Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 10, "A Quality of Mercy"

 

A few posts back, I said episode 4 of this show, "Memento Mori," was "the direct descendant of the original series' 'Balance of Terror.' " That sentiment was accurate at the time--but this episode stepped up and said, "Hold my beer." 

This episode is a retelling of "Balance of Terror" in an alternate timeline, where Christopher Pike is the captain that fateful day the Romulans attacked Federation outposts bordering the Neutral Zone instead of James T. Kirk. Pike is shown this alternate future from his own future-Admiral self (dressed in the red admiral's outfit from The Wrath of Khan) to prevent past-Pike from taking a step that will wreck the timelines as we know them: to attempt to save one of the cadets who dies in the accident that disables Pike seven years in the future. Admiral Pike plunks Captain Pike in the alternate scenario and forces him to see it play out, and he (and we) see what the consequences of him attempting to evade his fate are. 

Parts of this are very fan-servicey (including a voiceover in the alt-timeline from an unseen Scottish engineer who protests, when Spock growls at him, "I'm an engineer, not a miracle worker") but most of it holds together well, mainly due to Anson Mount's performance. He really has been the MVP of this entire first season. He approaches the crisis true to the character we have been shown all along--a cautious captain who always tries diplomacy first, and falls back to violence as a last result. This is who he is, and it's not really his fault that his nature is so ill-suited to this situation. But unfortunately it is, and we see the grim results of that--when it's Spock who's catastrophically injured during the Romulan attack, not Pike, and that removal of Spock from all the things we know he will subsequently do results in the horrific future that Admiral Pike has been sent back to prevent. 

And, of course, we get a surprise visit from a young alternate James T. Kirk, who took a different route to the captain's chair in command of the Farragut, which came to assist Enterprise during the crisis. The Farragut is destroyed and the survivors beamed aboard Enterprise, and Kirk comes up with a magnificent bluff that nearly saves the day, were it not for the Romulans deciding the Federation is weak and declaring war on them. In thinking over this appearance by the new Kirk, Paul Wesley, I am....underwhelmed, shall we say. The actor didn't try to imitate William Shatner, which is a good and necessary thing, but his interpretation of the character didn't make much of an impression on me either. He certainly didn't do as fine a job with a legacy character as Ethan Peck and Celia Rose Gooding are doing with Spock and Uhura respectively. Still, since Kirk is supposed to be in Strange New Worlds' second season, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to see if he can develop further. 

(And the new actor hired to play the Romulan commander paled before the magnificence of Mark Lenard's portrayal. I almost wish they could've done some Uncanny Valley stuff and CGI'd Lenard into those scenes, since they were line-for-line recreations of the original.)

The season also ends on a cliffhanger, as Una Chin-Riley is arrested for hiding the fact that she is Illyrian. This is hinted at by the alternate La'an (who was aboard Farragut) when Pike asks if she's talked to Una and is told "she's not allowed visitors." In the middle of the crisis, Pike doesn't have time to unravel what's going on, but we can see from the look on his face as Una is taken away that he's going to raise all sorts of hell over this. 

Altogether, I think this was a successful first season, if a bit uneven. It's certainly been better than most Star Trek series are right out of the gate--The Next Generation's first season was famously crappy, Patrick Stewart notwithstanding (we shall not talk about the second season of Picard, which I dislike so much I haven't been able to write about its finale). Hopefully if what happened with Una is what starts off the second season, we will a) be able to explore her character more, which was shamefully lacking this season; and b) move in a bit more of an original direction. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 9, "All Those Who Wander"

 

Following the last two lighter episodes, I thought the remaining episodes of the season would be heavier and darker.....and wow, was I ever right with this one. It's the darkest episode of the season. But it's also one of the best. 

The Gorn have been the running antagonist of the season, and in this episode we got to see them in their computer-generated glory. Of course, this being CGI and not the cheesy bipedal 60's suit, they were a lot more menacing. The head design was pretty similar to the adult Gorn seen in the original series' "Arena," but the babies are apparently more quadripedal, at least in the early stages of their development. They also grow terrifyingly fast, which is why they attack and eat anything around them, including each other. This and other facts about Gorn hatchlings are used by La'an to save as many of the crew as she can.

Obviously this scenario owes a lot to Alien, including the hatchlings bursting out of the body of a hapless blue-skinned guest star. In fact, I suppose this episode could be construed as Star Trek's version of Alien, albeit without the greedy murderous corporation. So I guess La'an would be....the Ripley analogue? If so, Christina Chong does a good job of it, including her cathartic shriek when she smashes the frozen hatchling at the end. 

The setup is simple: Enterprise is on the way to deliver vital time-sensitive supplies to Deep Space Station K-7 (which hasn't gone all tribble-ley yet), when another priority one mission comes in: the Peregrine, exploring beyond Federation space, send out a distress call and makes an emergency landing aboard a Class L (icy) planet. Since Enterprise cannot divert from her primary mission, Pike tell Una to complete that and he will take a landing party to see what happened to Peregrine. He words this as "taking the kids [meaning the cadets, including Uhura, who have come to the end of their rotations] on the station wagon for one last road trip." (Which is fine for the viewer, but made me wonder how anyone born and living in the 23rd century would even know what a "station wagon" is. This scene was delightful, however, as Pike holds his briefings in his quarters over breakfast or some other meal, and in this one even made Spock do the dishes.)

On the planet where Peregrine set down, they find the ship intact and the crew dead, and killed in a messy, brutal fashion. There are two survivors, a human girl, Oriana, and the aforementioned blue-skinned alien the magical universal translator apparently can't talk to (which leads to one of the few humorous moments in the episode, as La'an says, "Uhura, do something," and Uhura blurts out, "That's not how linguistics works!"). But the logs from the dead captain tell the tale: the Peregrine picked up three castaways on a Class M Planet, these two and an Orion...and the Orion was infected with Gorn eggs. Oriana says "the monsters are all gone," but we soon find out that's not true. The blue-skinned alien starts wheezing and gasping in Sickbay, and four hatchlings bust out of him. 

From then on it's a race to kill the hatchings before they pick off the landing party. The landing party works together to use the awakening ship and the Gorn's hatred of cold to their advantage: they lower the temperature in sections of the ship at a time, and use a fast-running Uhura and La'an to lure the hatchlings to one particular section. Much of this is shot from the viewpoint of the Gorn, their eyes seeing a greenish background and a running white bipedal form. The remaining hatchling is lured into the cargo bay (which is open to the planet's surface), and both Hemmer and La'an hide in the hexagonal storage units we've seen in the Enterprise's corridors before, with the hatching shrieking and slobbering its green mouth-ooze on the hatch. Hemmer sprays the hatchling with liquid nitrogen, and once it's immobilized La'an climbs out of the hexagon and smashes it to bits.

That's not the final shoe to drop, however. We've already had our two sacrificial "redshirts," two cadets, set up in the opening scene, where one is made Lieutenant and another is commended on her graduation. And since we know that the several series regulars in this episode aren't going to die just yet, we think everyone else is safe. Only they aren't. When one of the hatchlings came upon Hemmer and Uhura in engineering, it sprayed him across the face with its acid....but as La'an knew and Hemmer realized, that acid also included eggs. And so Hemmer, after dispensing some final words of wisdom to a weeping Uhura, walks out the back of the open cargo bay and plummets to his death. 

Please don't say, "Hemmer, we hardly knew ye," because we did, and it hurt. He was only in, what? Four, five episodes and a handful of scenes? But the writers did such a good job with him, showing first his egotism and arrogance and later his vulnerability through his interactions with Uhura and M'Benga, that this was very much not a "redshirt" death. And even in his final scenes, he continued to gently advise Uhura, telling her that she shouldn't turn away from her gift for creating bonds: "Of course the people you care about are going to cause you pain. It will hurt, but the love it yields will far outweigh the sorrow." And since the last shot is of Uhura going to the bridge and looking and the communications station, we are left with the strong inference that this is what will cause her to decide to stay in Starfleet. 

