In just a matter of weeks we’ll be off to venture more Strange New Worlds as Captain Pike and the Enterprise crew return for their third season.
Last we left them, the crew were in the middle of a Gorn crisis as a personal mission that could risk all out war resulted in the crew being split in two with half safe and sound on the Enterprise with the others in enemy hands with Pike left to decide what happens next as all odds are against them.
It’s been a long wait since seeing Pikee staring into space trying to decide on the next move. Especially with writers strikes pushing back filming. But now we’re almost there, we’ve picked out some key episodes to rewatch ahead of the launch!
Hegemony (S2E10)
May be an obvious one, but with Season 3 kicking off with the conclusion to a two-part episode, you should probably watch part one…. trying to settle after a bit of a weird year, Captain Pike’s better half Batel is under attack; her ship in ruins as she visits an independent colony on the edge of Gorn space. Ordered to tow the line and not break the already razor thin peace, Pike risks an all out war to find Batel and save the crew.
In terms of Gorn episodes, it’s not the best of the lot so far. There’s a lot of tension and building up to the end, which will surely give the second half a more satisfying pay off.
Lift US Where Suffering Cannot Reach (S1E6)
A mostly isolated story far from the Gorn Hegemony, this is a nice break from war and action to focus on a rather small, but deep story for Pike. Reunited with a former space fling, Pike involves himself in the kidnapping of a child who would be king. Well, as far as he’s aware. Or course, nothings straight forward and the bad guys aren’t who we think they are.
In terms of the big picture, it’s a rather low scale planet of the week episode with little lasting effects. But for a story where there’s no happy ending, it’s a great way to get to know the Captain who’s up against the Gorn in season 3’s opener.
Under The Cloak Of War (S2E8)
There’s no Gorn in sight in the episode, but in terms of story, there’s few better in recent years that highlight the effects of war in Star Trek. A former Klingon General with a reputation for brutality has defected to the Federation and on a galactic forgiveness tour. The Klingon War veterans on board aren’t exactly thrilled with this and as we see M’Benga struggle through his duties as a representative of Starfleet, the episode flashes to his service during the war where General Dak’Rah’s reputation was born.
What Starfleet is has always been a debate. Is it a military? Or a peace keeping armada? Here we see both sides in harsh contrast, as well as what happens to good people under pressure. M’Benga’s story is dark, compelling and with one of the most ambiguously hard endings the franchise has seen.
All Those Who Wander (S1E9)
With the Enterprise needed in two places at once, Pike lets his Number One take the ship to meet a deadline while he pops into a shuttle with some newly promoted crew for a recovery mission. And of course, the more they learn about what happened to the ship they’re recovering, the more he realises that one away team and no ship to fly home to was not a good idea.
If you took Alien and the Thing, smashed it together and dotted around some bright coloured shirts, you’d have this episode. Reinventing the Gorn for a new era meant expansion and making them seem more alien. This episode leans into that with somewhat of a reintroduction of the Gorn as a species, expands on their structures, capabilities and why everyone should be terrified of them.
Memento Mori (S1E4)
While only seen in one episode, the Gorn from the original series seemed to last a lifetime through reputation. In part because Kirk having to fight a Gorn captain with whatever sticks and stones he could find becoming a good, solid story. In part because, despite it’s looks and moving like a fridge, it was a solid baddie of the week. And yeah, in part because it’s a bulky static costume thats not aged well. So when it came to giving the Gorn some teeth, SNW dived right in.
Caught in a Gorn trap and hunted for sport, the Enterprise crew has only La’an’s extremely tainted knowledge of the Gorn to guide them through what comes off as a submarine style drama as the crew do anything they can to run and hide from a harsh and uncaring enemy. Filled with tension, drama and Ortega’s regretting her life decisions, as an early episode it remains one of the best to get a feel for the terror of the new Gorn direction.
