The episode opens with an Establishing Shot of K'Teuvon Prime, the Cerritos in orbit. On the surface, the four ensigns are shepherded into an ominous, spike-ringed tower. They have no idea what they're doing there, but the spartan accommodations and the "door" made of jagged metal daggers has them convinced that they must be in prison. All they know for sure is that they saw the senior officers being led into another room. Mariner tries to reassure them, saying it's a pretty tame prison — by Klingon standards, at least — but at that moment the ground reveals itself to be a giant elevator, raising them up into an enormous amphitheater. The frightened ensigns stand under a floodlight, drums echoing on the bare stone walls, as they look up at a multitude of similarly spike-adorned humanoid silhouettes surrounding them. The only thing not occluded by shadow is the Cerritos bridge crew suspended in a beam of light off to one side.
The ensigns are convinced this must be some sort of trial, as one of the aliens, Clar, bangs a skull gavel and approaches them. Addressing the audience, he announces that these four Starfleet officers have been brought forth to testify about their commanding officers. About what, they have no idea. Clar calls first on Mariner, referencing her ship's recent encounter with the Clicket ship Tweerk, and demands that she give a recitation of that day's events.
Mariner begins her story, which starts with the four ensigns chatting while doing some off-hours work on the Sequoia. Tendi steps out for a break, only to rush back in, frantically telling them that the ship is at Red Alert! Impossible, says Rutherford. He tinkered with the repair bay's speakers to make alerts extra loud... or so he thought. They peek out into the hallway, see that Tendi was right, and all dash off in desperation to get to their stations. In the turbolift, Mariner tells Boimler to play it cool and pretend like nothing is out of the ordinary.
They arrive on the bridge to see the Captain beaming onto the bridge, presumably just returning from the Clicket ship the Cerritos is face-to-face with. She complains that she was attacked for the crime of expressing gratitude for the map of the Neutral Zone she received from them. Unable to smooth things over with their captain, Freeman solicits Boimler for suggestions. Unfortunately, Boimler has no idea what's going on.
Boimler: Uh, okay. We could do evasive maneuver... eighty-... eight?
(Beat)
T'Ana: Is he (bleep)ing serious?
Freeman: That was the wrong answer!
Mariner doesn't fare much better. When the Captain turns to her and tells her to send the Tweerk a "message", Mariner fires a warning shot across their ventral. That's definitely not what the Captain meant! Clar calls a halt to the story, incredulous that a Starfleet officer would be so ignorant of what was going on. He asks about the map, but Mariner doesn't remember anything about a map. In frustration, Clar orders that Mariner be dropped into the "Tank of Contempt". It has eels in it.
Boimler rushes to her defense, claiming he didn't see a map, either. This convinces Clar to put a hold on the eels... for now. But next, he calls on Rutherford to talk about a different event he was involved in.
Rutherford is doing some routine maintenance when Shaxs and Billups suddenly rush up to him. They ask him without preamble if his implant has Romulan flight manuals in it. He says it can, if he does an update, but he doesn't like to do that while he's awake. But the two insist, leaving Rutherford with no choice. He performs the update, but before the senior officers can fill him in on whatever has them in such a rush, the update procedure causes him to lose consciousness.
When Rutherford wakes up, he realizes he's lost some time. A lot of time, actually. He, Shaxs, and Billups are on a Vulcan shuttle, heading into a planetary atmosphere, wearing Vulcan robes they liberated from the unconscious crew. It seems when his implant was rebooting, it took control of his body and allowed him to do some pretty impressive feats, to hear Shaxs tell it... but he also has no memory of what happened. He tries to explain this, but the burly officer just says something about a museum and pushes him out of the shuttle with a parachute towards the planet below. His implant reboots again...
This time, Rutherford wakes to find himself inside a spaceship museum, standing beneath an antiquated Romulan Bird of Prey on exhibit. Shaxs, climbing one of the supporting struts, is whispering at him to do a fan dance to distract the guard who has just noticed him. In total confusion, Rutherford does his best, awkwardly shuffling his feet. It doesn't work, and the guard levels his weapon just as the implant reboots yet again.
