Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning (finally!) on the 17th of July with an all-new third season. To celebrate the return what has become my favorite of the new Star Trek shows on Paramount+, I decided to create a list of my top five episodes from the first two seasons.
Memento Mori
After several episodes of hinting at their presence, Memento Mori is the first big confrontation between the Federation and the Gorn. First introduced in the TOS episode Arena, with a memorable fight between Captain Kirk and a slow moving, green-skinned humanoid lizard, the Gorn have popped up in the episode The Time Trap of ST: The Animated Series, and in the In A Mirror, Darkly Part Two episode of ST: Enterprise (using really bad CGI that wasn’t much of an improvement over the Gorn suit used in Arena). We never actually see the Gorn in Memento Mori, except for their ships, which look like angry claws ripping their way through space. This is a wise move, because not showing them makes the Gorn more mysterious and scary.
Both the Enterprise and her crew are put through the wringer here, as the Gorn--after baiting them in a trap--proceed to systematically hunt the Big E down through a gas giant. With the Enterprise badly damaged and severely limited in how it can fight back, Pike and crew are forced to come up with some ingenious ways just to stay alive. Memento Mori is an exciting space combat show. It’s also inspiring to see everyone aboard the Enterprise pull together in these extremely hard times, with the script giving every character a moment to shine.
Spock Amok
Spock (Ethan Peck) and T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) swap bodies. That’s basically the main story of Spock Amok. But this main storyline isn’t why I really like this episode. Taking place right after Memento Mori, the battered USS Enterprise and its equally battered crew head to Starbase One for repairs and some much-needed R&R. And it’s the R&R scenes that really make this episode worthwhile for me. While Memento Mori was the first all-out combat episode of SNW, Spock Amok is the first time we’ve seen this crew in a more relaxed, casual manner in quieter moments, and it’s really nice.
Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Chapel (Jess Bush), and M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) partake in Starbase One’s biospheres, which contain fully formed forests, lakes, and other natural settings. Meanwhile, Una and La’An, staying aboard the ship, both play an old game called Enterprise Bingo. It consists of a series of challenges aboard the Big E that the players must accomplish, including chewing bubble gum until the flavor dissolves, and then transporting away and back in place--just to see if the gum’s flavor returns. There’s no ’saving the universe’ plotline here, and the tone is very laid back. Even the Spock/T’Pring storyline is handled with humor. This is one of the Star Trek episodes that actually makes me want to live in the Federation.
A Quality Of Mercy
Captain Pike’s (Anson Mount) Enterprise and Captain Batel’s (Melanie Scrofano) Cayuga are in orbit above a Federation outpost located near the Romulan Neutral Zone, where they are off-loading supplies. When Pike meets the son of the outpost’s commander, and realizes that the boy will be one of several cadets whom he will sacrifice himself for in a future disaster, it sends Pike into a tizzy. Alone in his quarters, Pike decides to write to each of these future cadets, alerting them of the impending tragedy. But then Pike receives a visit from his future self, dressed in the Monster Maroon uniform from the Star Trek movies, who comes with a time traveling crystal, and a warning.
A Quality Of Mercy is basically a remake of Balance of Terror, the classic TOS episode (and one of my all-time faves from that series) that introduced the Romulans, with Kirk in command of the Enterprise tracking a Romulan ship that attacked several Federation outposts. AQOM is also reminiscent of A Wonderful Life, where the lead character, full of despair, is shown how bad things would be for his friends and family if he never had been born. But AQOM takes that concept and gives it a twist, as future Pike shows his younger self that he needs to save the timeline by suffering through the upcoming disaster, or else Pike will still be captain of the Enterprise at a very crucial moment: the incident that is detailed in Balance of Terror.
The fact that everything goes horribly wrong in this retelling of Balance of Terror--simply because Pike is the captain of the Enterprise--is what makes AQOM so mind-blowingly good for me. It becomes clear that Kirk’s more aggressive handling of the Romulans in the original BOT story was what was really needed. Because Kirk’s severe actions avoided a war with the Romulan Star Empire, who were closely watching every moment of their single-ship incursion into Federation space. But here, with Pike’s misguided (but decent) attempts to preserve the peace at all costs, full-scale war has still erupted. As Spock would say, “Fascinating.”
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
La’An (Christina Chong) goes about her business aboard the Enterprise as its chief security officer, dealing with problems big and small, until she meets a strange man, dressed in civilian clothes, who has been shot with a bullet. Telling her to “get to the bridge,” he gives La’An an odd device just before he dies. La’An then abruptly finds herself in an alternate timeline where Starfleet doesn’t exists, Earth is ravaged by war, and James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) is captain of the Enterprise.
When Kirk attempts to take the device from La’An, it teleports them to 2020s Toronto, Canada, which turns out to be the focal point where history went wrong. Getting casual clothing more suited to the times, La’An and Kirk settle in to find out how they can fix the timeline, while also falling hard for each other. TATAT may be another time travel episode, but it’s also very well done. The normally distant and reserved La’An is finally allowed to have a personal story all to herself for a change, and Christina Chong’s performance throughout this whole episode is marvelous.
Adelaide Kane is another standout as Sera, a passionate young woman whom La’An and Kirk meet in Toronto who believes the world is suffering a secret alien invasion. Despite what happens here, I’m still hoping she returns in a future episode. And having the episode take place where it was filmed--Toronto--was also a very nice touch. What wasn’t a nice touch was La’An leaving a loaded gun in a child’s bedroom. Really? WTF? With this romantic storyline between La'An and Kirk, could TATAT be foreshadowing the events of A Quality of Mercy, where La’An was a member of Kirk’s crew? Time will tell.
Those Old Scientists
This really shouldn’t have worked, but it did so gloriously. A team-up of the Strange New Worlds cast with cast members from the animated series ST: Lower Decks could have been a disaster. But, directed by Jonathan Frakes--Commander Riker himself--Those Old Scientists turned out to be an extremely enjoyable romp that is vastly entertaining. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid reprise their characters of Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler, but now in live action, and everything--from their performances to the recreations of their Lower Decks uniforms--is perfect.
Boimler is accidentally sent back into the past while investigating an alien portal. The Starfleet history geek practically has a nerdgasm once he realizes where he wound up and the legends whom he’s meeting. Quaid’s performance is very funny and engaging, with the actor so into the role that he even ad-libbed a line (“Riker!”) while alone in Pike’s office. Mariner, in trying to help Boimler, soon winds up tossed back in time aboard Pike’s Enterprise with him. Those Old Scientists manages to be engaging and just plain funny without devolving too much into slapstick. This is just a really gratifying episode that displays all of the good things in the Star Trek universe in fine form. --SF
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