Here’s the problem with doing a prequel with established characters: we know what’s going to happen to a whole lot of them, which puts barriers up on certain story notions. It doesn’t completely limit storytelling. For one thing, storytelling generally resists attempts to limit it. And even when you know characters’ futures, there’s still plenty of room for powerful tales. As evidence, I point to, not just this very show, but also two fantastic recent examples, Better Call Saul and Star Wars: Andor.
But there are story angles that are closed off, and also certain conclusions that are foregone. On this show, we know that, at the very least, Pike, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chapel, Korby, M’Benga, and both Kirks will still be around several years’ hence.
And we know enough details about them (some more than others, obviously) that certain avenues are, if not cut off, at least severely limited.
The third-season finale of SNW addresses one of those avenues, as we have to come to the inevitable end of the Pike-Batel relationship.
I chose the word inevitable there quite specifically. This relationship was doomed from the start, because Pike obviously wasn’t with Batel in “The Menagerie”; indeed, she wasn’t even a factor. If Pike had a significant other, that’s something that would’ve come up, especially given Pike’s final fate, which was to live out his life on Talos IV with Vina, their respective injuries masked by the Talosians’ telepathy.
So at some point over the course of SNW, the Pike-Batel relationship was going to have to end.
I find myself wondering if this was the plan all along, or if they were at first going to do something more mundane to just break them up. The problem is, Anson Mount and Melanie Scrofano have had such superlative chemistry that just having them break up was going to be either unconvincing or would require mangling one of their characters enough to make it convincing, which would be unsatisfying.
Instead, we close out the third season with a payoff to the cure for the Gorn infestation Batel received in “Shuttle to Kenfori” as well as the fight that broke out between Batel and the Vezda-possessed corpse of Nurse Gamble in “Through the Lens of Time.”
Over the course of this episode we learn that the fancy-shmancy rare flower that they retrieved from Kenfori to cure Batel didn’t just hybridize the Gorn DNA with hers, but instead transformed her into the guardian that was keeping the Vezda imprisoned on Vadia IX (or, more accurately, in the interdimensional prison that can be accessed via Vadia IX). The Vezda that possessed Gamble has been hiding in the Enterprise medical computer (as implied by the very last shot of “Through the Lens…”), and managed to reconstruct Gamble’s body from the medical transporter buffer. He has gone to Skygowan, another world from which he can access the prison (and where Korby is right now).
Batel has come to realize her purpose—backed up by a medical scan that shows that she’s now genetically identical to the guardian in the prison—and so has to confront the Vezda and reimprison them.
So we do lose her, but it’s a sacrifice she makes in order to keep the galaxy safe from the Vezda. And just to remind us how awful they are, Gamble deliberately torments M’Benga as much as he can, and also makes a large chunk of the Skygowan population gouge their eyes out to prepare them for being possessed by the Vezda. Fun people, the Vezda are…
Just before the final battle between Batel and the Vezda, she sends her and Pike into—er, something. It might be a dream sequence, it might be an alternate timeline, it might be a Talosian-style illusion. But whatever it is, it, “Inner Light”-style, has Pike and Batel living out their happily ever after. They marry, they have a kid (and a dog). When Pike goes on the cadet cruise on the Class-J ship, they’re both stunned when he doesn’t get hit with delta rays and instead gets out of it unscathed. They live together to old age, and only when she’s on her deathbed does she reveal the truth: that these memories will stay with both of them to remind them each what they are fighting for.
Amazingly, this adds further texture to the framing sequence of “The Menagerie.” Throughout Part 1 of that two-parter, Pike is constantly telling Spock “no” when Spock kidnaps him to take him to Talos IV. Pike’s foreknowledge of his confinement to a convalescent chair back in Discovery’s “Through the Valley of Shadows” and his subsequent acceptance of that (despite some hiccups, notably in “A Quality of Mercy”) explains why he was so reluctant to go along with Spock’s crazy-ass plan.
Now we have another reason: he already has detailed memories of a happy life with Batel. He knows that he’ll be trapped in a body that will be ravaged by radiation so much that he will be in constant pain, but he also will refuse Spock’s help, because he has these memories.
I also have to give props to the script, credited to two of the show’s executive producers, Dana Horgan & Davy Perez, and especially to the direction by the superlative Maja Vrvilo (one of the best of the regular slate of directors Trek has been using the last eight years) for the dream sequence/illusion/alternate reality/what-the-hell-ever. The cuts to show the passage of time are simple and subtle, and I especially love the use of knocking on the door as a motif.
I have heard arguments that Batel is fridged here, and I can see the argument, but I’m not quite there to accept it for the very reasons I outlined above. The relationship was always doomed thanks to Batel’s absence from “The Menagerie.” She needed to be written out, and this way she goes out in a blaze of glory, giving Pike a lovely mental gift and also saving a shit-ton of lives.
Besides, this doesn’t really fit the criteria. A fridging is a gratuitous death of a female character whose death’s sole plot purpose is to motivate the hero. That doesn’t apply here. Pike is a bystander to her sacrifice—and also an aid to it. It’s the death of a hero, not the death of a girlfriend. (Having said that, I can see the argument. Feel free to discuss this further in the comments…)
One of the side-plots involves our heroes needing to open up the portal on Skygowan that leads to the interdimensional prison. Scotty and Pelia hit on the notion of ship’s phasers, but a single ship only has about fifty percent of the power. So they do it with two ships, since the Farragut is also nearby, and Captain V’Rel apparently is indebted enough to the Enterprise crew for saving her life in “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” that she’s willing to go along with this.