Now Rutherford is in space, standing on what turns out to be the cloaked Bird of Prey they have apparently just hijacked. Billups is nearby, critically low on oxygen. Rutherford grabs him and carries him over to the nearby shuttle where Shaxs is beckoning him. Despite a few clumsy collisions on the ship's invisible geometry, they make in aboard, Rutherford sending the ship into warp when he passes out on the console.
Rutherford awakens on a rocky planet next to the crashed shuttle. Before him is a wedding party... of Gorn. They suddenly notice him (having somehow missed the giant shuttle crash) and attack! Rutherford laughs, expecting his implant to take care of them as it prepares one final reboot... except this time he regains consciousness almost immediately, still being chewed on by several sets of Gorn teeth.
Clar has had enough of this wild tangent and demands more details about the important parts, but Rutherford doesn't know what else he can say. So Clar sends him to join Mariner above the eel tank. Now Tendi steps forward in hopes of placating their increasingly frustrated interrogator. She's happy to tell her story regarding the Bird of Prey, but says she'll have to omit certain details for security reasons.
It started when Tendi was assigned to clean the senior officer's conference room. Mariner, in her bunk, can't understand how she is so excited about such a trivial task (though she privately grumbles to herself that she never gets to clean the conference room). Tendi gets to work, enjoying the prestige of being so close to where the big command decisions get made, when Ransom enters with three anonymous men in black tactical gear. He assumes Tendi is "The Cleaner", which Tendi acknowledges, neither of them realizing that she means the cleaner for the conference room and he means the cleaner for their covert operation.
By the time Tendi realizes she's not the person they were looking for, she's in too deep. The team uses the stolen Bird of Prey to make their way through the Neutral Zone and onto the surface of Romulus itself. The black-clad commandos penetrate into a secure building, leaving Tendi to guard their escape route. When they return a moment later, the doors open to a flurry of disruptor fire. Two of the operatives emerge with the package they were sent to find, the third being helped by Ransom as they flee their pursuers. The Commander tells Tendi to do her thing, but she has no idea what "thing" she's supposed to do! In a panic, she engages the charging Romulans in hand-to-hand combat, deftly disarming them with a barrage of martial arts.
Ransom: She was. I do not know what's going on here. This is crazy.
The team successfully exfiltrates back to the Cerritos, the package intact. Ransom congratulates them all, and especially Tendi, on a job well done. Then Tendi gets back to lint-rolling the conference room like nothing ever happened.
Clar is furious. He doesn't believe such an outrageous story for a second. He sends Tendi up to join Rutherford and Mariner, and they are all dropped into the eel tank. He demands that they tell the important details of the story that he's been trying to get: what was in the package and what was the role of the bridge crew. Boimler finally steps forward and tells Clar that they can't give him the answers he wants, because they don't know them! They're just the lower decks. Their job is to follow orders. No one bothers to keep them in the loop.
Clar refuses to accept his answer. They're Starfleet, he yells. They're supposed to be the best, always in full control of the situation. But Boimler insists they're not. Not even the senior officers. Like the time when Q stopped by for one of his trickster games, or when Ransom's Girl of the Week turned out to be an M-113 creature, or when T'Ana thought she was in a parallel universe because no one recognized her, only to realize that she had boarded the wrong California.
Clar's anger has turned to pleading. He doesn't understand why the ensigns won't just tell him how awesome their commanding officers are, but Boimler continues on in their defense. He goes on a speech about how they're all explorers who prefer dive into the unknown, and sometimes things get messy and confusing. Boimler concludes that, whatever crime they think their commanders are guilty of, there's no evidence that they behaved with malice or negligence, and that this whole trial is a mockery of justice for trying to prove otherwise.
Boimler: Uh... yes?
Clar: Could someone bring up the lights?
