The alert klaxon on the Orion ship in the cold open sounded suspiciously distinctive. Have we heard that before somewhere…?

This one had a couple of turns of phrase that smacked of an inexperienced Trek writer: Riker introduced himself as "Commanding officer William Riker" (rather than "Commander" or "First Officer"), and Crusher called him "Bill" rather than "Will".

On the bright side, I can rationalise these as evidence that this is far from a canon story. 🤣

Pike's look to camera in the final frames of this episode echoes the same look in the transporter room at the end of the season one finale.