The Enterprise crew fights for their lives as they attempt to resolve last season’s cliffhanger. Also, Spock gets his wish to be back with Nurse Chapel, but at what cost? Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3×01 “Hegemony: Part II” is written by Davy Perez and Henry Alonso Myers and directed by Chris Fisher, and 3×02 “Wedding Bell Blues” is written by Kirsten Beyer and David Reed and directed by Jordan Canning.
Mark Turetsky: Oh, Will, thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy you’re back! I had a terrible dream; I dreamt that an industry-wide union strike prevented me from writing Strange New Worlds reviews, and I missed the whole back end of the second season. And… And… wait, you’re not Will Nevin! How did you get in here?!
Matt Lazorwitz: Well, there was a transporter accident. Will and I, Matt Lazorwitz, have switched places. Fortunately, on top of sharing a passion for Batman, we also share a passion for Trek, so I can take his place. And it’s a good thing, because we have two episodes to discuss.
He Not Busy Being Gorn Is Busy Dying
Mark: Well! Here we are with the first season-spanning cliffhanger of the current Star Trek era! The foolish colonists of the planet A Day Trip From Toronto have been captured by the Gorn, along with Ortegas, La’an, M’Benga and Sam Kirk. Meanwhile, Captain Mrs. McMurray is infected with a Gorn chestburster, Spock and Chapel are having awkward relationship vibes and the Gorn are about to kill everyone anyway. It’s a pretty loaded cliffhanger, blunted only slightly by the fact that M’Benga and Sam Kirk have TOS plot armor. We could really lose La’an, Ortegas or Captain Batel, but that’s about the extent of the threat to characters we care about. Oh, and I guess Pelia, but she’s never in any specific peril.
Matt: No one had better touch a hair on Pelia’s quirky head! Sorry, sorry. I have strong feelings sometimes.
It’s quite a cliffhanger, and with the death of Hemmer back in season 1, the viewer knows that this show isn’t afraid to kill off characters. But it doesn’t go that way. Everyone makes it out of this one alive, if worse for wear. The whole episode ratchets up tension and winds up ending in a way pretty similar to “The Best of Both Worlds Part II.” It also answers the question of why the Gorn weren’t the threat the Klingons were when Kirk runs into them in “Arena,” which I know has been bugging some vocal sections of the online Trek community.
Mark: … and it also uses much the same solution as “Best Of Both Worlds, Part II.” With the Borg, it was a computer signal to put the cube to sleep. Here, it’s an… EM signal to trigger a biological imperative to hibernate. But enough about the ending, let’s talk about each of the crises they deal with: in sickbay, on the bridge, and on the Gorn ship, shall we?
Matt: Sounds good. So starting in that order, we have sickbay. Chapel was able to survive last season and made it back with Spock, and here the former couple have to work together to save Captain Batel from giving birth to a bunch of Gorn. It’s the classic Trek no-win scenario. They quickly go out of their way to establish that there’s no easy way to remove the baby Gorn, and wind up leaning on something that, if Will were reviewing this with you, would have him climbing walls and screaming: magic blood like in Into Darkness. There’s a ticking clock here, and it’s tense, but this whole sequence is as much, if not moreso, about the character interaction between Spock and Chapel as it is about the medical problem.
Mark: Absolutely. Like all good medical dramas, it’s about cutting people up and also feelings. Batel tells them, before being anesthetized, that if it comes down to her or the crew, they shouldn’t hesitate to kill her, but she also tells them to do whatever it takes, short of that. Of course, she then tells Pike that, “you shouldn’t have done that” about being given Illyrian blood. Make up your mind, Marie!
Maybe she’s feeling a bit of residual shame for arguing against Una staying in Starfleet because of that magic blood. I was also a bit concerned that getting augment transfusions might get her kicked out of Starfleet (she wouldn’t have the asylum argument to fall back on), but that doesn’t seem to be a concern in the next episode. Also, Spock and Chapel’s biohazard suits match the one Spock wears in TOS’ “The Naked Time.”
That one is made from a shower curtain.
Matt: On the bridge we have Pike and the bridge crew trying to figure out how to get the crew and colonists taken by the Gorn back, only to learn that there’s a whole lot more Gorn a’comin’. It’s more classic Trek problem solving, and involves most of the crew who are on the ship and not trying to save Batel. Watching it, I was getting really worried about Ortegas, not just because of what I knew was going on with the Gorn ship, but also because the episode took pains to remind us of the name and show the resolve of Ensign Mitchell. It felt like one or the other was going to die: either we were spotlighting a replacement they wanted us to know better, or we were dealing with a classic red shirt scenario (or for our more comics-centric readers, a classic Claremontian introduction, where we develop knowledge and sympathy for a minor or new character just to have the rug pulled out from under us). But surprisingly they both make it out.