Because apparently Horgan and Perez don’t understand how computers work, we are told that a mind-meld between two pilots is the only way to coordinate the two ships’ joint firing solution. (It would make much more sense for an independent computer system to control both ships simultaneously, but I guess that violates Trek’s long-standing inconsistent animus against automation.) Spock and Kirk are the ones who must mind-meld. First off, let me give major credit to the script for queer-coding the shit out of the scene in which Spock and Ortegas approach Kirk, which I’m sure made legions of slash fanfic writers giddy with glee. (I certainly chortled mightily.) And second of all, for all that it was dumb, it was lovely watching Paul Wesley and Ethan Peck talk in stereo as they did the thing.
The episode does not end with a cliffhanger, thank goodness, nor even with a surprise ending or any other kind of tease. It simply concludes with the Enterprise going off on their next mission. Which is as it should be.
Next week, I’ll do an overview of this very uneven third season.
I thought this episode was a bit of a mess, even if I mostly liked The Inner Light hat tip. My two big issues.
First, the medbay scene where Batel just exposits about “maybe this is my destiny” is just fucking awful. One of the absolute worst failures of show not tell in all of Star Trek. Absolutely nothing she says here is in any way rooted in what was established regarding the character and her motivations, but the needs of the plot and “destiny.” This really sits in contrast to the beep chair waiting for Pike, because even by the end of DIS’s second season, they had established that the reason Pike was destined for the chair was because he’s a boy scout who cannot avoid doing the right thing, right up to saving those cadets. Batel seems like a nice lady, but we’ve just seen her as Captain Girlfriend – we’ve not gotten to see her mettle tested in the same way.
Second, giving Pike a sweet parting vision of the life they couldn’t have together was all well and good, but I cannot believe Batel gaslit him into thinking they had a child. It’s so selfish at best, and morally abhorrent at worst. If I were in that scenario, I could never think about the happy visions of the other life without being reminded of the nonexistent child that never was – it would all be ashes in my mouth. Some may argue that this is meant to reflect back on Picard’s children in The Inner Light or Generations, but I think those are both quite different. The probe gave Picard a vision of the life of someone else – those kids really lived and died (and he mourned them through his life). And he had no one to blame for the Nexus fantasies but himself.
Is the child an illusion or did all of this happen in a pocket dimension thingy?
Even if it all happened in a pocket dimension, I presume the dimension ended once Batel “died.” Their kid looked approximately 40 years younger than her, so I have to presume she was alive, well, and middle aged when the pocket dimension went *poof.*
Yeah, sucks to be Wanda’s kids in this.
I am usually a big fan of Star Trek mythologizing as it did in Deep Space Nine. However, them talking about the Vezda being the evil that predates the concept of evil is complete nonsense. This is also one of the most classic “Chosen One” stories and those are pretty terrible without a twist. Even the Ancient Greeks believed in prophecy twists.
Also, is Chris’ daughter a timey wimey retgonned out or was she just an illusion?
Yesterday, I read Lily Oster’s excellent article on this website, laying out how Strange New Worlds has used bioessentialism to argue that DNA and species defines a person’s characteristics. And then, less than 24 hours later, we get a season finale where a character successfully argues that a bioscan of their body determines their destiny. So congratulations on that called shot.
I also agree with Karl that this episode was full of Doctor Who-level handwaving and vibes-based technobabble. I love Doctor Who, but it isn’t Star Trek, and I don’t want Star Trek to go this far to being Doctor Who.
I don’t know what to make of this show right now. The actors are still giving it their all. There are so many good, small moments (I loved the callback all the way to S1E2 with Scotty pranked into showing up in formal dress). But premise after premise has felt ill-conceived, or not thought through, or a poor copy of what’s been done before. Season 2 took some big swings, but they almost never felt like gimmicks. Here’s hoping the last sixteen episodes can turn things around…
“I love Doctor Who, but it isn’t Star Trek, and I don’t want Star Trek to go this far to being Doctor Who.”
They’re certainly trying, though. There was a glimpse of the TARDIS inside the scavenger ship in “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” and there was a bit in this episode where Pelia mentioned having known a time-traveling doctor.
There was a Dr Who (4th Doctor) ST:TOS crossover comic book in the 80’s. So it has been done.
That was an unlicensed work of fanfiction by Jean Airey. Pioneer Books published an unauthorized edition for sale without Airey’s consent, and at least one edition of that cut out the character names to avoid a lawsuit.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Doctor_and_the_Enterprise
IDW published an official, licensed Trek/Who crossover in 2012, teaming up the TNG crew and the Eleventh Doctor to fight a Borg/Cybermen alliance, with a flashback to the TOS cast encountering the Fourth Doctor. It’s one of numerous crossovers IDW has published, along with Trek/Planet of the Apes, Trek/Legion of Superheroes, Kelvin Trek/Green Lantern, TAS/Transformers, and a zombie event combining multiple licensed universes including Trek and Ghostbusters. None of which I believe for a moment could “actually” have happened in any of the represented canons.
I caught both of those, and I’ve also seen the comments that both sets of showrunners have made.
Personally, I’m not sure how buddy-buddy the Doctor would be with a quasi-military and their noninterference doctrine, but I’m not the one running a franchise.
