HOLY. CRAP. IT’S THAT GUY FROM SCRUBS. BOB KELSO!

Dr. Crusher is back! Her son let’s out some nanobots that start wreaking havoc on the Enterprise, and threaten to ruin a scientist’s experiment. Very similar to the episode from TOS where a scientist is testing his M3 Computer aboard the Enterprise, and even though the computer is looking like it’s going to destroy the ship, it’s hard to get the scientist to leave what could bring him everlasting fame. 

Dr. Crusher, while talking to Picard about her son: “Has he ever been in love?”
Picard: “Uh……”
Dr. Crusher: “Jean-Luc I’m worried” 
…. that my son is gay. LOLZ.

Wesley, explaining how the nanobots may have escaped from his science lab: “And when I woke up I saw that the container had been left open.”
See here how Wesley doesn’t take responsibility for his actions? You know why he says it this way? Because he’s a jack-ass.

SUBTITLE
The original smoke monster or what you can do with a special effects budget of $60

QUOTES
“Monsters come in many forms. But do you know the greatest of them all? Guilt.” - McCoy attempting to console a distraught Kirk

PLOT
Down on Argus X, Kirk has a Darth Vader Moment (I sense something: a presence I’ve not felt since…) Two redshirts die. OH GOD! Kirk knows exactly what has happened to them. They’ve lost all their red blood cells. It’s the smoke monster! It’s back! 

Backstory…. Captain Kirk was serving on the USS Farragut 11 years ago when 200 crewmen were killed by the smoke monster on Tycho IV. (Interestingly enough, the smoke monster, or “Dikironium Cloud Creature” gives off a smell of honey.) Kirk blames himself for all those deaths, even though at the time he was just a lowly ensign. 

Kirk goes CRAZY and begins chasing the dikironium cloud creature across the galaxy. Eventually the dikironium cloud creature gets on board the Enterprise. And people are surprisingly calm about it. If there was a vapor just floating around sucking out people’s bloods, you’d expect a lot more hysterics. It ends up in a room with ensign Garrovick and Spock. Spock tosses Garrovick out and attempts to delay the creature from getting into the room. That of course fails, but Spock doesn’t die because Spock has copper based blood. That’s right! The vulcan/man you’ve come to love has more in common with a horseshoe crab than you previously thought!

Fearing that the creature is going to reproduce soon, Ensign Garrovick and Captain Kirk go down to a planet with bait… hemoplasm! and a bomb! Unfortunately, the thing eats all the hemoplasm so they have to use themselves as bait. But it works out alright. End of episode. Goodbye white whale.

OBSERVATIONS
The monster keeps removing red blood cells from its victims. But everyone keeps calling them corpuscles. WHICH IS INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. 

Also, wouldn’t it be super cute if the Dikironium cloud creature and the companion energy entity (“Metamorphosis” ep. 9 Season 2 TOS) got together?

 
SUPER KYUTE! 

SUBTITLE
“This is just like that drug trip I saw in that movie while I was on that drug trip!” -Futurama’s Philip J. Fry, from “The Farnsworth Parabox” episode

QUOTES
“Very typical, Captain. Iron-Silicon base. Oxygen-Hydrogen atmosphere. Largely arid. No discernible life. No surprises.” - Spock commenting on the planet at the center of this episode… FAMOUS. LAST. WORDS. 

SPOCK: “Twice, for a split second each time, every thing within range of our instruments seemed on the verge of blinking out.” - Spock
KIRK: “I want facts not poetry Mr. Spock.” 
SPOCK: “I have given you the facts, Captain… the entire magnetic field in this solar system simply blinked. The planet below, the mass at which we’re measuring, attained zero gravity.”
KIRK: “That’s impossible. What you’re describing…”
SPOCK: “Is nonexistence.” 

“I don’t know Jim. This is a big ship and I’m just a country doctor.” - McCoy

“Jim, madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal. He must be stopped, destroyed if necessary.” - Spock talking about Lazarus

PLOT
While gathering data on a new planet (blase stellar cartography), the ship is shaken twice. Spock recounts to the captain that twice everything around the planet, and thus, themselves, nearly blinked out of existence. Also, a humanoid entity appears on the planet at the same time. So a landing crew goes down to check it out. On the surface, a man starts yelling at them from a cliff. He seems to be yelling nonsense, and then he falls off the cliff. They take him back to the Enterprise’s sick bay. The bridge receives a message from central command. A disturbance in normal magnetic, gravimetric, time warps, and radiations were felt in all quadrants of the galaxy, and all appear to have come from the planet the Enterprise was studying. The man who fell down the cliff, Lazarus, is briefed by Kirk as soon as he leaves sick bay, and he tells Kirk that there is an evil monster, in humanoid form, who wants to destroy everything in existence, and he resides on the planet’s surface. Back ON the planet’s surface, Spock informs Kirk that there is no evidence of anything living on the planet, and that Lazarus is most likely lying. Then there’s another disturbance. Lazarus is found on the verge of unconsciousness after the phenomenon, but he is incredibly aggravated and just keeps yelling the word “Kill!” Very annoying. Lazarus is brought back to sick bay, and McCoy notes that Lazarus has what appears to be ridiculous recuperative powers. There’s a deep scratch on Lazarus’s forehead. Then there isn’t. Then there is again. McCoy is deeply puzzled by this. Back on the bridge, there’s a rip in space near the Enterprise. Spock suggests that they can determine the extent of this rip in space using Dilithium crystals. Lazarus freaks out, saying that if he isn’t given Dilithium crystals, the evil entity is going to destroy the Enterprise. 

So Lazarus knocks out two scientists and steals dilithium from the ship. Although, when they question Lazarus about them, he no longer has the dilithium crystals. Lazarus argues that the evil entity has taken the crystals. So they beam down to the planet to try and locate the stolen dilithium. Unfortunately, but predictably, there is another attack.

This time in sick bay, Lazarus explains more things, although it only makes him sound even more crazy. The planet is actually his ship, for travelling through time.

Spock and Kirk theorize that Lazarus is actually two people, and that at least one of those persons is insane. They also theorize that Lazarus is actually two entities, one of matter, and one of antimatter. Meanwhile, at least one of the Lazari is f*cking around with engineering, causing a distraction to steal dilithium crystals. He then assaults someone in the transporter room and beams down to the planet and installs the stolen dilithium crystal into his starship. Kirk gets to Lazarus just in time to stop him, but somehow Kirk is transported to the antimatter universe. There he meets the not insane Lazarus, except, SURPRISE! The not insane Lazarus is in the parallel, antimatter universe. There, finally, everything is explained. This Lazarus discovered a way to travel in between the two universes. Once the other Lazarus discovered that this was possible, he went insane and devoted his entire life to finding and killing his parallel self. Antimatter Lazarus then tells Kirk that what must be done, to avoid the two Lazari meeting in any context besides the pathway between the two universes (which would obliterate everything within the universe), he must send matter Lazarus into the pathway and then destroy the pathways entrance. Essentially, the solution is locking the two Lazari together, even though, due to the one’s madness, they will be fighting for all eternity. Womp Womp. The end.

OBSERVATIONS
This entire episode makes me feel like I’m hypoglycemic. I still have no idea what’s going on, and I’ve seen it two times. SO ANNOYING.

Also, the antimatter universe is basically portrayed as being exactly the same as this universe, except in inverted color.

Also, the Lazari have schizoid personality disorder, if you were curious.