(courtesy Memory Alpha)
“Like Chronotons Through the Hourglass”
One of the best things about Star Trek storytelling in general and Strange New Worlds (SNW) in particular, is its ability to channel what I like to call the “Nordic Effect”. In essence, it’s the co-existence of both light and dark in the one piece of creative content; it’s most noticeable in the music that comes from the Nordic region which can have a sunny musical personality but be twinned with lyrics which go to the hardest, darkest parts of the human condition. Unsurprisingly, with its love of genre hopping and its near-perpetual embrace of storylines that regularly do double duty, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”, which is an affectionate play on words on the opening narration of the Days of our Lives opening theme, dive headfirst into the idea that light and dark can co-exist in the one narrative.
The episode sees the return of the Q Trelane (Rhys Darby in winningly puckish form) – he was previously re-introduced to Star Trek after his original appearance in The Original Series (TOS)‘ episode “The Squire of Gothos” in the SNW S3 episode “Wedding Bell Blues” – who turns the crew of the Enterprise into cast members of an overblown soap opera episode. Everything is overblown from the need to operate on Spock (Ethan Peck) using a live heart from his (in this reality only) twin Sybok and Dr M’Benga’s contraction of “Space Madness” which could end his medical career once and for all. The writers of the episode goes hardcore on all the tropes of the soap opera genre from overly serious meaningful looks out into nowhere to hilarious portentous statements that take routine things and turn them into epically important narrative turning points. They even bring in Day of our Lives luminary and soap operatic legend Deidre Hall as the hitherto unmentioned ship’s counsellor, Eleanor Chivers, who, rather remarkably, is the one person, apart from Pike (Anson Mount) who is somehow immune from Trelane’s melodramatic spell, to play it reasonably straight.
Much fun is had with Pike who finds the soap operatic reactions of his crew, most particularly Nyota Uhura who has a fantastically fun plot point to play with, absolutely perplexing until he realises what is going on and does his best to undo Trelane’s work which is, rather hilariously, being done not to create mischief but to pass a higher learning course. Yep, he’s screwing with people for self gain which is, I guess, trademark Q behaviour. What really marks the episode as something special is how the comedic brilliance of the soap opera overlay allows various character from Uhura to Pike to La’an and M’benga, to name just four, to deal with long-simmering and barely explored grief from past traumatic incidents. While the exploration of the pain they have accrued and largely ignored does feature in Trelane’s over-the-top plotting in characteristic, for the soap opera genre at least, overdone fashion, it isn’t trivialised and once Trelane is dealt with and the effect lifted, everyone remembers what they experienced while they were under the Q’s influence.
“Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” is an exemplary episode where the balance between comedy and serious emotional introspection is beautifully and affectingly realized, especially in the cases of Pike and Uhura, and which proves that far from being a hollow gimmick, that SNW’s embrace of genre diversity can actually serve real and transformative purpose and deliver the kind of moving, soul-searing drama that Star Trek has long been known for.
“Orders of Magnitude”
(courtesy Memory Alpha)
While “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” had an enjoyable dose of sugary whimsy to make the medicine of searing emotional truth go down, “Orders of Magnitude” goes hell for leather as an unadorned into the heart of confrontingly authentic drama at which Star Trek excels. In this episode which ups the stakes by arrestingly impactful degree in almost every scene until the seemingly unthinkable happens, one officer in particular is asked to stake his entire future in Starfleet to do the right thing, and he cannot turn away from the call because integrity has always been on the heart of what it means to be in Starfleet and someone like James Kirk (Paul Wesley) can no sooner turn away from following his inner moral compass than he can marry a Gorn.
The episode starts off happily enough with Pike, Commander Una-Chin Riley (Rebecca Romijn), Uhura, her reluctant mentee Cadet A’Sha (Bianca Nugara), Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) beaming down to a planet to investigate a distress signal. They encounter way more than they bargained for in a cave which is full of a mixed bag of weaponry from across the galaxy and it puts Uhura in a challenging position with her response proving that she has a brilliantly good future ahead of her in Starfleet.
Essentially a B-storyline, though a skillfully executed one at that, the away team’s absence gives the A-storyline a chance to exist since there are no commanding officers on deck to see a request from hotheaded admiral, Simon Reeger, who arrives on board with no warning and who commandeers the Enterprise to track down and destroy a ship which played a key role in the deaths of five million Federation citizens including Reeger’s wife and kids. While the admiral maintains his mission is not one that involve troubling amounts of self-serving vengeance, it becomes increasingly clear that all is not well and that it’s up to Kirk, with the help of his brother Sam (Dan Jeannotte), to stop Reeger before great harm is done and a slew of innocent lives are sacrificed to one man’s inability to come to grips with his grief.
With strong Nuremburg Trials overtones, and specifically the now well-established tenet that simply being given an order which is morally questionable doesn’t absolve you from the consequences – regardless of miliary convention, if an order contravenes moral or ethic guidelines, you are duty bound to oppose it which Kirk does – “Orders of Magnitude” is an impressive episode which deals with some hugely important issues while also setting the scene for the link to TOS with Kirk firmly establishing himself as captain material and ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- M’Benga being set up to leave the crew for, you must presume, the arrival of Doctor Leonard McCoy, played in TOS by DeForest Kelley.
The episode is hugely portentous and dramatically fraught, a worthy addition to the Star Trek tradition of storytelling which doesn’t shy away from weighty storytelling and which is happy to go as dark and deep as needed to get the message across.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+