Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2

SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.

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301: Hegemony, Part II 2025 July 17
(First watched 2025-07-17) I thought last episode was after Chapel's 3 months away, but this episode indicates it hasn't started yet. I guess she was on her way out when she got caught up with the Gorn.

I don't fully understand what they eventually did to save Batel. OK, so they changed tactics from focusing on her health to the infant Gorn. By feeding them, their drive to burst out would be negated. OK buuuut doesn't that just leave growing Gorn in her body? They talked about them being reabsorbed, but... why would that happen?

I thought Ortegas was going out for a bit. With a prequel show like this you really look at different characters different ways. Like, I know M'benga and Sam Kirk are going to survive this situation. But Ortegas's future (or lack thereof) is still shrouded in mystery so she's always in danger. And for all of these new-to-SNW characters, dying is the easiest way to explain why they never interacted with TOS characters on-screen in later days.

Telling the Gorn to hibernate of course reminds us of how the Borg were dealt with in The Best of Both Worlds. I'm surprised the Gorn are so... easily fooled, though. They all see a pseudo-star emitting a certain type of light for a few seconds and are like "Forget that invasion, time to go sleep!" Anyway, if they're hibernating for a fairly long time... is that the last of the Gorn we'll be seeing here on SNW?

Uhura's head looked a bit funny in this episode. I've seen pictures from this season where she has bigger hair; I'm supposing this oddity is the result of them tamping it down to try to match the look from the end of last season?

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302: Wedding Bell Blues 2025 July 17
(First watched 2025-07-17) Interesting premise and forced pairing for people to solve the problem... but the whole thing just felt so cruel to Spock that it was hard to properly enjoy the goofiness. His relationship with Chapel has gone down fast, a magic weirdness makes them a couple again, and then he's forced to be the responsible one trying to tell everyone that no, that's not really the case.

So was that Trelane? Sure looked similar and played out very similarly. That the crew of the Enterprise only saw him in other forms would preserve them not recognizing him when meeting him years down the road. But it makes the ending with the parents all too repetitive. Also, interesting casting for John de Lancie as one of the parents. Whether it's just a fun casting trick or meant to be more meaningful in tying Q and Trelane together.

Roger Korby... didn't much look, sound, or act like the version of him we see several years on in TOS. But then, I guess neither does Chapel.

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303: Shuttle to Kenfori 2025 July 24
(First watched 2025-07-24) OK, so the Gorn offspring weren't so absorbed back into Batel as they thought. Whatever's left is even noticeable during a mind meld. And their hoped-for solution is to use this weird flower to force her and the Gorn to hybridize... kind of a gentler Tuvixing? Well I guess we can assume everything's not going to go without incident, that wouldn't be very TV-interesting.

Star Trek has done ~zombies before, but this is probably the closest thing yet. People merged with moss, unable to die but that will go into dormancy for indefinite periods, ready to eat anything they can catch, no showing up as life signs on sensors. Looking on Memory Alpha now, I see even the episode title is a combination of several zombie movie references. 👍

Ortegas insubordinate, unwilling to take the slow route when people need rescuing... this thread is also not finished, I am sure.

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304: A Space Adventure Hour 2025 July 31
(First watched 2025-07-31) Mr. Frakes is back! The whole episode was OK, but the teaser was over-the-top fun exaggerated TOS-ness, down to the crazy close-up lighting.

Needing high resolution data they only had access to from transporter logs was a good excuse to fill the holodeck with familiar faces. Did La'an assign all the roles? Because they were all senior officers or James Kirk.

The holodeck a century before TNG is sure to rankle some, but this is something Star Trek has been consistently inconsistent about. They even reference the "recreation room" naming used in TAS, which would only be several years later.

Beyond that, as a holodeck story... it still feels a bit rerun. We've seen people use the holodeck to pretend they're fictional detectives, multiple times. We've seen them ask for something that will challenge them and running into problems. We've seen people stuck in simulations until they manage to finish, with the ship at risk. But getting down to the nitty-gritty specifics, it was a fine _version_ of those things. The regular actors were entertaining in their retro Hollywood roles, Scotty trying to handle the issues on the outside without having fully integrated into the Enterprise way of doing things... all fine.

So, Spock and La'an. Boy, how many crewmates is he going to partner with by the time the show is finished?

