Captain Pike is away helping Number One, leaving Spock to deal with “The Broken Circle” of the ship’s crew. Witness the very first time Spock steals the Enterprise to avert a war with the Klingons in Strange New Worlds SE2 EP1! Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman, directed by Chris Fisher.
Mark Turetsky: Will! It’s been a mere month and a half since we had new Star Trek to review. Are you all rested up? Have you taken your green super-soldier injection to get back on the review train?
Will Nevin: My pupils are incredibly dilated…but that might just be the weed that gets me ready for Beavis and Butthead episodes. Say what you will about Picard, Strange New Worlds and anything else on Paramount+— the new Beavis and Butthead has been some great stuff. But we’re not reviewing that today, are we?
Mark: Are you telling me it’s a show you can’t enjoy sober? For shame.
Starship Enter-heist!
Mark: One of my few complaints last season, really more of a gripe, was that too often episodes ended up resolving because of Captain Pike, the lead character of the show.
Will: You’re coming dangerously close to criticizing Pike and/or Anson Mount, and I won’t stand for it, Mark. But…you do have a point.
Mark: Perish the thought, Will! Look at it this way: even when, for example, Spock learns an incredible lesson about experiencing life in someone else’s shoes, it’s Pike who comes up with the notion that the aliens they’re trying to have some diplomacy with are mirror empaths. Spock’s story is there to give Pike a revelation about empathy, and not for its own sake. That said, here we get an episode that is largely free of Captain Daddy– err, Pike.
Will: Goddamnit, Mark, now I can’t focus on writing the rest of this. Thanks. “Largely free” might be an understatement — we’re told Pike is off to visit with the One Very Important Person who might be able to help Una, and at least my expectation was that we would get a taste of what he was up to. Nope. Pike is out and done before the opening credits.
Mark: To be fair, the pre-credit sequence was quite long. It also leads me to wonder if at least some of next week’s episode will be contemporaneous with the events of this one.
Will: The sort of thing that could have been cut into a feature-length episode? Yeah, I can see that. It was cool when South Park did it, at least.
Mark: It was also aired along with this episode at premiere screenings.
Last season’s episodes each had a very specific point of view character for each episode. Am I wrong in thinking this week’s didn’t, really? I mean, certainly there’s plenty of Spock focus, but I’d say there was an equal focus on M’Benga and, to a lesser extent, Nurse Chapel.
Will: In our pre-production meeting, we talked about how to slice this discussion up, and it was tough for precisely that reason — there’s no dominant theme in this episode. There are goals, yes — namely recapping what happened last season and giving some shine to those poor people who have to steal focus from Pike — but no major idea. It’s not a bad episode by any stretch, but it doesn’t seem to be as tight as the best ones from season 1.
Mark: That’s the thing: there’s so much praise for this show as being a return to the old format of Trek, after season-long, single character focus of shows like Discovery and Picard. But that kind of praise ignores the unique thing that Strange New Worlds brought to the mix. When The Next Generation did an episode entirely from Data’s point of view (“Data’s Day”) or Worf’s (“Parallels”), it was a break in the format. Season one of SNW is made up almost entirely of “Data’s Days.” This is really the first episode to break with that and give us just a normal episode of Trek. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s certainly something to note.
Will: Of the characters who did get the spotlight in Captain Daddy’s absence, Spock was given a lot to handle, with both serving as acting captain and having to make some tough choices there in addition to more uncomfortable feelings for Nurse Chapel…and, well, having to make some difficult calls relating to her, too. I think one of the most impactful lines the show has ever had might be his, “I waited for you.” It was a heck of a week for poor Spock.
Mark: It almost echoed Spock’s death scene with the other great love of his life, Captain Kirk, in The Wrath of Khan, at least in terms of emotion and intensity. It’s interesting getting to see Spock in this transitional period between his emotionality in The Cage and the Spock we know from The Original Series. I’m glad that they’re not just throwing out The Cage as a weird out-of-character anomaly, but acknowledging and building on it. By the end of the episode, when the Klingons keep referring to him as not being like the other Vulcans, you can see that he’s outwardly going along to get along, but there’s also a discomfort there, a fear that he might be untethered in choppy waters.
