TL;DR – A tense end to a remarkable season.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ streaming service that viewed this episode. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Review –

Well, it has been a rollercoaster of a season, with episodes flying, time-travelling shenanigans, and cross-overs happening, but we have now come to an end for now. So in our review today, we will first look at the season finale, Hegemony, which brings up back to the Gorn question hinted about back in The Broken Circle, before looking at how the season went as a whole.

So to set the scene, the USS Cayuga, under the command of Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano), is visiting a new colony on Parnassus Beta just outside of Federation space. The colonists wonder if Federation Membership is the protection they need or the target on their backs. But the subspace communications go down out of nowhere, shuttles fall out of the sky, and a Gorn battleship appears in orbit. Admiral April (Adrian Holmes) cautions Pike (Anson Mount) that this could cause a war between The Federation and The Gorn, and he is only to engage in reconnaissance to see what happened. But that is not what Pike has planned. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Tonally you know this will be a different sort of episode from when the shadow creeps across the settlement and up over the colonists’ faces, which is one of the ways that shows that Hegemony is a visual spectacle. Part of this was setting it in a colony with a “small town” vibe, meaning you had many options to find a suitable location to shoot in and around Ontario. The highlight was up in space, with the destruction of the USS Cayuga on full display. After hinting about them in Season One, we get the first full look at remodelled Gorn adults. They feel like an evolution of what we saw in Star Trek Enterprise’s In a Mirror, Darkly, which was already a step up from Star Trek’s Arena.   

We have been building to this episode for two seasons with La’an’s (Christina Chong) backstory and our first significant death last season. So even before the USS Enterprise warps into the system, we know things are not going well for the USS Cayuga. We get references to Zombie films and the drive to cast the Gorn as monsters. However, they are sentient creatures that use other sentient creatures’ death as reproduction. It is a unique problem for Star Trek’s drive to use diplomacy and understanding in their approach to unknown threats.  

Forcing everything to be done in secrecy brought a level of concern because the floodgates could open with any mistake. This created a political dimension to the show that I think it needed. Communication means that simple analysis can no longer be used. It also means that everyone gets a moment to shine, Ortegas (Melissa Navia) gets to show off her flying skills, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Pelia (Carol Kane) find a way to get rid of the dampening field, and Spock gets to save the day, well more Chaple, but also bring on using the saucer section as a weapon ala Star Trek Beyond. Finally, the season’s biggest surprise was them slipping in Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn). I like when shows don’t reveal big swings like this, and this was a perfect introduction.   

This episode is full of tension, with just enough charm to stop it from being oppressive. You feel a desperate need to help because you care for the characters, and you feel their pain. Spock’s (Ethan Peck) pain when he does not know what happened to Chaple (Jess Bush) felt real because you could tell it was there like a tsunami being held back by sheer force of will. Is it super convenient that Chaple is the only survivor of the Cayuga? Absolutely. But we already knew that she would survive, so the show was smart in focusing the danger on Batel and that green Gorn transporter right at the end. The best recommendation that I can give is that I felt my heart skip a beat when the ‘To Be Continued’ popped up on the screen.

Now it is time to look at the season and what a season it was. Before I dump praise, I do have to say that not every episode worked. Among the Lotus Eaters had three good ideas for an episode, but not the space for all three to have the needed depth. Also, Lost in Translation had some interesting ideas but never wholly coalesced. Thankfully, the rest of the season is so strong that these couple of missteps don’t weigh it all down.

If you want to excite Star Trek fans, set your episode in a court and use it to shine a light on our current world. Ad Astra per Aspera was the statement that Strange New Worlds was not holding back in their second season, and it was a delight to watch as you were not sure how they would get to an outcome. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow showed that Canada should get to play Canada more often. But more than that, this episode completely changed up the established canon in a genuine way, which was such a difficult balance to pull off. Also, Charades was some of the most fun I have seen in a Star Trek episode. Can I please recommend watching this episode again and just watch Anson Mount’s face acting in the background.

However, we can’t talk about this season without talking about the wild tonal swing that was the back final four of the season from Those Old Scientists, Under the Cloak of War, Subspace Rhapsody to Hegemony. I am unsure that any Star Trek show has oscillated like this and, more importantly, stuck the landing. This speaks to the show’s strength in front and behind the camera because you are willing to go on the ride. They had a crossover with Lower Decks and somehow made the live-action and animated sections feel like they were part of the same whole. There is a respect there that I don’t think others could have pulled off. We also delved into the moral ambiguities of war, where I am not sure M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) did anything wrong … maybe. Finally, I don’t think I had Spock getting dumped via a big song number in the ship bar on my bingo card for the season. So, props for that surprise.

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Hegemony & Season 2? Well, I think it is safe to say this was a taut end to a wild season. While not every episode worked, it was always entertaining, and I was there for the joy of the characters’ stories. This season took a lot of wild swings, and I am glad they are taking the risks of a musical episode. I know we won’t get season 3 for a while now, but I will be there when it comes.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Star Trek: Strange New Worlds yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Directed by – Chris Fisher, Valerie Weiss, Eduardo Sanchez, Amanda Row, Dan Liu, Jordan Canning, Jonathan Frakes, Jeff W. Byrd, Dermott Downs & Maja Vrvilo
Written by – Akiva Goldsman, Dana Horgan, Kirsten Beyer, David Reed, Onitra Johnson, David Reed, Henry Alonso Myers, Kathryn Lyn, Bill Wolkoff & Davy Perez
Created by – Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet
Based On – Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry
Production/Distribution Companies – CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout & Paramount+
Starring in Season 2 – Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun & Rebecca Romijn with Paul Wesley, Melanie Scrofano, Carol Kane, Bruce Horak, Dan Jeannotte, Adrian Holmes, Mia Kirshner, Gia Sandhu, Martin Quinn, Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, Jerry O’Connell, Greg Bryk, Adelaide Kane, Reed Birney, David Huynh, Yetide Badaki, Michael Benyaer, Ellora Patnaik, Michael Reventar, Robert Wisdom & Clint Howard and Rong Fu, Alex Kapp, Matt Jensen, Noah Lamanna, Emma Ho, Andrew Jackson, Kyle Kass, Noah Lamanna, Cihang Ma, Tiffany Martin, Jamillah Ross, Samer Salem, Izad Etemadi, Hannah Spear, Alex Spencer, Abbas Wahab, Laura Wilson, Russell Yuen, Jim Annan, Catherine Black, Anna Claire Beitel, Eugene Clark, Nicky Guadagni, Graeme Somerville, David Benjamin Tomlinson, Luke Marty, Desmond Sivan, Allison Wilson-Forbes, Anjuli Cain,  Ryan Taerk, Saida Ali, Ryan Allen, Carolyne Das, Kyle Gatehouse, Jose Gutierrez, Brendan Jeffers, & Vanessa Smythe
Episodes Covered – The Broken Circle, Ad Astra per Aspera, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Among the Lotus Eaters, Charades, Lost in Translation, Those Old Scientists, Under the Cloak of War, Subspace Rhapsody & Hegemony