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305: Through the Lens of Time 2025 August 7
(First watched 2025-08-07) I think this episode might've been better as a book. I've read a lot of Star Trek novels and seen situations similar to what the away party got themselves into. Trapped in some strange ancient place, having to figure out the rules and get themselves to safety... but in the length of an episode where there was an equally important other half going on, there just wasn't room to go very far with the concept. They all ended up in different versions of the same room, and once they realized that were fairly quickly able to find a way to come together. Then just one more trick to get to the door.

So the other stuff... one, I'm left wondering if that was always the plan with Gamble? They set him up a few episodes ago like he would be another recurring character, but then didn't do anything important with him until this time, so the setup didn't really go anywhere. I guess it didn't need much to set up "Dr. M'Benga and the new nurse have gotten close."

And then stranger... Batel. If her strangeness was a result of the Gorn in her, what connection does that have to the entities found on the planet? With her still around and the Gamble entity now poorly contained in the computer system, we're definitely continuing this story soon.

With so few episodes in a season, there are bigger gaps between them than on old ~26 episode seasons. They talk like La'an and Spock have been an item for months, when it started in earnest last episode. Relatedly, I think I've been more accepting of young Spock's attempt at romantic relationships than a lot of fans, but the way La'an describes it to Chapel this episode... not putting words to it, just fun times... that doesn't sound like Spock.

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306: The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail 2025 August 14
(First watched 2025-08-14) Pretty strong episode. Another excuse to bring Kirk back, but in a way that didn't feel too forced. His ship needs help, Enterprise tries to provide.

So... they kind of yada yada'd over what the hell they did to attack the scavenger ship at the end? "Phasers don't work." "OK Spock, what have you got?" Then they appear to shoot a few photon torpedoes and the whole thing blows the hell up. ???

The end twist is something we've seen a few times in Star Trek before. Enterprise had an early episode where a very early group of colonists were considered lost, but instead ended up on a rough planet and sort of... losing their civilization as the young survived as cave people. Not on screen, but I believe it was some of the Titan books that dealt with an early Earth-orbiting space habitat that somehow got sent across the galaxy and their civilization developed into something very different from Earth.

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307: What Is Starfleet? 2025 August 21
(First watched 2025-08-21) It was an episode. I feel like neither the story contents nor the documentary format were particularly great, and one didn't enhance the other. Just lots of unusual camera angles.

Also, no Scotty or Pelia around this week.

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308: Four-and-a-Half Vulcans 2025 August 28
(First watched 2025-08-28) Ehh. I was ready to be critical of them behaving too Vulcan-like without a Vulcan upbringing, but they at least tried to handwave that away so I'll give it to them. But from there on the episode kind of depends on the actors' Vulcan performances, and I don't think they quite pulled it off. Brandon Bird said Pike seemed like Beldar Conehead, and he was right.

La'An was the most interesting wrinkle, someone who got into the more Romulan side of Vulcan and was going to start a war for everyone's good. The... katra fight was also interesting. Fight choreography is already a kind of dance, so combining it with actual dance makes a sort of sense.

Patton Oswalt as Doug the Vulcan was a lot of fun, though.

Makes the galaxy feel a bit too small when they park for a handful of days and people like Kirk and Kirby can just show back up. Yeah yeah, you got contracted as recurring characters.

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309: Terrarium 2025 September 4
(First watched 2025-09-04) Finally an Ortegas-heavy episode. However, it's an episode we've seen several times on Star Trek and even more outside of it: the Enemy Mine trope. So not a lot is gained. Maybe today's 11 year olds watching will get more out of it than I did.

Also Arena with a twist, certifying the Metrons as hyperadvanced jerks who enjoy shoving people together to see what happens.

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310: New Life and New Civilizations 2025 September 11
(First watched 2025-09-11) I wonder if at the time they were worried about this being the last season? Not a cliffhanger and went out with a little montage of everyone appreciating everyone. And gave Pike memories of a happy unreal future to keep.

The... answer... to Batel's condition seems a bit of a stretch to me. A bunch of places in history had fought these bad guys, so mixing them in with her made her the complete anti-bad-guy fighting force. Like some weird version of The Chase. But all it took was human, Illyrian, Gorn. At this point in time there's already a fair bit of other hybridization going on (like, half-human half-Vulcan) so just lucky that she got the uniquely right combination? Or maybe a bunch of people _could_ have filled the role, but they weren't at the right place at the right time.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4