I'm getting this post in a little early; I watched this episode a couple of weeks ago and figure it's fresh enough in my mind that I probably won't watch it again. But I am going to bullet point my topics, since it's not so fresh that I can do a full writeup.
1. I had to go digging to find out where I recognized Roy Brocksmit (Kolrami) from. He was a pretty prolific actor, but it was his voice that really stuck with me. Turns out that I remember him most clearly as one of the monks in the Babylon 5 episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars". Ironically, that was 10 years after this episode...weird how the mind pieces things together.
2. The whole wargame simulation felt very Kobiashi Maru-ish--the only way for the Hathaway to win was to cheat...which is exactly what they planned on doing.
3. Speaking of the cheat, did it strike anyone else as odd that they can beam antimatter? And, on a lesser note, how Wesley is again right next to the main engine core doing homework?
4. Was the Hathaway bridge the battle bridge set? It seemed much more decked out than in the Stargazer episode.
5. "Where do I get the fiber optic cable?" Worf rips shreds out of the ceiling..."Anywhere". Obviously, Worf has never had to splice fiber optic cable.
The only part of the episode that took it down a notch for me was the ending, with Worf tricking the Ferengi sensors. I completely understand that he could do it to the Enterprise (although it was a bad decision for Picard not to change various key security codes), but doing it to the Ferengi seemed far fetched. Take that out of the mix (and they didn't need it--they could have just gotten the Enterprise's weapons back into "real" mode and given them a nice whooping), and the entire gambit was actually quite a bit of fun.
Pulaski and Data seemed to finally find their nitch in this episode, finding a way to get along. Or some wise writer just thought "She's gone anyway, why not have her leave in a way so people don't remember her as such a &!%@".
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