TV #23 of 2024:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2
The second year of this TOS prequel and technical Discovery spinoff isn’t flawless, but I’m comfortable saying it’s the single best season of Star Trek we’ve gotten since Deep Space Nine went off the air a quarter-century ago. The first run of Strange New Worlds already distinguished itself with a firm grasp of its characters and a zippy sense of fun, and this follow-up doubles down on both those strengths, continuing to rotate through who gets to be the focal protagonist(s) each week so that nearly everyone gets their turn to shine. It even takes the standoffish security officer La’an, who had probably the most under-served role last time around, and turns her into one of the most emotionally engaging elements of the show, all thanks to an improbable time-travel adventure with an alternate-universe version of James T. Kirk.
That wild sense of experimentation also lifts the series. Although the big musical episode falls a little flat for me — the songs themselves aren’t especially catchy or distinctive from one another, in my humble opinion — it’s the sort of swing that I can’t imagine any other iteration of Trek attempting, let alone managing to use in a “Once More, with Feeling” style to push the crew to express long-building but restrained emotions. That it can be in the same conversation as that classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer story, which built on over 100 previous episodes of evolving plot threads versus SNW’s 18 at this point, is a true testament to how well the newer program has been developing its own personal arcs in such a limited space.
More successful than “Subspace Rhapsody” for me is the Lower Decks crossover “Those Old Scientists,” which sounds ludicrous on paper but turns out to be a perfect meld of the two shows’ different sensibilities (and a real tour-de-force for actor Jack Quaid, who obviously was not cast or had ever approached his role on the cartoon with a thought for how the character would look in live-action). Despite the inherent goofiness, that hour plays out in a way that respects both sides of its creative DNA, while also finding room for the little character moments that elevate it further. Nurse Chapel realizing from an offhand comment by Boimler that her time with Spock has an expiration date on it; La’an bringing up her own recent experience visiting the past… I love how this series carefully takes the time to fold updates on ongoing character arcs like that into the most one-off of episodic adventures. Lower Decks is considerably looser with anything resembling a consistent storyline — good luck establishing when exactly the portal trip takes place in the animated continuity, other than the main cast all being together on the Cerritos — but this is an episode that couldn’t work outside of this particular moment on Strange New Worlds without some significant changes. It’s one of the biggest differences in vibe to the made-for-syndication TOS, but also part of why I consistently find this series to be a more enjoyable exploration of that era.
The show goes dark on occasion, too, beginning this year with one character under arrest for a plainly racist Starfleet law that must be challenged in court like the anti-android rules in TNG‘s “The Measure of a Man,” and then repeatedly exploring the traumatic ramifications of Discovery’s big Klingon war better than that program ever bothered to do. But at its grimmest, just as at its most gimmicky, the characterization soars.
I do have a few small critiques, in closing. The ten-episode length of the season is in line with other contemporary genre TV series, but it’s a real disservice to this one, which wants to both juggle a variety of ongoing storylines like DS9 and regularly experiment in format like the sitcom Community. Both goals would yield substantially stronger results in a longer season! We could maybe even get to see the starship explore more actual strange new worlds, as that title increasingly feels like a holdover from an earlier creative vision for this show and not an accurate description of its present ethos at all. It’s similarly a problem how little Captain Pike gets to do here, and while I’ve heard that that was a specific choice to allow his actor more time with his newborn child, it still leaves this stretch a little aimless, thematically speaking. With so few episodes, space is at too much of a premium to sideline the central figure of the captain like that.
Finally, I want to say that this program is suffering from a lack of canonical queer representation — especially compared to the much weaker Discovery, which for all its flaws includes Stamets, Culber, Adira, and Reno all in the main cast. Trek as a franchise is supposed to be all about building a welcoming future for everyone, and very specifically featured a multicultural bridge crew for Kirk’s Enterprise when the original show launched in the mid-1960s. While that racial diversity thankfully remains, it feels like an abdication of duty for this modern flagship series to not embrace a wider band of gender and sexuality in an era when LGBTQ+ rights remain under threat. I’ll get off my soapbox now and reiterate how great I find this show overall, but this is one area where it’s definitely letting me down.
[Content warning for gun violence, torture, and gore.]
★★★★☆
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