Will: Makes you think there’s going to be some sort of inflection point, right? Something that makes Spock think, “I’ve gone too far toward emotion, and now, I need to pull it back.” Maybe Chapel breaks his heart?
Mark: Maybe! But it looks like it’s a going concern. It’s also fun that this is the first time the crew has had to steal the Enterprise, chronologically. It’s a long tradition, and it feels like the starting point of every Trek movie.
One thing I didn’t appreciate was the drawn out, “what’s your thing going to be?” sequence. Kirk didn’t have a “thing,” nor did Sisko or Janeway. Even Picard’s “make it so” was used in addition to “engage” and was often just an acknowledgement that his crew should put a plan into action, not to make the ship go. This cute ritual with each new captain, that started on Discovery and continued into the Picard finale, is just tiresome at this point. [Ed. Note: I offer up “Make ship go now” as a future option for someone.]
Will: It was probably cute the first time, but, yeah, you can’t keep recycling that bit. It flags — and not in a good way — that this is all a production line effort by largely the same people.
Get High on Space Steroids and Fight Klingons, Why Don’t You?
Mark: Which leads us to the second character focus of the episode, Chapel and M’Benga’s capture on Cajitar and their being put to work on the salvaged Crossfield-class ship. First off, the use of the Crossfield-class is a lot of fun (it’s the same class of ship as the Discovery). It was probably chosen as a cost-cutting measure so they could use the Discovery corridor sets, but it gave us our first look at a Crossfield ship that wasn’t retrofitted with a spore drive (the drive section is entirely different from the Discovery). A lot of this portion of the episode, however, smacked of giving Dr. M’Benga a new thing this season, since his old one (finding a cure for his terminally ill daughter) got resolved last season.
What do you make of taking our doctor, who was pretty much defined last season through his kindness and gentleness, and introducing the notion that PTSD has left him perilously close to unleashing a barely-contained bloodlust?
Will: First, I did way too much googling to reconcile the salvage ship in this episode from what I remembered of the Discovery. I’m going to chalk that up to some nonsense I don’t have the patience for. Second, M’Benga is not messin’ around here…although who knew he had a ka’athyra in sickbay? Also, was the green Venom substitute a thing from last season that I forgot?
Mark: I don’t think it’s anything we’ve seen before. Over in the Star Trek comic, a bunch of people have been injecting themselves with Klingon adrenaline. This stuff was green, so maybe it’s Vulcan adrenaline? I’ll let Scotty explain what it is:
Will: In Archer’s era, they were still figuring out the Prime Directive. I think one hallmark of this show — and this ties into Una’s story — might be setting out the limits of what medicine should do.
Mark: Maybe. And also, what about Chapel’s reaction to his having it on his person at all times? Are we to take it that maybe he’s been using this stuff recreationally? Or am I reading too much into this?
Will: Not at all. Again, these series have the same folks behind them, and we’ve seen Picard dabble in substance abuse stories. Maybe they’ll actually do one right this time. We’re going full “Venom,” Mark!
Mark: Well, I certainly hope that it’s done right. Babylon 5 also featured a Black doctor who was addicted to stimulants. In that case, it was the more respectable type-A personality, overachiever needing stims to keep up, and they were careful not to have him come across like a junkie. And if they do choose to go down this route, it’s a troubling pattern if the major drug-addicted characters on modern Trek are both Black. I guess Garak was also addicted to drugs for an episode of Deep Space Nine, but it wasn’t a major character arc for him.
Will: I’ll say this for the M’Benga/Chapel fight scene: that was some good stylish action from a series probably not known for it.
Mark: As far as Star Trek fights go, it was pretty good! It doesn’t rise to the level of some of Michelle Yeoh’s work on Discovery, but far beyond the indecipherable flailings of The Original Series. And their depressurization without space suits was preceded by another great exchange, “We’ve gotten out of worse.” “No, not really.” For as much chemistry as Jess Bush has with Ethan Peck, she really clicks onscreen with Babs Olusanmokun.
Will: And, lest we forget during this Pride Month, Nurse Chapel is a bisexual agent of chaos who’s going to break hearts all over the galaxy. I really thought they were about to kiss there in the airlock.
Mark: Not even the coldest-hearted Vulcan can resist her charms, Will.
