WHY WE LIKE IT: The sarcastic Vulcan salute.
WHY WE DON'T: Amazing disappearing damage.
REVIEW: Weird title, but behind it is the second strong episode in a row, with Mariner's capacity to find a way to enliven even the most awful task aboard ship tested when her mom (and here they acknowledge the relationship more overtly, though I don't think any of the crew know), Captain Freeman, hits on an important realization... What Mariner hates most of all is responsibility. She was once bridge crew, and she hated it, so promoting to the Ops position (which gives us insight into what that role actually means, it was never all that clear on TNG or Voyager), is worse for her than anything. It's mostly the social stuff, frankly, which I so relate to! Riffs on TNG's poker game and indeed, on the fact no one in the main cast of any show hangs out with anyone else very much. Plus, office-style HR seminars and paperwork that make the bridge crew stuff about as tedious as the lower decks'.
Mariner is still our main character, and even if Boimler is in the background, his issues are still pretty central - Mariner has been punished with HIS dream - but at least the B-plot is Tendi's, highlighting her deep need to be liked. (Rutherford has a couple jokes, but I guess his big subplot was in episode 2). Tendi is assigned to observe an Ascension, as crew members being able to become god-like energy beings is a thing one can aspire to (John Doe, Amanda Rogers and Wesley Crusher might have started a trend). She ruins the guy's inner peace - as it turns out, he thinks he's a fraud and is playing up his anger to cover it - but by episode's end, a selfless act makes him ascend anyway (which looks crazy and upsetting, also a possible reference to the Great Bird of the Galaxy), and Tendi loses a new friend (and possible boyfriend). Well at least she felt liked by the end.
The sci-fi action plot is just background to these stories, collaboration with another ship, towing an alien craft filled with a terraforming liquid that eventually leaks into their tractor beams and causes the ships to start turning into planets. It's the kind of crazy effects that would be impossible on a television budget, but that animation can do so well. The visuals gave me original Animated Series feels. Both Tendi and Mariner get to be heroes and solve their situations AND connect with the person they are in conflict with (though Mariner undoes it at the end because she needs to be bumped back down to ensign, in an extended sensors/sensoars bit). My only problem is that while, fine, the terraforming liquid can be dispelled, but it really shouldn't fix hull breaches and such like nothing happened. Bit of a cheat. Computer saying "hitting it" is the best bit, Pike should get that installed.
LESSON: You're always working on yourself even if you don't realize it.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: A great little character-driven pair of stories.
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