There's a LOT about this episode that simply does not work for me and just downright bothers me.
First, Tarima getting transferred out of the War College makes no sense. And without consulting her and asking if this is something she even wants to do. They do it for her 'safety', but they have forgotten that once they graduate, it doesn't matter if they are in medical, engineering, science, etc... battles and situations where potentially using her abilities will be necessary can and do happen. If they were really serious about this being an endangerment to her life, they would have simply taken her out of the War College and Academy entirely. (For a real world comparison: in basketball, Chris Bosh from the Miami Heat was taken out from regular playing permanently due to a blood clotting condition that was considered life threatening.)
Second, Ake had no business calling in a shrink session for the cadets. They were not doing anything dangerous or harmful to themselves or each other. They simply weren't working as a team as well as they used to. While there IS precedent for a commanding officer to force shrink sessions to a member of their crew, like in "HARD TIME" when Sisko relieved O'Brien of duty and ordered him to attend daily shrink sessions as long as the shrink thought was needed, that was only done because O'Brien had nearly broken Quark's wrist in public and was very aggressive with and threatened Bashir. He was shown to be a potential danger to others and himself. There certainly wasn't enough reason to mandate a shrink session for these cadets. Ake overstepped her bounds here.
Third, Tilly... I find her annoying most of the time. She had her moments in DISCO, mostly near the beginning of the series, but she got more annoying as the series progressed. And Tilly was at her MOST annoying in this episode. She was also rather out of character. It was definitely out of nowhere that she has this huge love of theater, when there was not a single mention of it in DISCO (as far as I recall). Now, maybe she gained a love of it after she left Discovery. But this just seemed to come out of left field.
Speaking of her use of theater: I have never heard of OUR TOWN nor have any idea whatsoever about it. Frankly, the episode wasn't interesting enough for me to bother looking up the play to see the connections. Using that play felt more like the writers were writing entrely for their fellow writers and actors rather than for the audience. It seemed more like trying to self-congratulate themselves that they were adding something in that holds more meaning to them rather than try to actually write a story with any meaning or depth.
I'm also irritated at Tilly for trying to force these cadets to have this shrink session and talk about their trauma out loud in a group. She had no right to be doing that, and I'm glad Tarima called her out on that. (I do wish that Tarima stuck to her guns at the end instead of acquiescing to this stunt.) Tilly was getting more and more pushy and sassy, and honestly she was not really acting like Tilly at all. She was acting like Burnham: "I know best. I'll talk through you. I don't care what you think. If you don't like it, tough." That level of arrogance and condescension REALLY grates me, and it's one of the multitude of things that bothered me about Burnham, and why she is THE weakest captain in the franchise.
It's also very insulting to think that saying people's trauma out loud works for everyone. It's arrogant and condescending... VERY typical mentality and behavior of shrinks. It's one of the reasons why I don't respect the people in that field.
Tarima was really annoying here. She's obviously mad at being taken out of the War College, but her blaming all the other cadets that they 'look at her like a grenade' is just her projecting. Because we don't really see that with the other cadets. Until she really knows what she wants, she is going to act like a toxic and annoying person. Caleb would do well to just end it with her.
Speaking of Caleb, I am actually surprised he has been less annoying these last two episodes. In fact, Genesis and Tarima BOTH have improved his character and made him look better... last week when he was trying to talk Genesis out of turning on the engines and tried to take the blame entirely for breaking into the bridge, and here with a drunk Tarima, he didn't take advantage of her and did not fire back at her when she was trying to be hurtful to him.
This episode and last week REALLY should have been switched. It would have made better story sense for them to be working on their trauma and issues at that point, especially since a good deal of time has gone by in-universe in both episodes. Except for the quick scene of Tarima getting jealous of Genesis being Caleb's friend, it would have fit in perfectly and MIGHT have improved the episode slightly.
And it seems as though there are less and less cadets in the background with each passing episode. Dropouts? Couldn't cut it and were given the axe? I don't get the sense of this being a large enough group of people to be called 'Starfleet Academy'. There are fewer background people in this show than in any other series previously. Hell, there were more background cadets in TNG's "The First Duty" than we see now here. It may seem like a small detail, but it can help keep the believability factor of that universe intact. (For example, DS9: in season 1, there was a relatively small amount of background humans and aliens. As each season went by and the importance of the station itself grew, so did the amount of background people. That was one of the reasons why DS9 felt like such a real, lived-in world.)
Sam: honestly, I find her to be pretty annoying throughout the series, with the exception of the scenes in episode 5 where she was wondering about her role as an emissary and looking up Sisko. And I do think her scenes in the shuttle talking about the things she wants to experience and right before the Makers started analyzing her were good.
(By the way, that was a pretty quick shuttle trip from Earth to Kasq in the Delta Quadrant. We really need a better look at the 32nd century overall if this show is going to hold any interest for me.)
The VOY references were nice: "BLINK OF AN EYE" is one of THE classic episodes in the franchise. The solution to fixing Sam reminded me of how The Doctor was fixed in "THE SWARM" when the EMH diagnostic program was grafted onto him... essentially TWO sets of lives and memories being merged into one. And "REAL LIFE" was finally given a second shout past its original run.
While I do love Picardo and thought he nailed his scenes very well, I find it hard to believe that what happened in that episode is what stopped him from making connections with other people. Particularly since during VOY's run, he was making those connections and relationships with no problem at all. This felt like the writers just picked the episode without understanding that it was never talked about again, lifting off of the hard work that was done before, and patted themselves on the back for their 'ingenuity', instead of doing the actual work of building a reason for why The Doctor has closed himself off. Considering how many centuries he has been active since then, there is a GOLDMINE of possibilities to explore. Instead, they used the cheap shortcut. And in doing so, shrunk the universe instead of expanding it. AGAIN! (This has been a problem with the Kurtzman era in general.)
The episode just FELT like it was dragging along... I was checking the remaining time while watching, which is NEVER a good sign. The Doctor's scenes were the only things I actually liked about the episode, and it got a point for just that. Which gives this episode a grand total of 1.5... however, since the site does not have half points, this rounds up, unfortunately, to a 2. This episode just actively did so much more that I dislike in general and specifically, that I think this was even worse than "Vitus Reflux", which was the low point of the series.