There are a couple of other important emotional moments in this episode: to lure the hatchling to the trap prepared for it, Spock has to unleash his Vulcan rage, which he does to the point he can't control it afterwards. At Hemmer's funeral, he abruptly leaves and Christine Chapel follows him to see him smashing his fist into the bulkhead. Facing a Vulcan's fury could be a scary thing, but Chapel doesn't flinch: she tells him his anger and pain doesn't make him weak, it makes him human, and hugs him. There will be repercussions from this, or at least I hope so, as it seems too important a character moment to be dropped, even for a more episodic series like this one. La'an also comes to a turning point, as she discovers some hints as to where Oriana's family might be and asks Pike for permission to take extended leave to pursue them. 

With only one episode left, this first season of Strange New Worlds has been, in my opinion, a rip-roaring success. We just need more Una Chin-Riley going forward, as out of all the regulars, she has been the least served. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 8, "The Elysium Kingdom"

 

I don't know if the intention was for this show to separate its first batch of episodes into various shades of heavy drama and lighter character-based comedies, but that is more or less what has happened. The first four episodes were straightforward drama, and then we had the body-swap goofiness of "Spock Amok" and the "YARRRRR PIRATES" satire of "The Serene Squall." ("Please stop," begged Una.) (Of course, in between was the downer of "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach," with the ghost of Ursula K. Le Guin looking on and raising her eyebrows.) This episode is a combination of kids' fantasy fluff, Anson Mount's pitch-perfect portrayal of a cowardly obsequious snake, and the real heart of a father who, for his daughter's sake, has to let her go. 

It's also Dr. M'Benga's episode, wrapping up the subplot of his terminally ill daughter whom he has been keeping in the emergency medical transporter buffer as he searches for a cure for her condition. This was always going to be a delicate balancing act, as he has to take her out of the buffer at regular intervals for a minimum amount of time (never pinned down, but I got the impression that it had to be at least once every twenty-four hours) to prevent her pattern degrading. This forced exodus from the transporter lets her disease progress despite M'Benga's best efforts, and in this episode he admits she doesn't have much time left. 

The Enterprise is surveying a nebula, and when they're done with the survey and try to leave they can't. On the bridge, Ortegas is thrown to the floor, and Pike summons M'Benga to the bridge. When he gets there the door whoosh open on a transformed bridge, festooned with greenery (I imagine the plant budget for this episode nearly busted the bank--vines, ferns and ivy was everywhere), and the bridge crew were wearing costumes that looked like they were lifted wholesale from a Rennaissance Faire. M'Benga is also wearing a costume and bearing a crown, and the others call him "King Ridley." He realizes that what he is seeing and hearing, and the character he is apparently playing, have been lifted from the book he has been reading to his daughter Rukiya over the months, "The Elysian Kingdom" (written by none other than Deep Space Nine's Benny Russell). The bridge crew members have been drafted into role-playing the characters from the book: Pike is the craven, foppish chamberlain Sir Rauth, La'an is the Princess Thalia, Uhura is the enemy Queen Neve, Spock is the wizard Caster (and Ethan Peck looks damn good in his outfit, wizard staff, and long wig), Ortegas is the swordsperson Sir Adya, Una is Zymera the Huntress, and chief engineer Hemmer (a very welcome return, especially with his line "THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE!") is another wizard, Pollux. 

M'Benga has to see the story through to the end, with the help of Hemmer. The resolution takes an unexpected turn when it's revealed that the entity behind this is one of Star Trek's go-to tropes, the godlike energy being: in this case a Boltzmann brain, a spontaneously generated intelligence in the nebula that sensed Rukiya in the transporter buffer and reached out to her. The entity is also managing to hold Rukiya's illness at bay, at least as long as the ship remains where it is. If the entity releases the ship and the Enterprise leaves the area, the illness will return. Which leads to M'Benga's unexpected, poignant choice: he lets Rukiya go with the entity to give her a chance to live. She returns seconds later as a grown woman (the entity, who she has named Debra after her [presumably dead] mother, can apparently bend time as well), to thank M'Benga for letting her go and to tell him she is happy. 

Well. That was an emotional turn, and uplifted the entire episode, though I'm a little surprised Rukiya's predicament got solved in the first season. But though this episode was generally enjoyable (particularly Anson Mount's brown-nosing snarkiness), I think the comedy well has pretty much run dry. However, since there are only two episodes left, I imagine we'll return to the heavier drama next time. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 7, "The Serene Squall"

 

The thing about this show being (mostly) episodic is that there are different tonal shifts with each episode. "Children of the Comet" was full of the joy of exploration, "Memento Mori" was as serious and suspenseful as a heart attack, and "Spock Amok" was a more lighthearted romp that nevertheless dug into the characters and relationship of Spock and T'Pring. This episode does a bit more of that, with the addition of some character beats for Christine Chapel, all wrapped up in an episode that's halfway serious and halfway a satire of the "space pirates take over the Enterprise" concept. Oh yeah, and the pretty bow on the top is an excellent performance by guest star Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen/Captain Angel. 

The serious part of this episode is the basic setup: the Enterprise is taken on a wild goose chase (unknowingly) at the behest of Dr. Aspen, a counselor-turned-humanitarian who has been running aid missions to non-Federation space. The chasee turns out to be the Orion pirate ship the Serene Squall, who hoodwinks and takes over the Enterprise. Pike and crew implement the "Alpha Braga IV" strategy, fomenting an internal mutiny, while Spock, Christine Chapel and Dr. Aspen commit to the more straightforward method of attempting to fight off the invaders. That is, until the plot twist where Dr. Aspen reveals themself to be Captain Angel, the real leader of the Serene Squall, who has targeted the Enterprise and Spock for a specific purpose.

(The actor, Jesse James Keitel, is transgender. So is the character, but it's not remarked upon except for everyone using "they/them" pronouns. Keitel also turns in a marvelous performance, playing Dr. Aspen as a straightforward, empathetic and competent counselor with some rather useful advice to Spock about accepting both his human and Vulcan halves, and Captain Angel as a bit of a drama king/queen. Of course, when you get to the final scene, all of the Dr's and Captain's advice takes on an entirely new meaning.)

The satire part of the episode falls to Pike, and may I say that Anson Mount obviously had a glorious time making this episode? From his objecting to his Starfleet nickname of "Boy Scout," to his leading an away team to the supposed colonists' ship (and Una remarking on him "flouting the rules") to his immediate manipulation of the pirates by way of cooking them a good meal, persuading them to sell the Enterprise crew to the Klingons, and pitting crewmembers against one another to start the mutiny, to the final scene back on the Enterprise (which almost looked improvised to me) where he starts talking like a pirate, with over-the-top "Yaaarrrrrrs" and "walk the planks" (and Una begs, "Please stop"), Mount was having a hoot. On the Serene Squall's bridge, there was an actual wooden steering wheel--I mean, obviously that was for looks, but Pike stood there twirling the thing as they were bearing down on the Enterprise (and his asking Erica Ortegas to fire phasers to temporarily immobilize his ship, gently, came out sounding so pained). 

Spock and T'Pring also come to a better understanding of each other through these events. At the beginning, T'Pring tells Spock she has been "doing research on human sex" (and Ethan Peck delivers Spock's response to this, the single word "What?" perfectly--he sounds like he's choking on his own spit). At the episode's climax on the bridge, when Spock throws a monkey wrench into Angel's plans by revealing to T'Pring a pretend affair with Christine Chapel (and kissing Chapel quite soundly on the bridge to prove the point) in an attempt to get T'Pring to renounce him and leave him to his fate, T'Pring goes along with it. After everything is over, she meets Spock in his quarters and tells him she knew he could not have feelings for Nurse Chapel. She also notes that his human side is a strength as it provided him with the passion  necessary to pull the ruse off. It's very interesting that the writers are exploring and deepening Spock's and T'Pring's relationship, even though we already know, unfortunately, how it will end. 