The Doctor has been pretty buddy-buddy with UNIT for a long time, and that’s an out-and-out military. I think he’d get along much better with Starfleet, which is made up mostly of scientists who love exploring new worlds and helping people in need.
Of course, the two franchises should obviously never cross over canonically. Star Trek is a work of fiction in Doctor Who‘s universe, and DW has always been far more fanciful and scientifically absurd (although SNW’s creators seem determined to erase that distinction).
There’s a certain level of irony to the bio-essentialist argument for this episode because she’s Illyrian/Gorn/Human not by birth but by genetic engineering.
So destiny is absolutely alterable.
It’s probably why I didn’t have much of an issue with Four and A Half Vulcans because they’re Vulcans only because of genetic engineering (cultural appropriation?)
I bring this up because I am only alive because of modern medicine that certainly changed my biological destiny.
The illusory-future stuff could have been poignant and beautiful, if the rest of the episode around it hadn’t been such an idiotic mess. They’ve forgotten that Star Trek is supposed to be reasonably grounded science fiction and turned it into outright fantasy, with evil from before the dawn of time and forces of immutable destiny… and ley lines in space. Ley lines????? That’s a discredited idea that started in the 1920s as an antiquarian’s proposal for ancient trade routes between historic ruins (forgetting that the ancients didn’t travel across the bumpy landscape in straight lines) and was picked up in the 1960s by New Agers who invented all sorts of mystical BS around it. It isn’t even an ancient myth — it’s only about five years older than Star Trek. And now they claim that ley lines are not only real, but exist in space as well? Come on!
Also… the genetics of Melanie Scrofano’s character give her unique powers to protect the world from ancient forces of evil? Was this entire plotline just an elaborate way to set up a Wynonna Earp in-joke? Because the dialogue for how the mix of human, Gorn, Illyrian, and zombie-episode flower genes somehow combine the genetic knowledge of all the species capable of fighting the Vezda certainly doesn’t make any kind of sense in and of itself.
It also seems way too early to have Kirk and Spock mind-meld, and the way it was presented, as the two of them gaining total knowledge of one another, is hard to reconcile with TOS/movie Kirk not knowing about Spock’s parents, his betrothed, his estranged brother, or indeed much of anything at all about Vulcan culture. And yes, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have just had the computer do it. So the whole thing feels arbitrary and fannish.
There’s also the fact that M’Benga’s part in the episode fizzled out to nothing. They set up this whole thing where he had to go to the planet to confront Evil Transporter Clone Gamble, but all it boiled down to was M’Benga shoving him through a door, and he was basically irrelevant for the rest of the episode.
So while this episode is not the biggest insult to our intelligence this season, that’s only because “Four and a Half Vulcans” exists. What a disappointment this season has been.
Didn’t love S1 but it made me optimistic. S2 dimmed my hopes. S3 was awful, I skimmed most eps and really only liked one that was basically a rip-off of one of the novels done in a less interesting way. So sad.
Honestly, this is the kind of story that the novels would pick apart in a gentle way. I’m not going to mention how but it seems like its just begging for some retcons.
As for M’Benga, it mentions he killed a man at 12 as an aside. Uh….we do remember the Federation is supposed to be nice, right?
Well, it did take me about five seconds to come up with the handwave, “Well, maybe they’re just some space phenomenon that somebody nicknamed ‘ley lines’ as a reference to the nonsense pseudoscience idea.”
That’s pretty much where I went. I was thinking we were looking at the precursor to the discovery of transwarp tunnels.
Despite the strong ‘Fifth Element’ / ‘The Elfstones of Shannara’ vibes this episode was a mess.
Transforming a captain/attorney into a universal/primordial warrior was really too much.
She could have decided willingly to become the keeper of the Vault withoit involving DNA and or predestination.
Batel – and her relationship with Pike – deserved a better finale
Ohh… I hate myself for this, but I just realized… Pike had to lose the Batel to win the war.
… I’ll allow it.
*Connoisseur of dad jokes and bad puns*
30 days in the punitentiary. Bailiff, take him away.
Oh my god…..
SNW hits the difficult third album scenario and is very much a season of two sides. This episode demonstrates this perfectly, the big evil set-up isn’t terrible, having an entire planet of people die goes all the way back to Operation: Annihilate after all. The second pilot had humans transformed by wavy-hand magic, and the Inner Light plot device has been used by every show since TNG to good receptions.
The problems begin with the need to tell a 90-100 minute two part story into a 57 minute single episode. Korby gets sidelined after five minutes in a damsel in distress scenario that comes to nothing, M’benga is denied an opportunity to face his violent past, the loss of his daughter, and the relationship he had with Gamble, being reduced to a doorkey.
Then there’s the science, Batel becomes a Beholder/Beyonder due to some really fortunate DNA mixing, instead of say, being given a choice to sacrifice herself for the Universe. Kirk Snr talks about ley lines instead of say, the trans-warp transporter thing from the Kelvin timeline, and two ships firing together was just an excuse for the Kirk-Spock mind-meld (which is fan-service I don’t mind due to the chemistry between Paul Wesley and Ethan Peck).
I guess, in summation, SNW wanted to remake the Conspiracy storyline from TNG season 1 (with about the same result).
“Kirk Snr talks about ley lines instead of say, the trans-warp transporter thing from the Kelvin timeline”
Incredible that they’ve given us a worldbuilding element that makes “transwarp beaming” look good by comparison.
