TL;DR – A heartfelt end to a very uneven season.
Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service used to view this series.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Review Introduction
Well, we have reached the end of a very odd season of Star Trek. It almost feels like the beginning of the end, while also celebrating the series’ 60th birthday. The vibes are all over the place. Whatever the case, today we are going to take a little time to explore the series finale while also looking at the season as a whole.
So, to set the scene, the USS Enterprise is exploring a very rare phenomenon, a white hole. They are looking to see if white holes are the other end of black holes when a tractor beam strikes the ship after a signal shot out from the hole, impacting Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) the most. It’s odd, almost like she can hear things that have not happened, a temporal paradox just affecting her. She hears Scotty’s (Martin Quinn) demise, but he is still fine, and then maybe she hears a disaster from the near future. Wait, why is that white hole now a black hole? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.
The Time Warp Again
Even before this episode aired, if you know Star Trek, you knew that we would be getting all timey wimey this week just from the episode title alone, and on that front, this episode does not disappoint at all. Every aspect of the time travel that they used in this episode was a fascinating construction. My favourite aspect of it was using past and future Uhura to communicate and effect change. Past Uhura set up a science experiment that will take a year, based on information provided by future Uhura, who got it from future Spock (Ethan Peck), which was set in motion by past Uhura asking past Spock a question. The fact that all of those extrapolations worked even before the complexity of Uhura’s switching places shows a lot of time and effort went into writing this week.
Now, because we are dealing with two points in time about a year apart, it means that you get to have a bit of fun with what has changed going forward. It looks like Future Uhura is set just before the start of The Original Series, a convenient way not to include some of the original characters, even though they get name-dropped. So we get fun nods to changing hairstyles with Uhura and Chapel (Jess Bush), the shifts at the Enterprise, and also, wait, was that M’Ress? They slipped a M’ress cameo into the mix? Those changes, along with the shift between black and white holes, were enough so you always had a good idea of which timeframe you were in.
Emotions at the Core
Watching this episode, it was clear that this was written as a potential series finale if needed, and on that front, I think it would have been a strong closer, because at its core, it was the emotions that rang true. Focusing it around Uhura, even if it meant adding in a very odd relationship between her and Scotty, gave the episode the foundation it needed to shine. Part of that comes from Celia Rose Gooding knocking this episode out of the park with her performance. She has to play two characters that are only one year apart, and they feel like different yet also the same characters. That is a hard sell, and it works. Also, the goal of the episode to help a space baby that has found itself in breach made for a powerful motivator for the final resolution. Okay, I do have to come back to the romance plot line between Uhura and Scotty. It did feel very odd, given the context of the rest of the series and where we know the characters will go. But then Celia Rose Gooding makes it work … I’m still thinking about how I feel about that.
Overall, this was a solid episode from the entire cast, because everyone had a moment to shine. One of the things I liked the most was how both Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Pike (Anson Mount) quickly spotted that Uhura was not their Uhura. Both of those conversations were some of the best acting in the series so far, and it was fun to watch them play out. Respect to Paul Wesley and his bemused face. We also see those emotions, or in this case hear them, in the way that they weave the classic Star Trek theme into this episode. It gives those big risk moments the thematic weight that they need. It also helps that this episode is stunningly beautiful, with the black/white holes being a fascinating depiction, looming in the background.
This Season
While they absolutely stuck the landing with the season finale, when I think back to the season as a whole, I am unfortunately confronted with a very rocky and uneven season of episodes. While some episodes were fantastic, see The Case of the Chiaroscuro, The Griffin Incident, or Orders of Magnitude. Some still were weird, with the highly divisive Level-Five Transporter Accident and Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass, which I did quite love. However, we also got hit with some of the worst episodes in the series with Off-Hour and Human Best Friend, landing like a thud. You would oscillate between highs and lows so much that this season felt like a big case of tonal whiplash.
I feel part of the issue stems from the choice when they were mapping the season out to make every episode a stunt episode. Throughout the show’s history, there have always been these stunt episodes that came out of nowhere and were generally a delight. See Those Old Scientists, or Subspace Rhapsody, as a good example. However, after Season Three’s experiment with a season-long story arc kind of failed, it felt like they fell back on these stunt episodes as a reaction. However, chaos is not a unifying force for a season, and throwing everything at the fan means a lot will miss.
Hollywood Calling Haphazardly
To reminisce with what I wrote back during The Case of the Chiaroscuro: it felt like Season Four of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is undertaking a grand tour of the cinematic landscape. Valles Marineris was their homage to Jurassic Park, The Griffin Incident to Event Horizon, Human Best Friend to The Hangover, The Case of the Chiaroscuro to Casablanca, Level-Five Transporter Accident to The Muppets, Off-Hour to 24, Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass to Days of Our Lives, and Orders of Magnitude to Crimson Tide [something I didn’t clock at the time of my review, so sorry about that]. While Once La’An a Time was our weird follow-up to The Elysian Kingdom and The Princess Bride homage where they chose to offboard Pelia (Carol Kane) off-screen for some truly baffling reason.
Now, to be clear, this is not a criticism; if the episodes are done well, indeed DS9 would make homages like this all the time. But as a trend, I don’t know if I can say that it worked. I get the drive to leave nothing on the table when you thought this might be the end. It is better to go out swinging; that is for sure. Unfortunately, there were too many swings and misses. Plot points such as Cadet A’Sha’s (Bianca Nugara) story, one of the more frustrating narrative elements of the season, felt like the writers fundamentally misunderstood core parts of the Vulcans. The last time this happened, we had to do a three-episode arc on Enterprise to fix the damage. Also, some episodes this season actively angered me, in a way that Star Trek has not done in a while.
Recommendation
In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? Well, when it comes to my recommendation of the season finale, then my answer is a resounding yes. The emotions and storytelling combined into a fantastic end for the season. However, if we are talking about my recommendation for the season, then that is a dicier proposition. There are some episodes that I will come back to and love, yet still many more will get that skip button pushed without a second thought. Have you seen Star Trek: Strange New Worlds yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.
By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.
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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Directed by – Chris Fisher, Axelle Carolyn, Yana Gorskaya, Meera Menon, Jordan Canning, Dan Liu, Anna Dokoza, Sharon Lewis, & Sydney Freeland
Written by – Henry Alonso Myers, Robbie Thompson, Dana Horgan, Bill Wolkoff, Skylar Ojeda, Kathryn Lyn, Akiva Goldsman, Alan B. McElroy, & Onitra Johnson
Created by – Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, & Jenny Lumet
Based On – Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry
Production/Distribution Companies – CBS Studios, Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, HMRX, Roddenberry Entertainment, & Paramount +
Starring – Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Paul Wesley, & Rebecca Romijn
With – Brian Markinson, Carol Kane, Currie Graham, Dan Jeannotte, Joe Morton, Deidre Hall, Rhys Darby, Rachael Harris, Joe Lo Truglio, Gia Sandhu, Adrian Holmes, Demore Barnes, Albert Chung, Andy McQueen, Dave Foley, Sorika Wolf, & Saffron Burrows
And – Alex Kapp, Runa Ewok, Erniel Baez, Christopher Cordell, Jonathan Gould, Bianca Nugara, Ewa Wolniczek, Diana L. Johnstone, Anna Mirodin, Ziye Hu, Stella Lee, Abinaya Sivakumaran, Landon Nesbitt, Darryl Scheelar, Darryl Hinds, Kirstin Rae Hinton, Kathryn Lyn, Louisa Martin, & Catherine Cavadini
Episodes Covered – Valles Marineris, The Griffin Incident, Human Best Friend, The Case of the Chiaroscuro, Level-Five Transporter Accident, Off-Hour, Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass, Orders of Magnitude, Once La’An a Time & Tomorrow’s Enterprise