Strange New Worlds makes its return for season 3 exclusively on Paramount Plus. Ahead of the launch we’re locking down our Spoiler alerts on social media groups with all live and post episode reaction held in our Continuing Mission: Spoilers & Discussion Group –
About the author
Resistance Is Optional: Sunday 8th February
We've trialled, we've tested and we're ready for nonsense! This weekend we're inviting the fleet to come together and just enjoy talking Trek, general life, throw questions at Admin and generally misbehave in our Discord server while we run a live first run on the server. For those who've never used Discord before, we're migrating what we can from our social platforms to the Discord server in the coming weeks and months due to it's versatility as a desktop app, web-based client or mobile app; having multiple methods of communication from voice chats, to hosted events, to simple forum and live forum style discussions and of course – aside from them occasionally promoting their Nitro features – it’s ad and payment free with privacy controls to suit you. Also it lets us run video and voice chat - both of […]
“There is no greater enemy than one’s own fears”; ‘Vox In Exelso’, Starfleet Academy S1E4
When an existential crisis threatens to wipe out a beloved but infamous Star Trek species, a cadet is forced to confront his past and strained relationship with his family. As he pursues an unexpected method of coping, Nahla races against time to save this species from extinction.... Writers: Gaia Violo & Eric Anthony Glover Director: Doug Aarniokoski Ever since Discovery took the jump to the future, there were questions that were left unanswered. A few hundred yeas of changing cultures and political landscapes combined with the galaxy-devastating effect of the Burn gave us a familiar surrounding that had undergone massive change. We found out what happened to the Federation. We found out the Orions took advantage of the power vacuum. We even got to meet an isolationist Earth and see the reunification of Vulcan and Romulus. But for a […]
Revenge Of The Nerds; ‘Vitus Reflux’, Starfleet Academy S1E3
Proving yourself at Starfleet Academy always seemed to come down to competitive rivalry. Whether it was Sisko failing to win over Solok, Finnegan's constant pranks on Kirk, or Georgiou drinking everyone under the table, even the most professional stand up Captains have spent their youth in a knife fight with a Nausican. Vitrus Reflux get it all out the way as cadets Lythe and Raymi get locked into a battle of the ego's while the War College next door pops up to assert their dominance! Writers: Alex Taub & Kiley RossetterDirector: Doug Aarniokoski As the more militaristic war college use their current standing as the primary source of Starfleet for the past hundred-plys years to prove the revival of the Academy is a failed experiment, tensions begin to bubble over through mixed physical training leading to conflicts, a war of words and […]
[Q2&A] Positively Positive.
Last week Starfleet Academy debuted and something odd happened. If you're a regular to any Trek news or discussion site, you noticed a spike. Even our usually sleepy Facebook profile went from a handful of likes to over 2,000, am good chunk of which got deleted. It wasn't a normal spike, certainly not normal for a debut show, not normal to be everywhere and – to be frank – not normal in terms of comments. It was a mix of disturbing and sad. Disturbing for the high amount of bigoted and sexist memes and commentary that seemed to mock murdered US citizens. For a subculture of fandom that grew up praising – to the point of gloating – that Star Trek was about intellectualism and inclusion, it certainly showed that as a fandom, and a united international culture, we've taken more […]
[Retro Review] Where No Man Has Gone Before….
During a search and rescue mission that takes the Enterprise through the Galactic Barrier, ships captain James 'R' Kirk has another problem. During the trip through the barrier, Kirks crewmate and long time friend Gary Mitchell takes a blast of weird energy that slowly transforms him into everyone's best friend, to a telekinetic megalomaniac proving that old parable about absolute power.... By this point, everyone knows the story of Star Trek's two pilots. The Cage was filmed, rejected and the show got a rare second chance. That second chance as Where No Man Has Gone Before. Same ship, different Captain and crew aside from a green blooded alien... This year marks the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, so it seems only fitting we should start, where the show began on screen with the pilot that saw the idea become a […]
Everything Whale Be Alright; ‘Beta Test’, Starfleet Academy S1E2 Review
Rebuilding after being torn down by 'The Burn', Starfleet and the Federation are getting back on mission, rekindling old alliances, developing new technologies and now ready to re-open Starfleet Academy to raise the next generation of explorers... Writers: Noga Landau & Jane Maggs Director: Alex Kurtzman Whether it's seeing hios potential, or just sheer guilt, Captain Ake is bending over backwards to integrate Caleb into the Academy. Trouble is, he's not putting in the same effort. Fighting against his own inflated ego and distracted with his quest to find his mother coming to a dead end. Spiralling following an argument with instructor Jet Reno, Caleb tries to run, but instead he runs into Tarima; a visiting Betazoid who can see right through his bravado. Following the Burn, Betazed isolated itself from the Federation and now their president has an […]