The only thing wrong with transwarp beaming is how often people forget that Trek has shown us interstellar-range transporters multiple times before, e.g. in TOS: “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “Assignment: Earth,” and “That Which Survives,” TNG: “Bloodlines,” and VGR: “Displaced.” Also that even the filmmakers of Into Darkness forgot that the movie did not intend “transwarp beaming” to mean interstellar beaming, but specifically beaming onto a ship traveling at warp, hence trans- in the sense of going across the warp barrier, rather than in the “beyond” sense of transwarp drive.
I didn’t say it was good, ha, just pointing out that it was more science Star Trek like than ley lines.
My main thought upon watching this one was “Please keep your nonsensical Manichaean good / evil cosmology in that other ‘Star’ franchise.”
To be fair, this one has a few moments that should work; they do specify that the flight needs to be done manually for, er, some reason, so they couldn’t just use a computer, and I’m always a sucker for mindmelds. This one didn’t make any particular sense given that Kirk manifestly doesn’t know about Spock’s backstory in TOS, but I did like them talking in unison. The “Inner Light” sequence should have been much more compelling than it was, and I’m not really sure why; maybe because we don’t see enough to really invest us in the passing years. And I will miss Batel.
But yeah, this one was…dumb. I’ve wanted new villains in Star Trek, but the Vezda are utterly uncompelling generic “demon” figures that make the Pah’Wraiths looks nuanced and interesting in comparison. The final fight sequence with the glowing hands and fireballs felt like it should have come from a forgettable SyFy original series from the 2000s. It was lacklustre end to a deeply lacklustre season.
While I really liked this episode, I felt like some of the final battle at least was rushed, as well as Two phaser beams are striking through the planet and there’s two aliens just sitting there while the twin beams pass right by them. So like is this something that happens to them so often no one mentions it? really?
But, that whole ‘what could’ve been’ sequence between Pike and Batel was very good and very sad so much so I had to warn my wife who immediately told me she doesn’t want to see the episode because of how emotional that will make her.
Maybe I’m old. What the fuck is “queer-coding”?.
My take of that scene is another ham-fisted way to get Kirk on the episode and in a hackneyed way build his friendship with Spock.
A poor season overall.
Queer-coding is writing something in a manner analogous to or suggestive of same-sex or other non-heteronormative relationships. Kirk likened Spock making his mind-meld suggestion over a drink in the bar to being asked on a date, which was surely a case of the writers winking in the direction of the generations of Trek fans who have read homoerotic subtext into the Kirk/Spock relationship.
Random Thoughts on Strange New Worlds Season 3:
1: Seems more soap opera than Sci-Fi
2. Not really any “Big Idea” episodes (like “Measure of a Man” from TNG or “Pale Moonlight” from DS9). SNW seems mostly character personal drama, endlessly
3. Not really exploring space, which is, you know, the literal name of the show
4. The Ship is not a character. It is a set piece. It’s either a dimly lit room or a shining white hospital. And people don’t like spending their time in dark rooms and hospitals. One of the reasons even Season 1 of TNG was watchable is you loved being in that world, learning the ship. This Enterprise means nothing.
Still, its the only Trek we have ATM.
Peace and love all y’all.
I wouldn’t call Batel’s death “fridging,” a term that has been overused to the point that it barely means anything anymore, the same way “bury your gays” is brought up every time a gay character dies on television. However, that’s just about the only thing I’ll say in this story’s defense. Okay, not the only thing. Pike and Batel’s “happily ever after” sequence was cliched, but at least it was sweet and well performed, as was the otherwise pointless mind meld between Kirk and Spock. Other than that, though, it was a train wreck of Pah’Wraith proportions.
This season has been a real mixed bag for me. Wedding Bell Blues, Shuttle to Kenfori, A Space Adventure Hour, and Through the Lens of Time were all enjoyable, even if I had issues with them, and The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail, What is Starfleet, and Terrarium were very strong episodes, even if I didn’t care for how the latter ended.
However, Hegemony, Part II and this episode were stinkers, and when your premier and your finale are both stinkers, it’s tough to argue you’ve made a great season of television, especially when the season also contains a franchise low like Four-and-a-Half Vulcans. This has been SNW’s weakest season so far in my opinion, which isn’t to say I think it was terrible. It just didn’t live up to what I’ve come to expect from the show. Fortunately, they’re getting two more goes before Paramount pulls the plug.
ST:TOS was entirely episodic, all other ST shows have had at least some plot arcs. It seems to me like SNW is trying to fill a middle path – plot arcs have approximately 3 episodes in length, rather than being the majority of the shows in a season. I don’t care for this personally – I’d rather see longer arcs.
Also regarding the ley lines it strikes me they could easily have reused the mycelial network from Discovery. At least some members of the Enterprise crew are familiar with it. I suppose TPTB want to continue ignoring that and the spore drive so they don’t have to keep coming up with explanations why no ship in the next 200 years recreates the spore drive.
The thing is, Discovery season 1 had a built-in explanation for why spore drive would be abandoned: the fact that its continued use threatened to destroy the entire multiverse. But subsequent seasons just ignored that. Or rather, season 2 handwaved that it was okay for Discovery to use it for emergencies only, and the later seasons ignored that. (I like to think that 32nd-century science found a way to rework it to eliminate the risk of cosmic annihilation.)
There were good bits, and heartfelt bits, but mostly it was kind of meh for me as finales go.
