Enterprise is taken over by religious terrorists.
Gee, I wonder what possible real world parallels they were trying to draw… Although if you missed the moral, clearly you stopped the episode a few minutes too early, as the last scene wielded a true sledgehammer of subtlety.
The mechanics were mostly pretty good. Often the problem with episodes like this is that you wonder what particular head injury the security officer has received. Here it’s well explained. The only moment of suspension of disbelief difficulty was in Archer’s trick with the transporter – surely someone able to understand the systems well enough would be able to spot some elements of what the device is intended for, such as the fact that you have to set coordinates to make it work.
(As an aside – I’m sick of the whole ‘but there aren’t real differences’ trope about religious conflicts, done here as ‘they say ten days, we say nine days’ thing. It’s possible reduce some religious conflicts to that level, but doing so completely misses the point. The conflicts aren’t really about religion, they’re about power and influence, using religion as an excuse).
702 down, 35 to go.