Hey I’m also behind everyone else too, I’m glad to see a chance to chime in.

I consider this to be the absolute best “red shirt” episode yet. These are my reasons.

Ensign Gamble was introduced in prior episodes; no last-minute-hey-meet-airiam contrivances.

The episode starts with Gamble reading his log, as though he is framing the entire episode and foreshadowing his survival.

The threat was menacing and inscrutable, like an Armos with better presentation. But also sad, Gamble merely picking up that orb shows how fragile life can be even in the space future. He just gets iced for no good reason like Yar, because ultimately space is scary and dangerous.

Dr MBenga suffers more trauma and loss, as he should. Every redshirt was probably somebody’s protege and certainly leaves void we rarely get to see ( eg TNG Lower Decks). Closest runner up is Trip getting all tore up over ENT casualties.

This is how to kill an away team member and have me care about it.

I think "vibe scripted" is harsh. The writers were bumping against the restriction that they need

It's a version of "commander, you better take a look at this." It keeps the suspense up for the audience as Riker saunters over, maneuvering over multiple chairs, to take a look at the corpse of the mortal enemy of the federation. In a real military, Worf would say something like "heads up, Romulan casualties on the premise, everybody be on the lookout." That's to prevent the commander or anybody else from getting shot by a possible half-dead Rom in the rubble. But that's not great television. It's just script writing 101.

I liked that episode quite a lot, but it definitely coasts on pure vibes in places.

What I find particularly egregious in their decision making is that after Gamble lost his eyes, Beto is still hanging around. Like, helloooo? Film making student that has 0 training in anything remotely related to this, get back onto that ship IMMEDIATELY.