Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 1 Review, Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally back to writing about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds first season again. I reviewed the first three episodes in August last year, so this has taken me a little longer than I expected, but at least I'm getting this published before season 2 starts. Barely.

This time around I'll be reviewing four episodes:

• 1-04 - Memento Mori
  
• 1-05 - Spock Amok
  
• 1-06 - Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach
  
• 1-07 - The Serene Squall
  

Though first I just need to point out that episode 6 has an awesome title. I've giving it a special mention because the writers went the extra mile and that should be rewarded. I see what they did with Spock Amok as well, but it's not quite as as clever as Prodigy's Time Amok I'm afraid. The live action shows are going to have to step up their game if they want to keep up with the cartoons.

Alright, I'll be dropping SPOILERS for all four of these episodes and any earlier Star Trek episodes that jump to mind while I'm writing about them. Well, I mean when I did write about them, in the past. I scribbled my thoughts down the moment after I watched each episode, which was a while ago now. This means that there won't be any spoilers for later episodes, because I didn't know anything about them at the time.

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Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being where my attention starts to fail.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 1
1-04	Memento Mori		6
Episode: 004 | Writer: Davy Perez & Beau DeMayo | Director: Dan Liu | Air Date: 26-May-2022 The Enterprise visits a colony and finds nothing but blood stains, but there are still survivors in a ship. Unfortunately the attackers were just waiting for them to dock so they could hit the Enterprise with her shields down. La'an identifies them as the Gorn, and they're really keen on blowing their starship up. The Enterprise takes refuge in a gas giant and engages in a submarine battle with the pursuing Gorn vessels. They take one out by dropping their last torpedo on them, then they retrieve the secret of Gorn Morse code from La'an's traumatic memories with a mind meld and use it to trick a second Gorn vessel into destroying a third. Meanwhile Hemmer and Uhura have been having problems with a faulty cooling system that's about to explode. The crew decides to fly around a black hole and use the exploding cooling system to fake their destruction, giving themselves a chance to escape. Also Number One gets hurt but M'Benga gives her a blood transfusion from himself. I'm still trying to latch onto this series at the moment, and for whatever reason I wasn't really able to get into this episode. I think all the Star Trek baggage I brought in with me made it harder to buy into what was happening. Like the way the Enterprise was swooping around like a starfighter instead of a 442 meter long battleship, and how it couldn't raise shields while a ship was docked. Though somehow I was even more bothered by seeing Spock sweating in the heat. That's not normal for a Vulcan, right? I'm not even sure. It's also a bit strange that these people set up a colony in the same star system as a black hole. The colony's apparently the same distance from the black hole as Mars is from the sun and that seems like something that should've been commented on! Especially as the brown dwarf in the system was minutes away from being pulled into the thing. I thought them calling the gas giant a 'brown dwarf' was weird as well, but it turns out that's absolutely correct, so full marks there at least. The episode earns bonus points for being a proper space battle story, as those are very much my thing. But I have to take the points back again for the way it kept reminding me of better space battle stories. Plus the damage was really contrived. I mean the sickbay is hit by a precision strike straight to the stash of supplies and healing gadgets, just so they have to stitch people up the old fashioned way and they can't give Number One a blood transfusion. Gotta keep coming up with new ways to explain her strangely limited screen time. There are different kinds of space battle episodes and this is the type that's basically a submarine movie, complete with the ship eventually reaching crushing depth... that only affects the bottom deck or so. People have to race to evacuate, it's really serious. And then it's revealed that the cargo bay that Uhura and Hemmer have been hanging out in the whole time is at the bottom of the ship. Also there's a cooling system in there that can explode with enough force to destroy another vessel! So I guess that's handy if you want to blow something up and you haven't got any torpedoes or warp cores spare, and they actually are running low on them here. For first time in Star Trek history all their torpedoes get blown up... all except one. At first that made absolutely no sense to me that one torpedo would survive as all the torpedoes would be packed together in the same place, but then I realised that they wouldn't have stored La'an's special Limited Edition Tron torpedo in the same place as the regular torpedoes. I learned a few things about storytelling and building tension from this story. For example: making the viewer laugh at how absurd the torpedoes look like is a good way to break the tension and allow them to relax. And flashing that picture of La'an's mysterious brother on screen also kind of spoils the mood. The idea was fine, it's just that having a face fill the screen like that out of nowhere runs the risk of being comedic. Also having La'an learn Gorn Morse code from a book she glanced at in a repressed memory was a bit suspect. Why are they making the Gorn such a threat anyway, when it didn't seem like Starfleet had even heard of them in the Original Series episode Arena? I feel like if the story was good enough I wouldn't be thinking about all