I thought that the way they came to understanding what was going on was a little rushed and a bit too speculative, not being based on actual evidence and it was just convenient that they happened to be right that Batel was the Beholder. That entire bit of exposition sounded like it was out of Doctor Who rather than Star Trek: rapid fire vaguely plausible assertions that you just gloss over to get along with the plot and treating concepts like evil not as abstract but actual entities. There was none of the tension of putting things together from actual clues.
Are we meant to believe then that there is a degree of time travel or simultaneity going on? Because aside from the glib “effect before cause” thing which is the equivalent of “shut up, just run with it”, how precisely does Batel become the Beholder? How does three sets of DNA in her – Gorn, Human and Illyrian – translate to having all the abilities of all races that have faced evil?
It would have made more sense to have her go back in time after defeating Gamble (which is what I was expecting) or to say that the prison existed in non-linear time or something. As it is, it’s left pretty much up in the air and we are asked to accept it.
Are we also meant to believe that she was the one who left the messages for M’Benga and La’An, and why leave them in Swahili and Chinese respectively? Why not just put them in English? And how did Batel learn those languages? Why does the Vezda use Latin on aliens?
More questions keep coming up the more I think about it. Why would her chimerical DNA make Batel and the Vezda recognize and attack each other? If it’s genetic memory, does that mean any race that had encountered the Vezda would have the same reaction, and does that mean a Gorn or an Illyrian would have the same reaction? Or is it only a combo thing?
I was expecting, given what happened in “Through the Lens of Time”, that it was actually the Gorn part of her that reacted. And that could have led into a revelation that the Gorn were created or designated as Vezda killers, a predator species to rid the galaxy of them. Which would then explain why they turned their predator instincts on the rest of the galaxy once the Vezda were apparently gotten rid of for good.
Or, the ancient race that imprisoned the Vezda created this telepathic alphabet that would send a message to the descendants of the people who helped them the first time around – so M’Benga and Uhura would read the messages as Swahili, La’An in Mandarin (which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese), maybe Scotty would read it as Gaelic, who knows? That would certainly make more sense than the random inscriptions somehow being related to M’Benga for whatever reason.
Or, Batel would actually travel back in time to be the Beholder and we see her setting up the messages in a sort of bootstrap paradox – the messages were there because they were always meant to be there. A bootstrap paradox is hinted at in Batel’s dialogue but never quite explicated.
I don’t know. The more I think about the flaws in the plot the more I think it could all have been fixed with a little bit of story editing and rejigging.
“I thought that the way they came to understanding what was going on was a little rushed and a bit too speculative, not being based on actual evidence and it was just convenient that they happened to be right that Batel was the Beholder. That entire bit of exposition sounded like it was out of Doctor Who rather than Star Trek: rapid fire vaguely plausible assertions that you just gloss over to get along with the plot and treating concepts like evil not as abstract but actual entities. There was none of the tension of putting things together from actual clues.”
Good point. It was like the logic of how they deduced the villains’ clues in Batman ’66. “But wait — it happened at sea! C for Catwoman!”
“Are we also meant to believe that she was the one who left the messages for M’Benga and La’An, and why leave them in Swahili and Chinese respectively? Why not just put them in English?”
Why wouldn’t she use their first languages to send them messages? (Assuming Chinese is La’an’s first, or at least that she was raised bilingual.)
“(which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese)”
La’an is enough generations removed from Khan that his genes would be highly diluted in her, which is presumably why she’s not banned from Starfleet for having Augment genes. After all, Khan may have taken many concubines (a fact confirmed earlier this week in the Khan audiodrama’s first episode), but he and the other Augments were exiled a few years later, so whatever half-Augment children his concubines bore would’ve grown up to mate with normal humans and have quarter-Augment children, who would’ve had 1/8-Augment children, and so on. La’an is more than 250 years removed from Khan — that’s enough generations that she could plausibly have zero genes inherited directly from a given genealogical ancestor, although “Four and a Half Vulcans” confirmed that she does have some.
The Vezda being some kind of ur-evil and Batel’s destiny, from the genetic nonsense to the nonlinear causality, had a very Recent Doctor Who feel to me, and it’s just… really, really weird as Trek.
Back in the nineties I used to idly fantasize about how much better Trek series might be if they had shorter seasons and larger budgets. I didn’t stop to think that shorter seasons meant proportionally shorter production windows and that talented showrunners with a writer’s room running on all cylinders could turn out more, overall better shows even under the 20+ episode sausage factory grind. The truth is a longer season gives writers more time to think about where a season is heading as well as the space to be serendipitously inspired. I’ve read several sources that told how “Yesterday’s Enterprise” was written on the fly, in a terrible hurry, with multiple writers each penning one act yet it all came together wonderfully, quibles aside, and was a hugely defining show for the franchise.
The longer seasons during the nineties were also when the shows actually had something like a slush pile and younger writers and interns were invited to pitch stories which was how shows like “The Inner Light” came to be and how writers like Ron Moore got their foot in the door. Some of the best Trek episodes were the result of multiple cooks seasoning pots that simmered over a period of time not possible in a ten episode run.
Presumbly, this was written as a potential series finale, before they were given the go-ahead for season 4. It’s the first SNW finale to not leave things hanging on a cliffhanger, which is a welcome change. It feels like it, with it being Pike-centric and the clear resolution for him and the crew as they plan the next step of their journey on the bridge.
