A lot of heavy stuff happened in this episode, so there's no shortage of things to talk about.
After the Enterprise gets fired at, they end up rescuing three people from a shuttle. One of them, Alora, is someone who Pike knew in the past, and it's clear right off the bat that they have feelings for each other.
Alora wasn't as interesting to me in that first scene as the man, who we later learn is named Gamal, and child were. When asked, the man says that he's the father's child but only in the biological sense, which immediately made me want to know more. It turns out that the child is the First Servant, which is meant to be a holy figure within their culture. Upon hearing that, I kind of expected the kid to be annoying, but he was a really great kid surprisingly, which only made what happens in the episode even sadder.
At first, Gamal actually comes across as far more arrogant than the child. He is dismissive of Enterprise's medical equipment and claims that they don't have any disease on Majalis, which is certainly a pretty big revelation. They don't share that technology with outsiders though, which is probably good from a storytelling standpoint considering what having no disease would do to the entire universe.
It's something he admits rather easily though considering what could easily happen to their planet if a lot of people knew they had that technology. Surely, someone would attack in order to get it.
One of the subplots in the episode is that Uhura is on rotation and learning about security with La'an. While there were jokes about La'an not being "fun" in recent episodes, it was great seeing her and Uhura forming something like a friendship. Uhura definitely seems to have impressed La'an, which seems difficult to do. I'm looking forward to seeing how their relationship develops over the series.
Uhura ends up matching the data chips that La'an got from the crash site to the Prospect 7 colony, and she also figures out that they speak a language related to Majalis, meaning that the two people on the two planets are probably related.
It turns out that the First Servant's role is being hooked up to a machine that requires the life force of a child. Something about this machine makes it necessary for Majalis to continue surviving, though I'm not clear on what exactly the machine is doing. While Ahora says they've made attempt to find a different way to power the machine over the years, they haven't been able to. She seems scarily okay with the fact that her ancestors chose to power a machine that way even though she admits that they don't know why they did it. It's a very half-hearted attempt at knowing it's bad. At the same time, she rationalizes it in a way that makes it very realistic, especially when she compares the way Majalis reveres the children to how impoverished children are treated on Earth.
At the end of the episode, Gamal offers to show M'Benga a possible treatment for his daughter's illness. He stresses that it's not a cure, but it's still something. I'm hopeful that this means we'll get to see his daughter healthy soon.
Overall, this was one of my favorite episodes so far. I'm intrigued by Majalis, and it's yet again something that I would have liked to learn more about. It raises so many questions about what daily life is like on the planet that I wouldn't mind seeing explored. And I'm also excited to see what this episode means for M'Benga's daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment