[ijdgaf]

Thar be spoilers here!
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The episode was great right up to the end.

Then, I sort of wonder if the writers had been following MEG's reviews a little too closely. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, except I have a hard time picturing the mirror universe as anything but misogynistic. Sorry, I just don't buy the Hoshi revolution. At all.

Before that was good though. Except for something I'm noticing more and more which is irritating me more than I'd like it to.

References are great. References are my god. I sacrifice TOS haters to this reference altar I keep behind a bookcase in my basement.

But it seems to me, all these references we've had lately (with a few exceptions) have been references just for the sake of references. And even that wouldn't necessarily irritate me. Except for the way they're handled.

You can almost predict to the tee while watching an episode this season when a reference is about to strike -- no matter how spoiler savvy you are. You can tell because the plot is going along smoothly in one direction and then -- OUT OF NOWHERE -- some irrelevent-to-the-main story complication pops up and our heroes go out and search for the episode's reference.

In last night's episode, we're crusing right along the main plot. Escape pods from the NX-01, what to do with the Defiant, etc. -- and then OUT OF NOWHERE -- we get the Gorn sabateur.

Yes, the Gorn was cool. But that segment of the episode had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of it.

The entire epsiode "The Aenar" was like this. The alliance is forming along nicely and then (FROM OUT OF NOWHERE), we go to Andoria and have an adventure in fanwank.

Again, yes -- Andoria was cool. But the writers this season seem to lack something which I wish wasn't bugging me but it is. Context. They seem to have no problem taking a 180 degree turn from the plot to fit in a reference. And I love references. But I also love episodes with cohesion, which I'm finding lacking more often than I'd like.

(ahem)

Rant over.