Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Season 4, Ep. 7 - This Time the Gimmick is a Soap Opera

Embargo: September 3, 9AM ET

By John Kirk

Rating: B-

Remember Days of Our Lives? I sure don’t. I mean, I’m aware of it. But to be honest, I never watched an episode of it. Why? Because I didn’t care about it.

Sadly, I think that’s going to be the general reaction to this episode titled “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”.

Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) make soapy googly eyes at each other

You see, the secret to the enjoyment and maintenance of a working soap opera is that the characters, in all their melodramatic and exaggerated glory, actually become compelling enough that fans want to tune in day after day to see how their lives turn out. It was a combination of a truly outlandish lifestyle and cliffhanger pacing that taps into the vein of fascination the audience has.

But it doesn’t work for a singular episode; particularly this episode. I mean, do people still watch soap operas any more?

The story – as much as can be revealed – is that Captain Pike (Anson Mount) wakes up in sickbay, attended by Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), and learning that he has developed … cosmic amnesia! Of course, this is revealed after a series of overdone dramatic pauses and our good captain realizes that there’s definitely something not right on the Enterprise.

The cut-away scene immediately afterwards confirms that. Yeah – for some reason, they’re all in a soap opera.

But here’s the problem with this episode. The constant forced and inflated dramatic stylization of this episode is so completely irritating that it’s difficult to remember what the central storyline is. The cast gets so wrapped up in their soap opera sub-plots that it’s easy to lose interest in the episode. For a 45-minute episode, there’s really only about 13 or 14 minutes of anything that’s actually related back to Star Trek.

Which is what I think the problem is with recent Trek. It doesn’t reach back to a central and identifying hallmark that sets each iteration of Trek apart from each other.

The Original Series (TOS) was about exploration and allegorizing events of its contemporary historical nature: racism, the civil rights movement, war, colonialism and the Cold War. The Next Generation (TNG) also dealt with similar allegorical issues, but it also wanted to show how far humanity had advanced.

You can trace all the stories back to these central principles in some way. Deep Space Nine (DS9) was about maintaining Federation identity in a distant outpost. Voyager (VOY) also had some of that idea but was also about survival.

Both Discovery (DSC) and Strange New Worlds (SNW) have the same struggle: to manifest their identities. Discovery failed to do that and stray touchstones to Star Trek’s past failed to make any significant headway with the divided fans.

Strange New Worlds is beginning to know its purpose: to set up the early years immediately before the time of Kirk and crew. However, it’s happening so late in the show’s lifespan (only five seasons) that gimmicky episodes like this one have no Trek historical significance because of their distance from the original incarnations of Trek.

So, SNW relies on gimmicks and or repeatedly bringing back those gimmicks to show its relationship to those earlier iterations without understanding their significance. This episode is another example of that, with the return of a TOS historical touchstone (and if you remember Rhys Darby’s previous SNW appearance, you’ll know what I mean). With its microwave warmed-up nature, this appearance isn’t the success the writers hoped it would be.  

The dialogue gets particularly annoying as well. Every sentence is delivered with a stereotypical soap opera dramatic pause, a look to the camera or worse, incidental music. I can only imagine how frustrated this delivery must have been for the cast.

But. as I said, there are about 13 or 14 minutes of redeeming screen time. Surprisingly enough, this is from Anson Mount as he showcases how much Captain Pike actually represses. There’s an amazingly emotionally-rich performance as he remembers what he has lost, and we also see how much Pike depends on his First Officer (Rebecca Romijn). If there was ever a connection to classic Trek, it would be the relationship between the captain and his Number One.

The soap opera is an outdated television genre. I’ll be surprised if any of the younger members of this show’s audience recognize it for what it is. I’ll also be surprised if they recognize or understand the significance of one of the guest stars of the episode as well.

But, like sands through the hour glass, we’ll move on to the next episode.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Season 4, Ep. 7. Director: Anna Dokoza. Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Babs Olusanmokum, Celia Rose-Gooding, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Martin Quinn, Rhys Darby, Diedre Hall

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount Plus and can be seen on CTV Sci-Fi Channel on Thursdays.