Strange New Worlds S3E10: New Life, and New Civilizations
Ugh.
We’re not sure what sort of bump the Starship Enterprise hit a month ago, but we’ve finished out Strange New World‘s third season with a run of four episodes that included the three worst the series has produced.
“New Life and New Civilizations” has a promising start (although the title has nothing to do with the episode, as we encounter neither), as we return to Vesta, the evil alien entity that possessed Ensign Gamble in “Through the Lens of TIme.”
Roger Korby is following up on the ancient civilization whose temple had imprisoned Vesta and his evil ghostly pals, as there’s a similar temple on another planet, this one in a bustling city. The Enterprise crew is only mildly interested in Chapel’s boyfriend’s latest project, until Scotty discovers that someone used the transporters to reconstitute Gamble and beam him off the ship. (We don’t get much more of a how or why than, “Somehow, Palpatine has returned.” This episode does a lot of handwaving.) Cut to Gamble, no longer dead, still evil, staring down Korby.
The Enterprise files to the rescue, of course, but Batel in particular has a vested interest in stopping Vesta. Without being able to explain why, she feels like she has to stop it. (She got all glowy and stared down Vesta at the end of “Lens” without much explanation.)
Somehow, the combination of the Gorn parasite Batel still carries, plus Spock and Una’s blood, have all combined to not just give Batel mysterious alien ghost-fighting powers, it’s possessed her with the statue that was guarding the ghost entities in the temple. Or she now is that statue. Or always was. It’s all very convoluted, but also too dumb to merit a better explanation than the one we get.
It’s Marie Batel’s destiny to keep the evil ghosts from overrunning the galaxy, apparently, But to do so, she has to leave Pike. Both of them had assumed he’d be doing the leaving, given we know his tragic future is unavoidable, since it was already an episode of the original series.
So she faces down Vesta. And just at the climax, we cut away to… domestic bliss. Batel and Pike planning their wedding. Raising a daughter. Seeing her get engaged. Growing old together. Before Batel goes to meet her destiny, she and Pike are given a “gift” – spending the life together that they’re about to be robbed of.
It’s a pretty blatant nod to “The Inner Light”, a standout Next Generation episode, in which Picard experiences a lifetime in a long-dead alien civilization. That episode was expertly done, largely because of the melancholy hanging over the whole thing — all of the friends and family Picard spent a lifetime with died eons ago, and his memory of them is all that remains.
“New Life”‘s flashback, by comparison, is sappy, maudlin, and drags the episode to a screeching halt. Strange New Worlds was spun off from Star Trek: DIscovery, and its early seasons felt like the show’s writers had learned from Disco‘s mistakes. This week, those mistakes come roaring back with a vengeance. Wild shifts in tone and pacing, waves of unearned sentimentality, even a pop song montage over shots of the crew gazing adoringly at each other. Disco was usually better than its loudest critics demanded, but “New Life and New Civilizations” seems like all of their worst complaints about that series come to life.
It’s pretty rough stuff. The first two and a half season of Strange New Worlds reminded us of why we love Star Trek. The second half of season three has mostly made us not feel so bad that the show only has sixteen episodes left..
Stray tachyons:
• Chapel is very jealous that Spock taught La’an the Vulcan nerve pinch; she could never get the thumb placement right.
• Also, Kirk is there for whatever reason. Just as he got a completely gratuitous “you and I make a pretty good team, Scotty!” a few weeks ago, we get an even more gratuitous, “I like you, Mr. Spock. Maybe we’ll end up serving on a ship together one day, who knows!” Even the most stoic Vulcan in the viewing audience must be tempted to roll their eyes after a certain point.
• So that’s it for season three of Strange New Worlds. For the first time in a long time, Subject doesn’t have a new series lined up for TV reviews, but we’ll return for ongoing series like Silo, For All Mankind, and The Big Door Prize, as well as Season 4 of Strange New Worlds in 2026. We’ll no doubt find a few new shows to add to the list between now and then. And while we don’t have the highest of hopes for the upcoming Starfleet Academy, we’ll surely have plenty to say about it when that show premieres next year. Until then, live long, and prosper.
