this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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I thought that the way they came to understanding what was going on was a little rushed and a bit too speculative, not being based on actual evidence and it was just convenient that they happened to be right that Batel was the Beholder. That entire bit of exposition sounded like it was out of Doctor Who rather than Star Trek: rapid fire vaguely plausible assertions that you just gloss over to get along with the plot and treating concepts like evil not as abstract but actual entities. There was none of the tension of putting things together from actual clues.
Are we meant to believe then that there is a degree of time travel or simultaneity going on? Because aside from the glib “effect before cause” thing which is the equivalent of “shut up, just run with it”, how precisely does Batel become the Beholder? How does three sets of DNA in her - Gorn, Human and Illyrian - translate to having all the abilities of all races that have faced evil?
It would have made more sense to have her go back in time after defeating Gamble (which is what I was expecting) or to say that the prison existed in non-linear time or something. As it is, it’s left pretty much up in the air and we are asked to accept it.
Are we also meant to believe that she was the one who left the messages for M’Benga and La’An, and why leave them in Swahili and Chinese respectively? Why not just put them in English? And how did Batel learn those langauges?
There were good bits, and heartfelt bits, but mostly it was kind of meh for me as finales go.
I wanted to sleep on this one too see if there would be anything I would appreciate after some reflection, but...no, not really.
I think this is a big part of what didn't work for me. They really wanted to get to the fireworks factory, and sidestepped most of the interesting potential in order to get there.
The extended fantasy/hallucination was the strongest part of the episode, but...it seemed to be entirely about Pike. Did Batel even experience it? The episode seemed completely uninterested in what she might be going through as she prepared to sacrifice herself.
And the conflict itself suffers from the "pah wraith problem" - I'm fine with the idea of a conflict between primordial good and evil...but it's hard to make it interesting. All you can really do is focus on how it affects the people involved, and they were only semi-successful at that.
I keep finding questions coming up in my head. Why would her chimerical DNA make Batel and the Vezda recognize and attack each other? Is it some kind of genetic memory, in which case any race that had encountered the Vezda would have the same reaction, and does that mean a Gorn or an Illyrian would have the same reaction? Or is it only a combo thing?
I was expecting, given what happened in “Through the Lens of Time”, that it was actually the Gorn part of her that reacted. And that could have led into a revelation that the Gorn were created or designated as Vezda killers, a predator species to rid the galaxy of them. Which would then explain why they turned their predator instincts on the rest of the galaxy once the Vezda were apparently gotten rid of for good.
Or, the ancient race that imprisoned the Vezda created this telepathic alphabet that would send a message to the descendants of the people who helped them the first time around - so M’Benga and Uhura would read the messages as Swahili, La’An in Mandarin (which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese), maybe Scotty would read it as Gaelic, who knows? That would certainly make more sense than the random inscriptions somehow being related to M’Benga for whatever reason.
Or Batel would actually travel back in time to be the Beholder and we see her setting up the messages in a sort of bootstrap paradox - the messages were there because they were always meant to be there. A bootstrap paradox is hinted at in Batel’s dialogue but never quite explicated.
I don’t know. The more I think about the flaws in the plot the more I think it could all have been fixed with a little bit of thought and effort.
You are thinking it over way more than the writers did. This hole-ridden plot is just there to justify the action scenes. But I think it's implied that Batel left the messages. Why were they vague and in those other languages? Just because!!
That seemed to be the implication. In which case, I think it might have been better to have Batel get more fully "possessed," and take the angle that she knows exactly what's going on, and what needs to be done. It would take her agency out of the episode, but...the episode didn't really give her any agency as it is.
That bit right there is like a glob of glue along the seam where this Beholder plot was glued to the gorn cliffhanger.
Is any of this Beholder stuff foreshadowed before Batel fights Gamble the first time? I try to be a careful watcher, but it came outta left field for me.
Wish they would have leaned harder into reimagining Inner Light and less into boring chosen-one-stuff.