I had one big issue in this finale and that was Vezda Gamble. Yes, we’re supposed to be horrified by his actions and the way he manipulates the Skygowans into gouging their eyes out (and I certainly did not want to see more of that after last time). But other than that, what is he and why does he matter as a character? The ultimate representation of evil? Pelia can keep reiterating that pure evil exists in this universe, but I’m not buying, and it goes completely against Trek’s usual approach. Gul Dukat had layers and character. The Founders had clear motive rooter in fear and anger. Even the Borg Queen had a personality. TV critic Alan Sepinwall summed the character best: a retread of DS9’s Pah-Wraiths. No nuance, just cartoony evil. No, thank you.
SNW’s commitment to serving the whole ensemble is both a blessing and a curse. This means we got very little of M’Benga this season, and Pike yet again being underused. Thankfully this finale makes up for it with the Inner Light-esque look into Pike’s potential future. That was a heartbreaking sequence even before the expected twist that it was all Batel’s deliberate doing before the big sacrifice. There is a reason Vrvilo keeps coming back for every live-action Trek show. Her and Melumad elevated the whole sequence, with Mount and Scrofano really pouring emotion out of every beat.
While I enjoyed Kirk and Spock’s mind-meld, I was always under the impression he had no knowledge and understanding of that Vulcan practice back then. At least not before TOS’s “Dagger of the Mind”, to be exact. Granted, on that episode he was on the planet while Spock was on the ship doing it onscreen for the first time, which leaves room for interpretation.
Yeah, it makes sense that this was conceived as a series finale, given the title (which really has nothing to do with any part of the episode besides the closing scene). The first episode of Strange New Worlds was called, well, “Strange New Worlds,” so there’s an obvious symmetry to naming the finale “New Life and New Civilizations” (since “Where No Man/One Has Gone Before” is taken).
So at this point, the only parts of the opening narration that haven’t been used in episode or film titles are “Space:,” “of the starship Enterprise,” “Its five-year mission: to explore,” “to seek out,” and “to boldly go,” although there was a comic miniseries called Boldly Go and a collectible card game and some nonfiction books titled To Boldly Go.
“While I enjoyed Kirk and Spock’s mind-meld, I was always under the impression he had no knowledge and understanding of that Vulcan practice back then. At least not before TOS’s “Dagger of the Mind”, to be exact.”
Spock stated in “Dagger” that he had never melded with a human before, which has been contradicted multiple times already in SNW.
This is what happens when you have writers and show runners who don’t know or don’t care about the source material. Blatantly ignoring things about Spock’s having outright said that he had never melded with a human before, or Trelayne thinking that humans were still in the Middle Ages (in “SoG”) and yet presumably having him on the Enterprise and not remembering Spock in “SoG”, or Kirk, having stated explicitly to Mendez that he had met Pike when she was made Fleet Captain, and on and on and on. Just make a show about Ortegas (my favorite character from this thing) and have done with it. Such potential. Wasted. Rant over.
That’s unfair. It’s always the prerogative of writers of fiction to make changes — just look at TOS, with James R. Kirk becoming James T., Vulcanians becoming Vulcans, UESPA becoming Starfleet, etc. The Wrath of Khan played merry hell with “Space Seed”‘s continuity, retconning Chekov in and replacing Khan’s multiethnic followers with a bunch of pale blond models who were in their 20s despite being stranded as adults 15 years earlier, and who had movie-era Starfleet medical equipment and insignias despite having been left there in the series era. Yet fans love that movie and praise it for getting TOS right (though personally I disagree). There are more important things in storytelling than continuity nitpicks.
I do think reusing Trelane was a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean they “don’t care about the source material” — if anything, it means they care too much about it, since there was no good story reason for that to be Trelane at all, and the climax didn’t work because it relied solely on reminding fans of a continuity reference and rehashing the original episode’s ending, rather than doing something that gave real payoff to the story being told about the characters.
As for the other points, it would’ve restricted their storytelling too much to honor the bit about Spock never having melded with a human before — and if you think about it, that line in “Dagger of the Mind” is hard to reconcile with what “The Menagerie” later established about Spock having served with a human crew for over 13 years. Why wouldn’t he have melded with a crewmate in all that time? It’s one of those bits of early-installment weirdness that later episodes are better off ignoring anyway, like the bit about Romulans not having warp drive (which implied that Earth was the aggressor in the Romulan War).
(While we’re at it, the term “mind-meld” wasn’t even introduced until season 3, and was used only twice there and never in the animated series. It didn’t become standard until the movies. The first season just called it a “Vulcan technique” for joining minds, and various terms like mind touch, mind link, mind probe, and mind fusion were used over the rest of the series and TAS.)
And SNW went out of its way to concoct an excuse for Pike to be temporarily promoted to fleet captain when he met Kirk. “The Menagerie” never said it was the only time Kirk had met Pike; that may have been the implication, but it wasn’t explicit, so there’s wiggle room.
In that sense, it’s also a bit reminiscent of the ENT finale’s own title: “These are the Voyages”, an episode that had little to do with the Enterprise’s maiden calling, instead being a Shran-related search & rescue mission before the UFP ceremony.
Thank you as always, KraD! My thought on the “we can’t automate the two starships” thing: it is a legacy policy (as so many of Starfleet’s policies are) going back to the start of the Romulan War, where the Romulans took remote control over Earth’s and others’ ships (as seen in the final season of Enterprise and continued in various novels). As a result, a starship’s systems cannot be remotely controlled, by design. Same reason (retroactively) for why starships have prefix codes, as Kirk tells Saavik. I also think that even a prefix code (assuming they had been created by Pike’s time) might not enable the kind of direct synchronization needed here. Now, I’m not a big fan of the “mind meld” method used by the writers, but given that the alternative might have been scrounging in Pelia’s sock drawer for an old wired remote control monster truck toy whose controller could be repurposed, I was relatively okay with it, especially with the Enterprise/Wrath of Khan possible connection.
