Ambassador Spock reveals his motives for being on Romulus.
This is an enjoyable conclusion to the story with some solid character moments and (importantly) Spock has plenty of screen time.
The plot has a great concept from a character perspective. Who wouldn't want to find out what became of arguably Star Trek's greatest character following his depiction in the original series and movies? Mostly it works, as Spock has a satisfying continuation and some great exchanges with TNG characters. Unfortunately the scenes and dialogue involving a previously introduced villain is not a very inspired aspect of the episode's writing and drags it down a little.
The exchanges between Spock and Picard and Spock and Data are the highlights of the episode. Leonard Nimoy is fantastic playing a more evolved Spock whilst retaining his most important traits and mannerisms. Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner are the best actors on TNG so having Nimoy share the screen with them makes the most of his guest appearance.
I quite like the scenes with Riker and Worf for sheer amusement value. Riker's attempt at cool banter at the piano is bizarrely entertaining, but Jonathan Frakes and Karen Hensel are no Bogie and Bacall. In the grand scheme of the story though I would rather the writers had focussed more on Spock, but it was reasonably good fun nonetheless.
The visuals are great for what they are, especially the holographic sequences. I appreciate the budgetary constraints, but there's only so much cave and dark interior sequences I can see of places like Romulus and Qo'noS before it starts to feel a bit stale.
For me it's a 7.5/10 but I round upwards.
