This episode was kind of a snoozefest for me. It felt very Discovery-style: about 50 minutes of buildup for a five-minute resolution. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely felt like a filler episode.
That said, I did like the character of the Betazoid president’s daughter, and I got a chuckle out of the whole “Guardian of the Holy Mantle of Betazed” thing (or whatever his title was). I also liked the hint that she might be some kind of Tam Elbrun-type character.
What I don’t understand is why the Betazoids in this episode seem to be portrayed as empaths only. That’s especially strange with the (apparently) deaf-mute president, who needs an interpreter drone to speak and still uses sign language. On top of that, was that American Sign Language? If he’s signing, shouldn’t it be Betazoid sign language? And more importantly, why use sign language at all if you’re a species of telepaths? Sure, the president could be empath-only, but the whole thing made me scratch my head.
Because of that, the portrayal of the president felt awkward to me. His disability was emphasized so heavily that it ended up raising a lot of distracting questions. In real life, most people from marginalized groups don’t want to be singled out like that—usually the opposite—so the whole approach felt pretty strange.
I do kind of like the idea of Betazed becoming the new capital of the Federation. But again, for such a long buildup, everything was resolved so quickly that it almost veered into melodrama. And why are some of the Federation’s most important negotiations happening at Starfleet Academy instead of something like a proper Federation Council chamber?
So yeah—lots of questions. It was a decent episode, and I still like the show. But after that fantastic pilot, this one definitely felt like a bit of a snoozefest.