The shadows disappear to reveal colorful balloons and banners. Clar explains that he was the package that everyone went through so much trouble to retrieve, after a year of being involuntarily detained by the Romulans, and wanted to throw a party in honor of the bridge crew. They weren't being asked to testify against their commanding officers, but for them. The beam they are suspended in is the Beam of Celebration. The amphitheater is a rented event silo. Clar is furious that his party is ruined, but how were the ensigns supposed to know they were misreading the Prime's cultural signals this whole time? An employee walks in to let them know they've used up their rental time. The Captain gently leads Mariner out of the room as she and Clar continue to yell over each other.
Back on the ship, Freeman addresses the four junior officers. Despite the mess they made of things, Freeman concedes that, under the circumstances they thought they were in, they showed commendable bravery in defending them and Starfleet. She resolves to make keeping the lower decks informed a higher priority from now on. But then they start barraging her with questions. How was Clar captured? Why didn't she speak up when they were about to be eaten by eels? Who were those commandos? Why couldn't they have just asked to borrow the Bird of Prey? The Captain then decides maybe giving them explanations isn't that important after all.
And you know what? The ensigns are OK with it. More knowledge just means more responsibility. They return to their lives, ignoring Q when he shows up, bored with Picard and looking for new toys to play with.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Tendi turns out to be a skilled enough martial artist to single-handedly wipe the floor with nearly a dozen armed Romulan guards.
- Acting Unnatural: Tendi suddenly becomes nervous and her eyes dart back and forth when Boimler asks about Clar focusing on certain parts of the story. This gets explained when Tendi testifies.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: When he wakes up on the outer hull of the Romulan Bird of Prey, Rutherford finds Billups delusional from nitrogen intoxication, with only a minute of air left in his tank.
- Apologetic Attacker: When Ransom's infiltration team subdues two Romulan Guards, Tendi apologizes to them as they do so. The rest of the team thinks that she's just "playing some real f-ed up mind games" with the Romulans.
- Bait-and-Switch: The entire episode is made out to be a trial of the senior officers, but it's actually a celebration party for them rescuing Clar.
- BFS: Clar has a sword on his back that reaches nearly to his feet.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Literally. Rutherford and Shaxs steal a TOS-era Romulan Bird of Prey from a Vulcan museum.
- Brutal Honesty: When Clar asks if Tendi is willing to risk death by eels if it means keeping her secrets, she bluntly answers yes. He allows her to continue.
- Calvinball: When Q puts Humanity on Trial, he kidnaps the bridge crew of the Cerritos, puts them in chess outfits, sends them to a chessboard with football goalposts, makes them face off against against animated playing cards wielding hockey sticks, and sends in a dancing and singing soccer ball.Captain Freeman: Well, he clearly wants us to play something.
- Cassandra Truth: Clar refuses to believe Tendi's story, especially the part about her taking down four Romulan guards hand-to-hand.
- Censor Box: Tendi uses these in her story to hide the eyes of everyone but herself and Ransom.
- Censored for Comedy: Along with the normal Sound Effect Bleeps for swear words, Tendi's In-Universe attempts to protect Starfleet's secrets are shown as randomly-placed redacted bleeps (i.e., Ransom saying "Neutral Zone" is spoken as "Neutral Zo-*bleep*-one") and all characters having their eyes covered with censor bars.Ransom: Let's f(swear word bleep) this (redacted information bleep) up!
- Continuity Cameo: Q briefly shows up twice in this episode. Once during a flashback where he put the Cerritos bridge crew into an even more convoluted Calvinball trickster game than usual, and once at the end when he harasses Mariner and Co. because he's grown bored of teasing Picard. (They aren't impressed by him.)
- Continuity Nod:
- Boimler brings up how Roga Danar outsmarted Picard in a discussion about who's the biggest badass. Mariner brings up Khan, referencing both "Space Seed" and his abs in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- Shaxs has Rutherford distract a guard with fan hands, like Uhura in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Rutherford is thankfully fully clothed.
