It was definitely an enjoyable episode. I absolutely loved the throwback to the first season (I think that episode was one of the best, if not the best, episodes of the first season). I was almost expecting something bigger to happen with that particular storyline. It definitely reminded me of at least a few Star Trek episodes, though going even further with that latter scene in their version of the holodeck.
Yeah, this was an episode in the vein of TNG's
Who Watches The Watchers and
First Contact (the episode, not the movie) in the sense that it provided us with an actual reason & backstory for the Prime Directive that goes beyond "it would probably be a bad idea". Unlike the examples on TNG this was much darker though.
