In his novel The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson explored the idea of select humans in history being born with natural immortality. Unlike the Highlanders of movies and television, Poul Anderson's immortals were people who simply did not get old and die; they were as prone to death by lethal accident or violence as the rest of us. Therefore, death for an immortal is a strict Poisson process, and if 2% of an immortal population dies each year due to accident or violence, then less than 2% of that population will live longer than 200 years.

Before I start the actual review of this episode, I would like to note that this episode featured Brent Spiner as a guest star. Brent Spiner (Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation) was, by far, the best actor on TNG, and I would like to see him more often in movies and television.

According to Wikipedia, "Anarchism has been variously defined by sources. Most often, the term describes the political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, while others have defined it as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations." During this episode, two guest actors played roles where the second definition of anarchism was operative in either the characters' speech, as by the non-Alpha welder, or in the character's actions, the genius Alpha played by Summer Glau (River Tam on Firefly).