But the final stinger in the episode is the reason Dr. Aspen/Captain Angel captured the Enterprise to begin with. They wanted to use Spock's relationship with T'Pring, and her status as head of the Vulcan Criminal Rehabilitation Center, to force her to release a prisoner who is Angel's lover or husband. Angel called him "Xavareous," but as she talks about him (and the fact that this Xavareous told Angel about Spock!) Spock realizes who it is. The final scene in the episode takes us back to T'Pring's rehab center as the camera zooms to the back of a Vulcan prisoner's head. Spock's voiceover tells us it is "a Vulcan I have been instructed to avoid at all costs. My half brother, Sybok." 

Well, hell. I guess the almost universally maligned original series movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was good for something after all. 

I certainly hope they're setting things up for both Angel's and Sybok's return, as Jesse James Keitel stole the show out from under pretty much everybody. The actor playing Sybok didn't get any lines or even a head-on shot, but as the casting is generally spot-on this series I would like to see him again. I don't think I would rate this episode as the best of the season, but it was pretty solid. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 6, "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"

 

After the lighthearted tone last time out, this episode takes a decidedly darker turn. It's the darkest episode of the season so far. It's also based on (or inspired by, at the very least) Ursula K. Le Guin's famous short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." This story is almost fifty years old, so I'm sure a sizable portion of the audience hasn't read it. I'm not going to say which is better, the episode or the original story, but I think you should read the story to get a fuller picture of what is happening. 

This is another Pike-centric episode, with Dr. M'Benga as a secondary featured character. Arguably M'Benga gets the greater plot movement, as he receives a theory of a possible treatment for his daughter. We see his daughter Rukiya out of the transporter buffer for a greater length of time than previous, and it's evident that she's getting tired of staying there, even though it is keeping her alive. Christopher Pike reconnects with an old love, and gets an offer to join with her people, the Majalis, to avoid his fate. (Honestly, I wonder why this hasn't been discussed more often. He knows what's going to happen, and he knows when it is going to happen, so it seems to me somebody should be talking about inspecting/repairing the component that fails beforehand and making sure the cadets who are shown to be in danger simply aren't anywhere near the fated spot that day. The multiverse is a thing in Trek, y'know? So the circumstances are different, the timeline branches, and life goes on.)

(Of course, that would also upset fifty-five years of established Star Trek canon, but hey. Anson Mount is doing a good enough job with this character--a track record he continues here--that I wouldn't mind a little retconning.)

Cadet Uhura also has an important role to play in the plot, as does Security Chief La'An Noonien-Singh, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite new characters. One person who is absent for the second episode in a row is the irascible Andorian engineer Hemmer. Maybe they don't quite know what to do with him yet? Although the last time we saw him, in episode 5, "Memento Mori," we found out a bit more about him and got a glimpse of the person underneath the arrogant, egotistical mask. Perhaps the writers are thinking a little Hemmer goes a long way? That may be so, but I think he's an interesting enough character to support a brighter spotlight. 

As for this episode....I think it's arguable whether it 1) stands up to the original Le Guin story; or 2) is a coherent narrative in and of itself. In the end, Alora is right that the Federation has no jurisdiction over what her people do; but on the other hand, Pike could certainly raise enough hell to force the Majalis to reach out to other Federation members to see if their centuries-old technology could be weaned away from demanding "the neural network of a child" to support it. There are other floating cities in the Federation, after all, going back to the original series' "The Cloud Minders." That wouldn't save the kid in this episode, but it would save other children going forward. 

Thinking along that line, this is the first episode where this series' episodic format is not successful. This story and the fallout thereof really deserved another episode or two, I think. Perhaps it could be revisited further along the line? (Not that any of the powers-that-be are listening to me, but I'm going to throw my opinion out there anyway.) Unfortunately, while Anson Mount does his usual excellent job, and Babs Olusanmokum shines as Dr. M'Benga, this episode is not the best of the season (that spot is co-shared with "Memento Mori" and "Children of the Comet"). It's not quite a dud, but....well. I'll stop there, I guess. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 5, "Spock Amok"

 

After the first four episodes of the season (and especially the last, "Memento Mori") we needed a lighter episode, and this is it. The Enterprise is in spacedock for repairs and the crew is on shore leave (except for Captain Pike, who has a diplomatic mission to finish up) for some needed downtime. But while this episode has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments, there is also some good character work done for Spock, T'Pring, and Christine Chapel.

There are three main interweaving storylines: Pike's mission; Una and La'an, who stay behind on the ship, getting sucked into "Enterprise bingo" (a list of absurd and/or dangerous tasks to be checked off); and T'Pring meeting Spock to spend time together. We open with a dream sequence lifted directly from the original series' "Amok Time," with Spock coming to marry T'Pring and realizing he is in his human form, and her saying "I will not marry a human" and calling kal-if-fee--the challenge--on him. Only he doesn't fight Kirk--he fights his Vulcan half. (The original series music is also used here to great effect.) In fact, Vulcan Spock kicks Human Spock's ass, and Human Spock is about to get his head chopped off by the lirpa when Spock wakes up. This opening clearly depicts Spock's fear: that T'Pring will end up rejecting him because of his half-human heritage. This is shown as he yells at his Vulcan half during the fight: "I'm not human. I'm not." 

This theme of Spock and T'Pring each fearing the other's reactions and not understanding each other continues throughout: when T'Pring arrives, she notes Spock's quarters are "too human." He says he's redecorating (he's really not). We find out what T'Pring does: along with her colleague T'Pyll, she "undertakes to rehabilitate those who have committed crimes by showing them the true path of Vulcan logic," which rather sounds like a combination of bounty hunter and social worker? At any rate, she's still expecting Spock's duties to interfere, even as she tells him "We must prioritize our relationship." 

Unfortunately, what she fears comes to pass. Spock had agreed to help Captain Pike in negotiating with the R'ongovian Protectorate to join the Federation before the Klingons and/or Romulans can beat them to it. (Admiral Robert April makes a return appearance, and Pike is wearing the green uniform from the second season of the original series, although he doesn't fill it out quite as well as William Shatner did.) The R'ongovians arrive early and insist on starting the negotiations right now, which spoils Spock's dinner plans with T'Pring. When he briefly returns to his quarters to tell her this, she is not pleased. "I am concerned that your time in Starfleet may be causing you to behave in a manner so human we may ultimately find ourselves incompatible." 

During another break in the negotiations, Spock is sitting in one of the starbase's bars/eating areas, and is approached by Christine Chapel, who is also on her shore leave. She's actually using Spock to get away from her boyfriend/fling, who is questioning her about where their relationship is going, which she doesn't want to hear. Spock asks her for advice, and after she hears what's going on with T'Pring, she tells him that although he's an extraordinarily intelligent person, he's also being an idiot. "I feel I should have seen that coming," Spock says, with such a dry tone it made me laugh out loud. Chapel says he has to put T'Pring ahead of his duty, as "that's what being in a relationship is," and says T'Pring most likely feels misunderstood. Spock then returns to T'Pring and comes up with the idea of a "Vulcan soul-sharing," a deep mind meld wherein they will share each other's katras and deepest thoughts. They perform the ritual and end up swapping katras, with each in the other's body. This also provides a nice opportunity for both actors, Ethan Peck and Gia Sandhu (who looks quite a bit like the original series T'Pring, Arlene Martel) to stretch and copy each other's character mannerisms, which they pull off pretty well. 

