Hats off, with admiration

Last year I wrote a critical post about the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. My post was driven, in many ways, by a culmination of years of disappointment that started after Next Generation’s conclusion. I felt that modern Trek writers had lost their bearings, sacrificing the classic magic in favor of sensory overload. Star Trek: Discovery was the prime example, not trusting the viewer to stay engaged for more than three minutes without a new revelation or battle. When Strange New Worlds launched, I was hopeful about the return to the original series’ timeline. While the first season did rekindle the sense of exploration promised in its title, my complaint was that, like its contemporary peers, it was often afraid to let its episodes breathe and for its characters to stand on their own merits.

In hindsight, even Star Trek: The Next Generation needed two or three seasons to find its way. Simply ask yourself which NextGen S1 episodes you recall. There’s the pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint”, and “The Naked Now”, where the crew gets drunk on the same virus from the 60s series episode. What else? The other memorable episodes include the Binars stealing the Enterprise in “11001001”, Wesley getting sentenced to death for trampling flowers in “Justice”, Tasha Yar getting killed in “Skin of Evil”, and the Starfleet commander face-phasering of “Conspiracy”. Those aren’t necessarily good episodes, but you do remember them. The other two dozen episodes are a blur. Just two seasons later, however, the writers were dunking with stories like “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “Best of Both Worlds”.

Season 2’s first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, simply titled “Episode One”, had a worrisome kickoff. When Pike is off the ship, Spock steals the Enterprise to help La’an. Along the way, Chapel and the doctor turn themselves into super-soldiers after injecting themselves with a mystery green goo. Right about here, as Chapel is single-handedly Matrix-fighting a squad of Klingons, is where I sighed and considered calling it quits for yet another modern Star Trek series. Can we just have a Star Trek series where not every crew member is a secret super-soldier with a dark twisted past?

Fortunately, I stuck around. The second episode, “Ad Astra per Aspera”, is a classic court martial plot with Number One on trial for a fundamental right. It evokes ST:TNG’s “The Measure of Man”, where Data must prove his right to have free will. There are principled arguments to be made and the crew pulls together to support their besieged commander. Principles and camaraderie. It feels like Star Trek.

Episode three, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” pairs an alternate timeline Captain Kirk with La’An in a time travel episode to the 21st century. It’s a restrained plot that explores La’An’s struggle with her family name while also giving her a chance for some romance. It plays a few Star Trek IV beats with Star Trek characters out of place in contemporary times, but overall it’s La’an’s story, and I appreciate that despite the writer’s perplexing S1 choice to make her related to Khan, she’s allowed to explore the stigma. I also like that her feelings for Kirk translate back into her home timeline, where Lieutenant Kirk has not had a relationship with her, setting her up for an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind situation where your lover no longer remembers you.

Episode four, “Among the Lotus Eaters”, is an away team mission where the planet slowly erases everyone’s memories. The villain is a rogue Starfleet officer who uses his superior technology to rule a primitive planet. It evokes classic TOS episodes such as “Patterns of Force” where a Starfleet captain models a planet after Nazi Germany for efficiency, and perhaps a little of “Court Martial”, where a crew member, Benjamin Finney, who Kirk believes is dead, extracts revenge upon Kirk for abandoning him.

The next episode, “Charades”, is where season two hits its stride. When a shuttle accident seriously injures Spock, extra-dimensional aliens repair him using his DNA, mistakingly choosing the human component and making him entirely human. He awakens as a round-earred human, complete with uncontrolled emotions, at a critical time where he is to undergo a stern approval ceremony with T’Pring’s parents. This easily could have devolved into a Three’s Company episode, but instead it is delightful and laugh-out-loud funny. Spock’s one liners through the episode are comedic gold, such as “I believe my facial spasms are returning” as he struggles to keep a poker face under his mother-in-law’s demeaning onslaught. There’s a subtext that Chapel finds him easier to talk to about their relationship, since he’s not suppressing any emotions, but she also realizes he’s no longer himself. In a non-Star Trek reference, this reminds me of the Office episode where Dwight has a concussion, transforming into a normal human being for the episode before Pam somewhat reluctantly forces him to get medical help.

The idea of advanced aliens trying to fix a crew member but not having the correct blueprint evokes TOS’s “The Menagerie”, which tells the story of Christoper Pike being held by mind-manipulating aliens who also hold a human woman captive. The woman was the victim of a crash, who they tried to repair, but assembled poorly.