- The shuttle that Shaxs, Rutherford, and Billups use is similar in design to the warp engine attachment on Spock's shuttle in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, except larger and with more detail.
- Ransom once unknowingly dated a salt vampire. He even mentions that they're thought to be extinct.
- Boimler's speech covers a laundry list of embarrassing incidents in Starfleet history:
- Picard's first meeting with the Borg.
- Giant Spock on Phylos.
- That ghost in the lamp thing from the Scottish planet that Dr. Crusher hooked up with.
- He caps off his Mic Drop by shouting "Drumhead!", referencing the TNG episode of the same name that had an Insane Admiral running a Kangaroo Court.
- When Billups is delirious with hypoxia, he mutters "Tasha, no! The garbage bag's behind you!"
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Literally when Q shows up in the final scene. Mariner's in no mood for this and flips the bird at Q while the Ensigns walk away.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Every time Rutherford downloads new updates for his cyborg implants, he has to "reboot" himself, causing him to lose consciousness. Sounds like pretty much any modern real-world tech product (smart phone, computer, game console, etc.).
- Failed a Spot Check: The Gorn wedding party that Rutherford encounters at the end of his story only notices him just as he's regaining consciousness. How they failed to notice his shuttle as it crash-landed into a smouldering wreck right behind them is left as an exercise for the viewer.
- Fantastic Racism: Tendi overhears some Romulan guards complaining about how much they hate Remans.
- Foreshadowing:
- Clar asks Mariner to describe the "wondrous" events that she was witness to, a bizarre characterization for someone supposedly putting the senior staff on trial. Similarly, towards the end, he pleads with Boimler to tell him the senior staff are "infallible heroes".
- Additionally, Mariner has an offhand comment about how the "prison cell" that she and the other lower deckers are shoved into is a lot better than what she's seen in Klingon prisons. It's not actually a prison cell— it's a waiting room.
- In previous episodes, Tendi has been depicted as a sweet and naive newcomer, so it's a bit surprising to see her casually beat up a bunch of armed Romulan guards here. The second season episode "We'll Always Have Tom Paris" eventually reveals that she has a dark and violent past she left behind when joining Starfleet.
- Funny Background Event: Mariner's story has a funny foreground event. During Freeman's conversation with the Clicket captain, Boimler and Mariner can be seen sneaking around the edges of the Bridge, trying to reach their stations without anyone noticing they were tardy.
- Gratuitous French: Q peppers his speech with French words, even though no French speakers are about in this episode. An exasperated Mariner even tells him to go find Picard (who is supposed to be French).
- Groin Attack: Billups and Shaxs warn Rutherford about getting Denobulan flesh-eating bacteria on his crotch, because it will eat right through his underpants.
- Humanity on Trial: Played for Laughs when Q kidnaps the bridge crew of the Cerritos, puts them in chess outfits, and pits them against playing cards with hockey sticks. Between football goalposts on a chessboard. With a dancing and singing soccer ball who spouts riddles.
- Hypocritical Humor: During the denouement, Freeman promises to keep the lower deckers better informed on the ship's business. She then claims that it's all classified and angrily dismisses them when they keep asking questions without giving her a chance to answer.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Freeman quietly escorts Mariner out when she's locked in a back-and-forth with Clar, knowing that it's better to cut her losses at this point.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Clar only had the venue reserved for 22 minutes.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Of the four, Tendi is the only one who has even the slightest idea what's going on, and that's only because Ransom presses her into the mission with no briefing when he confuses her for the "cleaner" on the team. She has no idea what the point is.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Boiler wonders why the crew of the Cerritos had to steal a Romulan Bird Of Prey and thought it would be a better job for the Enterprise.
- Mic Drop: Boimler does this with the bullhorn after his rant.
- Mistaken for Badass: When Tendi explains that she was just in the conference room as a cleaner, Ransom assumes that she's "the Cleaner", a stone-cold black ops agent.