Starfleet clearly got over their distaste for automation by the late 24th century. The Texas class incident and the Fleet Formation incident happened within 20 years of each other, and there were no systems backups available to prevent the Living Construct from taking over the fleet remotely. Granted, the whole Texas class thing was the work of one rogue admiral, but you still think Starfleet would have learned their lesson before the Fleet Formation debacle.
Actually, thinking on her little bit more, while the Texas class was the brainchild of one admiral, Starfleet did seem willing to consider retiring the California class in favor of the Texas class, indicating a more relaxed attitude towards automation. Of course the fact that it would bite them in the ass every time…
the doctor who ref was appropriate, because this episode seemed to be a mash up of “The Satan Pit” and 10’s dream sequence at the end of “The Family of Blood”. but…not in a good way. maybe it’s because i fell asleep and missed the scene where batel fought gamble (the perils of middle-age), but everything just felt like it came out of left field. they needed to write out batel and the immortal evil aliens so we got this mess. i’m all for goofy. hell, i’d welcome another musical episode (loved it). but this felt like the result of not knowing how to wrap up these story lines in any satisfying way.
@krad:
Forgot to ask earlier. Are you planning on covering the Star Trek: Khan podcast-only series? I’ve just listened to the first episode, which got released a couple of days ago. And apparently it’s an official addition to the franchise. I had no idea Secret Hideout was the one producing it, and with Beyer writing and running the project, based on Meyer’s original idea.
As Christopher said, I reviewed the first episode, and will do an overview once the whole shebang is released nine weeks hence.
And, also as Christopher clarified, it’s David Mack and Beyer writing it based on Meyer’s story. Credit where it’s due. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Far from me to forget Mack and his Trek work. “Paper Moon” is still DS9’s finest Nog episode.
Keith covered the first episode here:
https://reactormag.com/reviews-star-trek-khan-premiere-episode/
Instead of week-by-week, he’ll do an overview of the series after the final episode.
The series is co-written by David Mack and Kirsten Beyer, based on Meyer’s story. As for “official” status, every licensed tie-in is official, in the sense of being legally authorized by the copyright owner. Authorized Star Trek action figures, t-shirts, and Christmas tree ornaments are official, so the word doesn’t mean anything except in a legal and business sense. As for the canon status, that’s unclear. It is produced by Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Productions, but not by CBS Studios or another division of Paramount, the actual owners of the franchise. (It has a CBS copyright, but so does every licensed Trek tie-in.) So it may be closer legally to a tie-in publication, or to something like Sony’s Spider-Man-adjacent Marvel movies like Venom and Madame Web, productions of a licensed subcontractor without the involvement of the main studio.
Turns out I was wrong here: Khan‘s production partners include Eye Podcast Productions, which is CBS Studios’ podcast division. So it is indeed directly produced by the franchise owners, though we don’t yet know if it’s considered canonical.
Whatever its actual canon status, it’s at least on a higher placement than the animated Very Short Treks, which I believe was also made by Secret Hideout.
There’s no such thing as a hierarchy of canon. There’s just canon and not canon.
I really got ‘we are not sure we are being renewed so lets close a bunch of plot lines and end on a vague happy ending’ vibes.
My biggest issue was the sheer amount of plotmentium needed. We are taking Dr. Who levels of timey wimey (which was actually alluded to by Pelia).
I was completely fine with the whole Noble Sacrifice trope but the sheer amount of coincidence needed (Swahili on the portal?) was just so much to stretch beyond playing with cause and effect. (Gorn bite, fancy flower, serum, Farragut being there, fancy temples both with Korby, etc)
And after all the setup she wins the day with just a speech and some glowy hands as she completes the loop.
I don’t hate the episode, and the interlude is growing on me, but I think overall it was just too convoluted. Which pretty much defines this season.
Two other notes: She’s not ‘gone’. Yeah she’s stuck there in the now but clearly has immense power now, er somehow. So maybe she reaches out later.
Also, how did M’benga and Pike get back? The door blew up.
It’s not coincidence if Batel was going to go back in time and set it all up once she became the guardian. It’s just retrocausality. She knew M’Benga would be the one to find the portal, because she was there when it happened, so once she went back to the beginning, she knew to write the sign in Swahili.
But yeah, those four different genomes mixing in Batel somehow being exactly the ones that would add up to give her all the knowledge and power to fight the Vezda was quite contrived and implausible. Especially since Illyrian genes are artificially modified, so how would they imbue her with ancient racial memory or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be?
Not to mention making sure that the other ship in place to open the door was a ship where the crews were friends and had a history, plus the captain of that ship owed them a favor so was inclined to do the incredibly dangerous thing that might vaporize a good chunk of an innocent city if not done exactly. If you are going to set things up, maybe just give them a key they didn’t know they needed until they did from the messages?
This episode really encapsulates Season Three as a whole. There was superlative acting and character building combined with incredibly dopey plotting that lurched from point to point. Overall, more good than bad, but easily the least of the three seasons of the show so far.
