story is simple enough to work quite nicely. Delving into the world of the resistance, Una’s trail leading to finding out Navette’s dead and trying to play both sides while being pulled in my her conscience to help the locals fight is fairly standard Trek. Breaking the rules to help the helpless? Great way to start your career as a full commander.
Mirroring the main plot, there’s a side story of La’an getting increasingly paranoid that another retrieved probe has been tampered with which drags the episode down a bit. While on the ground there’s mystery and tension aplenty, her plot is just a list of dead ends as she becomes increasingly irritable and eventually it all comes down to Chapel trying to hide information about a medical ship that crossed into Klingon space.
The whole B plot became very repetitive and pointless, which really dragged down the main story more than it complimented it. Being entirely black and white didn’t help either as the grayscale didn’t really add anything to the episode, just nullified anything good in the main plot to forever be known as ‘the black and white one’. Which is a little disappointing in a rare episode where Rebecca Romjin gets to play with a lot more than normal back on Mat’aar.
It was a good episode overall, but cutting down the B plot to give M’Benga and Uhura more time and explore the resistance in more depth could have elevated it to something more.
EPISODE DISCUSSION & SPOILERS
Highlights
- One of the songs from the Klingon group, the tale of Khaless' defeat over Molor was originally written for the DS9 episode Way of The Warrior.
- Kor's use of mind probes to interrogate Uhura is near identical in method to the technology he used against Spock in the original series.
- Scotty's promise of "Cross my heat, hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer." is another intentionally prophetic line thrown into the show considering his fate in he 24th century...
All Connected...
This episode gives us a glimpse of a slightly younger Kor than we’d remember. In his first appearance – which incidentally was also the debut of the Klingons – Kor was leading the occupation of another world that refused to resist. In TOS Season 1’s Errand of Mercy, it’s Spock and Kirk who are trapped on the surface blending in with the locals while they submit to the increasingly sinister Kor. But in the end an original series trope came to pass and the passive planet were actually all powerful beings who had quite enough of Kirk and Kor’s antics…
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