Strange New Worlds S3E3: Shuttle to Kinfori
We’re early in season three, but Strange New Worlds has already released a teaser image of Season 4; Captain Pike as a Muppet. It’s the kind of gimmick episode that seems cutesy and unnecessary, but will of course exceed all expectations, because that’s what this show does.
But it’s also a reminder that, while this show can seemingly work in any storytelling mode with ease, it seems far more interesting in novelty than, you know, exploring strange new worlds. Which makes this week’s meat-and-potatoes classic Star Trek episode all the more welcome. It’s exactly the kind of peril-on-an-alien-planet episode the original Trek routinely delivered, except it works both as a TOS-style standalone episode and advances several of the season’s larger storylines.
The biggest one is the fate of Captain Batel. Last week, she was apparently healed from an infection by a Gorn — particularly nasty aliens that lay eggs inside a host, Alien-style. Turns out, Gorn eggs don’t give up that easily. She’s still infected, and Captain Pike is desperate to save his girlfriend.
Spock identifies a rare alien flower that can help her, but it only exists on a planet called Kentori. Kentori formerly held a Federation research station, but is now in the Neutral Zone on the Federation-Klingon border and is off-limits. Officially, they can’t go anywhere near it.
So, naturally, they go near it. Pike and Dr. M’Benga go on a secret mission to the planet in a shuttlecraft while the rest of the crew wait behind the border. “Enterprise will not cross that line, Number One intones solemnly, just to make it clear that Enterprise is definitely crossing that line before the episode is over.
Before they’ve even touched down on the planet, this week’s mystery begins. The Klingons have set a warning beacon that simply says, “go back or die.” When they arrive on solid ground, the planet isn’t just deserted, it’s devoid of animal life of any kind. Except Pike and M’Benga quickly stumble on a dead body — a Klingon skeleton with its rib cage split open. While there are no life signs on the planet whatsoever, something strong enough to tear a Klingon to pieces was there recently.
It makes the abandoned research station that houses the plants all the more unsettling, and that’s before the living Klingons show up. Despite their efforts to be stealthy, Pike’s shuttle was notified by the Klingons, who send a ship to investigate. Their first move is blowing up the shuttle, leaving our duo trapped on the planet. Except both the interloping humans and marauding Klingons find themselves facing whatever killed the skeletal Klingon, and the episode takes a turn into horror.
And yet, in between jump scares and gruesome-by-Trek-standards violence, there’s still room for multiple ethical dilemmas, one of which resolves a controversial plot point from last season. And, of course, the Enterprise ends up crossing that line, which brings with it its own overlapping set of ethical dilemmas.
As we find ourselves saying over and over, Strange New Worlds does everything well. But our favorite thing it does well is what it does this week, cram extra helpings of action, character work, sci-fi ideas, and moral philosophy into an episode without it ever feeling convoluted or overly busy. (Even amid the horror movie unfolding on the planet, we get a few quiet scenes establishing Pike and M’Benga’s longrunning friendship, and they’re terrific.) When you’ve got a high-performance storytelling machine like this one, who needs puppets?
Stray tachyons:
• One of Trek‘s small running motifs is that, anytime the crew do an off-the-books mission, they trade in their uniforms for stylish jackets. Last week’s costume design was excellent in a show-offy way; this week’s is more muted but no less good.
• On that gruesome-by-Trek-standards violence: at one point we get fountain of CGI blood that sprays dramatically and then vanishes midair. The show’s CGI usually holds up well, but that particular shot looked fake enough to be noticeable.
• Last week ended with a stinger hinting that Lt. Ortegas is more traumatized by her encounter with the Gorn than she lets on. We get a follow-up here, but it’s not straightforward, and we don’t get an easy resolution, (all of which we say approvingly). Along similar lines, M’Benga makes it clear that the exotic flower might help Batel, but it isn’t a magic solution, so expect her storyline to continue through the season as well.
• They named the officer who does the scanning Lt. Scannell? Really?
• There’s been some talk of following up Strange New Worlds with a series tentatively called Star Trek: Year One, that shows Kirk’s early missions. (He was already an old hand when the original series premiered.) We’re always happy to see another Star Trek show in the pipeline, but we don’t think it’s healthy for a franchise to keep churning out prequels revisiting the same old characters (looking at you, Solo: A Star Wars Story) instead of moving forward. We’d rather see Rebecca Romijn’s Una get her own ship, and take SNW‘s new characters (La’an and Ortegas) with her. We got a glimpse of that show in this week’s B-story, where Una and Ortegas clash over the right course of action while the Enterprise hovers on the border, and it’s a pretty good show! Don’t just give us leftovers, Star Trek, keep exploring new territory. It’s what the franchise is all about.
