Logline
An off-duty window becomes a warp emergency when the Enterprise is pushed beyond its safe limits.
Written by: Bill Wolkoff
Directed by: Dan Liu
An off-duty window becomes a warp emergency when the Enterprise is pushed beyond its safe limits.
Written by: Bill Wolkoff
Directed by: Dan Liu
For me, it’s just a question of whether it’s serving the story. If it’s baked into the premise, like the musical or puppetry episodes, I’m happy to go with it.
But disaster scenarios are more satisfying if the obstacles and especially solutions seem like a natural consequence of the world of the show. Magical particles that both heal and fuel showing up in M’Benga’s case notes feel too convenient, even if it took some effort on Spock and La’an’s part to track them down. I’m not sure if I’d call it a Deus Ex Machina or just a MacGuffin that came into the story too late, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
So, M’benga wrote about the particles because he’s a doctor, and they can heal by expanding molecular structures like flesh. Scotty heard about this property and was like “Well can it expand atomic structures too? We could sure use some ‘healing’ on our deuterium reserves”. And turns out it can. So, think of it as a kind of smart matter that turns into whatever it touches. With gravitic containment and good aim, that principle of copying what it touches can do both jobs. And luckily, M’benga has seemingly already designed a hose nozzle smart enough to do the job on flesh. Just copy the molecules in the right places until everything is back to normal.