- Mistaken for Imprisonment: Because of the harsh lighting and Clar's angry tone of voice, the main characters assume that they are being forced to testify against the command crew, who are being suspended motionless in the "beam of celebration."
- Mundane Made Awesome: During the "trial", Clar always emphasizes the last decimal of the stardate, complete with zoom and sudden shadows.
- Mythology Gag:
- The presentation of the "trial" strongly references the trial of Kirk and McCoy in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, with the placement of the hooded judge with his spark-flinging gavel, the darkened room with the focus characters rising into the chamber in a beam of light, and triangular lamps emitting the same color light as the Klingons' tridents, while Clar (voiced by Kurtwood Smith, who played the Federation President in said movie) bears a similar design and role in the proceedings as General Chang.
- Mariner claims that there's nothing to do on Earth except hang out at vineyards and soul food restaurants, referencing that the two most prominent Earth locations in the franchise other than Starfleet Command and the Academy seem to be Chateau Picard and Sisko's Creole Kitchen.
- Noodle Incident: Mariner offhandedly comments that she's been on the wrong side of a Klingon prison.
- No Kill like Overkill: The eel tank also has burners to boil the victims. Mariner complains that it's redundant. It also cooks the eels (much to Tendi's horror), defeating the point of having them.
- Not What It Looks Like: The entire "trial" was actually a party meant to memorialize the great deeds of the senior staff. Mariner immediately lampshades the problem when the truth is revealed.Mariner: You had our bosses suspended in this scary-ass beam!
Clar: That is the beam of celebration!
Rutherford: You raised us up on a platform into a creepy courtroom!
Clar: This is one of our nicest event silos! I got married here! - No Wrong Answers Except That One: Ensign Brad Boimler is put on the spot for options concerning a tense encounter between the USS Cerritos and the Clicket ship Tweerk, with Captain Freeman saying that there are no wrong answers. After failing to weasel out through ass-kissing, Boimler suggests Evasive Maneuver 88. Dr. T'Ana asks if he's serious and Freeman adds that that was the wrong answer. Boimler tries to pivot to Evasive Maneuver 84, which is also met with harsh criticism. He attempts to brush it off as a joke, suggesting the Cerritos use the impulse drive to Crazy Ivan. The bridge crew all yell in exasperation at him and Commander Ransom tells Boimler he's embarrassing himself.
- Not So Above It All: Mariner downplays cleaning the conference room to Tendi, then once she's out of earshot, grouses that she never gets that assignment.
- Oh, Crap!:
- After cheerily noting that his Cyborg implants give him an infallible memory, Rutherford immediately starts to panic after Clar asks him to recall a certain stardate... as in, the one stardate that he doesn't completely remember due to him having had to deal with multiple software updates that day.
- Poor Rutherford gets a long series of Oh Craps as his implant keeps rebooting him in the middle of increasingly dangerous situations, like skydiving into a Vulcan starship museum, or crashing a Gorn wedding.
- Overly Long Gag: The Andorian officer freaking out about the Romulan warbirds scanning them. Each time another warbird shows up, ending with four all surrounding their ship even though nothing happens.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- The ensigns believe that they are on trial for their lives and the lives of their senior officers. They eventually learn that they are actually at a party that is meant to celebrate Clar being rescued. The dark atmosphere of the situation and them almost being killed by eels several times didn't help, nor did the senior officers failing to explain anything to them beforehand.
- Tendi ended up on the mission after being asked if she’s "The Cleaner" (member of the black-ops squad) and she replied that she is (assigned to clean up the briefing room). Inverted in that, because she either didn't pay attention properly during the briefing or wasn't fully told what her job was for the black-ops mission, she didn't know what her "thing" was that she was supposed to do (beam up the team back to the ship) when ordered, and instead just beats the crap out of a group of rushing Romulan guards while the other members of the black-ops team look on with surprise and confusion. Basically a large number of Romulans either got severely injured and/or died because Tendi wasn't given the proper information!
