Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3

Sorry, M'Benga, those are zombies!

I was all on-board M'Benga having to answer for the assassination of the Klingon Ambassador, but I am NOT okay with Pike covering for him at the end after all. On the other hand, if this story ISN'T actually over, it just became a thousand times more complicated if Pike now knew and said nothing. It makes him complicit in the cover-up and an accessory to the murder. I'm pissed at how the episode ended. But it's possible the way it ended will make a future episode MUCH tougher on Pike, the crew, and the entire Federation. I can't object to that.

I don't know what is precisely what is going on with Ortegas so her insubordination is annoying to me. I don't even know if this is entirely her fault or if she even deserves blame at all. The lack of context here hurt this story as well.

Spock's mind-meld with Batel was pretty fucked up. THAT'S never happened before. Let's not do that again, m'kay?

I can't tell if Pike is the best boyfriend ever to Batel or the worst. Both, maybe?

The transporter room loses gravity and Scotty is floating for a hot minute. The show always needed to do that more, and the Secret Hideout stuff has value because the budget is big enough that it SOMETIMES can.

Okay, zombies in Star Trek are cool. And yet, I didn't like the rest of the things that happened in the rest of the episode. But I WILL concede that where Pike and M'Benga are concerned, it could lead to interesting complications down the line. I sincerely hope they occur by the end of this season. M'Benga getting away with this when the show is affirming his guilt (which we guessed, but was never proven) doesn't sit right with me at all. 3 stars.

I was disappointed by that.

That was an enticing teaser. Alternate Universe? Time travel?

Instead it's the first Holodeck fuck-up in Star Trek history. After ALL of the Holodeck fuck-ups we had to suffer through on The Next Generation and Voyager why the HELL does this show think I'd actually be interested in the very first?

I'll say this for Pike. That deathtrap almost kills his crew, he puts the entire thing in mothballs. That thing tried to kill the Enterprise D crew every week, and not only was it never removed, the very same damn people it tried to kill still go to it. To relax. For fuck's sake.

I mentioned in recent Star Trek reviews that the Roddenberry future is cold and uninviting and not one I'd like to live to see. That! That!

And apparently Holodecks were ALWAYS boring. That's not a good thing.

The Uhura stand-in giving the lecture of the value of science fiction, especially that of futurism and allegory is pretty great. And Paul Wesley does a pretty good Shatner. Save that, Paul. There will be a test later.

But the best part of the episode was Anson Mount's unrecognizable performance as the producer / Roddenberry stand-in. Because Pike is so stoic, and those are the kinds of hero roles the actor is always cast in, he never needed to stretch. It turns out he's a fantastic actor, and probably the most gifted one in the entire cast. He's a freaking chameleon with that shit right there.

The outtakes at the end did nothing for me.

Disappointing episode, but there has never been a single holodeck episode I've ever liked, and the only admirable thing about THIS one is Pike sensibly decides to get rid of it at the end like a sane person. What is Picard and Janeway's excuse? 2 1/2 stars.

There was something about Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager I didn't exactly like at the time, but I appreciated in hindsight. One of the selling points of story of the week Star Trek is the variations in tone. And those shows occasionally did a super dark, terrifying episode, with little to no comfort given to the audience during or after. It's just Trek Dark. DS9 in particular excelled at this. TNG and Voyager had their good dark stories, but more often than not (especially on Voyager) they couldn't quite stick the landings.

I see a lot of "Empok Nor" and "The Ship" in this episode. And people die because of bad decision making. I mean the ONLY reason the red shirt prison guard died is because his reaction to the creature that was Gamble was rash and stupid. The away team got as messed up as they did because they refused to do the rational thing and abandon the mission, even after they were ordered to (Twice!).

I mentioned there is no built-in-comfort in these types of stories. Which is why it's frustrating Pelia with her big personality and Carol Kane's fake accent are given "somber" moments they are. When she talking about the "heebie jeebies" in that specific voice, it's not scary, it's unintentionally funny.

The irony is that Pelia works great to release the tension at the end. Her ending monologue is kind of ridiculously torpid for that specific character, but when she asks the dude if she ought to do a second take, the comical nature of the character saves the moment, if not her entire role in the episode.

A lot of the horror Trek episodes refuse to have easy answers. If there is a high-concept sci-fi mystery attached it is usually left unresolved to make things THAT much scarier for both the viewer AND the survivors. I have to say as far as that kind of Trek horror goes, this is probably one of the best examples I've ever seen. The tension, the gross-outs, the terror, and the unsettling, unrelenting sense of foreboding and impending doom is upped to the Nth Degree for this outing.

M'Benga's defense of Gamble is heartbreaking, but I think Sam, Pelia, and Scotty had it right that he had actually been gone the entire time. I dunno. I don't feel based upon what we saw that anything was preventable once the orbs and his eyes exploded. And I might be wrong. And the uncertainty of that adds to the horror and ambiguity as well. Part of me hates every inch of the horror episodes. And this specific horror episode pushed EVERY single correct button at all times (Pelia's goofy accent excepted). Very effective horror episode of Star Trek. This franchise will never be confused for Alien. But even without scenarios or endings that dire and depressing, things can still get fucked up on the old Starship Enterprise, and good on a bad week. I prefer the weeks with Q fuckery myself, but I cover my eyes during these episodes, peeking through my fingers every time because I cannot look away. 4 1/2 stars.