But this development leads to the episode's crisis point, because the negotiation with the R'ongovians have fallen apart. They don't want to speak to Pike any longer, and will speak only to Spock. So Pike goes to Spock's quarters to tell him what's happening, and gets a bomb dropped on him in turn, as Spock and T'Pring admit they are now in each other's body. T'Pring-as-Spock: "Now that you know, you can likely tell the very clear differences in our mannerisms." "Yeah, totally," Pike says, continuing Anson Mount's record of letter-perfect line deliveries. T'Pring and Spock try to get out of it, but Pike says the negotiations depend on it, and they reluctantly agree. T'Pring-as-Spock goes with Pike, and Spock-as-T'Pring gets dragged into T'Pring's job, as her assistant T'Pyll says their target Barjan will talk only to her. 

We then see them doing each other's jobs and temporarily living each other's lives. T'Pring-as-Spock talks to the R'ongovians and during that conversation they begin to sound an awful lot like him, which Pike picks up on. He also realizes T'Pring really isn't suited for this and ends up interrupting them, taking "Spock's" side, which impresses the R'ongovians. So much so they say they will give Pike the final "summation," the last word, before they make their decision about joining the Federation. Meanwhile, Spock-as-T'Pring goes to confront Barjan, but also seeks out Christine Chapel and asks for her help in solving his and T'Pring's problem(s). Chapel accompanies him to the confrontation with Barjan, who is an arrogant, superior little Vulcan snot, piling on insults about T'Pring's betrothal to the "son of Sarek" and making snide remarks about humans until Spock-as-T'Pring finally decks him. Which got another resounding laugh out of me. 

Back on the Enterprise, with both Chapel and Dr. M'Benga prematurely returned from their shore leave, M'Benga works a little handwaving technobabble magic with sea-urchin paste that will drive the katras from the wrong bodies back to the right ones. After all the dust has settled, Spock and T'Pring are finally honest with each other. 

Spock: "I admit I was afraid that I was not Vulcan enough for you. That you saw me as a human, more concerned about my duty to Starfleet than to my culture or my betrothed. My feelings about Vulcan are not easy. On our world, I was forced to prove my Vulcan-ness. Any deviation was seen as proof I did not belong. In Starfleet, I am accepted for who I am. Half Vulcan, half human. I am, quite simply, Spock." 

T'Pring: "I know how much you value duty. And I feared that you saw our relationship as just that, a duty, rather than something more. We must both want to be here." 

Well, they both clearly do, as they kiss and the camera pans up towards the ceiling. 

So Captain Pike ends up concluding the negotiations with the R'ongovians. They had earlier admitted that "empathy is a hallmark of our people," and Pike, remembering that and also drawing on his observations of what happened during previous negotiation attempts, plays a hunch of his own. He's brutally honest with them, saying that from the R'ongovians' point of view, it may not be such a great thing for them to ally with the Federation. They listen, say "Thank you," and walk out. Pike explains: "The R'ongovians were rude with the Tellarites, reasonable with us, and deeply logical when talking to a Vulcan. What if this was a diplomatic technique? They responded positively when I took Spock's side, even though it was in direct violation of what they'd asked. Maybe they're just looking for somebody to take their point of view. Radical empathy. Maybe what they value the most in others is the capacity to see things their way." 

This is spot-on, as we see a minute later when the R'ongovians get in their ship, fly the Federation flag, and deploy their solar sail as they leave (in a gorgeous effects shot). We are also shown Spock and T'Pring in bed together (hey, in this modern era, Spock can have a sex life!) and T'Pring admitting, "You know, I enjoyed being Mr. Spock for a day."

Spock: "In the spirit of total honesty, I should probably tell you I punched Barjan."

T'Pring: "Having met him, that is logical." 

So this was an interesting character study of both Spock and T'Pring, and Christine Chapel to a lesser extent. Obviously the powers-that-be are not interested in putting Spock and T'Pring at odds quite so soon, even though we know that's where they'll end up. (Although I'm now itching to find out more about the pilot Erika Ortegas. I hope she gets an episode soon.) We also see an exploration of Una's and La'an's friendship (although Una's hair is pulled back in a very unflattering bun that looks like a knob on the back of her head). That's probably the lighter of the three storylines, but the two of them have a good camaraderie. At any rate, this episode was a nice break. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 4, "Memento Mori"

 

This fourth episode, while not my favorite so far--that goes to "Children of the Comet"--was still damned good. It was a tautly written battle drama dripping with suspense, hearkening back to the past method of starship warfare, likening it to submarine war. In fact, you could call this episode the direct descendant of the original series' "Balance of Terror." The difference here is that we never see the antagonists, though we see their ships and their peculiar method of communicating ship-to-ship via light code (and we hear their clicking vocalizations, which serve to heighten the suspense). This is because the antagonists, which seem to be shaping up to be the series' Big Bads, are the reptilian race the Gorn from TOS.

People are of two minds about this, of course. We will first see the Gorn in the Trek timeline ten years in the future, when Kirk battles their captain in "Arena" and refuses to kill him. (Assuming we don't see a CGI glimpse of one in a future Strange New Worlds episode [at least I assume it would be CGI, although honestly anything would be better than that godawful 60's lizard suit]. That really wouldn't square with the canon that they had never been seen before, but I think La'an has a pretty good idea of what the Gorn look like, seeing as her colony ship was taken by them. Although when I watched the episode the second time, she doesn't actually say they are a reptilian species. She just says the people aboard the Puget Sound were hunted as prey and fed to their hatchlings.) Not seeing one onscreen is dictated by past canon, but it also ratchets up the tension very effectively in this episode. 

This is La'an's episode, following the established pattern of spotlighting one of the regulars each time out. We find out more about what happened to her, and she comes to a bit of a epiphany as she works through her memories of the attack, which are pulled from her mind via a mind meld with Spock at La'an's request. (She also sees a bit of Spock's memories, specifically the existence of a sister who sacrificed herself for him, a sister that does not exist in Starfleet records. That's more than a bit of a plot hole, as Michael Burnham, y'know, started a bloody war with the Klingons, and served for seven years aboard the Shenzhou, but whatever.) At the beginning of the episode, the crew is celebrating Starfleet Remembrance Day, where crewmembers wear pins with the logos of ships crewed by their loved ones, ships that have been lost. La'an refused to wear hers, and gets into a bit of a tiff with Una over it, saying she will not go to therapy because she isn't broken. That remains to be seen, but at the end she puts her Puget Sound pin on. She also gets a lesson in inspiring the crew from Captain Pike, who gently but firmly tells her to stop being so pessimistic about the Gorn and proclaiming the Enterprise can't win against them (even though that probably would have been the case, were it not for Pike's leadership and Spock's thinking outside the box) and start giving the crew something to believe in. 

We also find out a little more about the grumpy, irascible, arrogant chief engineer, Hemmer. His "I am superior; look at me" shtick was already wearing pretty thin, but here we find out he actually wanted to be a botanist. He doesn't really answer Uhura's question of why he joined Starfleet, but he does say he is sticking to his Aenar pacifist philosophy: "I will not fight for Starfleet, but I will defend its ideals. Pacifism is not passivity. It is the active protection of all living things in the natural universe." He also says he's going to give Uhura a passing grade on her engineering rotation, so hopefully he won't be so much of an ass in the future. 

