Unusual New Worlds’ Returns With an Awkward Case of Tonal Whiplash

It’s been virtually two years since Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds left us on a tense cliffhanger, and now it’s lastly again to pay it off. It’s maybe an unfair stress to placed on the present, that circumstances exterior of its management have saved this return anticipated for longer than it ought to have. However even past the context of its Hollywood strikes-induced delay, there was going to be stress on Unusual New Worlds to place its greatest foot ahead regardless.

So… it’s maybe not perfect that the sequence has returned with a little bit of a combined bag. A premiere of two episodes that couldn’t be additional in tone from each other—one a grim, intense, high-stakes motion conclusion to final season’s cliffhanger, the opposite a Spock character piece bursting with goofy, foolish shenanigans—season three’s debut at its greatest speaks to the number of storytelling modes Unusual New Worlds can weave itself by way of.

However past the particular executions of these plots, these very completely different episodes each ring a bit hole in comparable methods, as they each battle to each wrangle with the present’s episodic needs with more and more serialized components, and likewise battle with how they deal with their relationships to wider Trek canon.

Hegemony, Half II

The premiere episode itself, “Hegemony, Half II” (Unusual New Worlds‘ very first two-parter, made all of the cuter by letting Anson Mount choose up with Star Trek custom and lead us into the episode with the “And now, the continuation,” narration!), picks up like there hasn’t been a two-year wait to see simply what Pike and the Enterprise crew will do to flee the wrath of the Gorn over Parnassus Beta.

Like Unusual New Worlds‘ prior Gorn-centric episodes, “Hegemony, Half II” supplies a masterclass in high-stakes pressure. Albeit extra action-forward than the creepy Alien horror vibes of previous Gorn encounters, the episode deftly and cleverly weaves three distinct plotlines collectively round them. First, we’ve Pike and the Bridge group racing to try to rescue their captured crew and the lacking Parnassian colonists and save the Federation from a possible Gorn invasion; then, elsewhere on Enterprise we’ve Spock and Chapel making an attempt to save lots of Captain Batel from her Gorn an infection; after which we’ve the aforementioned captured crew themselves—La’an, Ortegas, Sam Kirk, and Dr. M’Benga—making an attempt to flee alive from what can solely be described as “The Collector Base from the ending of Mass Effect 2, however filled with Gorn.”

It’s lots, and it’s all stuffed with excessive pressure and large motion setpieces, from body-horror rescues to starship and floor shootouts, and once more, it’s all cleverly weaved so every part climaxes collectively simply so: every thread of the narrative ends with our heroes saving the day, regardless of the chances, and with the Gorn, Unusual New Worlds‘ most persistent of threats, are seemingly performed for.

All that sounds good and enjoyable, proper? Effectively, it principally is from a spectacle standpoint. However If this actually is the tip of Unusual New Worlds‘ envisioning of the Gorn (save for some potential lingering trauma this season, extra on that subsequent episode) and the present has had all it needs to say in establishing this connection from right here to the traditional Star Trek episode “Enviornment,” then “Hegemony, Half II” appears like a climax that actually doesn’t have a imaginative and prescient for the Gorn past treating them as unequivocal monsters for essentially the most half.

There was a fleeting second partly one the place Spock and Chapel felt a twinge of remorse for having to kill a Gorn warrior that appeared to recommend that Unusual New Worlds was going to have the potential to pivot and produce some nuance to a species that it had, as much as that time, handled as little greater than primally aggressive creatures. However whereas that exact beat is paid off of their shared dealing with of curing Captain Batel’s an infection (by feeding the Gorn embryos the sustenance they want so it doesn’t fatally burst out of her, letting it take in into her system), the remainder of “Hegemony, Half II” simply continues to try this for essentially the most half. There’s some makes an attempt made, certain, as a part of the best way Pike and the crew ultimately uncover how they’ll cease the Gorn from invading the Federation—their aggression, it seems, is pushed by elevated photo voltaic exercise of their dwelling system, with the Enterprise managing to reverse the impact simply in time to ship an enormous Gorn armada again into hibernation.

However even that small layer of depth to the titular Hegemony is essentially shadowed by Unusual New Worlds persevering with to painting the Gorn as explicitly animalistic monsters. The Federation doesn’t even contemplate co-existence, it sees warfare with the Gorn as inevitable and needs Enterprise to not discover a peaceable resolution, however a method to “punch again.” The seize of the away group and the colonists reveals that the Gorn, after they don’t violently impregnate their victims to breed, simply soften down their prisoners into biomass gas in an extended, excruciating, and horrifying course of, an act of profound evil. Even when La’an and the mostly-not-melted Enterprise away group (save for poor Ortegas, who loses a superb chunk of one in all her fingers from not being introduced out of pod-capitivty quickly sufficient) are making their escape, there’s no humanization or understanding: the Gorn are there to run at them in droves and be gunned down.