Mark: I love Pike soliciting options from everyone on the bridge and then going with one. I feel like when Kirk does it, people offer suggestions, he tells them they’d never work and then comes up with the solution (this was likely due to Shatner demanding re-writes), but having Pike just point and say, “That’s it. That’s the one” when Una suggests blocking the Gorn comms just shows what a good captain he is. We also get some very good Pelia and Scotty scenes, which remind us that the Scotty we’re getting here isn’t the fully-formed Scotty of TOS. He doesn’t know to interact with the captain, he doesn’t know how to manage expectations. He’s brilliant, but he’s not ready to be a chief engineer. That’s a good concept for this version of Scotty.
Matt: I absolutely adore the dynamic between Scotty and Pelia, and I look forward to seeing more of that through the season. The moment where she comes in, yelling that the Gorn are here and if he doesn’t get his cloaking shield up they’re all going to die is one of the best joke moments this series has done. It’s character-based and revealing, but thanks to Kane’s perfect comedic timing, it lands just right.
Pike is really one of the best Star Trek captains, isn’t he? Just how dynamic, empathetic yet realistic he is. I felt he was ready to do what he needed to, leaving his crew behind with the Gorn, to save the Federation. He didn’t have to, because that’s not the nature of the show, but I feel like he would have been more ready to do it than many of the other captains. I would love to see Pike take the Kobayashi Maru and what his results would have been.
Mark: And is it just me, or has his hair gotten even more ostentatious this season?
Matt: That hair will not quit. Bless it.
Mark: Moving on to the Gorn ship. It’s really cool to see the interior of the ship, to see how it’s effectively powered by digesting people the Gorn kidnap. I’m sure those digestion tubes were pumping some kind of anesthetic into them, which makes me wonder about La’an waking up and being able to wake everyone else up. Is this some subtle hint that she retains some augment genes from her lineage? Is it some kind of D&D-style “favored enemy” bonus on constitution checks versus Gorn? It’s curious.
Matt: It definitely is. I have been expecting to see her demonstrate some kind of heightened strength or resilience based on her lineage, and this might be the first solid hint of it. The selection of characters here is perfect for this adventure: the two harcore vets, the security chief and the guy with something to prove; It’s right out of a “behind enemy lines” story. La’an is probably the character here who has the most heavy lifting to do, not just with the literal lifting of people but also her coming to terms with her trauma around the Gorn and the loss of her brother. We’ve known the shape of this, but now it all comes into focus, and is the beginning of her arc for the season, of opening up. We’ll talk about it more with next episode, but she also hands off the trauma baton, which I kind of wish had just been dropped, but that is what it is.
Mark: Last season saw her dealing with time travel heartbreak and confronting the embodiment of her lineage, this season has her confronting the alien monsters who murdered her family. With her rather, let’s say lighter, appearance in “Wedding Bell Blues,” I too am glad to see her moving on to bigger and better things. As for how it’s handled in this episode, it’s fine, but there’s just a bit too much going on for anyone to do much growing and changing. “The Best of Both Worlds” then gave us “Family” to decompress. Strange New Worlds gives us “Wedding Bell Blues,” which, let’s face it, couldn’t possibly hope to hit the same cathartic highs (or introduce us to Worf’s extremely Jewish parents).
The Wedding Planner of Gothos
Matt: One thing I love about Trek, and much of genre TV in general, are the differences in tone from episode to episode, and sometimes even within episodes. And after the intensity of “Hegemony: Part II,” this was (mostly) a very different beast.
Mark: And also, the fact that they can do those episode-to-episode swings in tone in the abbreviated seasons lengths that we’ve been getting in this current era should be praised. But…
Well, I don’t think they’ve been very successful on the whole with their comedic episodes. I will always go to bat for Lower Decks, but comedic episodes of Picard weren’t great (“Stardust City Rag” was an abysmal nadir to an already lackluster first season) and I haven’t enjoyed either of the previous Spock romance comedies (“Spock Amok” and “Charades”). The two comedy episodes of NuTrek that I’ve enjoyed are “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” (a genuinely fun spin on the time loop concept and Rainn Wilson bringing a great comic turn as Harry Mudd) and “Those Old Scientists” (once again elevated by the comedic chops of its guest cast, Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid). Here, we’ve got a light reality warping romantic comedy featuring one of our greats of genre comedy, Rhys Darby. But…
It just didn’t work for me. Darby seems wasted here. I loved his work in Flight of the Conchords and Our Flag Means Death, but something just seems off here.
Matt: I think my problem with it is that this felt rushed. As you point out, the abbreviated season lengths mean you have to get to things fast, but introducing Roger Korby (which is something those of us who know TOS have seen coming a lightyear away), trying to wrap up two-plus seasons of Spock/Chapel drama and possibly seeding Spock’s next romance while also doing a Star Trek episode meant none of that got enough time. We’re supposed to care about Korby and Chapel’s relationship, but since we haven’t seen them together for more than a scene and change before the change to reality, it’s very “tell, not show.”
