Directed by Richard Compton
Written by Darcy Meyers
After witnessing an accident in a night landing aboard the USS Seahawk in which a man dies, Lt. Loren Singer (Nanci Chambers) recommends criminal charges for the landing signal officer (LSO), the LSO's assistant, the air boss, the arresting gear department chief, etc.
Captain Johnson (Scott Paulin) accuses Singer of conduct unbecoming as she shows signs of pregnancy. However, no one can be sure whether she got pregnant aboard the Seahawk or while on leave, because she's three months along now, and she's been aboard the Seahawk for about that long. Admiral Chegwidden sends Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie to the Seahawk with the directive to discreetly investigate Singer.
There's the suspicion that Johnson wants charges against Singer in retaliation for her recommendations, which could theoretically cripple the already understaffed ship by tying up the crew in court-martials.
Commander Rabb also goes to the carrier, officially for the purpose of reviewing Singer's recommendations, but unofficially he is also interested in Singer's baby, believing his Russian half-brother Sergei Zhukov to be the father.
Rabb calls Lt. Commander Manetti (Tamlyn Tomita) back at JAG headquarters and asks her to do an unofficial investigation but doesn't mention his half-brother. Manetti finds that before going to the Seahawk, Singer spent a happy evening with a "sandy-haired fellow" at Benzinger's. Rabb assumes the fellow to be Sergei.
Mac can't find evidence of any man aboard who spent any time alone with Singer in a social context. According to her legalman, Petty Officer Coates (Zoe McLellan), Singer was all business and no pleasure. It would have been difficult for a man to sneak into the women officers' quarters; that's a possibility Mac doesn't seem to consider, perhaps because it's a little farfetched.
Except for Singer, the witnesses to the mishap don't really want to talk to Rabb. One of them says he's protecting those Singer hasn't charged yet. Rabb keeps at it, and eventually the LSO takes responsibility.
But the air boss, Commander Cooper (Brixton Karnes), doesn't want a junior officer falling on his sword, so he takes responsibility. Captain Johnson feels likewise, so he will request early retirement, and tonight he'll get in a plane "to make one last trap" before leaving the Navy. Rabb urges Johnson to reconsider.
After interviewing all the witnesses, including Singer, Rabb recommends canceling all of Singer's recommendations. Although the whole crew are culpable, individually each man made only a small mistake, and most of the equipment was operating within standard parameters. Johnson says maybe he won't retire just yet.
Even though Mac can't find any evidence to support the conduct unbecoming charge against Singer, Johnson nevertheless wants Singer off the ship. Mac will stay aboard the Seahawk to take Singer's place for the time being.
Rabb and Singer take a cargo onboard delivery plane to return to the United States. Rabb urges Singer to tell Sergei. But Singer doesn't consider it any of Sergei's business, or Rabb's for that matter. If she had deployed just a week later, she would have found out she was pregnant on dry land and she would have gotten an abortion.
Maybe Sergei isn't the father of Singer's baby. But who is? For now that remains a mystery; it will get dragged out over the next few episodes, and almost into NCIS.
Meanwhile, Lt. Sims (Karri Turner) is worried that her husband, Lt. Roberts, is pushing himself too hard, standing on his good leg and his prosthetic for much too long. He could suffer a setback, she worries.
Prof. Cavanaugh (Isabella Hofmann) sends Lt. Roberts a bunch of books by William Shakespeare, which she thinks will oblige Roberts to sit down. Chegwidden doesn't think Roberts likes Shakespeare. Cavanaugh partly agrees with that assessment, but she thinks it's because Roberts hasn't been exposed to Shakespeare.
Turns out Roberts already knows Shakespeare, and he can even connect some of the plays (or maybe all of them) to specific ''Star Trek'' episodes. For example,
- Macbeth inspired "Dagger of the Mind",
- The Tempest inspired "Requiem for Methuselah", and
- Hamlet inspired "Conscience of the King" (Roberts describes the episode as "the one where Captain Kirk is the prince and Kodos plays Claudius").
Roberts tells Cavanaugh that he's working on a Shakespearean Star Trek fanfic.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Cars, maybe: How did Roberts get to Cavanaugh's classroom to return the books? We don't see his wife with him, and she probably would've insisted on carrying the books for him. Or maybe he took public transportation, or asked Tiner to send the duty driver, though it's possible the writer thought Roberts would just drive his car. But, since he lost his right leg, he might not be able to use the car's right foot pedal. Maybe he could have driven himself without any vehicle modifications, since the car probably already had power brakes and an automatic transmission. Or maybe there was a modification but it was not shown onscreen or mentioned in dialogue. Either way, it seems unlikely the writer gave this much thought.
- Continuity Nod to "Family Business", in which Singer drove Sergei to the airport.
- Doorstopper: Each Shakespeare play is a thick book about the size of two Bibles. Surely Roberts will have to sit down to read them. In real life, each Shakespeare play fits neatly in a pocket paperback book. The Riverside Shakespeare runs almost 5,000 pages and definitely qualifies as a door stopper, but it includes all of Shakespeare's plays, his sonnets, two plays attributed to him, commentaries by modern scholars, photos from recent productions and a glossary. Maybe the books Cavanaugh sends Roberts have very large print, or maybe they include extensive performance history and scholarly commentary. In the latter case, Shakespeare's actual words would be a small fraction of the total page count.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: A "good girl" like Sims certainly would not get an abortion (though she had miscarried prior to her marriage). Singer is of course not presented on this show as a good girl. She refers to abortion as casually as one would a dental cleaning.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Singer got pregnant this way. The question is, whether this happened aboard ship or before she deployed.
- Permission to Speak Freely: Coates says "All work and no play makes [Lt.] Loren [Singer] a very dull girl."
- The Scapegoat: Singer blames damn near everyone involved in the botched night trap, from the air boss, to the Landing Signal Officer to the entire arresting gear crew.
- Shout-Out to Star Trek: Chegwidden says that "Bud likes comic books and Star Trek," as if to say he can't also like Shakespeare. Cavanaugh also assumes Roberts doesn't know much about Shakespeare. But in fact he does, and he's inspired to write a Star Trek fanfic titled "Picard III" based on Richard III.
- TV Telephone Etiquette: At the end of her first phone conversation with Rabb in this episode, Manetti says "Aye, aye, sir, I'll let you know what I dig up." She hangs up without giving him a chance to say "Thanks" or "Bye." Their second phone conversation is not shown in full, so this trope doesn't apply to that one.
