Star Trek: Finale Captures the Best of Trek in One Episode

By John Kirk

Rating: A

You know that feeling you get when you’re deep into an episode and you realize the time and that there’s no way this show is going to end in time?

Yup, this episode’s a cliffhanger and that’s a classic hallmark of some of the best Star Trek that fans will remember from some of the most memorable episodes. We saw it in Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Best of Both Worlds,” in Star Trek: Voyager “Endgame,” and beginning the tradition with Star Trek (TOS)’s “The Menagerie.” Season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Hegemony” faithfully follows in those footsteps.

Before we go any further though, the story to date: The USS Cayuga, under the command of Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) is in orbit over the colony planet of Parnassus Beta. It’s a planet barely outside Federation territory and is an idyllic colony modeled after a mid 20th century rural American town. Suddenly, the peace is disturbed by the arrival of a Gorn cruiser overhead and just like that, all communications cease, and the USS Enterprise is called into action to rescue its unfortunate sister ship and crew, if possible.

This episode’s got it all.

The Gorn are reprising their role as the chief villain in this series. The original series had the Klingons, TNG had the Romulans and DS9 gave us the Dominion. Voyager’s chief nemesis was the Borg, who were introduced to us in TNG and for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it’s the Gorn, which serves two purposes.

First of all, Star Trek needs a major villain. While it’s about exploration of space, it’s also about overcoming obstacles and there is no more of a greater challenge than a hostile alien encounter. It’s a classic science fiction trope and arguably always a successfully entertaining one. It’s conflict and conflict is always a good story.

Secondly, the Gorn were originally introduced in the Star Trek (TOS) episode “Arena.” Probably one of the most well-remembered episodes, it demonstrated human ingenuity, a new species, and gave us one of the greatest demonstrations of Captain Kirk’s venerated “Kirk-Fu” combat techniques. Admittedly, it didn’t age well, when you look at Bobby Clark’s Gorn costume, but hey, it was 1966. Still, this a callback to Star Trek’s history.

There’s also interstellar politics at play in this one. However, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is not a diplomat, and this is an instance where he has been told that he needs to respect Gorn sovereignty. How can he rescue the crew of the Cayuga and the colonists without starting an interstellar war? This is a great opportunity for our hero to show off that vaunted Starfleet ingenuity while preserving a fragile peace between the two races. If that isn’t Star Trek, then I don’t know what is.

Yes, there is a bit of starship combat too. We also see some more character development with Spock (Ethan Peck). Remember: this isn’t the Spock we know by Kirk’s time, and this is a chance to see how the half-human Spock evolves into the one we know best. To top it off, there’s even some hand-to-claw combat with the Gorn that definitely takes us back to that scene at Vasquez Rocks.

But a real blast from the past has got to be the presence of an all-too familiar classic character who shall remain nameless for the sake of a spoiler-free discovery. In short, this episode has everything that a class Star Trek fan will love and it’s an incredible way to end the season.

This episode takes us right back to classic elements of Star Trek that make it a bona fide winner that fans will remember and will place it in the esteemed company of all those other memorable cliffhanger episodes. It mixes old and modern Star Trek the way it should be done and cements Strange New Worlds as a worthy successor to the Trek mantle.

Of course, fans know that this is all leading up to an eventual peace. In “Arena” the Metrons managed to allow for the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony to find a way to communicate with each other and in novels, they were even allied against the mutual enemy, the Dominion. But all of this is an insight into the history of Star Trek by seeing the development of the relationships between the two powers. It’s a new vantage point and that’s what this series is supposed to be about, succeeding where Star Trek: Discovery seems to have failed with fans.

Using those classic elements, presenting a familiar history that all Trek fans can agree on — that’s a powerful force that brings fans together instead of dividing them.

What a great thing to accomplish, what a feeling, and what a season finale in the best of Star Trek tradition.

Don’t miss it.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Director: Maja Vrvilo. Starring Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Celia Rose Gooding, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Dan Jeonette, and Melanie Scrofano. Streams on Paramount Plus and CTV’s Sci-Fi Channel every Thursday.