One thing that really bugs me is the sense that this was somehow supposed to be a series finale. I know Trek has never been as popular as some other franchises but it was surprising to hear that it was such a struggle to get the last two seasons of this show OK’d by the studio/streaming bosses. I’m happy we’ll get the next two seasons – but am a little worried it’ll be the equivalent of TOS Season 3, with the budget slashed to the bone and the better creators jumping ship.
I just read an interview with the producers. They said season 3 was affected by the strike, giving them less time to work on it and bringing staff changes, but those issues won’t affect season 4. Hopefully that means season 4 will get back on track.
https://trekmovie.com/2025/09/13/exclusive-strange-new-worlds-eps-on-why-s4-will-be-better-and-which-star-trek-character-not-to-expect/
Good to know, though I had no idea that Season 5 was already about to start shooting, or that it’ll only be six episodes long. Oh well. I guess 46 episodes is better than the 30 I worried we’d get. I do wonder what happens next, though. I’d love to see more Trek set in the 23rd (or 25th) centuries, but the only show I know is going forward is Starfleet Academy.
The new owners of Paramount Skydance Rappahannock Terwilliger, or whatever it’s called now, are reportedly big Trek fans and are committed to continuing the franchise, including a renewed push toward feature film projects.
Has anyone considered, if the Vezda are such a primordial, pre-universe universal evil, why haven’t the Q, the Organians, the Metrons, and any other “omnipotent” energy form gotten themselves involved in containing it for the benefit of literally everybody?
Maybe they did. After all, the Vezda were contained for ages until Korby’s expedition let Gamble-Vezda loose.
The vezda were contained for ages by Marie Batel, due to a property of interdimensional space that puts effect before cause. This was the whole point of the episode.
Yes, but they said in the big exposition-dump scene that her ability was the amalgamation of the genetic memory or whatever of multiple species that had battled the Vezda for a long time before they were contained for good. She didn’t do it alone. So no, that wasn’t the whole point, it was just one part of the larger whole.
For a time for a time I was thinking, they made an episode I like less than the Vulcan one! Ugh what is happening to SNW! This is nonsensical terrible godawful bul…(enter Nexus/Inner Light/whatever montage) um actually this is kind of beautiful…(enter final knock) Noooooooooooooooo! So the Inner Light Montage and the final closing montage/narration saves this episode from reaching the Vulcan episode level for me but still not happy with finale.
-Kefka
This was purely terrible. This was SO MUCH worse than the 4.5 Vulcans episode. When did Star Trek become part of the Marvel universe with superheros and demons? I’m soooooo upset. sorry, rant over.
Well, TOS had a couple of “demons” like Redjac from “Wolf in the Fold” and the Evil Pinwheel Thingy from “The Day of the Dove,” not to mention the sorcerous Sylvia and Korob in”Catspaw,” and Lucien in TAS: “The Magicks of Megas-tu,” though he was a friendly and misunderstood demon. And characters like Spock, Data, Troi, Odo, the EMH, and Seven of Nine have had what could be considered superpowers.
Incidentally, one annoying bit I forgot to mention was at the end, where the ship was about to launch and every character was getting one last line (since the producers thought it might be the series finale), and Uhura’s line was “Hailing frequencies open, Captain.” Yeah, yeah, we know that’s her cliched line, but the ship was just about to set out from port, so who the hell would she have been hailing at that point? Words mean things. You don’t open hailing frequencies unless there’s someone specific you’re trying to hail, to request communication with. The line made no sense in that context and was just a gratuitous “Let’s have her say the thing” moment, like that Simpsons episode where everyone says their catchphrases one after the other at the end and Lisa refuses to play along.
I’m finally caught up with Strange New Worlds, so this comment is a little belated and I’ll keep it short as much of the discussion has been had.
Many have commented that Batel’s “destiny” felt like something out of Doctor Who, but for me it immediately brought to mind Buffy the Vampire Slayer: there’s a chosen warrior destined to fight “evil” in all of its forms (and in the canon of that series, there actually is a “first evil” who represents the kind of negativity that Pelia ascribes to the Vezda). As a concept, it’s not what I want from Star Trek; I came away from “Through the Lens of Time” feeling like it was more fantasy than science fiction, and this episode doubled down on it. When Batel stated that she had always felt out of place and could never settle on one particular career, my reaction was “yes, lots of people have those kinds of feelings, it doesn’t mean you’re the cosmic Chosen One!” I am glad that the episode just about refrained from having an ancient laser beam battle a la the Prophet & Pah-Wraith possessed Kira and Jake in DS9’s “The Reckoning”…
I liked the idea of a settlement of people who worshipped the Vezda as gods, although was bemused by the temple worshippers’ utter lack of interest in two huge phaser beams striking the monument just feet away from them! And I felt that Pike and Batel’s “goodbye” dream world was a lovely piece of filmmaking, and a great send-off for the character, but 100% telegraphed from the start of the episode – the scene where Batel gets ready to take up her new position at JAG is heavily “death flagged” – and as Keith suggests, the inevitable continuity issues.
Overall a very uneven season finale. Next season I hope they stop leaning so heavily on TOS foreshadowing and start telling more original stories.
“Many have commented that Batel’s “destiny” felt like something out of Doctor Who, but for me it immediately brought to mind Buffy the Vampire Slayer: there’s a chosen warrior destined to fight “evil” in all of its forms”
Odd that I’m the only one who made the connection to Wynonna Earp, who not only was also a chosen warrior destined to fight demonic evil, but was also played by Melanie Scrofano.