this. I'd be talking about how it's good we're getting more backstory on La'an or whatever. Honestly though I haven't got much to say about the story. It was fine I guess. Plus I could understand M'Benga's dialogue perfectly well this time, so now I know it's not the way he's speaking that's the issue, it's the way they're handling the audio on the dialogue. Aw damn, I just remembered the line "Uhura for the win!" I'm just going to give this episode a rating and move on before I remember something else and get tempted to lower it. I liked the episode well enough, but did I like it more than than the Original Series' fourth episode (in broadcast order) The Naked Time? Well Memento Mori is a space battle episode, while The Naked Time's a 'everyone's acting out of character' story, so they're doing very different things. But personally I think The Naked Time does its thing far better. So including the first three episodes, the current scores are TOS 3, SNW 1. To be fair The Original Series' has an unusually powerful first season, so I'm not surprised the new show has a fight on its hands here.
1-05	Spock Amok		6
Episode: 005 | Writer: Henry Alonso Myers & Robin Wasserman | Director: Rachel Leiterman | Air Date: 02-Jun-2022 The crew get to have some shore leave while the ship's being fixed after the space battle with the Gorn, though Pike's still at work trying to help negotiate an alliance with some difficult aliens. Meanwhile Number One and La'an find a cadet screwing around and discover that they've got a whole 'Enterprise Bingo' checklist of things to try to get away with. The two senior officers decide to follow the checklist themselves to see if they can find the fun they've been missing out on. Also Spock ends up swapping bodies with his frustrated betrothed and the time spent in each other's shoes helps them see things from each other's perspective. It also helps Pike realise that the aliens are mirroring the attitude of whoever's talking to them, demonstrating empathy, and he demonstrates that the Federation can see things from their point of view too, winning them over. This one's pretty obviously inspired by a certain episode of the classic series and the clue's right there in the title. It's Spock's Brain all over again, with his body going walking off without his mind. Okay maybe there's a little bit of Amok Time in there too, like the Vulcan wedding/ritual combat in the teaser (complete with the original fight music). Though it had me worrying that the episode it was actually turning into was Enterprise's Two Day and Two Nights. I really really hate that episode! The crew does split up into different groups to go on shore leave, just like Two Days and Two Nights, and it is kind of slow to get started, but what sets the episodes apart is that this one has a story. It's a comedy story, but only a mild one, and thankfully the mild comedy music that came along with it seemed to die away after a while. Comedy episodes are a Trek tradition stretching back to the Original Series and it's great to see the series taking advantage of its episodic nature to show off different tones and genres in a way that the classic series used to do. Even Enterprise sometimes. It's Spock's episode and he's all over the thing, even straying into Pike story as well. So it makes sense that both plots share the message 'try to see things from the other person's perspective'. I feel like Pike takes empathy a little too far maybe, with his speech at the end going right past 'seeing the other side's point of view' and into 'straight up talking the other side out of the deal' territory, but it apparently worked! Somehow! I did like how the aliens' had a gimmick to solve though; it was very Star Trek. Plus I also liked how the episode tricked us with their apparently ironic line about being empathetic after we saw them arguing with the Tellarites. It wasn't irony after all! Meanwhile Spock and T'Pring have a bit of a body swap problem this week, which I honestly didn't see coming. Star Trek keeps on reusing a lot of tropes, but this one's only appeared two or three times over the entire run. I've definitely never seen this twist on it, where the two people getting swapped are so similar in their mannerisms that it's hard to tell that they've even been swapped. It's just because of a typical Vulcan ritual as well, so this must be an actual problem that just happens to Vulcans sometimes! Fortunately the science solution is very low tech, basically shocking their brains into undoing it, which gives us the second scene of Spock screaming in pain in just five episodes, weirdly. I liked how the two Vulcans arrived at the choice to pretend to be each other purely logically and then dropped the act the moment it no longer made sense. I'm not sure why the series is trying to make me like T'Pring though, seeing as we already know what she does to Spock seven years from now. I'm also a bit confused about her job, specifically the part where she offered to meet a fugitive on a Federation space station and he agreed to this. I suppose they did say he wasn't acting logical. The episode also went a bit Lower Decks with a plot about Number One and La'an investigating the concept of fun, which was pretty nice and gave the two characters a chance to show some other dimensions. I'm glad they're back to being friends again after Ghosts of Illyria. Though I don't quite get why the episode decided to put 'the scorch', allegedly the oldest panel on the Enterprise hull, at the part of the saucer that got blown up in Discovery. That whole slice of the saucer was just gone; it was a fairly dramatic and memorable moment when it happened! Other good things: I liked Spock teasing Chapel for a moment, even if it has apparently started her pining over him for the next 10 years. Don't need an early start on that. I liked more being added to the legend of Kyle (he's apparently really mean). And I liked the view of the solar sail ship at the end... though how a ship without a warp drive got all the way from its distant homeworld to Earth is a mystery. This time it's the battle of the episode 5s: TOS's The Enemy Within vs SNW's Spock Amok. One story's about Spock learning to empathise more with his beloved, the other's about Evil Captain Kirk basically assaulting Rand. So a little bit of a difference there. Spock Amok's definitely the more light-hearted tale, but Enemy Within is far more dramatic and I'm going to give it the win here.
