(courtesy Memory Alpha)
“Level-Five Transporter Accident”
Now here’s some fun!
Star Trek meets the Muppets in an episode which demonstrates once again that Strange New Worlds is more than happy to go there, and with gusto and fierce imagination into the sort of places many other sci-fi series fear to tread. While there is possible “it was all a dream” vibe at play there, which reeks of what Dallas attempted many decades earlier to not quite satisfactory effect, there is a playfulness at work which gives the deeper story, that of the relationship between Spock (Ethan Peck) and T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), some room to explore and breathe what might lie ahead for the two.
To be fair, fun though it is, and it is a LOT of fun, “Level-Five Transporter Accident” does not quite transcend the gimmick. The gimmick, it has to be said, is fantastically well done, with the actors rising to the occasion to give life to puppets which looks much like their human counterparts that it’s easy to imagine these people trapped in soft and fluffy and seemingly indestructible bodies. (The story has some fun with the cartoonish ability of everyone in puppet form to survive fatalistic moments which might otherwise spell their doom.) The massive suspension of belief at work through the entire episode is helped along by the fact that you really feel like these are the characters you love and love, transmuted into wholly other form.
What doesn’t quite work, but it’s hardly a fatal dynamic in a mostly highly entertaining episode, is the attack on a puppet-ified Enterprise by Orion pirates. They are threatening enough and they certainly seem poised to make life hell for a crew who can’t fight back save for Spock whose away on a shuttle when things go awry and who is left responsible to do everything the now non-human crew can’t, but ultimately you never really feel like anyone is in any real jeopardy. Fun though the puppets are, and suitably serious their determination to fight back might be, it all still feels a bit Pigs in Space (from The Muppet Show). It’s hard to take a fightback seriously when those leading the charge seem too soft and cuddly to do much harm.
That they do successfully fight back is a fact, but it’s hard again to take it too seriously when everyone looks so damn cute. So, points for imagination and inventiveness and for being willing to push the envelope, all of which happens with a zestful sense of garrulous entertainment which you will thoroughly enjoy, but deductions for the fact that the attack at the centre of the episode feels a little too underwhelming in the puppet-rich environment in which it takes place.
It’s always fun to see how Strange New Worlds likes to play with various genre and to refuse to be constrained by what a Star Trek should be, but while it makes for a fun episode that makes you feel a little better about the world, it lacks real substance and emotional heft and so, ends up little more than beautifully done and seriously clever frippery.
Making-of fun …
“Off-Hour” (S4, E6)
(courtesy Memory Alpha)
?file=SNW_Off-Hour_poster.jpg){kind=link}
If you ever wanted a precise definition for “intensity” then may we present “Off-Hour” to you, an episode that begins with the hard-working main cast of Strange New Worlds, known as Alpha Shift, getting ready for the weekend (though quite how that works when you live where you work isn’t full explained or explored). The crew are in the process of handing over, or getting ready to hand over to their Beta Shift counterparts when something goes Very Badly Wrong.
With next-to-no-warning, the Enterprise is sucked into a slipstream wormhole, which is likened to a giant vacuum cleaner in space, which sucks up everything in its path and which starts pushing the Enterprise, the systems of which have all but, rather unhelpfully shut down with no surplus powers to kickstart them back up again (yep, should’ve stopped at the servo/gas station), faster and faster with the very real threat looming that they will be pushed beyond the warp threshold and break up into smithereens.
A timer is on the screen much of the time, emphasising how fast time is passing and how everyone who can contribute must do so and fast or risk the end of the Enterprise. “Off-Hour” concentrates most especially on Doctor Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) who are caught up in a race to save the former’s life in a sickbay where many things don’t work at the very moment they all need to work. The race to save M’Benga gives the two actors a huge amount of intensely meaningful emotionality to work with and they move from an argument before everything goes south where Chapel is chided for not applying to become a permanent part of the Enterprise’s crew by a possibly soon-to-depart M’Benga to some heart-stopping moments where the two close friends really lay it on the line. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking and hopeful stuff and it gives these two characters another chance to solidify an already-close working relationship and friendship.
Also put into the meaningful character moment spotlight is Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) upon whose shoulders much of the technical work to save the Enterprise rests. While the stroke of genius which ultimately saves the day comes from another very desperate quarter entirely, it is Scott, (and Pelia, played by Carol Kane) and some truly brave work by Spock (Ethan Peck) and La’an (Christina Chong), who must fight his fears and sense of helplessness to think of solutions to thwart an all-but-certain fate.
That he does so is hardly a spoiler since we have four more episodes and a truncated fifth season to go, but what really shines in this flawlessly calibrated and executed episode is the way we see a Star Trek crew once again race to stop the inevitable. The franchise is superb at delivering these kinds of episodes in a range of different scenarios and “Off-Hour” is absolutely up there with the best, giving us some truly moving character moments and an edge-of-the-seat story which never lets up but still has time for the main characters, and others like Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) to let their raw humanity see the light of the day while they professionally avert disaster with seconds to spare.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+