Related
A Fistful of Familiar Surroundings
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo. President Forward During the Next Generation multiple set pieces were re-used and recycled from the set pieces built for the film franchise. From the obvious re-use of internal corridors, to smaller pieces such as Dr Crushers office being McCoy's, it's hard for a keen eye to ignore how much the productions shared between them. But as The Next Generation became the dominant forcer with ongoing production and full standing sets, eventually the turn tabled and by the final original cast instalment, it was the TNG stages that became the obvious redress solution. The most jarring of the films set re-uses was the office of the president. As Kirk and McCoy were charged with assassination, a political poop show begins and the Federation […]
A Fistful of New Beginnings
The coming of a new year always comes with a feeling of new beginnings. Whether it's hearing the bells at midnight or planning a list of new years resolutions to forget about by February, the changing of numbers and another year ahead can bring us a sense of starting over. To commemorate another year passing, and the beginning of a new Star Trek milestone, we're kicking off with our usual list looking at five times Star Trek itself was able to give itself a fresh start. GROWING THE BEARD Between the first and second seasons of The Next Generation, things changed. A lot. A lot of the Next Generation was just carrying over from the abandoned Phase II and Roddenberry's constant rewrites led to a very inconsistent start for the show. By the second season things has calmed down a […]
A Fistful of Forgotten Technology
Travelling the stars is a lot more fun when you have engineers who can turn rocks into replicators and scientists who come up with some crazy ideas on a whim and bring some brand new tech into creation to solve this weeks problem. But sometimes you have to wonder what happens to the inventions that didn't last the week.... Borg Again Once upon a time, Neelix died. Then Seven came along, casually unstuffed some Borg probes in him and suddenly he's back to life again. Mortal Coil is an episode that focuses on Neelix's belief and psychological after effects of being dead, even if just briefly, only to experience nothing but his revival. It's a common story throughout all genre's of TV. It's just this time there were nanoprobes to speed up the 'coming back to life' part. Seven's nanoprobes […]
A Fistful of Next Generations
When Paramount was up for sale, everything was on pause., Now things are a little different with new owners, a shake up and a new future ahead. Since the merger everyone with a keyboard has had their idea of what could come next in the Star Trek Universe to tempt Skydance into the next part of the legacy. So we figured.... why not look at a list of ideas too? The Archers Someone's getting their PR out there along with their pitch as the Archer idea seems to have been picked up everywhere with fans who once decried Enterprise clamouring for more Archer! Though Archer's story ended on Enterprise with the formal formation of the Federation, the history of the shows that came after confirmed the 'beta canon' of his next adventures as President of the Federation. With Enterprise ending […]
A Fistful of Sci Fi
Over the past few years we've been spoiled with a dazzling amount of Star Trek on our screens, but with shows coming to an end, the close of Season 3 of Strange New Worlds leaves us impatiently waiting for more! With a bit of time to go until we see season four, and the next live action show Starfleet Academy coming next year, we need some geeky joys to fill the gap! Taking a look around at recent sci fi releases, we've picked the top five from the year to keep us engaged before our return to the Star Trek Universe in 2026. Murderbot Based on the series of books by Martha Wells, Murderbot is stars Alexander Skarsgård as a refurbished security unit who's hacked his safety protocols to gain free will and horrible at hiding that fact. Assigned to […]
A Fistful of Vulcans
The first alien species to openly make contact with Earth and one of the core members of what would become the Federation, Vulcan's started with the original series Spock just to show the alien on the bridge. Now, nearly sixty years later, Leonard Nimoy's portrayal set the tone for decades of evolution. Despite being an easy mine for comedy, seen quite a bit in Strange New Worlds between the 'lets mess with Spock' episodes and now Four and a Half Vulcans bringing a full on comedic parody of Vulcan stereotypes, the nuance and layers thrown into the mix over time can be surprising and sometimes even heart-warming. So this time we're looking back at the episodes that go beyond the stereotypical logic and delve a little deeper into the culture of Vulcan. Sarek, The Next Generation Sarek was introduced as […]
