Review for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 2

Introduction

I loved the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, so much so, that I bought the second season Blu-ray on the day of release. And it has been sitting on my to-watch pile ever since. But this time it isn’t a case of procrastination. This is more about heightening the anticipation. I don’t just want to breeze through the episodes to quickly rattle off a review; I want to engage with every moment of this show. Strange New Worlds is a modern take on classic Trek, set between the first original series pilot that introduced Captain Pike, and the series proper with William Shatner as Captain Kirk. And just like that original series, we get individual episodes that play with every genre, and even bring whimsy back to Star Trek, although as modern storytelling demands, there are over-arching plot lines as well. And to be honest, I’ve been most looking forward to the crossover episode with Lower Decks.

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, bolding going to explore strange new worlds under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. His first officer is Number One, Una Chin-Riley. The science officer is Spock, security chief is La’an Noonien Singh, Dr M’Benga runs sickbay with the help of Nurse Christine Chapel, and at the helm is Erica Ortegas. At the end of the previous season, the family was disrupted when Una Chin-Riley was arrested, and charged with flouting one of Starfleet’s most strict laws.


Ten episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are presented across four Blu-ray discs from Paramount. Episode specific extras are listed with the episodes.

Disc 1
1. The Broken Circle
Una Chin-Riley is under arrest at Starfleet for falsifying her records to hide her Illyrian nature, and the one person she wants to represent her in the court martial isn’t returning her calls. Pike takes a leave of absence to find this lawyer leaving Spock in command. Which is when the Enterprise receives a distress call from Security Chief La’an Noonien Singh, who is on a planet on the border with the Klingons.

Extended Scene (1:52)

2. Ad Astra Per Aspera
Genetic modification is illegal in the Federation, a holdover from the Eugenics War on Earth, and a law that Earth has imposed on all members. For most it’s a non issue, but for a few people, a few species, it’s an irrational prejudice. It’s something that the Illyrian Una Chin-Riley has hidden all her life. But the secret is out, and the result is a court martial that Starfleet has no intention of losing.


3. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A flash of light yields a strange wounded man, who pleads for Security Chief La’an’s help, telling her to get to the bridge. But when she gets there, it’s not her ship. Now she’s on the Earth Ship Enterprise, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk. History has been altered, and it’s up to La’an and Kirk to restore it, back on 21st Century Earth. But only one of their timelines can survive.

Extended Scenes (2:15)

Disc 2
4. Among the Lotus Eaters
Five years previously, the Enterprise briefly visited Rigel VII, a disastrous mission that cost the lives of three crewmembers. Now, it appears that someone has grown a Starfleet Delta in their back garden on this primitive planet. The Prime Directive may have been broken, and the Enterprise is ordered back to clean up their mess. But Rigel VII isn’t the easiest planet to get to.


5. Charades
Spock and T’Pring’s challenging engagement faces its latest hurdle; a traditional ceremonial engagement dinner arranged by T’Pring’s mother, who in no way believes that Spock is good enough for her daughter. Spock has to be extra Vulcan for the dinner, only he and Christine Chapel suffer a shuttle accident. They’re saved by extra-dimensional aliens, who heal Spock’s injuries, but they didn’t have the blueprints.

Extended Scene (0:45)

6. Lost in Translation
Pike’s promoted to Fleet Captain, albeit temporarily, in charge of the Enterprise, the Farragut, and the deuterium refinery they’ve been assigned to get back online. But there is something odd about the nebula that it’s meant to mine, and Uhura is being afflicted by hallucinations. Dr M’Benga assumes deuterium poisoning, but the only one who believes her when she claims otherwise is Lt. James T. Kirk of the Farragut.

Extended Scenes (4:49)


Disc 3
7. Those Old Scientists
It’s amazing what ancient portals can do. Some can even convert from 2D to 3D, as well as send people through time. And now the Enterprise is hosting a couple of visitors from the 24th Century. Ensigns Boimler and Mariner of the USS Cerritos would be walking violations of the Temporal Prime Directive, if they weren’t such endearing fans of the past.

Extended Scene (0:55)

8. Under the Cloak of War
The Enterprise has been assigned to transport a Federation Ambassador, which seems routine enough. But Ambassador Dak’rah is actually a Klingon, a former general who defected during the last war. Given how many veterans of the war serve on the Enterprise, this isn’t going to an easy voyage, least of all for Nurse Chapel, and Dr M’Benga, who have history with Dak’rah.