I don’t feel like Darby was wasted, but I do wish he had more to do. I think he captured who Trelayne is, and added that wink and a nod that Darby does, so I think it’s a fault of the script more than anything; I don’t know if anyone could have done better with what was given.
Mark: Comedy, famously, is hard. Putting it onstage or onscreen takes a lot of time and rehearsal to get each bit right, and even when the performances are good, it needs to be edited just so to ensure the jokes land. I don’t know if I’d pitch it at the writers’ feet or where, but it just didn’t land. That aside, there’s still plenty of juicy stuff to discuss.
Like, first off, Roger Korby! He’s not just a creepy robot man in an ice cave! I thought Cillian O’Sullivan brought a whole lot of charm to the part, and he handled the dramatic stakes of the episode really well. I’ll have to disagree with you about how the episode establishes his and nurse Chapel’s relationship in that I thought the scene in the galley pretty deftly sells that they both fell in love on their trip and the circumstances around it.
I’ll also mention that the writers did a good job of steering around the rather, let’s say dated, politics of how their relationship was established in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” In that episode, we really only hear of Chapel going from being his student to his fiancé (ick!). Here, they at least spend some time establishing that, yes, she started as his student, but very quickly established herself as his equal.
Matt: The sexual politics of TOS are often pretty hinky (there’s a reason that, no matter how often it’s referenced for its villain, no one ever talks about Scotty in “Wolf in the Fold”).
Mark: You mean the episode that begins with Kirk and McCoy taking Scotty to a brothel, under McCoy’s orders, so that Scotty won’t grow to hate women for messing things up in his engineering? That “Wolf In the Fold?”
Matt: O’Sullivan is definitely a charmer.
I want to save the Trelane talk for the end, so let’s talk about the Family Ortegas next, shall we? We meet Erica’s brother and establish his relationship with Uhura, and we see that Erica might have healed physically after the events of last episode, but the mental wounds are still very much open. PTSD has been something we’ve spent a good amount of time with on this series: M’Benga’s scars from the Klingon War and I don’t know if you’d call Pike’s wrestling with his future that, or maybe a variation, Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it’s fascinating to see it affect Ortegas. I haven’t rewatched every episode of the earlier seasons, but she seems to deal with her wartime trauma better than some, so seeing her now struggling adds a wrinkle to the usually lighthearted and unflappable Oretgas.
Mark: It also retroactively explained some of the storytelling choices of the previous episode (ie, why did they nearly kill Ortegas, only to have her be saved offscreen? It felt like establishing a point of tension without really giving us a payoff).
As for Ortegas’ trauma, I’m not sure I like this as a development for her character. As a character, she’s been so underserved on this series, where characters like Sam Kirk and T’Pring have gotten more development as guest stars than she has as a main cast member. It just smacks of, “we don’t have a handle on who this character is, let’s give her some trauma to deal with” that seems to me like they’ve given up on the character’s original conception, likely because that conception wasn’t fleshed out to begin with. I’m aware that Melissa Navia’s role in previous seasons was kept small due to her grief at the loss of her partner, but this doesn’t seem like a great solution.
I also have to wonder if there was some deleted material regarding Beto’s use of camera drones and how they would have interacted with Trelane’s reality shift. But maybe they’re set up for a future episode.
Matt: I could not agree more about using trauma as a way to build character; who is writing this, Tom King? But seriously, Ortegas is a favorite around my house and among a lot of fans based solely on the charm and verve that Navia brings to the character. Dragging her down with a leaden plot about her facing down her Gorn trauma, especially since we just had La’an going through hers, feels like, as you said, the writers not being sure what to do with her otherwise.
And those camera drones are definitely going to come back at some point this season. That screamed of setting up a later plot.
Mark: My prediction: an episode structured like “The Interview,” the episode of M*A*S*H that was presented as a documentary. They have said that there’s a big format shift episode this season, right?”
Matt: Now for an awkward segue: Mark, how familiar are you with Star Trek novels?
Mark: I read a ton of TNG ones when I was a teen. One or two TOS ones. Oh, and some of the earliest DS9 ones. But I can’t say I remember anything about any of them (save A Stitch In Time, which I listened to recently).
Matt: Well, my knowledge of TOS as a kid was spotty, as I watched a few here and there with my dad and got into the franchise deeply with TNG. From there, I read a bunch of the novels, my favorites of which were by the recently departed Peter David. David had a habit of tying together TOS and TNG plots and characters in a bunch of his novels, and after reading those novels I would track down the TOS episode he was referencing back in the days when video stores existed and had single episode tapes. One of those novels was called Q-Squared, and it featured an alternate timeline where Jack Crusher didn’t die colliding with the main timeline, brought about by Q and Trelane having a tiff. That’s a long walk to get to the fact that fanon and B-canon has long connected Q and Trelane, and acknowledging the recent passing of a problematic-at-times but luminary figure in the Star Trek fiction sphere.
