As someone whose dissertation is on conspiracy theories, I gotta say: The writers did a great job at essentially summarizing the current literature:

“I thought you were just a paranoid anxiety made up by people who needed an imagined enemy to simulate order on unrelated disasters so life doesn’t feel so random and chaotic!” (Boimler, S04E08)

Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/2829352

It was nice to see a somewhat T’Ana centered story. Assuming she appears at all, she’s either making out with Shaxs or doing cat things.

Surprised it took so long to meet Levy. It played out as one might expect.

Glad we got some quality time with Delta Shift. We’ve had a few episodes featuring them, but they’re mostly off screen or limited to short exchanges.

As a whole package, I don’t think this episode worked as well as Veritas. There wasn’t a central story tying the four tales together. You could probably cut the hub tale, and possibly Tendi’s turbo lift tale, and not lose anything of value.

This was a nice wholesome episode.

Caves really are the worst, though.