Deleted/Extended Scenes (3:17)


9. Subspace Rhapsody
Investigating a subspace phenomenon with regards to instantaneous communication should be manna from heaven for Spock and Uhura, but real life gets in the way. James Kirk is visiting from the Farragut, Spock and Chapel are having issues, and the phenomenon twitches, altering the nature of reality, making people sing their deepest secrets. This could be the end of the Federation as we know it.

Extended/Alternate Scenes (2:09)

Disc 4
10. Hegemony
The USS Cayuga under Captain Batel is outside Federation space assisting a colony, and Nurse Chapel is helping. During a communication with Captain Pike, the signal is lost. It quickly becomes clear that the colony has been attacked by the Gorn. Pike wants to take the Enterprise to help, but since the attack has occurred outside the Federation, his orders are to avoid starting a war.

Picture

The 2.39:1 widescreen 1080p transfer is clear and sharp with excellent detail, making the most of the futuristic imagery and special effects. Contrast is excellent, and there is no visible compression or aliasing. It seems we’ve gone full circle with visual effects. Back before green screen and the like, films used rear projection to put actors in unreal situations, and they could see the worlds they were interacting with on a giant screen. The 21st century tech equivalent is the AR wall, many HD panels interconnected to immerse the actors in a future world, made all the more realistic by real time processing to allow for dynamic camera movements around the stage.

Sound

Strange New Worlds offers the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English, and DD 5.1 Surround French and German, with subtitles in these languages. I was satisfied with the audio, nice and immersive, with plenty of impressive spot effects, and impactful action sequences. There are some wonderful tie-ins with the original series, not least the transporters having a similar sound-effect to the transporters in The Cage pilot episode. I also love the way that the original series music is reworked and made new, not least the show’s triumphant and soaring theme tune, with recognisable elements from the original series theme, but brand new as well. But I have to admit to being grateful for subtitles. Sometimes you can attribute incomprehensible dialogue to modern sound mixes optimised for surround systems, but played back through tinny flat panel speakers, but sometimes it’s just mumbly actors. It’s the latter for this show, although it doesn’t happen too often.

Extras

You get 4 discs in a BD Amaray style case, with two on each side of two centrally hinged panels. The inner sleeve art offers episodes and extras listings, all wrapped in an o-card slipcover. The discs boot to animated menus.

You’ll find the following extras on disc 4...

Producing Props (10:46)
The Costumes Closet (13:21)
The Gorn (15:37)
Singing in Space (22:14)
Exploring New Worlds (46:30)

It’s a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to commentaries for episodes like Those Old Scientists and Subspace Rhapsody.

Conclusion

Strange New Worlds isn’t perfect, but Season 2 is the most I have ever enjoyed a Star Trek show. It’s just delightful entertainment, and as I said in my review for Season 1, there is finally a Star Trek show to appreciate that can deliver whimsy again. It’s a return to episodic storytelling, which allows it to dip its toes into whatever genre catches its fancy, while still developing character arcs long term, and all in a story-telling vernacular that appeals to modern audiences. It can be light and frothy when the mood takes it, and it can be dark and thrilling when it needs to be. And it can still find the time to hold up an allegorical mirror, nudging us to the errors of our ways should we choose to be nudged.

Because of the new streaming paradigm, we just get 10 episodes per season to enjoy, but these are ten, high quality episodes, like them or not. The days of filler and just coasting along are buried back with broadcast television. That same streaming paradigm also means that the episodes are just as long as they need to be to tell their particular story, no squeezing into a schedule with 4 guaranteed ad breaks anymore. The episodes here vary from 45 minutes in length to just over an hour; and all of them are notable.


The first couple of episodes are spent cleaning up plot threads hanging over from the previous season. First they have to rescue their security chief La’an Noonien Singh from a border planet where shenanigans abound. Neo-Trek re-introduced the Klingons, and thankfully after the design abomination of Discovery, these Klingons are nice and familiar from the TOS movie era onwards. It’s an entertaining story, where Spock gets a taste of command, with Number One in prison, and Pike off looking for a lawyer. The second episode is one of those allegories, with Number One, Una Chin-Riley on trial for being different in the one way that the Federation doesn’t tolerate. Courtroom dramas always seem to do well on Star Trek, and this one is no exception.