Holy Shit, It’s Carol Kane
Mark: By far my favorite part of this episode was the introduction of the new Chief Engineer, Commander Pelia, played by the legendary Carol Kane. She brings such a fun energy that we don’t get much of on Trek. She’s playful, she’s commanding, she’s funny, she’s Carol Fucking Kane on Star Trek.
Will: The accent is…uhh…a choice, but you’re absolutely right: She’s a great addition and is going to steal any scene she’s in. I also liked her character’s motivation for going back into space from her Academy teaching gig: She’s so hopelessly, terribly bored. Must be nice if that’s your biggest problem as a near immortal.
Mark: Yes, listening to her accent, the voice actor in me was like, “what the hell is she attempting here?” and so Uhura’s identifying her as an alien was a great comedic moment. The show knows she doesn’t sound like she’s from anywhere. The show is in on the joke.
Will: You can imagine the audition, right? “Give us the weirdest, non-existent fake accent you can muster.” And she *nailed* it.
Mark: I can’t imagine they made her audition. If they did, it would be a great stain upon their house’s honor.
And the way she’s introduced is also great: she figures out immediately that they’ve faked a coolant leak in order to steal the ship. And she’s totally up for it. She even recommends better ways to fake a disaster. It’s such a great introduction for a new character. It tells us she’s not only hyper-competent, but also has a sense of fun.
Will: We might need to call a moratorium on “stealing the Enterprise” scenes, but that was a fun twist on it. Yet ol’ Bob April didn’t seem all that pissed, did he? Didn’t send anyone after them or anything.
Mark: Unlike Captain Shaw (RIP) [Ed. Note :disappointed:], Robert April knows to stay out of the way when there’s a Star Trek afoot.
But getting back to Pelia’s whole character concept, the fact that she’s an alien who can pass for human, and who lived on Earth for hundreds of years before first contact, is ripe with possibilities. There’s nothing to say that she isn’t, canonically, the same person who rented an apartment to Kimmy Schmidt and Titus Andromedon. She also might show up in the time travel episode that’s coming up this season. So we now have Guinan, Pelia and the Supervisors (Gary Seven and Tallinn) hanging out as aliens on Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries. Do you think they ever met up and had coffee?
Will: It’s bad enough that Rick and Morty exists in Star Trek, Mark, I don’t want to have to think about anything else like that. If they did meet, I hope they all talked shit about Wesley Crusher.
But, yeah, I think it’s a strong possibility she pops up in the time travel episode. I bet Pelia will officially not give a shit about the Official Time Travel Rules (™). What Temporal Prime Directive?
Mark: The saddest part of the episode was the closing credits, where she was listed as a guest star. Get her into the opening credits and make some real money!
Stray New Words
- Touching tribute to Nichelle Nichols: “For Nichelle who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open…” Simply beautiful.
- The plot of this episode was at least somewhat reminiscent of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in that we had a conspiracy aimed at destabilizing Federation-Klingon relations. There…probably weren’t any Starfleet collaborators here? But how does a Federation ship just disappear? *thinking emoji* [WN]
- Probably salvaged secretly after some battle in the Klingon war. And going along with your Star Trek VI analogy: we also have characters imprisoned on a dilithium mine planet. [MT]
- Having an unplaceable accent was also Carol Kane’s shtik on Taxi, where her character came from the same country as Andy Kaufman’s Latka Gravas.
- Klingon mugs are just vintage flour measuring cups.
- La’an’s re-introduction with a drinking contest is lifted straight from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not that that’s a bad thing.
- The Klingons speaking a rare dialect of Klingonese was a bizarre thing to include on its own. Could this be setting up a longer storyline involving the Klingons? Or is it just to explain why they look different from the Discovery Klingons?
- I would hope in this, the year of our lord 20 and 23, we have given up on explaining how or why Klingons look the way they do. [WN]
- People complain, Will. I don’t know what they hope to achieve, but boy do they complain. [MT]
- Funny that Spock, as acting captain, seems to have named their new permanent Chief Engineer.
- Captain Daddy when he gets back: “Who is she?”
- Jenna Mitchell, the ship’s navigator, continues to be very present on the show without ever getting much to do.
- This scene from The Original Series takes on added significance now that we know Chapel and M’Benga a whole lot better: Spock slapped.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
