A child is discovered matching the genetics of Trip and T'Pol.
I enjoyed this one for the performances and plot themes, but I thought parts of the script used pretty hackneyed formula.
The story was very interesting from a thematic perspective, as xenophobia in relation to the Federation of Planets is an excellent idea. It stands to reason that this would be a natural occurrence in this type of situation and the show actually underplays the divisions in humanity. At the time of writing, only 35 years away from the Enterprise era, nation-states are deeply divided with Earth as a whole nowhere near the type of unity that would make people identify as 'humans' rather than members of a group based on factors like ethnicity, gender, sexual persuasion, political ideology, social class or geographic location. Nevertheless I thought this was a strong theme to address at an important point the development of the Trek universe.
Performances were all great with the regular crew doing well in combination with some strong guest characters. Peter Weller is excellent as John Frederick Paxton, looking, sounding and acting the part perfectly.
I found the script very heavy on exposition and littered with cliches, particularly the scenes involving Paxton and Terra Prime. It's testament to how good Weller performs that he made the dialogue sound good and scenes that feel like they have been lifted from a first draft script of a bad bond movie work. Everything in relation to Mayweather and Gannet Brooks is so predictable that the build up scenes feel pointless other that to give Anthony Montgomery a love scene with a hot girl after years of character neglect by the writers.