The end of last season saw the introduction of Paul Wesley as a James T Kirk from an alternate timeline, and I didn’t really buy his interpretation of the character then. He returns in the third episode as another alternate timeline James T Kirk, who gets pulled into an adventure in the past with ‘our’ timeline’s La’an. Here I began to see the charisma and charm that William Shatner and Chris Pine have previously portrayed, and the character finally clicked with me. This is Strange New Worlds’ take on The City on the Edge of Forever, with added Trek-lore, but you might as well be inspired by the best. This universe’s ‘canon’ James T Kirk joins the adventure for a few more episodes as the season unfolds, and he’s very much a vibrant addition.


Among the Lotus Eaters is a really cool episode for Trek fans. In the original 1964 pilot, The Cage, Pike’s Enterprise was coming off a disastrous mission to Rigel VII, a mission that had him thinking of retiring before they got caught in the mess with the Talosians. We got glimpses of Rigel VII in some of the visions the telepathic Talosians created, but here the Enterprise has to actually go back there to follow up on the original mission. And then there is that whimsy... Charades sees Spock turned human by a well-meaning entity, just when his intended beams aboard with her super-critical parents. Farcical it may be, but again it really adds to Trek lore.

Those Old Scientists may be the best thing ever... at least if you’re a Trek fan. It’s the crossover between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, where two of the Lower Decks characters wind up in the past, on board the ship they most fanboy and fangirl out about. It’s also amazing that whether through serendipity or planning, Lower Decks cast actors that look much like their animated characters. Seeing Boimler and Mariner in the flesh is a hoot, and makes you hope for a live action Lower Decks movie.


But then there is Subspace Rhapsody, where one of those spatial anomalies gets everyone singing, imbuing the universe with the rules of musicals. Okay, it’s a big dollop of narrative contrivance, and you might think that it’s playing heavily off the success of Buffy’s Once More With Feeling. Yet it’s one of those rare bits of trivia, this is Trek’s second musical outing. The first was in novel form, How Much For Just The Planet? by John M Ford published in 1987, which saw Kirk’s Enterprise visit a most bizarre world where the denizens were apt to burst into song, something that got infectious. The lyrics were written in the novel, and an Internet search will yield the tunes that inspired them. More importantly, the story and character arcs in Subspace Rhapsody are strong, the songs are really great, the episode works well, and this was suddenly the best thing ever.

There are the weaker episodes though. Star Trek has done more than its fair share of episodes with mysterious aliens in nebulae trying to communicate with humans, and Lost in Translation is another of them. Its strength is in that this is where Uhura meets James Kirk, and they have to work together to solve the mystery. Under the Cloak of War was my least favourite of these episodes. Its message was far more eloquently conveyed in one conversation in The Next Generation episode, The Wounded, while Deep Space Nine’s extended arcs offered a look at war and PTSD in a far better context than this single episode can manage. Its only saving grace is its ambiguous conclusion, but it still didn’t quite work for me.


Then there is the finale. I didn’t like Strange New World’s take on the Gorn, reimagining them as some sort of xenomorph, and they’re back again here, being all monstrous. I must admit though that this episode does more to give them nuance than anything the first season did, adding a little reason to their monstrousness. But this episode is more about the main characters, the introduction of one more classic era character, and a whopping great cliff-hanger... Roll on Season 3!

There are character arcs to follow in this season, Captain Pike’s long distance relationship with Captain Batel, M’Benga and Chapel’s Klingon War PTSD, La’an’s interesting relationship with Kirk, and Uhura has a particularly effective journey. But by far the most effort goes into developing Spock, on his journey to the Spock that we know. Strange New Worlds takes a page from the earliest of TOS, where we occasionally saw Leonard Nimoy smiling, even grinning, as he was working out the character. Those atypical smiles are put down to a Spock still trying to find himself, after losing his logical control towards the end of the first season. We also get a relationship with Chapel that belies the one-sided infatuation of the original series, and gives a better context. Strange New Worlds definitely adds to the complexity and diversity of Star Trek in the best possible ways.


The first season was great! The second is even better. I am so glad that they are making Star Trek like this again, not that Those Old Scientists was exactly like this, but Strange New Worlds takes what was so special about the original series, and updates it in just the right way for modern audiences. This is the Star Trek to watch now.