Oh dear, what the hell have we just watched? The Young King Arthur? A Haunted House Movie? Poltergeist? I just don't know what's going on any more.
The Lady in Red is wandering around Los Angeles smashing windows for kicks, the Odd Couple have forgotten about their cute Romulan kid and are getting all "meta" about the status of their relationship in the series' narrative. Picard's mum speaks as if she has a mouthful of pebbles and acts as if she has a brain full of pea soup. The British guy from Galactica has wandered into Picard's subconscious only to start psychoanalysing him and Rios is re-enacting bits of The Voyage Home & First Contact. Young Guinan is back and the Abracadabra she is talking about El-Aurians makes us wonder what on earth she puts in those concoctions. Meanwhile the FBI has suddenly become interested in alien abductions.
Perhaps we can console ourselves with listing the things that we have been spared this week:
This episode has no appearance by John deLancie and so we don't have to witness his further emasculation as Q-2 discovers that he no longer has omnipotent powers.
Brent Spiner's grandiloquent, mad scientist and his "daughter", played by the newly-pneumatic Isa Briones, are nowhere to be seen.
The actor who plays the Borg Queen got a rest from all that latex while Alison Pill channelled her character with nothing more than a pair of black contact lenses.
Penelope Mitchell as the Bland Blond, aka the least likely candidate to ever pass out from Astronaut School, has taken a tranquillizer and gone to have a lie down.
It's just as well Senior Trekker has a sense of humour. This one will get the customary 5 points.