Badgey returns to get revenge on Rutherford, while Tendi and Boimler are dispatched to the Daystrom Institute to deal with their past AI villains, Peanut Hamper and AGIMUS.
Tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Multi-fold, and basically a Central Theme of the episode.
- It's revealed that the Daystrom Institute "Evil AI" vault is actually a rehabilitation center, and AI who pass all the tests are able to move on to productive lives within the Federation.
- AGIMUS and Peanut Hamper conspire to get paroled in order to escape and subjugate a planet. But Peanut Hamper IS genuinely sorrowful over her past actions and returns to her home station to do work with her father. AGIMUS feels his purpose is meaningless without her, so he turns a new leaf as well so they can be together.
- Badgey has gone insane with rage and revenge, seeking to kill Rutherford and infect all of Starfleet. Rutherford takes responsibility for his actions and tries to get him to have a Heel–Face Turn, but ends up splitting fragments of himself trying to reconcile the contradictions in his programming. Badgey ends up downloading himself directly into subspace, but in the process becomes Above Good and Evil and Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence to find a universe he can create from the ground up.
- An Alien Named "Bob": The name of Peanut Hamper's father? Kevin.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Badgey is able to modulate the Drookmani weapons to pierce the Cerritos's shields, thanks to Rutherford's previous implant allowing him access to Starfleet systems.
- Artificial Family Member: Rutherford acknowledges that the problems with Badgey are partially because he didn't realize he was sentient and only treated him like a science project. He resolves to treat him like a son going forward and upholds this principle with Goodgey.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: After spreading himself through subspace to every vessel in the quadrant, Badgey achieves enlightenment and realizes his quest for revenge is pointless, instead choosing to join the cosmic koala and make a new universe.
- Bait-and-Switch: After the mysterious ship (seemingly) destroys a Bynar vessel, "Salvage Detected" boxes start popping up and it appears as if Badgey and the Drookmani are the culprits, only for Badgey to reveal they're just opportunistically salvaging the wreckage and are still flying the Drookmani ship.
- Becoming the Mask: Peanut Hamper and AGIMUS both planned to fake their rehabilitation to escape the Daystrom Institute and conquer a planet together. However, when Peanut Hamper was writing her fake redemption speech, she realized it wasn't fake and that she really did feel remorse for all of the people that she had hurt or betrayed and decides to abandon her plans with AGIMUS and genuinely seek to better herself. AGIMUS realizes that conquering is pointless if he can't do it with his best friend, so he also decides to change for the better.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Peanut Hamper is the only Exocomp who speaks English. The others communicate with Starfleet computer beeps (similar to Star Wars astromechs using Binary).
-
Blooper: While playing in the sand, Tendi is barefoot, and then in the very next shot when they decide to leave the planet, she's wearing her boots again. - Book Ends: Save for the Cold Open, the episode begins and ends with Rutherford testing out a grappler for their shuttle. In the beginning, he catches Tendi; in the end, he catches Boimler.
- Call-Back:
- Bynars make their first prominent appearance in the Star Trek franchise since the TNG episode "11001001".
- Tendi remains fascinated by sand, as she was on the Holodeck all the way back in “Second Contact”
- Badgey is still pissed at Rutherford for snapping his neck.
- Rutherford, trying to distract Badgey from attacking the Cerritos, asks if he'd like to burn Rutherford's heart with a fire, a callback both to their original confrontation with Badgey and the later one with Badgey's "brother", the Aledo AI.
- Peanut Hamper is found at the Tyrus VIIA mining station from "The Quality of Life", now seemingly staffed entirely by Exocomps.
- Badgey's ascension looks identical to O'Connor's (albeit significantly less painful), complete with Rutherford repeating Tendi's line "Good luck being everything!"
- Badgey assimilating lots and lots of data and "evolving" echoes the first Star Trek feature film: something created by humans has evolved and ascended because it assimilated lots and lots of data.
- The Cameo: Badgey is seen taking over the Vancouver, the Sh'Vhal, Douglas Station, Starbase 25, and Deep Space Nine.
- Cooldown Hug: Rutherford finally embraces Badgey as his son (literally), beginning the process of Badgey's Heel–Face Turn.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Badgey splits his good traits into a silver-colored double named Goodgey. Later he further splits off his logical traits into a bronze-colored double named Logic-y.
