I like this episode as a whole thanks to the character moments, the unexpected twist at the end, and the visual quality. I also don't mind (even expect) "creative" science like the planetoid being made of weird rock or whatever, but the whole dangerous incident is a series of nonsense.
Of all times the solar flare occurs during the mission, of all times it hits the planetoid NOW.
Several maps of the star system are shown. Even if the star were smaller than Earth's Sun, like a K type (orange dwarf which the colour on the map may imply) or a red dwarf, the planetoid would still be millions of kilometres away which should give the the Archimedes plenty of time to get out of the way before the cloud of debris is formed in the first place, they got FTL sensors after all.
The Cerritos cannot go around the cloud, the show is like "because reasons, get off our backs", however, what about the other Starfleet vessels that reach the planet after the catastrophe gets averted? They retain their outer hulls, so have they somehow cleared the debris field? Found another technobabble solution?
Some minor observations:
Wouldn't Rutherford's memory capacity be ridiculously low if some copies of some moments took too much of the storage? He could also use an external device I guess.
Gomez intentionally approaches Lapeeria slowly in order to give the indigenous people time to scan the ship. When it is about to crash into the world and enters the atmosphere, you can see that the Lapeerians apparently have no idea what is going on, so it seems they have not bothered to conduct a scan.
There is a chance people can survive the crash in the back of the ship (Starfleet vessels are tough), so what is the point of staying on the bridge?
so Gomez probably outranks Geordi now. That’s kinda funny…and sad.
No, it's not, not at all. Unlike Laforge, Gomez has chosen the command path, chief engineers do not need to be captain.
Troi asks Crusher why she had become a commander towards the end of TNG:
TROI: May I ask you a personal question? Why did you decide to become a Commander? I mean, you didn't need the rank in order to be Chief Medical Officer, so why put yourself through all the extra work?
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/268.htm
Has this thread raised/discussed why that big cloud of rocks following the Archimedes didn't smash into the planet? Did the episode cover this?
Billups says, "that debris is caught in the orbit".