I’d originally had some problems with Strange New World’s Spock relationship with Nurse Chapel, until I’d realized that Chapel admitted having secret feelings for Spock in the 60s series episode “The Naked Time”, where the crew becomes drunk on an alien virus, losing all inhibitions.

Uhura is the star of episode six, “Lost in Translation”, where only she can see terrifying messages from an alien race. It reminds me of ST:TNG’s “Night Terrors” where Counselor Troi keeps having nightmares that turn out to be a subconscious message from a trapped alien crew.

I wasn’t originally sure how to feel about Strange New World’s version of Kirk, but in the original series whenever Kirk bumps into someone who knew him at the Academy or in his pre-captain days, he’s always described as a hard worker who was a “stack of books with legs”. I appreciate seeing a Lieutenant Kirk who is not yet Captain Kirk, but is an up-and-coming focused leader who will earn his future rank. It’s refreshing not to see the J.J. Abrams frat-boy version of post-Academy Kirk.

If season 2 had hit its stride a few episodes ago, episode seven is where it pulls way ahead of the pack. “Those Old Scientists” is a crossover episode with the animated Star Trek series, Lower Decks. It starts out animated in the Lower Decks timeline, with Ensign Boimler stepping into an alien portal that transports him back in time to Strange New Worlds’ setting. There, he is live-action, just like everyone else. As a time traveler, his presence is disruptive and the Enterprise crew wants to find a way to send him back to his home timeline. Matters complicate when a second Lower Decks crewmate, Mariner, emerges. It was so much fun, I watched this episode more than once. What makes this work so brilliantly is that Boimler is the ultimate Star Trek TOS fan, idolizing the characters and ships of the past. He is us, if we were transported to the Enterprise, and we live vicariously through him. Most importantly, this episode gives itself complete permission to be as Star Trek as possible while having unfettered fun. I loved every minute of it. It ends with an animated scene of Strange New World’s crew, explained as a weird side-effect or drinking too much Orion alcohol.

After the last episode, “Under the Cloak of War” will give you whiplash for its tonal shift. A dark, grueling episode about the trauma or war, with Chapel and M’Benga flashbacks as field medics treating an endless stream of casualties during a Federation-Klingon war. The plot cuts between the flashbacks and current time where a Klingon defector from that war now has a message of peace as an ambassador. Those who were brutalized by him, however, cannot forgive him. This reminds me of the TOS’s “The Conscience of a King” where the lead actor of a Shakespearean acting troupe is suspected of being Kodos the Executioner, a leader who killed thousands of people during a food shortage and is now trying to live a life of peace as an actor. The episode is about trauma and war, and makes a point that those looking in from the outside can’t understand its impact.

This episode has a callback to Worf’s Klingon version of Tai Chi, Mok’bara:

The somewhat-reluctant dinner with old Klingon adversaries reminds me of the Star Trek 6: Undiscovered Country dinner:

This leads us to episode nine, “Subspace Rhapsody”. Much like “Those Old Scientists” took risk with an animated/live-action crossover, “Subspace Rhapsody” pushes the chips all in for a musical episode. Let me say, this was the most fun I’ve had watching a Star Trek episode. When the Enterprise encounters a naturally-occurring subspace fold, an improbability field emerges, forcing the crew to break into song and dance whenever emotions are strong. The result is a theme-park of fun and character exploration, with characters revealing their inner-most feelings. Indeed - that is the conflict - characters share too much publicly, and the improbability field is growing, pulling other ships into its wake.

What I loved about this episode is that it was all about the characters. Spock’s “I’m the X” is as perfect a Spock song as it gets, with industrial, mechanical beats juxtaposed against Spock’s deeply-rooted emotions. Anyone who’s ever tried to think themselves through a breakup will relate.

Chapel’s “I’m Ready” is the same song recast as a glamorous cabernet-style tune, evoking her joy at breaking her bonds to pursue her dreams. Uhura searches for her place in the world, belting out the notes in “Keep Us Connected”. La’An explores the theme of unrequited love introduced in the time travel episode with “How Would That Feel?”. Although it doesn’t have a title, there’s a bring-down-the-house moment where even the Klingons get involved in the singing. The whole episode, complete with singing Klingons, could easily ruffle the feathers of any Star Trek purist, but, like the animated cross-over episode, it does just the opposite, serving up an homage of all things Star Trek.

So, to the writers of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, I tip my hat, with great admiration. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve hit your stride and, like Usain Bolt smiling to the cameramen as he leaves the competition in the dust, you make it look easy. You’ve made me excited about Star Trek once again, and, like Kirk at the end of Star Trek II, I feel young, like when it was all new.