When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, his goal was to depict a bright and hopeful future in which humans had learned to use science, reason, and common sense to work together and explore the universe. In its season three finale, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds managed to undo all that and has now completed transitioning his franchise into a series of flailing emotions and empty nonsense.
The episode, titled “New Life and New Civilizations,” pulls together breadcrumbs scattered throughout season 3 into a plot involving end-of-the-universe stuff. I’d explain it, but I can’t, since the show doesn’t. It’s all about the vibe of bad things happening. Characters then respond to this vibe by asking, “What if this thing we can’t know, is true?” and then someone responds, “I bet it is!” and they proceed accordingly.
She can do Vulcan neck pinches now. Why? How? Feels good.
None of it makes any sense, and that’s the way Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wants it. The show seems to be avowedly against reason and common sense.
So the Strange New Worlds’s overstuffed cast of characters goes to work on the feelings they’ve all had about the developing situation. They then do whatever those feelings lead them to do, and the audience is supposed to accept this as a plot.
The Strange New Worlds science and engineering team does some vague things to solve some vague things.
It culminates in an emotionally manipulative side-tangent in which we watch Captain Pike live out a life with Captain Patel, for no reason other than that it’s what Captain Patel feels she wants before becoming a statue. Why does she have to become a statue? No one knows, but she feels it.
Then Captain Patel vanishes, sort of, but it’s not clear why. The bad guys, the Vezda, are defeated, though it’s also unclear why that happens or even who they are or why they are bad. The show doesn’t seem to care. There was a nice hug, though.
Captain Pike and Captain Patel hold hands to fight bad vibes.
At one point in the episode, the Enterprise’s wacky chief engineer, Pelia, reveals she once went on some adventures with a time-traveling doctor. This is a clear reference to Doctor Who, and the second time Strange New Worlds has tried to integrate the universe of that other sci-fi franchise into its own. The first was an appearance by the TARDIS in a previous episode.
The show’s strong desire to associate itself with Doctor Who, a sci-fi property so thoroughly ruined and discredited that the one show it has left on the air is probably being canceled, explains a lot about what Strange New Worlds has become.
The reason Doctor Who is now a dead franchise is its decision to switch to a model of crass emotional manipulation and wish-fulfillment over reasonable, interesting science fiction ideas. That’s what Strange New Worlds is doing too.
As bad as Star Trek has been in the past few years, this Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 finale is a real low point. Not only because its one of the worst episodes Star Trek has ever produced, but because of the season of terrible writing that went before it, and because of what this means about the show’s plans for the future. None of those plans are good.
When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds first launched, it seemed like a hopeful course correction for a franchise in trouble. That hope is over. I’ve been a Star Trek fan my entire life. I’ve watched every season of every series, even truly terrible ones like Star Trek: Picard season 2 and every episode of Star Trek: Discovery. I’m not sure I’ll be back for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 10 Hug Counter
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