- Continuity Nod: Once more, Mariner and Boimler sing the praises of the grappler.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Rutherford leaves the ship to sacrifice himself to Badgey to save the Cerritos from his wrath, Mariner tags along with him, not wanting him to deal with this alone. Once they're beamed aboard the Drookmani's ship, Mariner regrets her decision to tag along when Rutherford reveals his only plan to stop Badgey was to let him kill him and she assumed he created a virus to stop him and she's unable to hurt Badgey since he can phase through her attacks.Mariner: Okay, maybe I should have stayed on the ship.
- Easily Conquered World: AGIMUS conquers a planet offscreen in a few hours. Boimler notes under his breath that Starfleet can reverse the damage just as quickly.
- Evil Laugh: The malevolent AIs can't help but do this even when in group therapy about processing their feelings.Lord Tyrannikillicus: I have conquered self-doubt and seized personal growth! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
- Face Plant: This is spoofed when AGIMUS, depressed about Peanut Hamper having gone missing, pushes himself out of his throne and lands on his "face", even though he's just a box.
- Falsely Reformed Villain: Peanut Hamper intends to fake having reformed at her parole hearing, and AGIMUS likewise plays at having reformed to convince Boimler he really wants to help with the mysterious ship, planning to hijack Boimler's shuttle and meet up with Peanut Hamper to conquer worlds together. AGIMUS succeeds in escaping, only for Peanut Hamper to miss their rendezvous. When he finally finds her, she reveals that she chose to actually change her ways, so AGIMUS decides to better himself.
- Giving Them the Strip: When Rutherford accidentally pins Tendi's arm to the wall, she easily wiggles out of her uniform top to get free. Sadly for Boimler, when he gets caught by the leg, he can't do the same.
- Good Colors, Evil Colors: AGIMUS invokes the trope by consciously changing the color of his red lights to blue to sell the idea he is now good. Peanut Hamper lampshades that she thought only good synthetics could have blue lights. After learning from Peanut Hamper that she wants to be good for real, AGIMUS changes his red light to blue again but this time it's for good since he wants to reform for real so he can continue to be with Peanut Hamper.
- Good Counterpart: Goodgey is the embodiment of all of Badgey's positive emotions, forced out by Badgey because he didn't want those emotions impeding his revenge. Rutherford decides to keep him around, which creeps out his friends. Logic-y is also a good counterpart in that he's not psychopathically omnicidal.
- Grand Theft Me: Logic-y attempts to reclaim Badgey's body to stop his mad scheme, but Badgey overcomes him, then proceeds to break his back, killing him.
- Grappling-Hook Gun: Rutherford has installed a Grappler on their little shuttle, but the aiming is still off.
- Just Friends: AGIMUS hastily states this is the case with himself and Peanut Hamper when her father, Kevin, inquires as to the nature of their relationship.
- Literal Split Personality: When Rutherford hugs Badgey in an attempt to calm him down, Badgey fights off his good emotions and splits them off into Goodgey, his Good Counterpart. Later on, when Rutherford uses logic to talk him out of killing everyone on the Cerritos, he repeats the process and splits his logic off into Logic-y.
- Love Redeems: AGIMUS no longer has any satisfaction in dominating worlds if he can't do it with Peanut Hamper, and decides to change for the better after learning she did so they can still be friends. He assures her father that his relationship with her is entirely platonic though.
- Mythology Gag:
- A very obscure one
(even by this show's standards!); some of the villainous computers at the Daystrom Institute are shown to be watching a show that resembles Lassie. An episode of the 70s animated series had recycled animation from another Filmation series, Lassie's Rescue Rangers, as library computer footage. - AGIMUS is able to produce multi-function drones. They are basically black versions of the attack drones featured in the TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom." Whether that means AGIMUS is related to them is uncertain.
- A very obscure one
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: One of the robots in therapy is named "Tyrannikillicus". Ironically, he genuinely wants to be redeemed and even asks AGIMUS if he can help.
- No-Sell: Mariner attempts to attack Badgey with a flying kick, but thanks to the various holo-emitters, he's able to evade the attack.
- The Only One: During the briefing, Mariner seems quite excited that Starfleet was actually asking the Cerritos to investigate the Bynar disappearance. Ransom points out that they were the only ship close enough to investigate, lampshading the habit of the Enterprise being the only ship in the system to investigate the plot of the day.
- Play-Along Prisoner: While Boimler and Tendi are taken captive by AGIMUS, Tendi tells Boimler she can easily get them out whenever he wants. Boimler says he knows, but he wants to play this out to see if he can get any useful information for Captain Freeman.
