The Cerritos arrives on Corazonia, an inhabited Ringworld Planet whose guiding AI, 343 Guilty Spark — err, sorry, Vexilon — is having some problems. Captain Freeman coordinates the repairs, with Boimler leading his first away mission in support. Meanwhile, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford have to deal with a possible hazing ritual from a full lieutenant.
Tropes Featured in this Episode:
- Afterlife Antechamber: After Boimler dies in the explosion, he suddenly appears in a purple room with a zigzagging floor design which contains a purple sofa chair, a purple door, a lamp, a table with a bowl on it, and a window where the Black Mountain can be seen outside. After Boimler looks out the window at the Black Mountain, the Cosmic Koala appears sitting on the purple sofa chair and tells Boimler it's not his time yet in Sdrawkcab Speech, and then Boimler suddenly wakes back up in the world of the living.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted; despite the possibility of things going south and Vexilon going rogue, it actually doesn't. Most of the problems in this episode are because of poor maintenance, since its systems haven't been updated in six million years. Even Freeman tampering with the systems doesn't create a rogue AI; it just activates the automated maintenance systems and a factory reset of sorts for Vexilon, and getting them back online and updated is the solution.
- Apologizes a Lot: Good grief, does Vexilon apologize. To be fair, he hates that his charges are being inconvenienced by his problems and only wants the best for them.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Vexilon mentions that his original creators evolved into fifth-dimensional energy beings six million years earlier.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Both Rutherford and Mariner push back on the idea that they're being hazed. Rutherford is glad that Mariner believes in the integrity of other Starfleet officers as much as he does, but she corrects him by saying they wouldn't be cool enough to think up something like this.
- Benevolent A.I.: Despite past experience with evil A.I.s for Starfleet, Vexilon is nothing but kind and helpful to the inhabitants of the ringworld, apologizing profusely whenever he commits an error. Turns out the problem is due to poor systems maintenance.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: The Corazonians have huge eyebrows that extend well past their heads, regardless of gender.
- Call-Back: The Black Mountain appears after being mentioned by Shaxs in the second season, along with the cosmic koala.
- The Chains of Commanding: Boimler is given the task of aiding in the retrofitting of Vexilon with a group of Ensigns alongside T'Lyn. However, being that he just got promoted and he's now leading a group of people who are at his previous rank and they could die, he panics and tries to do everything himself.
- Continuity Nod: The Wadi and their Chula game first appeared in DS9's "Move Along Home".
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Lt. Dirk hadn't even been named before this episode. Here, he's sharing the B-plot with Tendi, Mariner and Rutherford.
- Also for Ensign Taylor, the Kzinti ensign, given how his name is actually spoken aloud for the first time. note
- Death Is Cheap: Boimler dies when he stays behind to shut down Vexilon's power relay and the building he's in blows up and his team is devastated by his death, but luckily he's brought back to life by Dr. T'Ana who's surprised that she's able to revive him.
- Faint in Shock: After being told his near/actual death experience is only the first of many that will probably be worse, Boimler faints. T'Ana thinks he died again and demands another 30 CCs of whatever revived him last time.
- Gaslighting: The lieutenant behind Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi's hazing, Lt. Dirk, tricks the trio by claiming he has PTSD after being stuck in the chula board game, thus why they have to check the isolinear chips and not him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Boimler stays behind to shut down the power relay, but it blows up in his face when he does. Thankfully, T'Ana revives him.
- Hidden Depths:
- Ransom apparently knows more about artwork than you'd think, given his criticism early in the episode.
- Despite Lt. Dirk's hazing of our heroes (complete with making up a false backstory), he genuinely appears to be a fan of jazz music. Mariner can't stand that she likes it, too.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: Mariner has to do a lengthy Walk and Talk with Dirk where she allows him to talk as much as he wants about "slop jazz" so that Rutherford can dismantle the prank, and she's obviously suffering through the whole conversation. (Apparently, the sound of spit moving through the instruments is part of the music.)
- Initiation Ceremony: Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi are tasked with finding a broken isolinear chip in a room full of them and replacing it by hand. Oh, and the room they're in has nitrogen coolant gas spray out every hour, Billups' pet ferret Lancelot is roaming around and likes to bite, and there's a second wall of chips behind the first. Tendi rightfully deduces they're being hazed, but Lt. Dirk is able to convince them otherwise.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Rutherford is trapped in the chula game along with the Betazoid Gift Box he was holding when they got zapped. The box, normally non-sapient aside from parroting conversations, starts encouraging him along. When he gets out, he has to deflect a shot from an alien probe like that from The Inner Light and uses the box. The box says it just had an entire simulated life in a second and misses his wife.