Unusual New Worlds‘ Gorn are handled as largely undeserving of understanding (if something, making their aggression pushed by pure stellar phenomena underlines that these Gorn might by no means comprehend the idea of diplomacy), monsters that the Federation should bend guidelines to defeat regardless of the fee. And by resolving issues, seemingly for good by way of what’s left of Unusual New Worlds by way of placing the Gorn into an early hibernation—that even the present has Pike acknowledge is simply punting the problem down the highway for another person to cope with—Unusual New Worlds avoids having to wrestle with that remedy, and the way it impacts Star Trek‘s broader method to treating even the best of antagonists with nuance and depth.

And even wilder, contemplating we all know what Unusual New Worlds is kicking the problem down the highway to: it’s solely six years after the very fact when the occasions of “Enviornment” in authentic Star Trek happen. “Enviornment” is an episode of tv virtually 60 years older than “Hegemony, Half II” that by some means manages to present its singular Gorn a extra nuanced and understanding portayal—and a extra nuanced and understanding portrayal of humanity’s personal path to Star Trek‘s utopian future, questioning the potential for each humanity and Gornkind alike’s potential for violence, and the hope of their striving to rise above it.

“Hegemony, Half II” as an alternative solely considers that the Gorn are animals, and deserve battle till it might make treating them higher one other present’s downside. Among the many slick spectacle of all of the motion and pressure that actually works right here, it’s an oddly incurious transfer for a present in a franchise that prides itself on its curiosity.

Wedding ceremony Bell Blues

Effectively, in spite of everything that seriousness, why don’t we transfer on to one thing enjoyable! “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” is an fascinating parallel to “Hegemony, Half II” regardless of being radically completely different in tone, just like the equal of a photographer on the titular wedding ceremony yelling “let’s do a foolish one,” however as a whole episode.

If “Hegemony, Half II” was the contination of the present’s action-disaster, year-of-Hell kind riffing seen in prior episodes of the Gorn arc throughout season one and two, then “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” is, by some means, the third in a line of camp comedies that may solely be described because the “One thing Foolish Occurs Throughout a Time of Tumult In Spock’s Love Life” style. An oddly particular pattern!

Choosing up three months on from the occasions of “Hegemony, Half II”—a timeskip that permits Unusual New Worlds to conventiently dump having to discover the lingering traumas of these occasions, for essentially the most half, with a view to wildly swing its tone—the episode sees Enterprise docked at Starbase One to rejoice the Federation’s centenary, just for issues to take a clumsy flip when Nurse Chapel returns from her fellowship to not romantically reunite with Spock, however reveal she is now truly in a very critical relationship along with her mentor, Dr. Korby (visitor star Cillian O’Sullivan) as an alternative.  Womp womp!

Supplied an odd drink by a mysterious bartender (none aside from Our Flag Means Dying‘s Rhys Darby) to assuage his heartache, Spock all of the sudden finds himself waking up in a actuality the place Enterprise is docked at Starbase One to intead rejoice his impending marriage to Chapel. From there, Unusual New Worlds engages in a complete host of acquainted comedies, as an unaffected Korby (and shortly after a realizing Spock) race to try to snap everybody else out of the the thriller bartender-slash-wedding-planner’s phantasm.

It’s a breezy and enjoyable episode, however doesn’t actually have a lot to do or say, even constructing itself across the fascinating beat that we’re seeing a an inversion of Spock and Christine’s relationship within the authentic Trek (the place Chapel pined after an unreciprocating Spock) as he wrestles with letting her go for good. The actual hook shouldn’t be essentially that character arc, however as an alternative the thriller of who Darby’s thriller illusionist actually is…

To which, once more, Unusual New Worlds doesn’t actually have a powerful reply. Darby’s character has actuality warping powers like authentic Trek‘s godlike being Trelane from “Squire of Gothos,” and definitely attire the half (with the sideburns to match), however the climax of “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” as an alternative leans extra to recommend that Darby is taking part in a Q, proper right down to a voice cameo by John de Lancie himself as a shapeless guardian entity who reveals as much as cease the bartender taking part in with mortals so everybody can get on with precise actuality.

