Before we get into this review I want to start by saying fuck anybody who thinks technology has made lives worse. Farmers toiled from sun up to sundown without hope of improving their lives or of not just dying to some random disease for millennia before the modern era. This is the story of a cult of personality based around a religious hatred of technology and unlike so many anti-tech episodes I think those one is actually pretty good. It certainly did a good job of making me hate the evil cult leader Alixus for her torture of her followers and denial of modern medical treatment. The ambiguous ending was a bit annoying but presumably she will be brought to trial and at least the children will be given to option to lead better lives.
The episode opens with Miles and Ben out looking for potential sites to colonize. They find an M Class planet that seems to have human life. When they beam down they find their technology not working due to some technobabble energy field and are held at bow point by two men. They get taken to the colony and find out that it is the remains of the crew of a starfleet vessel that "crashed" here ten years earlier. They are led by the charismatic and totally evil Alixus who would rather they die than use technology of any kind. Sisko and O'Brien don't fit in since they are determined to get back to their lives and are punished severely for it. Kira and Dax eventually realize they are missing and head out looking for them but discover that the runabout that had been missing is travelling at high warp. They manage to track it down and discover someone beamed on board, erased the logs and aimed it at a star but was bad at their job and missed. They start backtracking to the point of origin. In the colony Alixus as started torturing Sisko for refusing to conform and O'Brien manages to track down the source of the energy field and turn it off. Eventually Kira and Dax find them and they bring Alixus back to stand trial.
Review: I am still pretty sick myself so it is a bit of a short summary, but I think it does the episode justice. Along with Kai Winn Alixus is the most evil character so far revealed on the series and it is nice to see not every writer has an anti technology fetish.
4 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment