TL;DR – An odd end to a strange season of Star Trek.

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

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Introduction –

Well, we have gotten to the end of what has become a very odd season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It rolled from one wild entry to the next, giving such tonal whiplash that you have to look back on it in awe. However, there was also a thematic throughline throughout the season. And. Well. Look. It’s not great. But let’s take a moment to dive in and see if they at least stuck the landing before we look back at the season as a whole.  

So, to set the scene, the USS Enterprise is getting ready to take Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) back to Earth so she can take up her position as the head of Starfleet JAG. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is feeling a lot of emotions as he is happy to see Batel finding her place in the world, but it does mean that they have to go back to long-distance. But as they start giving the Enterprise a much-needed detail, Scottie (Martin Quinn) finds that someone has patched himself together in the medical transporter and escaped. But who would do such a thing? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Finale

I mentioned that this was an odd end to the season because it is pulling on threads that probably should have been one one-off jokes, but then were stretched out for the whole season. Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan), appearing in Wedding Bell Blues, was a fun jape between him and Spock (Ethan Peck), but then they continue to play on it throughout the season, and it becomes irritating. Then there is the evil Vezda, who felt ill-defined but was done and dusted in an episode, only surprise, it’s the big bad for the season. It all helps build this view that something structurally was amiss this season. I am sure that the big break because of the strikes didn’t help, and this ending feels like it was written as a goodbye to the show, if needed.   

One of the central issues that flows from this is the character of Marie Batel. I have loved her addition to the show, and the cliffhanger at the end of Season Two would not have worked as well as it did without her. However, it felt all season that they could not commit to killing her off in Hegemony Part II, and then they spent the rest of the time trying to make that stick. The finale works its best when it goes into full-Inner Light mode, and you know the joy you are feeling is just a substitute for the sadness that is incoming. However, it felt like they just spent time trying to cherry-pick plot points to technobabble an ending for the character, and it doesn’t work. Which means for all the visuals, character interactions, and emotion, on a technical narrative level, the series finale did not stick the landing.  

The Season

However, if we discard the main narrative throughline throughout the season and take some time to explore the individual episodes, we do see some gems out there. Wedding Bell Blues was a delight that gave the writers a chance to tie The Original Series, Voyager, The Next Generation, Picard, and Strange New Worlds together by giving the fans something that they have hinted at for generations. Shuttle to Kenfori brought zombies to Star Trek with a Klingon on a mission of revenge, and she served it cold. A Space Adventure Hour was a profoundly odd meta episode that was both a delight and also a little mean all at the same time. The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail gave us the Spock-Kirk team-up episode that we have wanted to see, Terrarium gave us the Ortegas (Melissa Navia) episode that we have enjoyed for an age, and Four-and-a-Half Vulcans let Patton Oswalt get his Vulcan-freak on.

It leaned into farse a bit when it presumes that Vulcans genetically style their hair with in-built mosses and gels by saying “you think Pike’s hair was majestic before, well you have not seen anything yet”. We get a constant reminder that whoever decided to cast Carol Kane in this series was a genius, and yes, we didn’t miss the Doctor Who nods in both The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail and the finale. It also continues to be one of the most gorgeous sci-fi shows on television at the moment, even if it does use the projector screen a touch too much in places. One of the key things the show still has time for is to find the joy that is out there in the universe, and that is something that I think we need more of every day at the moment.

Conclusion

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – New Life and New Civilizations & Season 3? Look, I don’t think it stuck the landing; however, it is not a bad episode. Indeed, it is quite touching in places. You can just feel that it is the repercussion of structural choices made earlier in the season. While there were some odd episodes this season, there were also some that were a sheer delight, and I look forward to the two more seasons we have with the show coming up. Have you seen Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – New Life and New Civilizations yet? Drop your impressions in the comments below.

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.

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 – Maja Vrvilo, Jordan Canning, Andi Armaganian, Jonathan Frankes, Chris Fisher, Dan Liu, Valerie Weiss & Sharon Lewis
Written by – Dana Horgan, Davy Perez, Henry Alonso Myers, Kirsten Beyer, Onitra Johnson, David Reed, Bill Wolkoff, Kathryn Lyn & Alan B. McElroy
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 – Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Paul Wesley & Rebecca Romijn with Melanie Scrofano, Carol Kane, Cillian O’Sullivan, Dan Jeannotte, Chris Myers, Patton Oswalt, Mynor Luken, Shaun Majumder, Christine Horn, Adrian Holmes, John de Lancie & Rhys Darby and Rong Fu, Zoe Doyle, Michael Hanrahan, Eric Miracle, Anna Mirodin, Alex Kapp, Warren Scherer, Dariush Zadeh, Graeme Somerville, Steffi Didomenicantonio, Jo-Anne Leach, Paloma Nuñez, David MacInnis, Ish Morris, Kira Guloien, Jonathan Frankes, Ishan Davé, Matia Jackett & Kira Guloien
Episodes Covered – Hegemony Part II, Wedding Bell Blues, Shuttle to Kenfori, A Space Adventure Hour, Through the Lense of Time, The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail, Four-and-a-Half Vulcans, Terrarium & New Life and New Civilizations