I thought this episode was only borderline OK. The ship scenes worked (especially the Ed-Kelly material), the planet scenes largely didn't - the depiction of the (apparently British/Irish/Australian) peasant inhabitants was extremely hackneyed in the vein of TNG's Up The Long Ladder, and I could see every plot twist coming, from the time differential (similar to DS9's Meridian and VOY's Blink Of An Eye) to the priest being assassinated to Isaac spending a cycle on the planet. The episode improved towards the end, but social satire (of Catholicism/televangelism/Middle-East conflict) shouldn't be so obvious, particularly when it's not especially biting. The humor wasn't as well-integrated as in recent episodes, Bortus was again only used for comedy, and the supporting characters weren't used well (Gordon/LaMarr/Alara were superfluous, Claire was defacto absent).
Coming at this from an agnostic/irreligious perspective, I did find this episode's brief jabs at Catholicism and US televangelism pretty weak and facile, because it didn't really have anything to say or say it with any conviction. The episode was at its best when it articulated that the "Kelly" period was just part of the society's development and wasn't her fault - if it wasn't her, it'd have been something else. If you're going to criticize religion, do it with teeth, passion and intelligence - satire needs to be cutting and intellectually rigorous, not just lazy, obvious "thing X is bad" material that's designed to play to the gallery. It's exactly the type of lazy material that religious people will see and think "the liberal media hates us", which furthers social division. As such, I guess the episode would have worked better for me without the parallel-earth touches - it was too unsubtle.
Coming at this from an agnostic/irreligious perspective, I did find this episode's brief jabs at Catholicism and US televangelism pretty weak and facile, because it didn't really have anything to say or say it with any conviction. The episode was at its best when it articulated that the "Kelly" period was just part of the society's development and wasn't her fault - if it wasn't her, it'd have been something else. If you're going to criticize religion, do it with teeth, passion and intelligence - satire needs to be cutting and intellectually rigorous, not just lazy, obvious "thing X is bad" material that's designed to play to the gallery. It's exactly the type of lazy material that religious people will see and think "the liberal media hates us", which furthers social division. As such, I guess the episode would have worked better for me without the parallel-earth touches - it was too unsubtle.