True to form, the Cerritos crew can’t seem to have a routine away mission. While on the planet Jengus IV the team (sans Tendi) led by Lt. Cmdr Stevens is tasked with working alongside a crew from the USS Carlsbad to dismantle an old outpost and clear the area of glowing green orbs that read your mind and project out your innermost fantasies which, if physically touched, turns you to stone. The psychic traps were laid out by the planet’s inhabitants known as the Scrubble. This silica-based lifeform is at odds with the planetary scientists trying to conduct geological studies using the outpost and has a nasty way of dealing with intruders.
While both the Cerritos and Carlsbad crews are running for their lives from fantasies that could use a therapist’s touch, Tendi is back on the ship attempting to go through Science Officer Training with the ever-self-assured, ever self-important, and his own biggest fan, Dr. Migleemo who, during her first training session conducted over a plate of writhing worms, gives Tendi some decent advice on how to get Captain Freeman to take her seriously but says it in all the wrong ways, leaving it up to Dr T’Ana to course correct Tendi with gentle but direct wisdom.
In the middle of the orb chaos and mentoring gone wrong, Captain Freeman is hosting a peace treaty signing between the Scrubble and the planetary scientists and that goes weirdly wrong too. Egos flare between Captin Freeman and the captain of the USS Carlsbad Captin Maier over a gift from the Scrubble and that’s really where the episode goes sideways. While Tendi discovers her own way of doing things and the Cerritos crew finds out from the Carlsbad crew just how legend the Cali-class crews think the Cerritos is, and the captains make peace, the storylines as a whole are just a little slapdash, and maybe one of the weaker episodes but it is fun and interesting nonetheless.
Mining The Mind’s Mines, along with all previous episodes, is available to stream right here on Paramount+.