This episode was just plain bad,
It jumps ahead 6 years, yet the ship and crew look the same, indicating literally nothing of interest happened. Most of the cast are little more then extra's in this episode with next to no dialogue
The story of Trip and T'pol, which had been building up for 2 seasons is suddenly cast aside for no apparent reason, which also undermines the ending of the previous episode in which the death of Elizabeth drew them together. 2 seasons of buildup (including a now mind-link) which is just tossed aside with a casual line here.
Shran is inserted out of nowhere, faked his death, has a child and quite a lot of other throwaway lines instead of actual plot on how this came to be.
Trip's death was just plain insulting and completely unrealistic and so tacked on that made it seems like it never happened and Troi just added it in there for Riker's "lesson". The Pirates were stated to be in a slower ship, yet somehow caught up with no explanation. They somehow not only reached the ship virtually undetected and unopposed, but also got to the heart of the ship without any effort and held Archer at gunpoint again with no opposition. Where were the MAKO's, security or any other defense against a ship stated vastly inferior to Enterprise.
Riker apparently did this simulation purely for the moment Trip defied orders and killed himself. The rest of the episode had nothing to do with this moment and the situation was in no way comparable to his own. Not to mention there are quite a few "order defying" moments in earlier episodes that served that purpose far better.
Then we get Trip supposedly dying while under Phlox's care, which not only lacked any kind of emotion to it (Trip winking didn't help) but an actual death is NOT shown and T'pol is missing.
Finally we have Troi ruining the episode multiple times. She says Trip will die 20 minutes before he does (why on earth was that line added) and she hypes up Archer's speech yet we never hear it.
In the end this episode just came of as a non-canon Holodeck novel and not the actual events, mainly due to aspects happening that literally couldn't happen. The crew couldn't be identical 6 years later and Trip couldn't have died because those pirates couldn't reach the ship due to a huge difference in warp capabilities and they certainly couldn't enter the ship completely unopposed.
It jumps ahead 6 years, yet the ship and crew look the same, indicating literally nothing of interest happened. Most of the cast are little more then extra's in this episode with next to no dialogue
The story of Trip and T'pol, which had been building up for 2 seasons is suddenly cast aside for no apparent reason, which also undermines the ending of the previous episode in which the death of Elizabeth drew them together. 2 seasons of buildup (including a now mind-link) which is just tossed aside with a casual line here.
Shran is inserted out of nowhere, faked his death, has a child and quite a lot of other throwaway lines instead of actual plot on how this came to be.
Trip's death was just plain insulting and completely unrealistic and so tacked on that made it seems like it never happened and Troi just added it in there for Riker's "lesson". The Pirates were stated to be in a slower ship, yet somehow caught up with no explanation. They somehow not only reached the ship virtually undetected and unopposed, but also got to the heart of the ship without any effort and held Archer at gunpoint again with no opposition. Where were the MAKO's, security or any other defense against a ship stated vastly inferior to Enterprise.
Riker apparently did this simulation purely for the moment Trip defied orders and killed himself. The rest of the episode had nothing to do with this moment and the situation was in no way comparable to his own. Not to mention there are quite a few "order defying" moments in earlier episodes that served that purpose far better.
Then we get Trip supposedly dying while under Phlox's care, which not only lacked any kind of emotion to it (Trip winking didn't help) but an actual death is NOT shown and T'pol is missing.
Finally we have Troi ruining the episode multiple times. She says Trip will die 20 minutes before he does (why on earth was that line added) and she hypes up Archer's speech yet we never hear it.
In the end this episode just came of as a non-canon Holodeck novel and not the actual events, mainly due to aspects happening that literally couldn't happen. The crew couldn't be identical 6 years later and Trip couldn't have died because those pirates couldn't reach the ship due to a huge difference in warp capabilities and they certainly couldn't enter the ship completely unopposed.