But it was Anson Mount who really carried this episode; he commanded my attention in all of his scenes, as Pike did everything he could to keep his crew alive and get out of this mess. Now, granted, some of the risks he took here may have been predicated on his knowledge of the future: that, for instance, Enterprise wasn't going to be crushed by its dive into the brown dwarf's depths (although this did give us a neat scene of the ship groaning as it descended to deeper pressure, which again reminds one of submarine warfare). Which I think should be a subject for conversation with Una at some point? Anyway, the final shot of Enterprise slingshotting the black hole's event horizon and dropping its decoy along the way, to make it appear to the Gorn as if the ship had been destroyed, was expertly done by the special effects crew. And the relief that flows across Pike's face when Uhura answers him, telling him both she and Hemmer are still alive, was just a tour de force of acting.

(And speaking of Una, that was the episode's biggest plot hole. Just last time out we had an extensive discussion of her super-duper Illyrian genetically modified immune system, which not only defeated a light-transmitted virus but cured her of fatal radiation exposure--and not only her, but the antibodies Una's immune system generated apparently jumped, er, somehow, to the nearby body of La'an as well. But Una gets skewered by shrapnel during the first Gorn attack and staggers into sickbay still bleeding and not yet healed? Now granted, it would not have been a good thing for her immune system to heal over the wounds while still leaving the shrapnel inside, particularly the fragment lodged in her abdominal aorta. Chapel would've had to re-open Una's wounds and remove the fragments if that had been the case. And certainly neither Christine Chapel nor Dr. M'Benga was going to blurt out, "Hey, your super-duper Illyrian immune system healed you already!" in the middle of the crisis. Still, something should have been said about it.)

Nevertheless, this was an exciting thrill ride of an episode, and is my second favorite so far. This series is hitting its stride much faster than Discovery did, and is shaping up to be one of the best of the new iteration of Star Trek. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 3, "Ghosts of Illyria"

 

So the pattern of this show seems to be set. Plot-wise, the episodes are one story and done. Character-wise, the arcs seem to be continuing through the season. And so far, the evidence shows that one character in particular is spotlighted per episode. In the first episode, it was Captain Pike; in the second, Cadet Uhura; and now in the third it is Number One, Commander Una Chin-Riley.

(Although that comes with a bit of a caveat in this episode, as Dr. M'Benga also has a character spotlight, even if it's not the primary one.)

The episode opens with the First Officer's log, Una explaining that Enterprise has been dispatched to Hetemet 9, the site of an abandoned Illyrian colony. Illyrians are a humanoid species forbidden to join the Federation because of their habit of genetic modification. Enterprise was sent here to find out what happened to the colony, but they can't stay on the surface long because of ion storms, "one of which is fast approaching." As the landing party gets ready to leave, Pike goes to grab Spock, along the way collecting an ensign who is shining his flashlight around a just opened cabinet (as ominous music plays). Una and the rest of the landing party try to transport out, but Kyle can't get a lock on them. He calls down to Chief Engineer Hemmer for help, and Hemmer (accompanied by his usual snotty remarks) reroutes auxiliary power to give the transporter a boost. (The camera lingers on the engineering set, which is gorgeous.) This works so quickly that Kyle gasps: "How did you do that?"

"I am a genius. Move quickly." 

(The actor is playing Hemmer's arrogance to perfection, but man, it's already getting tiresome. I hope something happens soon to take this jerk down a peg.) 

Pike and Spock are still on the surface; in fact, Spock is pulling what look like lighted canisters out of the wall in the "library," and the one he is looking at is "a journal of previously undiscovered relevance." They go to the beam-out point, but the storm is too strong and Kyle can't get a lock on them, so they run back to the building to take shelter. Una goes to the bridge and explains the situation to the crew. 

Down one of Enterprise's corridors, Lieutenant Ortegas finds the same hapless ensign standing before a porthole, pulling his pants off. "It's too dark in here. I need to feel the light on my skin." She tries to talk him down, but he bashes his head through the glass (it's a damned good thing this is apparently a decorative covering, rather than the outer hull itself) and she has to wrestle him away while summoning security. The ensign isn't the only one: in her quarters, Number One looks at the decorative lamp and asks the computer to increase the illumination 25%. She also starts tearing at her uniform to expose more of her skin to the light. But then something strange happens: her face and hands start to glow red, and after a few moments she snaps out of it. Realizing something very weird is going on, she calls Dr. M'Benga and asks him the status of the landing party. The doctor says he was about to call her, because "I have several of them in here as we speak, presenting with some very curious symptoms." Una goes to sickbay, to find the people there have burned and/or shocked themselves to get closer to illumination: "They're being attracted to light." 

M'Benga: "So much so they're willing to hurt themselves to get to it."

The crew members have no viral/bacterial contagion as far as Dr. M'Benga can determine, but are showing severe drops in vitamin D. He says the landing party must have come into contact with something the transporter biofilters missed. Number One goes down to engineering to ask Hemmer about this, and the chief dismisses the idea: "Nonsense." He nonetheless says he will run a level 5 diagnostic, "which, I might add, may well take all night." Una goes back to the bridge and is briefly able to communicated with Pike, telling him she has a "situation," before the signal is lost. 

Next, she goes to the ready room and asks for everything the computer has on Illyrian genetic modifications related to disease control. Before she can really get started on what's available, La'an enters in response to her summons. Una tells La'an what's going on and asks her to have her security team keep an eye out for "strange behavior." La'an sees what she's researching and asks if what's happening has anything to do with the Illyrians. "It seems to me things like this are exactly why the Federation is so wary of genetically modified species like the Illyrians. You start breaking down the genetic code, who knows what the unexpected consequences can be?"

Una: "If the problem originated with the Illyrians, maybe they could also provide us with a cure."

La'an: "Isn't using any Illyrian medical tech against Federation regs?"

Una: "Thanks to the Eugenics Wars. I imagine you know all about that period in history."

Then it comes out: La'an is a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh, and was tormented as a child because of it. But that conversation is cut short as La'an begins exhibiting symptoms, remarking how dark it is in the room before shining Una's desk lamp full on her face. She's taken to sickbay, where everyone realizes the contagion is spreading but they have no idea how it's happening. Dr. M'Benga urges a full lockdown, and Una orders it. 

During the lockdown, Uhura is in her quarters in bed. (It's rather convenient that her "bedroom" is a bunklike nook in the wall with a sliding door that puts her in total darkness.) She is awakened by her roommates experiencing symptoms. In sickbay, Dr. M'Benga notes there are more than 50 affected people. In the middle of all this, Hemmer comes to sickbay, snottier than ever and still running his diagnostic, wanting to check the emergency medical transporter. M'Benga objects (and we see him surreptitiously flicking a switch that will dim the lights and agitate the patients): "Please stop messing around in here!" and Hemmer leaves. 

Down on the planet, the ion storm is still raging, and Pike is pacing in the library where he and Spock have taken shelter. Spock observes that "a watched kettle never boils," and when Pike corrects him with "Pot," notes that "You are deliberately mixing my metaphor to indulge your anxiety." Well, of course Pike is, because people are sick on his ship and he can do nothing. Spock is still reading the journal-canister he pulled from the wall (which is kind of weird, actually; that should be a tablet or a printed book or something, rather than a canister that looks like it could be used to shoot deposits through a bank's drive-through pneumatic tube). At any rate, he discovers this group of Illyrians wanted to join the Federation, so much so "they were attempting to reverse their DNA modifications to gain entry." But this conversation is cut short as they hear shrieking outside, and look out the window to see what appear to be orange energy beings flying through the storm towards them. 

As the storm progresses, the "ghosts" are gone....or are they? Spock mentions that "the journals did mention unconfirmed rumors of creatures living inside the storms," as they start pounding on the door. (With what, since they don't have any flesh-and-blood hands to pound with, I'm not quite sure, but whatever.) Pike is standing and facing their hastily erected barricade with his phaser drawn, and Spock (bless him!) is still trying to read his cylinder. Pike asks: "Does that thing have a setting for stun?" (This line, like all of Anson Mount's lines, is delivered to perfection.) 

