Strange New Worlds S3E4: A Space Adventure Hour

We’ve gotten plenty of Star Trek parodies from the last 60 years of television, but we’ve never gotten one from Star Trek itself, until now. With no preliminaries or explanation, we get a campy riff on the original series, with Paul Wesley doing the Shatner impression he ably avoids doing in his portrayal of James Kirk elsewhere on the show. Melissa Navias (Ortegas) and Jess Bush (Chapel) are on hand to wear campy costumes and add stilted dialogue, as they square off against an obviously-a-woman-in-a-costume alien marauder. We even get a campy spoof version of the opening credits, for a show called The Last Frontier.

Only after the credits do we get an explanation for why Strange New Worlds is doing yet another gimmick episode. The Enterprise crew is testing a prototype of the holodeck—always a favorite on Next Generation, but used sparingly in modern Trek. Holodeck adventures can be a silly conceit, so Pike assigns La’an, the least silly member of the crew, to run a simulation that will push the limits of the system.

So before we get to the faux-TOS hijinx, La’an dresses up as a hard-boiled detective (a favorite of Captain Picard as well). The proto-holodeck can only create people already-on-file, which is an excuse for the regular cast to play the characters La’an encounters. The murder takes place in 1960s Hollywood, and suspects are the cast and producers of The Last Frontier. The show was about to be cancelled, and someone bumped off the studio head to stop that from happening.

The details of the case don’t really matter, they’re just an excuse for the cast to ham it up in 60s costumes. It all leads up to a clever twist, but it’s essentially the same twist as the TNG holodeck episode “Ship In a Bottle” — La’an instructs the holodeck to create a mystery to stump her, not the character, so it breaks the rules a bit to do that. It’s all a bit of harmless fun, but it feels very much like a throwaway episode. TNG had 26 episodes a year and could afford to throw a few away; SNW has 22 before the series gets taken off the air, and as always, we’d prefer watching the crew explore strange new worlds to running through some admittedly fun lightweight fluff.

Stray tachyons:
• La’an continues her dance lessons with Spock. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think they’re starting to move on from Kirk and Chapel, respectively.

• “You know I’m an actor, not a doctor, right?”

• There’s a B story where Scotty frantically tries to keep the ship running while the holodeck sucks up most of its energy. It doesn’t really make any sense to have the Enterprise test experimental technology while in the middle of another mission, but here we are. It does at least lead to a nice character moment for Scotty.

• This is the second week in a row Pelia’s been conveniently off-screen. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, given how overwhelmed Scotty is, and any screen time Carol Kane gets is always a treat. But it makes sense that the show is easing Scotty into the role of chief engineer, as we fully expect the original series ensemble to be in place by SNW‘s final episode.

• Celia Rose Gooding gets a big speech about how inspiring the show-within-a-show is, which is a clear nod to her predecessor playing Uhura. Nichelle Nichols considered quitting the original series, and no less than Martin Luther King convinced her to stay, telling her his own daughters were inspired seeing a black woman working on a starship every week. It’s a nice tribute, while also seeming a bit self-congratulatory. It’s one thing for MLK to call your show inspiring; it’s another for the show to say that about itself.

• Running outtakes from the fake show under the closing credits (along with the TOS closing theme) is a cute touch.