1-06	Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach		6
Episode: 006 | Writer: Robin Wasserman & Bill Wolkoff | Director: Andi Armaganian | Air Date: 09-Jun-2022 The crew rescue a ship under attack and Pike discovers that one of the passengers is an old love interest of his called Alora. There's also a genius child, and a doctor who is biologically the kid's father. Pike grows closer to Alora as he helps her investigate the attack, and he's eventually allowed to be present during the kid's ascension. It's at this point that Pike discovers that they plug kids into a machine and sacrifice them to keep the city from falling, and he doesn't react well. Alora was hoping that he'd accept the fact that some people have to suffer for the rest to prosper but he just beams away. That's a pretty old school sci-fi title for an old-school sci-fi episode. The Strange New World for this episode features BioShock-style floating cities hanging precariously over a fiery doom, but really it's about waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's pretty obvious from early on that the aliens are hiding something, to the point where it doesn't look good for Pike that he didn't notice. Though it doesn't look good for Pike in general in this story, as everyone he tries to stop either dies, or gets away and then dies. Well I suppose the kid he tried to stop didn't die, he's just going to be tortured in a Spock's Brain device as his mind keeps the islands from crashing down into the lakes of acid and also lava below. I called that twist roughly about the time the kid beamed down. Well okay I was 80% thinking that they'd put him into a computer and 20% thinking they'd just throw him into a volcano to please the volcano gods. I wouldn't say that's a flaw in the episode though, in fact it means that the clues make sense. The fact that it has to be a kid plugged into the thing makes less sense, but they hung a nice big lampshade onto that with Alora saying that it was designed that way by their ancestors and they don't know why! I didn't know this when I was watching, but the episode has some massive parallels to a certain short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, about a paradise built on the suffering of one child and the people who refuse to participate in this society. The episode really puts in the work to make sure Pike has every reason to stay here, to make his ultimate choice matter. It gets around the 'romance of the week' problem by having him already in love with Alora and it throws in a possible cure for the biggest concern in his life (which is an interesting twist that I didn't think of). Alora has every reason to believe he'll actually stay with her, even after showing him the truth, because almost everyone stays. But he basically chooses the beep chair all over again when he beams away at the end. I guess this is why his fate is inevitable even though he has foreknowledge and free will: he just won't stop being who he is. The attempt to draw parallels with the real world didn't quite work for me however, as if someone asks a Starfleet officer if they can honestly say their society isn't built on the suffering of children, they can just reply 'yes'. There's no hypocrisy here for Pike... well unless there's bad things happening in Federation worlds we don't know about. I also didn't quite get the full emotional impact of his choice, because the scene of him beaming away came across like a typical 'Starfleet captain does the right thing' moment I've seen a thousand times before. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me exactly what Pike was sacrificing here. There's a bit of a B-plot about Uhura being trained in security this week, but it's heavily tied into the main story. I'm really happy with the way Uhura's being used in this series. I expected her to be sitting on the bridge, handling communications and miscellaneous bridge functions, and being mostly useless (basically doing Hoshi's job on Enterprise), but her cadet training means that she can be doing any job that's suitable for the episode. It was a bit harsh though that she accidentally blows up a ship full of people on her first day firing the phasers, especially as it turns out they were the good guys!  There's also a C-plot with M'Benga about the guy being given hope that he'll get the medical information needed to save his daughter, only having it cruelly torn away when the relationship between the Federation and the planet sours. Except... not really, as he does get the medical information from Gamal at the end after all! At least something got very slightly better for someone this week. Speaking of things getting better, I found M'Benga's dialogue very easy to understand in this episode.  Unfortunately the kid's also hanging around in sickbay for most of the story and they did the 'super genius child who's smarter than all the adults' thing with him that I generally hate. It annoyed me when they did it with Queen Po in Short Treks and it annoyed me here as well. Maybe the point of it was to get us wondering if his implants had boosted his intelligence and make us curious about why they'd do that to him. He certainly didn't need to be an ultra genius just to set up the part where he uses science to make the crew aware that he'd been beamed into a box, as he could've just yelled or something. The actor nailed the performance though, he's blameless. Anyway, this one was a little more my kind of episode than the first five stories. It didn't have as much to frustrate me and it gave me a bit extra to think about. The moral of the episode: if you come across a utopia where the government runs a lottery and the winners are never seen again, you should probably be concerned. Hang on, isn't that a Sliders episode? Alright, now I have to decide whether I liked Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach more than Mudd's Women. Well Mudd's Women isn't all bad and it does have a good moral at the end, but I think this battle has to go to Strange New Worlds. Turns out my favourite episode of Strange New Worlds can defeat one of my least favourite episodes of TOS.