"I am arming us with knowledge," Spock insists, and says the creatures started to appear as the Illyrians were dying from a mysterious disease. 

The storm intensified, popping Pike's ears. As Spock announces that it is now "fatal to organic life," the beings break through the door and stream in. Pike and Spock hit the floor, and the creatures hover over them, sheltering them.

In sickbay, Una is trying to figure out why Uhura isn't sick. Uhura says she went to bed--"I closed the door. I need it pitch-black to fall asleep"--and Una realizes the contagion travels on light waves. She decides to turn off the lights aboard the entire ship and sedate everyone in sickbay. She then goes back to researching Illyrian genetic modifications, and is interrupted by a "blackout override in the transporter room." Hemmer is there, in the grips of the infection and attempting to beam aboard a chunk of the planet's mantle (!!!) to bathe in its 10,000 degrees of light and heat. Una phasers him and carries him down to sickbay (although it's rather obvious the actor is carrying a pair of pants stuffed with straw and/or feathers and not the person). She dumps Hemmer in sickbay, and Dr. M'Benga says he needs to be sedated next. At this point, Una 'fesses up: "I'm immune. I've already come down with this and my immune system did what it was engineered to do. I didn't tell you earlier because I'm an Illyrian." It's clear she expects the doctor and Chapel to be shocked and fearful, but they're not. In fact, M'Benga is discouraged by her admission, as her blood, drawn earlier, has "no novel antibodies"--Una's Illyrian immune system burns out new infections immediately, and there is nothing there to synthesize. (In the background, La'an sits up, hearing this.) Una puts Dr. M'Benga out, and another crisis arises: "Warp core containment field has been deactivated." It's La'an, who knocked Chapel out and ran.

Una runs down to engineering, and she and La'an get in quite a fight. La'an gives a good account of herself, even as she is lashing out at Una, calling her "an augment, a monster," which is what La'an was called as a child. Una knocks La'an out, but the radiation levels have risen high enough that her immune system kicks into overdrive again as she crouches over La'an's unconscious body. 

On the planet, the storm is finally over. Pike asks why the energy beings saved his and Spock's lives but didn't save the colonists, and Spock theorizes that the energy beings were the colonists (which was obvious). He says the journal cylinder he was reading reported that the infected Illyrians ran into the ion storms, and due to some improbable handwaving technobabble the storms created the energy beings after the colonists' bodily deaths. 

In sickbay, Una wakes up Dr. M'Benga and says she has a cure. Apparently La'an, being so close to her when the containment field went down, received a high dose of radiation but was able to create "chimeric antibodies" (how would that even work? this stretched my suspension of disbelief more than a little) that Chapel was able to synthesize. Una then goes to talk to La'an and clear the air. She explains why her people bioengineered themselves: "My people were never motivated by domination. Illyrians seek collaboration with nature. By bioengineering our bodies, we adapt to naturally existing habitats. Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with that."

La'an: "If that's what you believe, why do you hide it?"

Una: "I've been hiding it from a lot of people. All I ever wanted, since I first saw the stars, was to join Starfleet." 

La'an, relenting a bit: "And you gave me that dream."

Pike and Spock have beamed back aboard by then, and Una goes to turn herself in. She admits to lying to Starfleet and breaking regulations, and presents herself for a disciplinary tribunal. Pike refuses to accept her confession. Una points out "if you shelter me, they could come after you too."

"I welcome that discussion," Pike says, and calls her the "best first officer in the fleet." He tells Una to let him worry about Starfleet, and tasks her to fix the transporter's biofilter. Una investigates, and goes to confront Dr. M'Benga: "It was your medical transporter that inhibited the biofilters." He's storing something in it, something he risked the entire crew over, and she demands to know what it is.

"Not what," M'Benga says. "Who." It is his young, terminally ill daughter, who he's been storing in the pattern buffer, rematerializing her periodically. Her disease is brutal, but in the buffer it cannot progress, and he is hoping that in Enterprise's travels he will find a cure for her condition. He says he won't risk the crew again and asks to spend some time with his daughter before Una turns him in. But Una, paying forward what Pike has done for her, says she will provide him with a dedicated power source to keep the girl safely stored. 

The episode ends with Una making another log entry, recounting how she confessed to the captain and wondering if he only spared her because she saved the crew. She also wonders when, or if, the time will come when she will be free to be "just an Illyrian." Meanwhile, Dr. M'Benga is reading a story to his little girl in sickbay. 

Well. This was a taut little adventure story, shining light on Number One and M'Benga in particular (Una is shown to be decisive, level-headed and very competent, and Rebecca Romijn plays it beautifully) while strengthening Pike and Spock's relationship. But there are also decisions made in this episode which will presumably (at least I hope they will be followed up on) come back to bite Captain Pike in the ass. I don't think this was quite as good as the first two episodes, but it was still a solid hour of Star Trek. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 2, "Children of the Comet"

 

It's early in the season, but I've identified a trend in this series that I fervently hope continues.  Plot-wise, the stories are "one and done"--a problem to be solved in this episode, which of course harkens back to Ye Olden Days before season-long plot arcs. But character-wise, there seem to be continuing character arcs: there were a couple of scenes in this episode dealing with Christopher Pike's ongoing dilemma, the horrific future bearing down on him less than a decade away, which he is still struggling to accept. (At the end, he's pulling up the pictures of the cadets he will save--who are young kids at this point--and memorizing their names. Which is noble and selfless and certainly in line with Pike's character, but as Number One points out: "What if you're wrong? What if you got that message so you could save those kids and that's it? What if you don't have to ruin your life, too? How do you know you can't make a different choice? One that saves all of you? What if your fate is what you make it?" Those are reasonable objections to make...only we already know it won't happen, that his fate is pre-ordained by fifty years of canon. Which is really too bad.) I fervently hope this trend continues, not only for Pike but for the other characters. 

I also hope this season will take turns spotlighting the main cast. This episode was Nyota Uhura's, and sold me on Celia Rose Gooding's portrayal of the young linguistic "prodigy." She starts out unsure if her place really is in Starfleet, and ends the episode still feeling that way to an extent. Of course, we know what will happen, but with this show it's the journey and how it explores the characters along the way. This is true of Pike and Spock and seems to be true of Uhura as well. The new characters introduced--such as the grumpy, smug, smart-ass Andorian engineer Hemmer--are a bit less constrained to already established canon, and thus have greater opportunities for expanded character arcs. If that's the direction this show is going to take, I for one will jump up and down and cheer.  

The plot of this one is classic Star Trek: a comet is going to crash into an inhabited planet--the native species is pre-warp and cannot help themselves--and Enterprise has to stop it. But this comet is not your typical Halley's. It has a structure built into it which contains what seems to be an alien navigation "egg," perhaps holding an artificial intelligence, and it also has a high-powered ship with a crew of fish-eyed beings called Shepherds following it. Said Shepherds worship the comet as a god, M'hanit, and demand that Enterprise leave it alone. But Pike can't do that, because just before the Shepherds showed up a landing party consisting of La'an, Sam Kirk, Spock and Uhura (on her first away mission) have beamed over to try to gain information to change the comet's course, and naturally are trapped there. So it becomes a game of cat and mouse between Pike and the Shepherds, who are all caught between rescuing the landing party, saving the planet, and following their "god" in whatever it chooses to do. 

Along the way we find out more about Nyota Uhura in this one episode than all the previous decades of Star Trek. She knows 37 (!!!) languages--as she explains: "In Kenya, we have 22 native languages. I found early that if I wanted to be understood it's best to communicate in someone's own tongue, so I learned them." She also talks to Spock in Vulcan, and tells off Hemmer in Andorian. A prodigy? That's a bit of an understatement. She also relates that a week before she was due to attend the University in Nairobi, her parents and older brother were killed in a shuttle accident. She went to live with her grandmother, who had been in Starfleet, which is how she came up with the idea of joining, or as Pike says, "You ran away to Starfleet?" 

