 Zack Handlen reviewed the episode in 2010 , for The A.V. Club , giving it a rating of an A. He praised the fact that there was no mystery to the episode , and that it was instead explained immediately that Sarek was the cause of the crewmembers ' problems . He added that there was a " beautiful simplicity to this concept , an elegance that makes the tragedy at the heart of the episode all the more powerful " . Handlen said that the scene in which Picard deals with the emotions of Sarek after the mind meld was a " remarkable work , a level of naked , raw intensity that we rarely get on [ The Next Generation ] , and in the hands of a lesser actor ( basically anyone else in the ensemble ) , this could 've been ridiculous " . 
