Logline
Captain Pike and his crew welcome a Klingon defector aboard the USS Enterprise, but his presence triggers the revelation of some shocking secrets.
Written by Davy Perez
Directed by Jeff Byrd
On M’Benga, I can’t quarrel with a thing you say and I haven’t been through what you’ve been through. But I’d encourage you to consider that he’s not a finished product. If this show gets to continue as far as it can, we know he’s in for a lot more change. Maybe he has to heal from here to end up somehow working under McCoy. The state he’s in when he hides this from Pike isn’t the end for him. Maybe this is part of trauma we get to watch him process from here?
I would have liked M’benga’s ending monologue to be less final. Instead of “things break, we fix them, but they’ll break again,” even just leaving it as a question-- “can we ever truly fix these things?” would feel like it leaves more room for hope and redemption in the future.
I interpreted that a bit differently, but I definitely see what you mean. I got, “The biobed/M’Benga needs some extra maintenance, but that’s fine since it/he can always be fixed up.” The overall darkness of the episode and the ambiguity of the ending makes that fuzzy, though.
I hope that this is the middle part of a three episode arc, like with Una’s modifications and trial. If there’s a part 3 I think it will end more positively, but we’ll have to wait and see.
