There’s a pall hanging over Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, and it’s an odd one: the show has been canceled, ending with a shortened Season 5. Mind you, that series finale is years away at this point. But this knowledge recontextualizes the new episodes from “here are some fun new episodes of Star Trek” to “here are a few of the remaining episodes of Strange New Worlds.” Rather than fun romps with the crew of the Enterprise, it’s a look at characters who are running out of time.
Granted, that’s been baked into the concept of the series since the beginning. We’ve always known that Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) eventually needs to hand the keys to the starship over to Captain Kirk (Paul Wesley). And thanks to some time travel shenanigans over on Star Trek: Discovery, Pike has known that there’s a ticking time bomb around his life that will ultimately leave him scarred and encased in a large, metal machine.
What our foreknowledge of the show’s impending ending does, though, is it flips the dynamic of the series. The weakest episodes of the previous two seasons — and of the five episodes provided for review of Season 3 — are the “mythology” episodes, the ones dealing specifically with the threat of the overarching villains, the Gorn. That’s where we left the crew of the Enterprise in the Season 2 finale, and that’s where we pick up in the Season 3 premiere. But rather than wrapping things up neatly, the CGI lizard baddies are a shadow hanging over almost everything on the show. It provides danger, and it provides action… But also up until now, it’s been the least interesting part of the show.
The most interesting part? That Strange New Worlds allows itself to go weird, particularly as it did in Season 2. A musical episode, a crossover episode with the animated Lower Decks… These are the stand-outs that harken back to the best of Trek. And that continues pretty much every other episode in Season 3 as well, particularly as the show leans heavily into the idea of Spock (Ethan Peck) as a heartthrob. There are goofy cosmic entities, murder mysteries, even an episode that takes its cues from The Last of Us, and they’re all weird and wild and fun. Not everything works, but they all start with the characters’ dynamics, and the show’s cast has easily been its strongest asset.
The problem with the Gorn episodes is that they lean into the characters’ trauma. Everyone is extremely bummed about the evil lizards laying eggs in everyone and destroying the universe, and its a slog that plays to the weakest parts of streaming pacing, rather than the wooly fun of letting this excellent crew of actors play in a different genre for a week. Any scene where Pike is cooking dinner for the crew is one billion times more interesting to watch than seeing someone stare in horror at a bunch of lizards who aren’t actually there.
But to get back to the original point, whether fair or not, knowing that the Gorn are the villains likely all the way through the end of Season 5 (which will run six episodes), it changes the dynamic of watching those hours. They are “essential” in the sense of providing clues and character arcs to show how things will turn out for the Enterprise crew in 26 episodes’ time. And it also unfairly paints those one-off episodes as what folks on the internet derogatorily and incorrectly call “filler” merely because they… Spend time with the characters?
Star Trek at its best is a hang-out show, which is why it thrived with 22-26 episode seasons for so long. The stand-out episodes have always been when things go absolutely weird on the holodeck, or one character travels back in time. That’s true of Strange New Worlds as well. See how last season’s La’an (Christina Chong) focused episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was arguably the best thing Strange New Worlds has ever done, or how Season 3’s fifth, also La’an focused episode is the best of the bunch (heck, maybe La’an is the secret ingredient here), figuring out a way to include holodeck tech without contradicting existing Trek lore.
The romantic flirtation between Spock and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) continues to be a blast, too, particularly as their love triangle changes into a convoluted rhombus. Quieter scenes with Pike and his girlfriend, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano), are also sweet and fun to watch. And Martin Quinn’s Montgomery Scott may be mostly an impersonation of James Doohan, but it’s a fun one… And gets more fun when he’s paired in a mismatched comedy duo with Carol Kane’s delightful Pelia.
And the other thing the show excels at is when it’s earnest about Trek. A lovely speech by Celia Rose Gooding (who plays Uhura) in Episode 4 gets to the heart of everything that makes the franchise work. A large part of that is these people caring about, trusting, and respecting each other. That comes through in the scenes where they hang out in the ship’s lounge, or have dinner with Pike, or have private moments with each other. When the Gorn show up, though? It’s all shouting and explosions.
Would the show perhaps have moved past this with more time on TV? Or perhaps spaced the episodes out less frequently, with a longer season? Probably on both counts. But as is, we’re likely headed for more Gorn as we get closer to the end, not less. At least for this Trek fan, it’ll make me treasure those other episodes even more.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 premieres Thursday, July 17 on Paramount+ with two episodes.
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