Waking up in sickbay with a comical bandage on his head following a shuttle accident, Pike quickly notices things are a bit off. The lights are too bright. The medical staff are behaving oddly with dramatic pauses aplenty. And he’s fairly certain space madness isn’t a genuine diagnosis. As the hour continues with devious secret siblings, dramatic feats of medicine and family drama aplenty, Pike is drawn further into the strangest of all worlds; the soap opera.
Writers: Dana Horgan and Bill Wolkoff
Director: Anna Dozoka
Soap opera’s are mental. And for a theme it’s even more mental than it seems. But considering soap opera’s are basically just overly dramatic premises with long lost relatives you’d never before heard of, absolutely insane scenario’s that make Maggie Simpson shooting Mr Burns seem normal and plot twists so insane you genuinely have to check your tea isn’t spiked. But for all that could be said and mocked about them, it’s a genre that builds characters and stories in such a compelling way that they’ve become the norm.
Stylistically, Strange New Worlds sticks with what it knows from the American format of soaps which – from the land of Eastenders and Coronation Street – adds an extra layer of oddity. But leaning on the theme lets the show nudge into corners of the characters mindsets that we haven’t had much time to explore to date. While there is a sigh of theme fatigue, there’s two things they’ve done well with through this format. One was utilising the soap-level drama to do some character work. The other was throwing the theme into a classic Trek theme we’ve seen played to death; The Q episode.
Laying it all out early on, the Enterprise’s crew are seemingly trapped in a soap opera and it’s a Q to blame. Trelane, to be exact, as he returns to play around with everyones minds some more. This time it’s a school project where they don’t hold back on showing him in a production booth, feeding Pike direction and manipulating each story to get the results he wants. Pike, for some reason, can’t be controlled and is the only one aware of whats going on but despite early protests to being part of the experiment, he realises the only way out is through…
Much like many direct Q episodes, the plot is just weird stuff happening for the sake of weird stuff happening. But Anson Mount sells it all well playing Pike as the grumpy, frustrated straight man in the comedic scenario as everything unfolds around him. Particularly Uhura who has decided, thanks to decoding ancient secrets within Pike’s cook book, that Christopher Pike is now her long lost father.
We also have Spock, also in the shuttle accident, at risk of completely mental soap opera medical nonsense while La’an runs off to find his secret half brother Sybok, whom she’s visualised as an evil twin as she’s no idea what Sybok looks like and, well, what could be more US soap than an evil twin?! It’s all ridiculous on the surface, but admittedly it does play on a lot of character elements we’ve seen hinted at that need more time like Ortega’s not quite being back to normal following the Gorn, and M’Benga’s inner anxiety coming out as shaking hands before surgery.
It’s all fun, it’s all entertaining and it all has heart. But again, even with bringing on a US soap legend in Dierdre Hall, it feels like the theme eclipses the idea and that there are too many good elements here to hide within that awkward comedy. That said, the conclusion to it all hides in plain sight with Uhura’s subplot of believing she’s Pike’s long lost daughter and how that builds to the climax of what Trelane was trying to provoke from Pike.
After being forced into therapy in the soap setting, Pike finally sits down with the ships counsellor and breaks. The whole season he’s been running from the pain of losing Marie, but in those few moments we see it’s deeper than that. He’s accepted and moved on from losing her. But the life she generated for them both…. while it was just a gift, it was an experience that was real to him. Something we’ve seen before in Star Trek. O’Brien believed he spent decades in jail and killed a man. Picard lived an entire life in minutes. Pike did the same. And all thats left him with is mourning for what was left behind, the daughter who never really existed but was still every bit as real.
Overall the episode was fine. Especially taken into context of it being a Q style episode (with another link between Trelane and the Q buried within). And I can see it being one of those love or hate episodes. I’m kind of in the middle as, much like other themed episodes, there were great elements here that could have played out in more serious settings and left a bigger impact because of it.
But if anything, leaning into the silliness with a format thats been around in Trek for decades, mixed in with Anson Mount taking us through comedy to despair with dedication to the part elevated it beyond just another gimmick and it’s laid out some nice seeds from which I expect interesting stories to grow as we race to the finish line for the series.
EPISODE DISCUSSION & SPOILERS
Highlights
- Dr Chivers was played by Deidre Hall who's starred in Days of our Lives from 1976 and still going strong!
- Trelane's little project goes a long way to explaining Q's fascination with humanity in the Next Generation.
- La'an and Sybok play Kal-toh, a game favoured by Tuvok in Voyager.
All Connected...
The feeling of an implanted memory being real isn’t new to Star Trek. In Deep Space Nine’s Hard Times, O’Brien had a prison sentence implanted in his memories. Returning to DS9, he had to be retrained as in his mind his time as engineer was decades ago. His relationship with his wife was also a struggle. Though part of his memory was killing his cell mate in a squabble over food. While the event wasn’t real, the memory of it led him down a path of extreme guilt and depression for what had happened.
About the author
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