1-07	The Serene Squall		6
Episode: 007 | Writer: Beau DeMayo & Sarah Tarkoff | Director: Sydney Freeland | Air Date: 16-Jun-2022 The crew are are given a task by aid worker Dr Aspen to rescue colonists stranded in an area outside of of Federation space menaced by a pirate ship called the Serene Squall and its fiercely loyal crew. Pike leads a boarding party onto what they believe to be one of the colony ships, but it's a trick and they're actually on the Serene Squall herself. Meanwhile the Enterprise is invaded by pirates, with only Spock, Chapel and Aspen able to escape to engineering to take control of the computer. Unfortunately Aspen is actually the Serene Squall's captain, Angel, and Spock and Chapel soon have to fake a romance to prevent Angel from pressuring T'Pring into releasing a prisoner. Fortunately Pike is able to win over some of the Squall's crew with his excellent cooking skills and a bit of skilful manipulation, and his team disables the Enterprise while the rest of the pirates onboard are preoccupied with a mutiny. Captain Angel gets away and it's revealed that the prisoner they failed to get released is Spock's brother Sybok! From Star Trek V! Now the series has swung from a tragic Twilight Zone story where the kid meets a horrible fate in the end to another goofy comedy. This episode's like a pirate themed A Piece of the Action. So that'd be Pieces of Eight of the Action maybe? I had my doubts about the guest star counselor from the start, because who wouldn't after the twist in the Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach? But it was only when Aspen changed into the Ishara Yar catsuit of treachery that I was absolutely sure they were going to be betray the crew. The only question was whether Spock would follow a hunch and and figure Aspen out when they unlocked the ship's systems in engineering, because that was clearly where Aspen was going to make their move. And the answer was... no. Instead Spock's clever scheme this episode involved kissing Nurse Chapel to give T'Pring a plausible justification to pre-divorce him and avoid disgrace. A cunning plan, but it's maybe not a great idea to give T'Pring an education in manipulation. Also it's going to get a bit old if poor Chapel's going to be pining over Spock for the entirety of SNW and the entirety of TOS afterwards. One thing I liked about the episode though was that they took the time to set up how distant the ship was from the Federation and how they had to drop com relays to stay in contact. And then T'Pring just turns up in minutes at the end anyway, but whatever.  The Spock plot ended with the shocking reveal that there's a reason the writers gave T'Pring a job rehabilitating V'tosh ka'tur, as it was all part of a plan to introduce Sybok onto the series. I thought we'd all agreed to pretend Star Trek V didn't happen! This means that we likely haven't seen the last of the dread pirate Angel, which I'm not totally hyped about. Angel was good when they were giving Spock advice about who he is (which cleverly fit both his arc, Angel's relationship with Sybok, and the actress being transgender) but after the turn happened she was kind of playing it broad. I feel like Trek has maybe a 50/50 record when it comes to stories about the ship being taken over and her presence helped push the episode over to the goofy side, where episodes like DS9's Rascals and Enterprise's Acquisition live. And Star Trek V too, now that I think about it. It was hard to really buy what was happening as the episode didn't give me the impression that the pirates had enough people to successfully seize the Federation flagship through force. Meanwhile on the Serene Squall, Pike's armed landing party quickly surrendered due to the pirates' clever strategy of... being on the ship. What was Pike even planning to do with those guns he brought if he was utterly blindsided by armed opponents existing? I guess he figured that he'd get a better outcome by changing the game they were playing, and it's hard to argue with the results. He took advantage of the ridiculousness of the episode, kicked off a pirate mutiny with the power of cooking, and was incredibly smug about the whole thing. It was a very Kirk bit of trickery, except with less exasperation and more glee. I mean the guy goes full 'talk like a pirate day' at the end, to Number One's horror. This was a fun episode and it mostly worked on that level. Though I'm deducting points for the pirate ship having a literal wheel to steer it with. Or just to pose behind I guess, as Ortegas is the pilot and she had her own controls. The last epic episode battle of this article is The Serene Squall vs What Are Little Girls Made Of. So it's pirates versus robots, and I gotta give this one to the robots. I was surprised how much I enjoyed WALGMO on my recent rewatch... and I think I've just discovered why I never see the title abbreviated anywhere. I think Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach (LUWSCR) could've given WALGMO a run for its money, but TSS just doesn't have what it takes.

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NEXT WEEK

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will return with the final three episodes and a bit of a season 1 review, but next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm jumping back to the Original Series once again to watch season 1's Arena!

Please feel free to leave a comment and be aware that I'm glad you dropped by and grateful you read my words.