This all comes out during a barbeque dinner Pike holds for members of the senior staff and others. Walking with Uhura down the corridor afterwards, Spock is none too pleased by her admission: "Starfleet has been a lifelong dream for many, myself included. If it is not your path, you might consider making way for someone who wants to walk it." 

(Spock still has a bit of the more-Vulcan-than-Vulcan rod up his ass in this episode. During the general conversation in Pike's quarters, as Pike tells a funny story of something that happened when he was an ensign and everyone laughs, Spock notes: "I've never understood the human inclination to laugh at others' misfortunes. It feels impolite." Pike replies with an observation that sort of becomes the running theme of the episode: "Sometimes, Mr. Spock, things go so badly that you just have to laugh." He also fails to read the room when the landing party is stranded on the comet and Uhura is trying to figure out the navigation egg, giving her a piss-poor "pep talk" she immediately calls out: "Was that actually your version of a pep talk?" to which he replies, "Yes. I've been working on them.")

The heart of the episode is the scenes on the comet where Uhura is trying to figure out how to talk to the navigation egg (after the landing party is stranded there by Sam Kirk's idiotic attempt to touch the egg--it seems that family has a genetic predisposition to touch things they shouldn't. Sam Kirk promptly gets knocked on his ass and spends most of the episode lying there unconscious) and she realizes it communicates via musical notes, which is a neat callback to the original series. She and Spock sing a series of notes which unlock the force field the comet had put up around itself, which enables the landing party to be beamed back aboard Enterprise. This gets them out of that pickle, but doesn't help things with the Shepherds--their ship attacks Enterprise, which is woefully outmatched. But Spock comes up with a way to keep the comet from crashing into the planet, and we are treated to an exciting sequence where Enterprise loops and dives among the chunks of rock and ice that make up the comet's tail, with the Shepherds' ship coming right along behind firing. Hotshot pilot Erica Ortegas (she could probably give Kayla Detmer aboard Discovery a run for her money) manages to avoid both those obstacles, and parks the ship at the front of the comet. Pike then shuts everything down except life support and pleads for help to the Shepherds, saying they will no longer touch M'hanit. It's a gamble--the alien ship could have easily blasted them out of the sky--but the Shepherds start to tow Enterprise away from the comet. This frees Spock to take a shuttle and skim the comet's surface, using the shuttle's heat shields to melt just enough ice from the comet to change its trajectory. (Although why the Shepherds didn't see this and object to that action as well, since it amounts to carving a chunk away from the face of their god, is left as an exercise for the viewer.) The comet loops by the planet and continues on its way, but the water vapor deposited in the atmosphere by the melting ice will permanently change the planet's climate, enabling, as Spock says, less aridity, more plant growth, and greater societal advancement. (And indeed, we see the natives holding up their hands in amazement as it begins to rain. I just hoped it didn't flash flood their settlements.) So M'hanit "brought life" after all, at least the Shepherds thought so: "You have seen the glory and mercy of M'hanit," the Shepherd leader tells Pike. Pike acknowledges that there's been a miracle (which was a fine bit of disassembling from the captain) and the Shepherd says, "And so we shall not part as enemies." 

After it's all over, Uhura makes a report to Pike, Number One and Spock where she reveals she decoded the musical notes emitted by the comet--or more precisely the controlling egg, I suppose--and discovered what it was trying to say: it meant no harm and also had foreknowledge of Spock's actions. "It knew its fate, you might say." Personally, I could have done without that, but it does tie into Pike's character arc. Also, we see another scene with Uhura and Spock walking down the corridor, and he has changed his mind about her: "I understand you did not come to Starfleet the way most of us have. That you are not sure you wish to stay. But, having observed your actions on the comet, I am certain, should you choose to, Starfleet would be fortunate to have an officer like  you." 

This episode was quite strong, and a lovely exploration of Uhura's character. It's also a story of optimism and the joy of exploration and learning about an alien artifact and culture. Whoever is running this show has a fine grasp of the Star Trek ethos (far better than the guy who all but ruined Season 2 of Picard) and I am very happy with it. 

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 1, "Strange New Worlds"

 

I will get to the finale of Picard Season 2. Really I will. Eventually. But since I've been so disappointed with the season so far, I thought I would try the premiere of Strange New Worlds first, to serve as a bit of a palate cleanser. 

I'm glad I did. If this show carries through with what's in this first episode, it's going to be fantastic. 

We first met Captain Christopher Pike, the younger Spock and Number One (who gets a name here, Una Chin-Riley) in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery,  and the three of them made such an indelible impression that this show was greenlit. We then saw the three of them, as well as the incredible set that makes up the Enterprise's engineering room, in a couple of the between-season Short Treks, and I thought, "They wouldn't have built that set just for a ten-minute mini episode and not do anything else with it." And sure enough, shortly afterwards this show was announced, along with the info that it would be more episodic instead of the usual modern season-long arc. 

The episode opens "three months, ten days, four hours and five minutes" after Discovery jumped into the future, and Pike is still dealing with what he learned (namely, his gruesome future less than a decade from now). Enterprise is still in spacedock, and he's retreated to Bear Creek, Montana, where he's grown out his hair and beard and is having a lady friend, a fellow captain, sleep over (who he then cooks breakfast for). She knows something is wrong, but Pike refuses to talk about it or answer his insistently beeping communicator. After she leaves, Pike goes for a horseback ride (in the snow?) and is interrupted by a shuttle swooping in, bearing Admiral Robert April, the previous captain of Enterprise. He informs Pike a first contact mission to Kiley 279, headed by Una, has gone bad, and Starfleet has lost contact. He's pulling Enterprise out of spacedock early and is ordering Pike back out there to figure out what's going on. 

Meanwhile, Spock has taken advantage of the three-month downtime to return to Vulcan and meet his bonded bride, T'Pring. Apparently an additional step has to be taken now that the two are adults (which would make sense) and T'Pring officially asks Spock to marry her (although she expresses reservations about him "gallivanting across the galaxy with Starfleet"--this and other snippets of dialogue does a good job of laying out the motivations for her subsequent actions). They're about to make love when Spock's communicator chirps. T'Pring asks him not to answer it; Spock says he took an oath, and T'Pring retorts that he has also taken an oath to her. Spock says, "Matrimony and duty can complement each other," to which T'Pring replies, "I remain skeptical." At any rate, Spock answers and Pike explains what is going on. (After an amusing bit where Pike asks, "Spock, are you naked?" and T'Pring acidly interjects over Spock's shoulder, "He was about to be.") Of course, Spock immediately says he will come and "T'Pring will understand," and T'Pring just as quickly calls him on it: "I won't chase you across the galaxy just to get married." She's clearly not going to take any guff from Spock, and I do hope we see more of her. 

With a shave and a haircut (and six bits), Pike returns to Enterprise. As the shuttle pilot notes, it's "all scrubbed up and good as new," to which Pike mutters, "Wish it were that easy." Spock meets him in the transporter room, and while they are on their way to the bridge we learn it's been the aforementioned three months since Discovery season 2. On the bridge, we meet some of the new cast members, including the acting Number One, La'an Noonien-Singh, the helmsman Erikah Ortegas, and the "prodigy," Cadet Uhura on communications rotation.

After briefing the crew (which provides the perfect excuse for a long tracking shot showing off the gorgeous new sets) Pike orders Enterprise taken out, and we see he's still having flashbacks to the horrific future vision of himself. He goes into the ready room, and Spock follows, saying he "doesn't want to overstep," but he has noted that since Pike went down to that Klingon moon, he "returned a changed man." Pike then tells Spock what he saw. Spock urges him to use the knowledge of his fate "to be the man you most essentially are--the captain." 