It’s such an odd play to nostalgia, as a result of Darby’s riff is neither explictly made out to be Trelane or a member of the Q Continuum within the textual content of the episode, however sort of a mish-mash of each, an aesthetic right here, a specific handmotion. Which is, itself, a seperate play to nostalgia: there’s lengthy been a fan principle that retroactively establishes Trelane, who’s actual nature was by no means lined in “Gothos,” as a Q. It’s been touched on in Trek books, and even Unusual New Worlds itself, through Decrease Decks characters Boimler and Mariner joked about it in last season’s crossover episode as a nod to the speculation.

That is the closest on-screen Trek has come to floating it as canon, however once more, the episode leaves issues imprecise and unanswered: a cloud voiced by John de Lancie is available in and tells Rhys Darby off, he turns right into a cloud himself, and off they each go. What does Unusual New World get by digging into this fleeting second of fanon, however then solely gesturing reasonably than saying something specific? What does whether or not or not that is Trelane, or a Q, or these are each the identical factor, push out of our characters? Spock’s entire arc of reconciling how he feels about Christine shifting on might’ve simply occurred with out the diversion of shenanigans.

It speaks to an odd relationship with ephemerality that Unusual New Worlds has had because it’s progressed. The present’s need to take care of that episodic vibe, switching up tone wildly from week to week with little carryover, is brushing up increasingly with the occasions it needs to have issues of consequence occur with its characters. Spock is maybe the uncommon exception as we’ve seen him should course of first his doomed betrothal to T’Pring, and now dropping Christine. However Chapel herself is put apart within the strategy of that latter arc, her romance with Korby taking place totally offscreen after which having to be defended on advantage by way of the filter of this reality-warp-wedding-drama (apparently, the arc of their total would-be-romance sort of takes place virtually totally by way of these extra comedian episodes—getting collectively after Spock briefly became human in “Charades,” slicing their relationship off throughout the musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody,” and now this).

They’re not the one two characters impacted in “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” both. The three-month timeskip lets La’an primarily acknoweledge that she will be able to now be over her traumatic childhood encounter with the Gorn now they’re handled and seemingly gained’t present up once more, that means we don’t get to essentially sit along with her as she sits with concluding a defining factor of her character. There’s additionally Ortegas, who has struggled to exist on the present a lot that at this level all of the present can do along with her is have her say “I’m Erica Ortegas, and I fly the ship” as an alternative of have an precise character. She actually did that once more in “Hegemony, Half II” after being put by way of the wringer being horrifically injured throughout her seize and the escape—a truama “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” brushes over for essentially the most half, utilizing its timeskip once more to even actually handwave her dropping a part of her hand within the final episode (at the least there you possibly can thank Starfleet’s superior medication).

“Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” tries to present Ortegas one thing extra by introducing her brother Beto (Mynor Luken), however he instantly as an alternative turns into a possible romantic foil for Uhura, away from Ortegas’ orbit. Nevertheless it then additionally concludes with the revelation that, understandably, Ortegas is certainly coping with trauma over her seize and accidents on the hand of the Gorn: a personality depth the episode had spent its total runtime ignoring, and primarily La’an’s personal prior character arc now simply transferred over to her. Which they’ll do, as a result of she’s not likely had a lot of a personality to this point, but in addition as a result of Unusual New Worlds‘ relationship with what truly issues for its characters from week to week has grow to be so bizarre.

“Hegemony, Half II” and “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” are a likewise bizarre set of episodes to pair (maybe unfairly, as the choice to launch each without delay is probably going not a artistic determination on behalf the present, however on Paramount), however they replicate one thing that’s been a flaw within the background of Unusual New Worlds for some time now. The sequence needs to do massive, deep issues with each its characters and its connection to wider Star Trek continuity, but it surely additionally doesn’t need to commit with what it means to stay with a few of these issues with a view to keep its episodic selection. The present needs to leap from horror-disaster-action epics proper into camp comedies and clear the slate every time, however cleansing that slate leaves its characters in an odd limbo.

Perhaps that is only a notably off combo of episodes to amplify this flaw, but it surely’s additionally maybe that Unusual New Worlds is now in its third season—and the truth that there at the moment are 24 finite episodes of its runtime forward of it—and properly into a well-known, snug sample with itself. These are each episode codecs we’ve seen the present execute on a number of occasions earlier than, and now we are able to see the sample ourselves… and a few of the cracks in its method, beneath the slick sheen.

Need extra io9 information? Try when to anticipate the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and every part it’s essential find out about the way forward for Doctor Who.