“You know, I remember standing the night watch as a young ensign on the bridge of the Reliant feeling I was the only one awake in all that… emptiness, all that silence. I’d forgotten until just now, how much I loved it.”

Let’s say the Little Sisters of Eluria* got together like a pack of over-the-top space witches to touch a visual effects-enhanced circular railing (let’s call it a kettle) and then had a bunch of disturbing images pumped into their brains. Most of the coven killed themselves after seeing/feeling the images, but three remained: “Big Ears” Commodore Oh, Incestuous Romulan Slinky-Sis, and Loony-Balls “THE-END-OF-ALL!”

These creepy triplets form the crux of synth-hatred currently permeating this 24th-century galaxy. Even more impressive is that they refer to their “foremothers,” not forefathers. Men don’t figure into the grander scheme, I guess. I could understand that if you felt you had to act to destroy a greater evil, you would have to do terrible things to prevent it, but these gals (at least two of them) are enjoying themselves way too much. They’re cardboard cut-out baddies, as shallow as any character could be because there is no substance. Evil for evil’s sake.

Meanwhile, there’s intrigue on Captain Studly Neurosis’ ship. Raffi distrusts Soji, points a friggin’ phaser at her, but Picard intercedes. Raffi’s one remaining card is the revelation that the Leslie Bibb/Kristen Bell knock-off pulled Maddox’s plug. Remember when “Big Ears” gave her the mind-meld shot? She was showing her what she saw when they gathered around the special effects kettle. Some of this has to do with “eight suns,” or some such nonsense. I have a sneaking suspicion winter is coming.

Seven of Nine returns and connects with El-Nor on the Borg cube. She sets about trying to determine what the Romulans are up to in their work with the recovered Borg. Raffi, being cut off from her alcohol, gathers Studly’s holographic clones (one of them an over-the-top Scottish engineer) to discuss the Captain’s psyche. There is a cool effect we see whenever the holograms are attempting to access information. Their eyes get all blue-glowy. Picard contacts Starfleet about the Maddox murder, and salty-dog Ann Magnuson tells him to, “shut the f–k up.” Really, Ann?

The Leslie Bibb/Kristen Bell knock-off has to confess to Picard the images she saw in the mind-meld, the tracker she was installed with so that Studly’s ship could be monitored, and her murder of Maddox. “We’re at a threshold,” she warns Picard. “The coming of the Destroyer,” Soji confirms. Oh well. Time to interrupt the story progress with an unnecessary scene between Raffi and Studly. She sings him a song about the moon and the stars and puts him to bed. That’s just a joke, but it would’ve been far more entertaining than this.

How many times do I have to scream, “I DON’T CARE” at this show? I’m tired of watching crazy people doing crazy things for no reason. Seven connects with the Borg cube and wakes her comrades so that they can fight Incestuous Romulan Slinky-Sis. It’s strange how we’ve taken something as genuinely frightening and relentless in their pursuit of perfection as the Borg and placed them into the “victim” box.

Picard, Studly, Raffi, and the Leslie Bibb/Kristen Bell knock-off (Shouldn’t she be in lock-up by this point? I mean, she is a murderer, right?) gather in a con-fab. “Big Ears” turns out to be a half-Romulan chick who has infiltrated Starfleet in order to engineer the Great Synthetic Revolt so that the Federation will ban all synthetic life-forms everywhere.

Wait a minute, you’re telling me a major disaster was orchestrated by a powerful entity in order to get a reaction out of people? I don’t believe it! Time to buy some toilet paper. I kind of felt this was where the show was going but did it require eight episodes to get here? Deep Space Nine would’ve killed this storyline in half the time. Enterprise would’ve had a handful of fantastic stand-alone episodes to compliment the overall story arc.

“The Little Sisters of Eluria” is a 66-page Dark Tower novella originally written for and published in the 1998 anthology Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, and later included in Stephen King’s own 2002 collection Everything’s Eventual.

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