Sometimes the best way to commentate on human society is to put it through a mirror and pretend it's an alien society instead.
I'm not sure what the show is saying with Beata's apparent happiness with her delay of Angel One's "evolution" though. To put what's happening there into a human historical context, she's effectively exiled the suffragettes of our past to minimize their impact on public opinion. Of course, the men of that period in our history would have been equally smug at managing to suppress the voices of women demanding equal rights, but I'm not sure the tone of this episode quite works. It comes across as kind of saying "this is an OK solution"—which I would expect is not what the writers intended.
Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, the drama over a mysterious virus that spreads at an alarming speed clearly arose out of the need to effectively imprison the away team and Odin survivors on the planet, so they couldn't simply beam away before Beata's execution order was, well, executed. It was meant to force Riker into giving that very Picard-esque speech, and it did. It just did so in a very transparently plot device–like way, unfortunately.
I do think the subject matter this episode tried to tackle was important. It still is. The execution (sorry, these puns just write themselves!) left me wanting, though.
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2018-10-05T05:54:58Z
Sometimes the best way to commentate on human society is to put it through a mirror and pretend it's an alien society instead.
I'm not sure what the show is saying with Beata's apparent happiness with her delay of Angel One's "evolution" though. To put what's happening there into a human historical context, she's effectively exiled the suffragettes of our past to minimize their impact on public opinion. Of course, the men of that period in our history would have been equally smug at managing to suppress the voices of women demanding equal rights, but I'm not sure the tone of this episode quite works. It comes across as kind of saying "this is an OK solution"—which I would expect is not what the writers intended.
Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, the drama over a mysterious virus that spreads at an alarming speed clearly arose out of the need to effectively imprison the away team and Odin survivors on the planet, so they couldn't simply beam away before Beata's execution order was, well, executed. It was meant to force Riker into giving that very Picard-esque speech, and it did. It just did so in a very transparently plot device–like way, unfortunately.
I do think the subject matter this episode tried to tackle was important. It still is. The execution (sorry, these puns just write themselves!) left me wanting, though.