"Strange New Worlds," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has established itself as the most consistently watchable of the recent "Trek" shows.  It's more formulaic and tends to fall back on familiar television tropes, but it's also got a much better handle on its characters, and the ensemble has coalesced nicely.  And since it has established such a sturdy status quo, the creators have been much more willing to have some fun with it.  This year, we get "Star Trek" standards like a trial episode, a time travel episode, and a particularly heavy moral dilemma episode involving war atrocities.  And we also get a musical episode, a partially animated crossover episode with "Star Trek: Lower Decks," and an episode about Spock trying to win the approval of his future mother-in-law. And they're mostly pretty great.

One of the strengths of episodic television is that we get much more opportunity to get to know the characters individually, and "Strange New Words" understands this.  There was clearly an effort to make sure each of the major  characters got a spotlight episode this season, and the stories are much more distinct and individuated compared to installments of other current "Trek" shows.  I like that La'an's episode is tonally different from Ortegas's episode or Uhura's episode.  There are plenty of episodes that feature the ensemble rather than foregrounding one character, but the character spotlights are valuable in helping to explore the world from different POVs.  We also get more insight into supporting characters like Captain Batel (Melanie Scofano) and the two Kirks, brothers Sam (Dan Jeannotte) and James (Paul Wesley).  The most significant new character of the season is the replacement Chief Engineer, Pelia (Carol Kane), a kooky, loveable mentor figure.

As much as I appreciate some of the big swings, not all of them connect.  The musical episode, for instance, has some priceless high points, but as someone who watched a lot of "Schmigadoon!" this year, the music is pretty underwhelming and a couple of the weaker singers are noticeably autotuned.  I like that "Strange New Worlds" is more comfortable exploring relationships and other aspects of the crew's personal lives.  However, the Spock-Chapel-T'Pring love triangle farce is starting to get on my nerves a bit, and I wish that some of the other relationships got more attention.  The performers are all consistently good, but some of them need more to do - M'Benga surely has more going on besides licking old war wounds, right?  Of course, this is a problem that all the "Trek" series have faced since the beginning.

I think that "Strange New Worlds" appeals to more casual watchers because it's more lighthearted and less demanding.  Whenever it tries to do more thematically heavy material, the results have been fine, but anything involving adventuring and hijinks tends to land better, and the out and out comedic episodes have been a blast.  Even better, the comedy still manages to be very "Star Trek."  Putting the live action Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) onboard Pike's Enterprise is a cute idea, but the writers also figured out how to make them representative of a certain kind of "Star Trek" fan for some meta jokes, and actually made their appearances matter to a few of the ongoing "Strange New Worlds" storylines.  The musical episode is built around several characters finally addressing issues they've been dealing with all season long, because an anomaly forces them to sing their private feelings.  It's a great reminder that the original 1960s "Star Trek" was often pretty goofy and silly.  Also, the crew were much less cerebral, and more willing to fall in love at the drop of a hat.  

With "Discovery" on its way out, "Strange New Worlds" is poised to become the new flagship "Star Trek" show, and I'm worried this means that the folks at Paramount will be tempted to have the series overstay its welcome.  "Strange New Worlds" is a prequel, and it's already got a built in endpoint.  I have no desire to see the show get dragged out like "Smallville." Well, unless the creators decide to drastically change the premise the way they did with "Discovery."  This is, after all, still a science-fiction program.

 

I doubt "Strange New Worlds" will ever supplant "The Next Generation" as my favorite "Star Trek" series, but it's definitely in the top three at this point.  And after a few more seasons, who knows?

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