- Interface with a Familiar Face: A Betazoid gift box
is one of the items kept in storage with other anomalies on the Cerritos. - Know When to Fold Them: Freeman wisely calls in Billups when she realizes her college studies in Archaic Technology are woefully inadequate to fix Vexilon's degrading systems. Soon subverted when Billups proves less than helpful, and she resumes working.
- Mundane Fantastic: Giant-superstructure-running supercomputers like Vexilon need regular system updates to maintain program functionality just like any regular computer.
- Neglectful Precursors: Spoofed; the problems with Vexilon are because its creators neglected to perform a system update before they ascended to higher dimensions millions of years ago.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Boimler is handling being in charge of the away team rather well until T'Lynn points out that Lt. J. G. is the rank most likely to suffer casualties when leading an away team. This sends him into a spiraling freakout in hopes of protecting the Ensigns.
- Freeman decides to update Vexilon's operating system as it hasn't been done in millennia, only for errors and/or rash decisions to make things steadily worse.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: T'Lyn's eyes are wide open with shock when she and her team witness a building blowing up with Boimler still inside, instantly killing him, and watching his corpse land in front of them. While the other Ensigns are devastated by Boimler's death, T'Lyn composes herself and resumes her stoic personality.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Exaggerated to truly incredible extremes. Both Vexilon and Corazonia are still fully operational over six million years after their creators departed! To put this into perspective, the Mediterranean Basin is currently believed to have flooded 5.3 million years ago, and modern humans have only existed for 300,000 years. The worst that has happened is some lagging and other slight malfunctions.
- Restart the World: This happens quite literally. As they're attempting to reboot Vexilon, they accidentally trigger the factory settings and the ringworld maintenance system begins a world initialization program, threatening to wipe out the entire ecosystem as it is reset to the initial parameters.
- The Reveal: We get to see the afterlife that Shaxs and Stevens mentioned back in Seasons 2 and 3, complete with black mountain and the koala.
- Ringworld Planet: The setting of the episode is an ancient ringworld colonized by Federation citizens.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: The cosmic koala speaks this; when reversed, he says "It's not your time, Bradward Boimler."
- Shared Family Quirks: Captain Freeman rolls up her sleeves when she decides to work on Vexilon personally, just like Mariner's are all the time.
- Shout-Out:
- Corazonia highly resembles the iconic ringworlds from Halonote .
- Ensign Taylor's presence on the away mission may qualify as this; the character is a Kzinti, and his species were created for Larry Niven's Known Space universe, which included the novel Ringworld, which introduced the idea.
- Lancelot first appearing in the artifact room could be one to the pilot episode of Warehouse 13, where one artifact caused ferrets to keep showing up.
- The decor, floor pattern, and backwards-talking entity that Boimler sees in the “afterlife” are reminiscent of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks.
- When rebooting their terraforming protocols, Vexilon says they are "initiating fjords", calling to mind another famous piece of terraforming from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where one of the world builders says he is famous for his fjords and puts them in every planet he designs.
- The presence of NX-01 style generators is either one to Star Trek: Enterprise, or to Star Trek's occasional budget-related lack of creativity.
- Speedrun: When Rutherford is accidentally trapped in the Chula board game, he basically does this in order to get out quickly before Lt. Dirk finds out they set up a prank in his room.
- Tempting Fate: Subverted. When Freeman confidently announces in her log that Vexilon is a Benevolent A.I. with no interest in world domination, and the Corazonians agree that he definitely isn't trying to subjugate anyone, the viewer fully expects that he'll go off the deep end at some point and reveal himself to be yet another mad computer plotting to rule the universe. As it turns out, he really is as nice as everyone says, and while he does end up causing some serious problems, they're down to an honest malfunction triggered by Freeman's own attempts to fix him.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Big Merp collapses into one while crying when he and the others see Boimler's dead body after an explosion.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: When the Ensigns see Boimler's charred body after he is blown up, Taylor collapses and can be heard throwing up off-screen.
- Word-Salad Humor: The Betazoid gift box seems to have picked up half the crew's speech patterns, including T'Ana's, and, not unlike a parrot, repeats what it overhears without being able to understand what it's saying. The result is it periodically blurting out random phrases, ranging from out-of-context normal sentences to T'Ana-influenced strings of profanity to flat out gibberish.Gift Box: Eat a bag of Borg [BLEEP], mother[BLEEP]ers!
Tendi: I didn't know Doctor T'Ana came in here. - You Are Better Than You Think You Are: T'Lyn has to talk sense into a panicking Boimler, who is suffering from The Chains of Commanding, telling him that he deserves his promotion and he needs to trust in his team.