- Pull the Thread: Boimler starts doing this after the misunderstanding is resolved. Freeman quickly says that everything is classified rather than trying to explain the absurd series of events.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Freeman doesn't blame the ensigns for taking the wrong idea from the "trial", since Freeman left them completely in the dark. She even decides to give them a commendation for being willing to stand up for Starfleet as they did.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: At the end, Q shows up to challenge the lower deckers to a duel of the mind, Mariner tries to brush him off and tells him to go bother Picard.Q: (petulantly) Oh, Picard, he's no fun! He's always quoting Shakespeare, he's always making wine.
- Skewed Priorities: Boimler complains that he has a pottery class at 0900 when he's shoved in a cell with his friends. Tendi is also more worried about how the burners below the eel tank will boil the poor eels, rather than how they will boil her and her friends.
- Shark Pool: Well, eel pool, but the Tank of Contempt fits the general idea.
- Shout-Out:
- While at the helm, Boimler suggests pulling a "Crazy Ivan" against a Clicket ship.
- Thanks to the wonders of animation, Q’s actions in the flashback and his later pestering of the ensigns lean heavily with John De Lancie’s other trickster god role.
- Similar Squad: T'Ana at some point wound up on the U.S.S. Alhambra instead of the Cerritos, where the crew all look the same except the captain is a man, Shaxs is a Kaelon woman, and Ransom, Boimler, and Mariner are aliens. As T'Ana realizes her mistake and leaves, a doctor who looks like Billups but is voiced by T'Ana's VA comes out of the turbolift.
- Sound-Effect Bleep: In-universe, Tendi uses this to obscure any details that she doesn't want to mention. Actual profanity uses the standard beep, while Tendi's beeps are Star Trek-style console negatory-response beeps.
- Stating the Simple Solution:
- After the confusion is resolved, Boimler asks why they went to the trouble of stealing the Romulan Bird of Prey when the Vulcans would probably have let them borrow it if asked.
- Later when Dr. T'Ana comes up to the bridge, panicking and claiming that everyone in sickbay has been replaced by imposters who claim that they don't know her and that they might be trapped in a parallel dimension, the captain of the ship sets T'Ana straight pretty quickly!T'Ana: Uh... wait, is this... is this not the Cerritos?
Captain: This is the Alhambra, did you get on the wrong ship?!
T'Ana: ...F*ck! They all look the same!
- Take That, Audience!: At the end of the trial, Clar repeatedly insists that all Starfleet officers are flawless, a view that many long-time fans have held. Boimler (and the show as a whole) challenges that notion, but also explains why not being flawless is fine, too.
- Tempting Fate:
- Mariner assures her friends that the cell is nothing compared to Klingon treatment of their prisoners, (and she would know). She can't even finish the thought before the floor starts rising.
- When Rutherford's bouts of unconsciousness land him at a Gorn wedding and they begin to maul him, his implant starts to reboot and he brags that he'll escape somehow. He wakes up five seconds later still being mauled.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Mariner and the rest of the lower deckers are so exhausted by the day's shenanigans that they completely refuse to indulge Q's mindgames when he appears at the end of the episode.Q: HA HA! I challenge you all to a duel! Pick your weapons! I pick THE MIND!
Mariner: Get out of here, Q! No! We're done with random stuff today! We're not dealing with any of your Q bulls***! - What Did I Do Last Night?: After updating his implant without going to sleep, Rutherford keeps blacking out as it reboots and controls him in the interim. This results in him bouncing between locations during his few minutes of consciousness, wondering what's going on.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- In-Universe, Clar insists on more information about details that the lower deckers didn't focus on, such as the map of the Neutral Zone or the package from Tendi's secret mission.
- Out of universe, we never do learn how Rutherford got to the Gorn wedding, nor how he managed to escape.
- We never find out what happened to the actual "cleaner" that was supposed to join Ransom's infiltration team, and whose place Tendi inadvertently took.
