Into The Forest I Go

** (2 stars out of 5)

Shall we hug plants with Saru or have a drawn-out bloody brawl? Well, continuing to take our cues from Battlestar Galactica, Admiral Cornwell has NOT had her throat slit Baltar-Style or been killed by L'Rell's bug zapper. Nope, still alive!

"Klingons" have the weird abilty not to notice that L’Rell & Cornwell aren't corpses when dumped in the corpse room. (Yes, of course, "Klingons" have a Corpse Room. Maybe it's a larder?) Where's their sense of smell? What are the four nostrils for? Or, failing that, where are their life signs scanners?

The clueless and quickly ignored Pahvans have called both Starfleet & Kalesh's Finest to Pahvo trying to talk peace without the strength to back it up. Our heroes are all that can save them and supply us with enough space explosions to get us through the next 8 weeks until episode 10.

Captain Lorca talks Stamets into a fiendishly complex series of 133 mushroom jumps to get location data on their opponents. It taxes Paul to the utmost and leads to an explosive victory and a strange reversal.

“When I took command of this vessel, you were a crew of polite scientists” speechifies Lorca. Not quite following it up with 'Today, you’re a bunch of self-serving assholes and I couldn’t be prouder!'

Because her track record with the enemy is the best, Michael Burnham is the only one sent to sneak aboard the Big Bad Corpse Ship. I mean, Ash the very trustworthy Chief of Security tags along, but he freezes up immediately, so Michael is mainly responsible for recovering the Admiral and L'Rell. Also a sword fight. As usual, there is nothing Michael Burnham cannot do. But as Dylan Hunt could tell us, you aren't the Gary Stu if it's your story. (Your enjoyment may vary, my limited research suggests this is a well-regarded episode.)

25 minutes into all this Michael’s universal translator proves “human ingenuity” by saying the Klingon version of “human ingenuity” several seconds before SHE does! Autocorrect has gotten positively telepathic!

Ash’s PTSD flashbacks are a strobing intercut of being flayed alive & a questionable coitus scene cribbed from Species.

Having broken a Star Trek barrier earlier this season with an F bomb, we are treated to the first (official) on screen Star Trek gay male kiss for Stamets and Culber. Only twenty-five years too late to be ground-breaking anywhere else. Also Trek's first female nipples, maybe. It's yet another moment when NuKlingon prosthetics & jarring tone get in the way of any possible enjoyment. Without upcoming context, some even claim L'Rell is raping Ash, and they still might be right for all I know. Even IN context, grotesque is not a sufficient word.

At least the dudes kissing was pleasant!

Booby Trap

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Geordi strikes out on his date with Christi (a person) but finds smooches on the holodeck anyway. Who needs real girls? (Insert Valentine's Day joke here.)

Orelious IX (former planet, current rock garden) is the site of the final conflict between the Promellians and the Menthars. The Promellians built battle cruisers to stand the test of time, while the Menthars were known as the Fresh-Makers.

Picard used to build model airships in bottles as a boy. Riker, Worf, and Data have never heard of such a thing. O'Brien has. Or possibly he's a good suck-up. Or both.

Now Picard has a Promellian BattleCruiser of his very own. With realistic skeletons featuring 'died at their posts' action! It makes his history-loving heart go pitter-patter-clank. ('Cause it's a metal heart, you understand.)

Guinan tells hard-luck Geordi she's attracted to bald men, because a bald man was kind to her once when she was hurting. I wonder if his heart went pitter-patter-clank...?

Geordi must put aside his floundering love life and race against time to figure out how to get Enterprise free of a cunning and deadly trap. So of course, he falls in love with the voice, face, and journals of the engineering propulsion specialist who designed the ship's engines: Dr. Leah Brahms.

"I need to get inside there." Geordi muses. He means the dilithium reaction chamber. What were YOU thinking?

Possibly to make up for Christi, maybe even for Moriarty, the computer manifests the geek girl of Geordi's dreams. With a 9 percent margin of error, the hologram even simulates Brahms' personality.

Picard balks at Geordi's propulsion proposal to escape: turn control over to the computer. Picard used to imagine flying a single propellor airplane. "Now the machines are flying us."

In the end, they go the other way: less power, more Picard. The Captain coasts them to safety on a pair of thrusters and no prayer (heathens, remember).

Worf makes the ship in the bottle go ka-blooey. Waste not, want... never mind.

Hologram Leah is, to put it mildly, somewhat forward. "Every time you look at the ship, it's me. Everytime you touch it, it's me."(She may have attended the Minuet School of Accommodating Photon-Based Ladies.)

"Booby Trap" brings the fun with a good Geordi episode, good effects, and a noticeable soundtrack. It again raises the question (and not for the last time) how real is real? For my part? I'm glad I don't need a battery pack for my flesh wife.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Valentines Day.