Strange New Worlds S2E1: The Broken Circle
In some ways, Strange New Worlds is the hardest of the new Star Trek shows to write about. It’s the best of the bunch, but that’s in no small part because it’s the safest possible show to make — the USS Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilizations, with Mr. Spock on hand to arch an eyebrow as needed. It’s right-down-the-middle classic Trek, which means it came out of spacedock with far more confidence than Discovery or Picard, which took big swings with uneven results. But it also means there are fewer choices for a reviewer to examine. It’s just your reliable old favorite, with better special effects, and some very light serialization.
So it’s to season 2’s credit that we get thrown right into an ongoing storyline, without much hand-holding for anyone just tuning in. At the end of season one, Una, Captain Pike’s Number One, was arrested by Starfleet for illegal genetic modifications. It’s something she can’t help, and something Starfleet can’t forgive. And the latter is something Pike can’t accept.
So while the Enterprise is in space dock for a refit, Pike takes leave for a few days to go argue Una’s case, leaving Spock in command. The Vulcan is uncharacteristically stressed about being left in charge with several key officers off the ship, and worried that after an emotional outburst at the end of last season, he doesn’t quite have things under control. Dr. M’Benga recommends a healthy dose of fan service, giving him the lute he plays several times on the original series. But his heart rate also spikes at the sight of Nurse Chapel — the two have unresolved romantic feelings, and the tension is enough that Chapel is considering taking an academic fellowship that would take her off of the Enterprise.
On the bridge, Ortegas and Uhura are annoyed that I.T. is installing software patches and screwing up their workstations (relatable!). The ship may be docked, but Uhura doesn’t want to shut down in case an urgent message comes through. Which, right on cue, it does. It’s a distress call from La’an, who had left the Enterprise to help a young refugee from last season’s Gorn attack find her family. Spock wants to rush to her aid, but she’s on a dilithium-rich planet Starfleet shares with the Klingons, and Starfleet forbids Enterprise from interfering for fear of upsetting the delicate diplomatic arrangement.
Whether it’s his emotions coming to the surface, or that his logic disagrees with Starfleet’s, Spock can’t abandon his colleague, or her warning that the Federation itself is in danger. He lays out a plan to the senior staff: “We’re going to steal the Enterprise.” And we’re not even at the opening credits yet. Strange New Worlds may have the safety of operating squarely within the Trek formula, but damn if it doesn’t operate at peak performance. We’ve checked in on every character, picked up several plot threads, and set up this week’s grand adventure, all in the first few minutes.
That grand adventure is immediately thwarted by Pelia (the always-delightful Carol Kane), an inspector who won’t stop poking around the ship, and immediately sees through Spock’s ruse to steal the Enterprise. But she just as immediately decides he must have a good logical reason, and offers to not only look the other way, but to stand in for the absent chief engineer.
We catch up with La’an in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style drinking contest with a Klingon. While the Federation and the Klingon Empire split access to the planet every other month, the surface is populated by both, and run by a mining syndicate made up of war veterans from both sides, as La’an explains to the crew, who the show wastes no time in getting down to the planet. The syndicate was making money hand-over-fist supplying dilithium to both sides during the war, and now they’re looking to restart hostilities for the sake of profit.
To that end, someone’s detonated a photon torpedo in one of the mines. M’Benga and Chapel tend to the wounded (the refugee girl’s parents among them), and are immediately clocked by a Klingon woman from the syndicate and captured. Spock and Uhura follow La’an to a meeting with a Klingon who’s looking to buy Federation weapons for some unknown purpose.
To say more than that would only spoil the fun. Life-and-death decisions, daring rescues, plans thwarted, violence, friendship, emotion, logic. Strange New Worlds may stick to the formula, but it’s a hell of a formula, and this is its best iteration yet.
Stray tachyons:
• We get some tomfoolery with Spock struggling to find a catchphrase along the lines of “make it so” or “engage.” For whatever reason, Trek is trying to make each captain having their own phrase into A Thing, and we fear they’re going to run out of catchphrases pretty quickly. Or already have, given that Spock settles on, “I would like the ship to go. Now.”
• Pelia turns out to be from an incredibly long-lived species who lived unnoticed among humans for centuries. As she’s sticking around for the rest of the season, we’ll likely get some followup in future episodes.
• Discovery took some flak for their Klingon redesign (especially since the prosthetics made it hard for the actors to speak without overenunciating), so we’re back to Worf-style Klingons, in keeping with SNW’s stick-with-what-works philosophy.
• While we’ve gotten uniformly terrific scripts from SNW, and the series has expertly managed the pacing issues that have always plagued Discovery, what really makes the show sing is the winning cast. It’s entirely to their credit that this episode is largely missing both the show’s lead (Anson Mount’s Pike only appears in the opening minute) and best-known actor (Rebecca Rojmin’s Una gets even less screen time, in a quick Zoom call with Pike), and we hardly miss them. Ethan Peck is more than capable of carrying the episode, and his Spock manages to feel of a piece with Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal, while also giving us a take on the character when he’s less fully-formed, and not yet the aloof stoic of the original series.
• In the interest of full disclosure, by day I work for Simon & Schuster, a division of Paramount. I am in no way involved in their film and TV division, and write these reviews solely as a Trek fan who’s able to balance lifelong affection for the series with a ready acknowledgement of its flaws.