WHY WE LIKE IT: The suspense.
WHY WE DON'T: The magic science.
REVIEW: SNW's version of TNG's Disaster (insert your jokes about the season here), specific cast aside, Off-Hour comes off as an episode that could have fit the first couple seasons. i.e., it centers on the characters rather than a gimmick, and it references original-cast stories that, in the chronology, haven't happened yet. There is STILL a gimmick, mind you, but it's minor. It also doesn't work. I'm talking about the chronometer that sometimes appears on the screen and which is counting down to the destruction of the ship. They're trying to do an episode of 24, just as Doctor Who had done with its episode "42", but the countdown comes up too early. We don't KNOW there's a ticking clock until midway through, so early instances of the countdown, are confusing.
The budget allows for the disaster to be pretty extreme and truly put lives at risk. With the show ending in a dozen episodes, one might even think deaths are possible, but the people closest to death CAN'T die because we know they survive and appear in TOS. Perhaps they hoped casual fans wouldn't remember this about M'Benga who is definitely coded to die this episode. When gravity starts going crazy on the ship, he's basically cut in half by a lab table, Dr. Boyce has returned to the ship as a possible replacement, and Chapel won't give up on him, but all the heart-to-heart stuff COULD have been a farewell. Spock also has a mission that could end in death, but we know that's impossible. Had La'an been sent, there might have been more suspense. Not that we spend too much time on that. As things get worse and worse, we're essentially cutting between the Chapel/M'Benga situation, and Scotty (who has really become the writers' pet character) trying to restore power. Both he and Chapel are the ones who have an arc. Chapel will decide to make her post permanent whether or not M'Benga leaves the ship (which he has been thinking about), and Scotty faces his Stardiver PTSD and learns all about "working miracles" by listening to the ship and has some nice scenes with Pelia (over coms), trapped in her quarters during the emergency.
Let's talk continuity for a bit. First is the accident that causes the disaster. It's clearly the same kind of dangerous wormhole we see in The Motion Picture, the ship knocked into a velocity tunnel by a glitch in its dilithium reaction (or whatever). The situation also gives us the opportunity to use the ion pod from TOS's Court-Martial, finally giving us explanations for the mysterious (and never referenced again) procedure that forced Kirk to (allegedly) jettison a crew member. Independent sensors or not, you'd think there would be internal access to this thing, but the scenes of Spock and La'an crawling through radiation sparks on the hull is pretty cool. And then there's Dr. Boyce who I think is a problem. Now played by Brian Markinson (who'd been on TNG, DS9 and as a recurring character, Voyager), Boyce is the doctor from The Cage, returning as M'Benga's second banana, just as he, himself, would be relegated to McCoy's second. Here's my problem: If we're setting things up for TOS, he really should be the doctor from Where No Man Has Gone Before, the near-identical Dr. Piper. They might have plans for him, but it's strange to look back when we should be looking ahead.
Speaking of looking forward, am I the only one who kept being reminded of Voyager's infamous "worst episode" Threshold? When the countdown starts to mean something, it's because at 00:00:00, the ship will hit the (impossible) warp threshold at which point the ship will turn into fragments of space-time (and the crew into... salamanders?). While thinking of Threshold at all is unfortunate, it's also the episode that makes the magical solutions at the end of Off-Hour work. When Pike has to say, out loud, that the idea of magic particles that can heal M'Benga AND refuel the Enterprise so it can break out of the wormhole is absurd, well, that's only highlighting the problem the writers wrote for themselves. The deux ex machina particle is not great and especially suspect as a healing ray. That it regenerates dilithium, or whatnot, makes more sense and might even be a wink at Star Trek IV, but they go a bit too far with it. Not that we want M'Benga's guts to spill all over sickbay - the episode already gives us enough body horror with Una's leg bone sticking out of her flesh, Spock vomiting green blood, and Chapel losing a finger to a cold counter. I've also got a note here that, at virtually infinite velocity, it's weird the Enterprise didn't pop out in another galaxy, but let's call it a localized loop in subspace and move on. In any case, despite the magical physics, Off-Hour was really about characters we like working out solutions to ever-mounting problems, and having personal realizations along the way. And on those terms, it works admirably.
LESSON: Miracles are possible.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Yeah, the sci-fi is a little wonky, but Off-Hour is a thrill a minute disaster movie that makes several of the characters shine.
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