WHY WE LIKE IT: Jeffrey Combs!
WHY WE DON'T: The foppish Hyperians dancing around everywhere.
REVIEW: The two competing plots this week are classic Star Trek bits, especially the manipulative sentient computer who takes over a civilization. AGIMUS could be the best of them all, and not only because he's played by the legendary Jeffrey Combs! This bulky hard drive is always trying to trick the human characters into plugging him into a computer network so he can take over again. After taking it off a victim culture, Mariner and Boimler are tasked with shuttling it to the Daystrom Institute impound (which will provide a fun end shot, though one surprisingly lacking in Easter Eggs). On the way, an anomaly will have they crash land on a Bermuda Triangle planet and that's when AGIMUS tries to split them apart and get his grubby cables on a juicy port. It's a good adventure story, and one that - not for the first time this season - allows Boimler to show he really did have the chops to serve on the Titan, and that Mariner's wrong to think he's useless without her. (The assignment indeed starts with Mariner taking a more action-packed assignment away from him in order to "protect" him, so he had to win the day here.)
The other plot deals with a crew member's parents showing up, with big Lwaxana Troi vibes coming off Queen Paolana trying to trick her son into accepting the throne of Hysperia. That son? Chief engineer Billups, a character I don't much think of (he's neither Lower Decks nor part of the bridge crew foursome that was part of the marketing the year before, and who I often confuse with Ransom bootlicker Stevens. So I felt no need to learn more, but they make him a million percent more interesting by making him not from Earth, but from a colony planet that's styled itself after fairy tale lands. Their ships look like toys marketed to little girls in the 80s, they use nomenclature like dragon's breath for the usual technobabble, and Billups grew up in a castle. If he's still a virgin, it's not a Geordi-like "unlucky in love" thing, it's cultural. If he ever has sex, he immediately becomes King and has to leave Starfleet. So in untold tales (judging from Captain Freeman's Picard-like reaction), she's often shown up to trick him into having sex (not with her, you understand). Is this time any different? She CLAIMS her ship has damage only her son can fix, and that gives him hope she's finally accepting his life choices. But there's an explosion and he's made to think his mother is dead, and he hears the call of duty...
Rutherford is of course part of the away team to the ship, and also left for dead, which finally gives Tendi something to do in the episode. She's the one who doesn't give up on her friend and exposes the trick before Billups losing his virginity. But in the end, the faux-magic culture joke gets a little thin (or am I reacting adversely to being trapped in the pink aisle at Toys R Us), and resent cutting away from the superior supercomputer story. We just want more of that guest voice! (By contrast, Queen Paolana sounds so much like Tawny Newsome, I thought for sure they skimped on that side of the episode - my apologies to June Diane Raphael who actually voiced her.)
LESSON: The big difference between a phaser and a phaser rifle is that the rifles takes TWO hands - I knew it!
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: A side-character gets development we didn't know we wanted. A strong Jeffrey Combs guest appearance makes the other side of the episode shine more brightly however.
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