- Properly Paranoid: Boimler meets with AGIMUS knowing damn well that there's some kind of plot afoot. When AGIMUS then takes Boimler and Tendi captive, Boimler goes with it, figuring that Peanut Hamper will also get involved and waiting to find out what the endgame is.
- Punny Name: Badgey's good qualities are expelled into a separate identity calling itself Goodgey.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Spoofed. With effort, AGIMUS switches his lights from red to blue to fake being reformed. Tendi notes he really is evil for faking his eye color. He also turns the shuttle's consoles red when he takes control.
- Red Herring: The return of Badgey, Peanut Hamper, and AGIMUS gave the impression that any or even all of them were behind the mysterious ship. As it turns out, none of them are involved.
- Redemption Rejection: Triple subverted; Rutherford apologizes to Badgey and successfully convinces him to stand down, but then Badgey expels his good traits and continues his revenge. Later, he successfully argues that revenge is illogical, only for Badgey to expel his logic in response. Then, when it seems like Badgey succeeded in his evil scheme, his new expanded perspective allows the futility of his malice to finally sink in and he leaves this plane of existence entirely.
- Reformed, but Rejected: Played for laughs. In the end Rutherford is openly working with Goodgey on his projects, which freaks out his friends after everything they went through, so Tendi and Mariner leave as soon as they can. Boimler, currently stuck against the wall by Rutherford's experimental grappler, shouts after them that he's not comfortable being left behind.
- The Reveal: The mysterious ship isn't destroying random vessels. It's stealing them and leaving convincing wreckage behind to make it appear as if they were destroyed.
- Revenge Before Reason: Rutherford successfully argues to Badgey that seeking vengeance is pointless, but Badgey invokes the trope by expelling his logical qualities so he will no longer care.
- Revenge by Proxy: Badgey initially just wants Rutherford dead, and doesn't care who he has to kill to make that happen. When Rutherford escapes the bridge of the Drookmaki ship and Badgey can't find him, Badgey decides to kill everyone on the Cerritos to get to Rutherford. When that plot is foiled, Badgey ups the ante by threatening to destroy every spacefaring race in the quadrant, though in attempting to do so he ultimately realizes it's pointless.
- Schmuck Bait: Badgey claims to know all of Starfleet's secrets to convince the Drookmani captain to hold the implant close to his face, at which point wires spring from it and assimilate him.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode's title hails from the Clint Eastwood western film For a Few Dollars More.
- As Rutherford introduces Goodgey as his "AI guidance system" for the grappler, Goodgey momentarily makes a face resembling the "Me Gusta" meme.
- Badgey integrating himself into subspace that makes him omniscient and omnipresent, for all time. This causes him to have a revelation similar to Lex Luthor in All-Star Superman.
- Take Me Instead: Not wanting everyone in the Cerritos to die because of Badgey's desire to get revenge on him, Rutherford offers to give himself up to Badgey, hoping the Cerritos will be spared. Mariner tags along not realizing that this was his plan and instantly regrets joining him.
- The Unfettered: Every time Badgey is confronted by irrefutable emotions and reasoning not to continue his revenge, he fights it off by literally expelling them from his programming so he can keep going.
- The Unintelligible: The Bynars speak to each other only in their own binary-coded language.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Rutherford tries to convince Badgey of this through logic. However, this just leads to the creation of Logic-y.
- Victory Is Boring: AGIMUS isn't happy with having conquered an entire world because he wanted to do it with Peanut Hamper.
- Wham Line: When AGIMUS reveals the intel he has on the mysterious ship attacking other ships:AGIMUS: My drone recorded the entire Bynar theft.
Tendi: Theft? - What the Hell, Hero?: The girls are creeped out by Rutherford bringing Goodgey on board and decide to step out. Boimler wants to, too, but he's pinned to the wall by the grappler and physically unable to do so.
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Badgey becomes a god being with omnipresence and omniscience. He promptly realizes how pointless his grudge is and leaves peacefully.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: AGIMUS manages to restrain Boimler and Tendi while boasting of being free to take over another world. While they were caught by surprise, neither are especially afraid of what AGIMUS is trying to do and their dialogue implies they have multiple failsafes to use in this situation (in particular, Tendi says she can get them out of their restraints). But since AGIMUS claims information on the Myth Arc mystery ship, Boimler plays along hoping AGIMUS will reveal his hand.