(This very well acted scene also answers a question about the Original Star Trek episode, "The Menagerie." We were never told just why the protocol-bound Spock--and he's even more so here, in his younger years: rigidly wedded to Starfleet policy [he spends quite a bit of time in this episode arguing with La'an and objecting to her suggestions], not having very much of a sense of humor, and in most things more-Vulcan-than-Vulcan--broke all sorts of rules to get Pike to Talos IV. Now we know: Spock knew what Pike faced, and knew the Talosians could provide a way out. Spock probably started drawing up his plans shortly after Pike told him what was going to happen.)

Enterprise pops out of warp to find Una's ship still in orbit but empty, and no subspace chatter. The Kileans have no signs of local space colonization, but they also possess a warp signature. La'an calls this a "red flag" and suggests activating the deflector shields. Spock objects, but Pike does it anyway. It's a good thing, as almost immediately afterwards "plasma torpedoes" are launched from the surface but are deflected with minimal damage. Spock analyzes the warp signal variance (with his usual refrain of "Fascinating," to which Pike remarks, "I'm all ears"--one of several dry humorous shots the captain gets off) and realizes it's not a warp drive but a "warp bomb," which sounds more than a little handwavey, but we'll let it slide. Una may not have realized this, as Enterprise's sensors were upgraded just before they left. La'an wants to retrieve their people and she and Spock argue again, with the latter objecting that such a move would clash with "General Order 1" (which gets renamed to the more familiar "Prime Directive" at the end of this episode). Coming up with a solution, Pike says, "Let's go to the doctor," who is of course Dr. M'Benga and his nurse Christine Chapel, "on civilian exchange from the Stanford Genome Project." Christine is going to temporarily alter their DNA so they can beam down to the planet and not be detected. This process is very painful, and La'an doesn't want the sedative. (Here and in a later scene we get quite a bit of her backstory, and she's an interesting character. I'm also glad to see that so far the other characters look like they're going to be featured on a bit more of an equal basis along with the three leads. This is my biggest complaint about Discovery, that the bridge crew is so underused.) After their transformation--which is the usual snake-patterned bumpy foreheads--Pike, Spock and La'an beam down to see what's going on. Native clothing, tricorders and universal translators are programmed into the transporter to materialize with them, which leads to a genuine laugh-out-loud moment: they appear in an alley, and Spock looks down to see the "native dress," at least for him, consists of long socks and short shorts. This leads him to exclaim in genuine clipped Vulcan outrage, "Captain, where are my pants?" (I would love to see the bloopers for this scene. I bet it took a while for them to get it right.)

They have arrived to find the society in the midst of a civil uprising (and the footage used here was apparently from a protest in Ukraine, which caused a bit of a stir). Seeing some scientists about to enter said building, La'an takes them down to get their clothing and badges, and suggests they be beamed up to Enterprise and kept sedated until the mission is over. This is done. Once the two natives are in Sickbay, Chapel realizes Spock's genetic changes are already deteriorating and she needs some Kilean DNA to stabilize him. Unfortunately, the Kileans wake up sooner than they should and one of them bolts out the door, leading Chapel on a merry chase through Enterprise's corridors. He runs into the turbolift where Uhura is on her way to the bridge, and there's a nice little scene where the "prodigy" uses her communications expertise to calm him down. When they reach the bridge, Chapel, who has used sickbay's emergency transporter to get there ahead of them, knocks the man out and gets her DNA sample. Transporter Chief Kyle has to use this on the fly to apply some sort of "eye salve" to Spock's alien eyes to enable him to pass a scan--I'm envisioning this as a thin film of DNA coating Spock's eyes--and the three are able to enter the building. 

They find the cell where Una and her crew are being held, and since it's at such a deep level that the building's shielding will not permit transporter beams to penetrate, they try to walk out. Spock's genetic alterations start wearing off, unfortunately just as they meet up with another group on the lower level. (He claps his hands over his ears and yells in pain as he changes back, which is another thing the older Spock assuredly did not do.) A fight breaks out, and they subdue the group and run for the elevator. 

Inside, Pike demands, "How did these people get warp!" since they're in no way ready for first contact, and the truth comes out. When Discovery opened up the wormhole in Season 2 and fled to the future, all the ships fighting to guard her passage lit up space. The Kileans saw all those warp signatures with their telescopes and was able to reverse-engineer them (in 3 months? no wonder the Federation is nervous) into a matter/anti-matter reactor. But instead of using it to explore space, one of the factions is going to use it to crush their enemy. Pike realizes that no matter what General Order 1 says, the civilization has already been influenced and corrupted, and the only choice remaining is to "influence it well." He orders everyone back to the ship and keeps Spock, the obvious alien, with him. When the elevator doors open on a group of gun-toting security people, he says, "Take me to your leader." 

Pike tries to talk to this leader, emphasizing "negotiation and debate" with their enemy, and gets nowhere. "Your rules are not my rules," she says, and since she has the bigger stick now, if "spilled blood is the price, so be it." As they are taken away, Pike snaps to the communicator resting on the table: "Emergency communication from Captain Pike. Enterprise to lower orbit. Full visibility. Show 'em what you got." Sirens immediately go off, and we look out the window to see Enterprise descending into view. This forces the factions into meeting to figure out what to do about the aliens, but naturally they start arguing instead. 

Back on the ship, Pike, Spock and La'an are watching this, and we get more of La'an's backstory--which, in a neat twist, ties into what is happening on the planet and also into Pike's personal dilemma. In the past, the Gorn captured her family's colony ship and took it to one of their "planetary nurseries," where her family members were slit open, fed on alive and used for breeding sacks for the Gorn to lay their eggs. La'an stated flatly, "Not believing you're going to die is what gets you killed," and asks, "Do you know the last thing they felt?"

Pike: "Surprise. Because up until the last moment, they couldn't imagine dying." 

This sparks an idea. He asks Uhura for access to the historical database, and tells her he needs to punch a signal down to the planet. He then beams into the middle of the negotiations, interrupting the arguing factions with a wry, unapologetic "Hi" (Anson Mount nails this, as he does every line he's given) and giving them a lesson in Earth history, from civil war (started with, ironically enough, "Stop the Steal" footage) to the Eugenics Wars to World War III. "What we gave you," he says, "is the means to exterminate yourselves. And from the looks of you, you're going to do it." He lays out their choice: "Go to war with one another, or join our Federation of Planets and reach for the stars."

Now I doubt a simple speech from an alien captain--not even Jean-Luc Picard, which Anson Mount doesn't try to be: he has a softer, more laid-back and nuanced delivery--would be sufficient to overcome decades and/or centuries of internal strife, but I'm willing to let this go too. Because we're shown some optimistic, uplifting scenes of the Kileans doing just that: putting aside their differences and indeed reaching for the stars. 

Back at Starbase 1, Admiral April informs Pike, Spock and Una that "getting the Federation High Court not to throw you all in jail almost took more pull than I have," but since the Federation cannot officially admit that Discovery is gone, they also cannot officially reveal how the Kileans got their warp technology. Una requests permission to return to Enterprise, and April asks Pike: "You planning on keeping the chair?" And Pike is. 

Back on the ship, Pike gets a chance to restate the Enterprise's mission once more (the same phrases used in the opening credits), and in a delightful bit of cadet enthusiasm, Uhura bursts out: "Cool!" Then, after a beat, an embarrassed, "Sir." We haven't seen much of what she can do yet, but this new actor sells the vision of a young, inexperienced Uhura. 

This is an excellent start to the new series. It's well-written, well-paced and adds some lovely touches to the more familiar characters. After the disappointing slog of Picard season 2, I needed this, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the rest of the season.