Mark: Buddy, let me show you something from my personal collection:
Matt: Brilliant! Someday we should talk about MacKenzie Calhoun…
I enjoy Q, and love every time he shows up, but I don’t know what this does for anyone other than fan service. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, and I like the idea of these kind of connections, but I prefer it when they serve the story, vs. them being just a wink to the in-the-know audience. Just echoing the end of “The Squire of Gothos” but having it clear that Q is Trelane’s dad doesn’t help or hurt the story: it’s just there. I won’t say I didn’t cackle with joy when I heard the voice, but I would have liked something more with it. It makes me worried we could slip down the fan service slope that so much of modern Star Wars does when it incorporates old EU characters, and something that this show has generally avoided when using TOS characters and concepts.
Mark: It also creates a weird tension in “The Squire of Gothos.” I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I watched the episode all the way through, and upon reviewing it, it seemed like the writers of “Wedding Bell Blues” threaded a remarkably tricky needle. At first, Kirk and Sulu end up in Trelane’s drawing room, fine, they’re not around for Spock and Chapel’s wedding. Then McCoy and a few redshirts beam down, great. Spock even tells Scotty that they both need to stay on the ship when Scotty wants to beam down with McCoy. But then it all falls apart: Spock and Uhura get teleported into Trelane’s drawing room along with the rest of the bridge crew. So how is it that Spock doesn’t recognize him? Yes, Trelane appears to Spock as a Vulcan bartender and as an Andorian, but it seems like Spock eventually sees through that (identifying that they’re the same person). You’d think with Spock’s diamond-sharp intellect, he’d put two and two together, but no.
Not to mention the revelation that Q is Trelane’s father doesn’t actually work as far as Q’s characterization: in “The Squire of Gothos,” Trelane’s parents apologize to Kirk for letting their child inconvenience him and his crew. Does that sound like the actions of Q to you? Maybe Q is acting nice because Mrs. Q is there and this isn’t the first time their kid has ruined someone’s day. But I’m just making excuses; it just doesn’t ring true.
Matt: Maybe this is Q in his softer, later years…? Yeah, I’m not buying that either.
Mark: We saw Q in his latest years in Picard season 2, and he was… still a dick. Anyway.
There’s one more thing I’d like to bring up in the Q discussion here: this episode seems to be playing on TNG’s “Tapestry.” It features a character wishing something in their life was different and a Q granting that wish, it features characters waking up next to someone unexpected (twice!), it features Q showing up as other people to guide them along. But in the case of “Tapestry,” Picard learns a valuable lesson about how we’re the culmination of the choices we make, that we are the person we choose to be throughout our lives, and also he learns to appreciate some of the more impulsive tendencies of his youth.
In Spock’s case, he wishes that Chapel was still in love with him, and he learns… that it’s wrong to manipulate reality into matching your desires? That’s not really a lesson that he learns in this episode. He doesn’t come to a realization anywhere; he’s already a moral enough person that as soon as he realizes reality has been changed, he sets out to undo it. He isn’t even tempted to keep playing the charade. I guess at the end of the day, he learns that Chapel is happier with Korby. But we don’t even see her as less happy with Spock at any point; she seems perfectly happy to be with Spock in the new reality.
Stray New Words
- I’m not sure I like the implication that Scotty goes from hardly ever drinking to being a heavy drinker over the course of Spock’s bachelor party.
- On the flip side, it’s fun to see him apparently take over as transporter chief and wear his same formal kilt uniform as in TOS.
- Chapel’s mother’s flowers are kept in a box very reminiscent of the ones Bajoran Orbs of the Prophets are kept in.
- What was in that drink that Trelane gave Spock? It’s… green.
- The three-armed bartender at the end of “Wedding Bell Blues” is an Edosian, like Arex from The Animated Series.
- Now that La’an is teased as having a romance with both Kirk and Spock, I can think of no greater sign that a character is doomed.
- I desperately want Captain Batel, swearing like the actress’s character on Letterkenny, hanging out with noted dropper of every swear possible Dr. T’ana from Lower Decks.
- Was anyone else hoping that when Trelane proposed including elements of Human and Vulcan weddings, we’d get Spock breaking a glass underfoot?
- Ortegas got to drop her catchphrase again. “I fly the ship.” I get goosebumps every time I hear it.
- I laughed when Pike said, “let’s hit it” about ramming another ship.
- Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to serve on the USS Pablo Picasso. That guy was a great artist, but he suuuuucked as a person.
- Modifying the main deflector. Is there anything it can’t do?
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana. Follow him @markturetsky.com on Bluesky.
