Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
The Enterprise gets tangled up in an ethical quagmire after saving a ship in distress.
I thought this was yet another good episode of Star Trek. I particularly enjoyed the moral dilemma between should the crew interfere with how this other civilisation operates or should they let them kill a child and not get in the way and cause a conflict, it felt like older series of the show. I also like how dark they were prepared to go with it having the kid being effectively tortured by the machine, before he is inevitably saved, it was surprisingly twisted and mature.
I liked that Pike, played by Anson Mount, got centre stage here he really made the most out of every scene he got. Mount continues to be fantastic in the role and prove what a skilled and capable actor he is, hopefully we have some more Pike centric episodes coming up in the rest of the season.
My main issue with the episode was that the new character, at least to me as I don’t watch the other modern Star Trek shows, with whom Pike had a history was really written as being incredibly one dimensional. She was a generic love interest and then she turned out to be the villain in the end, with almost an air of the psycho girlfriend cliché to her that felt more than a little sexist.
Overall, I think that this current Star Trek show is really starting to hit its prime and come into its own.
Pros.
The ethical conundrum
How dark it gets
Mount is fantastic as Pike
There is no needless filler
Cons.
The villain ends up feeling like a sexist cliché
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Another Millennial Reviewer 