For its first tense seconds this episode rocked, full of promise on the bridge as a half-kilometer Liparus swallows NX-01. Exploring inside, an EVA party comes across some wispy things, one of which pops into and out of Trip. Long story short (too late), soon many of the crew get "possessed" but in the end Phlox chokes them to save them and two tiny torpedoes take care of the mammoth ship. At least Hydroponics got a good blast of CO2!

Not that we the viewers got a good blast of anything, certainly not anything new. Ghosts of some sort possessing the crew haunt most Trek series, from TOS's "Return to Tomorrow" (with Sargon) to TNG's "Power Play." (This episode even borrows big chunks of plot from ENT's "Catwalk," thank God for osmium alloys!) However clearly most of the screenplay cut-and-pasting comes from one of TOS's worst shows, "The Lights of Zetar," about a hundred life forces hunting for new bodies - why, Hoshi even strikes a Mira Romaine pose on the floor. (Why the Zetars in this episode need a ship is beyond me.)

We learn some Trip-history from his OBE's, stuff about skiing and raking in New Zealand or Florida or wherever (yet should we really expect him to know about Hopalong Cassidy?). We learn a little about how T'Pol looks in her pajamas enduring Reed Rape. Hoshi and Mayweather join the brawl about half way in - Trip punches Travis, Hoshi kicks Phlox (repeatedly), then Phlox headbutts Trip. Phlox fared inconsistently, smart enough to differentiate distant neurotransmitter levels but not so enough to detect a broken leg a few feet (so to speak) away.

With Archer issuing orders like, "Confine all people acting strange to quarters" (Jeepers, where to start?), or making observations like, "We're not going anywhere" (from a far faster ship), one wonders about whatever ragged edge is left on his wit. He smart-mouths the Zetars back with, "We're rather fond of our substance" but Worf did it better back to Locutus. We've gone from "Risk is our business" to "Something smells funny" (said to a Vulcan). I'll say.

The appearance of background characters like Rostov is realistic and overdue, and it's nice to see the flashing red lights in engineering during tactical alert. As usual - I try not to take them for granted - the visuals, especially the EVA sequences, looked great. But any life-inhabiting force could have been better employed to animate the lifeless cast and crew. This episode should have ended long before it did.


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