You know how at the start of every episode they throw a bunch a stuff at you to introduce the events to follow and that each thing they throw at you gets put to use.
That didn’t happen here.
We have the Enterprise headed towards a planet called Babel where a large group of ambassadors from a variety of alien cultures within the Federation of Planets are meeting. In the Bible, Babel was the place where God decided that everyone was going to start speaking different languages and have to put in more effort to understand one another.
How did they follow through? By having a mysterious alien woman show up speaking incomprehensible babble.
Okay, yeah, sure-fine-whatever. I’ll learn to deal with it.
We have a commodore who has reached the age of forced retirement and his wife who was the Enterprise’s doctor back when he was captain. You don’t mention someone being old enough for forced retirement unless their super-unhappy about heading into retirement, that’s why it’s forced.
How did they follow through? His wife suggests they not use the transporters to return to their advanced years so that they can live many more years. He says he’d rather not trade any of the years they spent building the life they have together.
That wasn’t on the table, dude, she didn’t say that.
Then we had a flower from Capella which only lives a few hours that has reached full bloom, dies on their way into the nova, and comes back to full bloom when they’re in the new universe. An old woman holding a dying a flower screams foreshadowing and symbolism and sweet, poet, please do something with this.
How did they follow through? They use it to illustrate which universe they were in. That’s it. The flower was a mere sign of which universe they happened to be in, as if they couldn’t already tell that from their own life signs.
Cue an actual poet providing a flower with poetic justice.
Sonnet 84
The Mayfly has a coz in me if I might be so bold as to direct your gaze that you might see from seed to bloom my hours are few. Mark how my petals fall in time, while yet I mark a stranger rhyme wherein I find a wondrous dance though you grant me not half a chance. Oh! Send me through that star again! Again! Again! To live and die, there is no greater prize to try than travel through that star again and live this life from ev'ry view that lasts but hours that are too few.