Since losing Batel at the end of the last season, life for the crew of the Enterprise hasn’t stopped. Mainly because Pike won’d let them. Racing from mission to mission without even a water break in between, the crew are getting a little run down after six months of back to back nonsense. And it’s all because of Pike running away from the loss and burying himself in adventure to keep the grief at bay. As Admiral April pops over for a chat, and to offer Pike a promotion he doesnt seem too interested in, a break doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon.
Writers: Henry Alonso Myers, Alan B. McElroy
Director: Chris Fisher
Sent to investigate some new weird space stuff, things go completely mental when the Enterprise gets pulled into it and thrown, Caretaker style, into an unfamiliar place that turns out to be less of a strange new world, and a more familiar strange old world. Earth, 65 Million years ago. With nearly every system down, and components they need on the surface of ancient Earth, Chin-Riley leads an away team to find an alien ship while dodging dinosaurs while Pike deals with aliens deciding to take the broken Enterprise as salvage…
The dinosaurs are a bit of a gimmick here. And while it’s fun to see La’an punch a raptor in the face without any hesitation, the more intriguing part of the episode is giving a new history of Earth and the solar system long before humanity was even close to existing. In this era Mars is a flourishing, dominating world at war with their neighbours from Dol’drm. The wars not going well and the Enterprise, with technology Martian Captain Cassel has never seen before, could help tip the scales and end the conflict.
Arrogantly assuming Pike has surrendering by default, Cassel has some typical traits but avoids all the usual tropes you’d expect. For the better. Instead of arguing, fighting or uttering too many cliche’s, she boards the ship to let Pike give her a tour of the ship and state his case. Showing her a mixed crew, explaining the Federation and how it works, he almost wins her over. Which in terms of story is nothing special, but as a season opener and a weird third season prior, it’s kind of nice to get a reset of sorts to refresh the shows memory on what Star Trek is.
It also opens doors to some tough decisions for Pike. Once Cassel figures out she can quiz the computer and get more information, she begins to realise that the Enterprise is from the future, Pike is from that planet with dinosaurs and Mars in the era of humanity is a bit of a wasteland. Which all feels very classic Trek. Cassel realises theres no future for Mars, but still wants to win the fight. And Pike is stuck with the inevitable choice; save the Martians and potentially ruin the timeline, or let things play out and watch Cassel destroy her enemy with stolen tech because he knows full well that planet doesn’t exist in his time.
It’s all one big parallel to Pike’s arc. As Cassel submits to the inevitable, knowing theres no future for her planet, Pike has to confront the same is true for him and with each passing year his day will come. It also plays nicely with the pre-destination paradox game that Star Trek’s done many times before. The Enterprise’s reactors become a stolen weapon that destroys a planet, kills the dinosaurs and resets the solar system to what we as the audience know it to be.
And of course, while Pike’s moving from diplomacy to moral crisis on the ship, Una and co on the surface take the silliness of being on prehistoric Earth and make it work to break it all up with over the top action and fun.
For a first hour of a new season, Valles Marineris plays with a few different topics and themes, kind of like a taster of what Star Trek and Strange New Worlds can and has delved into in it’s balance of drama, comedy and action turning an overall silly concept into something intriguing, not too heavy, and with just enough fun to set a nice starting tone for season 4.
Highlights
- Cassel's wider language translating Pike's tone to decribe himself as a widow by accident was a harsh and perfectly understated moment.
- Pelia (and her second Doctor Who reference) seems to have officially checked out and feels like she's just coasting to let Scotty take lead.
- La'ans fears that her genetic history is coming to get her. A small moment that teases something interesting for her this season!
All Connected...
At the end of the episode we learn the extinction event that caused the end of the dinosaur era only happened because of a stolen reactor from the Enterprise. But in Voyager we learned not all the dinosaurs died out. At least one species, the hardrosaur, survived and evolved to become Earths first space faring species. By the 24th century, the descendants of the dinosaur survivors had planed their flag in the Delta quadrant for over twenty million years and had no record of their origins. While some scientists believed they originated elsewhere, a theory corroborated by Voyager, the Voth Doctrine stated that they were the first species to evolve in the Delta Quadrant and saying otherwise was heresy
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