Similar to the VOY episode "11:59", the story of an ancestor of one of the main characters is told - back in the 20th century. And this time too, this ancestor looks exactly like the actress of the here and now. T'Pol's great-grandmother looks a lot like T'Pol. As she is also played by Jolene Blalock. The fact that the authors didn't at least dye her hair differently, changed the nose or something else is just plain lazy.
The episode itself is quite entertaining, although the Vulcans adapted to small-town human life a little too easily. A few funny scenes in which the aliens clashed with the customs of the humans would have made the episode more interesting. Instead, one of the Vulcans can play billiards straight away and there are no problems whatsoever when buying food for the first time. I imagine how lost I would be the first time in a Japanese supermarket, for example. All the foreign Japanese characters on the packages, the unknown products or the checkout at the cash register. And here come three aliens from a completely different planet, but they immediately know how to blend into the crowd as humans. I no longer wonder anymore how the simultaneous translator in Star Trek actually works and how it manages to ensure that the lips move in sync with what is being said, when everyone actually speaks a completely different language that is then only translated.
Like some of the other commenters, I also think the episode suffered quite a bit because of the last minute. It should have been left open whether T'Pol simply made up or embellished the story or whether everything happened as she described it. But with this ending the mystery is gone. Imagine that in Inception the spinning top would have fallen over at the end. It wouldn't have been the same.
The episode itself is quite entertaining, although the Vulcans adapted to small-town human life a little too easily. A few funny scenes in which the aliens clashed with the customs of the humans would have made the episode more interesting. Instead, one of the Vulcans can play billiards straight away and there are no problems whatsoever when buying food for the first time. I imagine how lost I would be the first time in a Japanese supermarket, for example. All the foreign Japanese characters on the packages, the unknown products or the checkout at the cash register. And here come three aliens from a completely different planet, but they immediately know how to blend into the crowd as humans. I no longer wonder anymore how the simultaneous translator in Star Trek actually works and how it manages to ensure that the lips move in sync with what is being said, when everyone actually speaks a completely different language that is then only translated.
Like some of the other commenters, I also think the episode suffered quite a bit because of the last minute. It should have been left open whether T'Pol simply made up or embellished the story or whether everything happened as she described it. But with this ending the mystery is gone. Imagine that in Inception the spinning top would have fallen over at the end. It wouldn't have been the same.