Part of being a Star Trek fan is learning to accept a ridiculous premise in the name of enjoying an episode. But there are times when a set-up is simply too outlandish to be hand-waved away, and that’s what I felt watching “A Case Of Chiaroscuro.” I could buy a story about Una, M’Benga, and Uhura going undercover in Klingon occupied space. I could buy an episode about Una inexplicably having a doppelgänger who just happens to be an important double agent in a random alien city. I could even buy an episode set on a planet that looks identical to 1940s Earth. But all three of those premises in one episode is just too much. Add in weird details like the fact that a Starfleet computer can apparently synthesize elaborate clothing to blend in on a planet the Federation knows nothing about, and there’s a real sense of clumsiness to this week’s style-over-substance entry—even if it does give Rebecca Romijn a welcome chance to shine.
The initial plot set-up here is fine enough. A broken Federation probe has drifted into Klingon territory and because the Enterprise can’t just fly in there and get it, Pike sends Una, M’Benga, and Uhura on a secret mission to repair it and send it back. (Shades of last season’s “Shuttle To Kenfori,” but sure.) The trio complete that part of the mission easily enough, but when a Klingon ship enters the vicinity just as they’re about to depart, they have to hide out on a local planet called Mat’Aar 12 until it passes. Once there, they get way more than they bargained for as they find a civilian population living under oppressive Klingon rule and discover Una just happens to look identical to a woman who had complex ties to both the Klingon overlords and the local resistance movement. Oh, and everything is in black and white thanks to an infrared star that affects how everyone in the system perceives color. Bring on the Casablanca references!
Easily the most baffling choice this episode makes is to have none of the characters acknowledge that Mat’Aar 12 is identical to 1940s Earth, right down to the fedoras and art deco furniture. While there’s a proud tradition of Original Series episodes set on planets that randomly replicate various Earth time periods, there was generally at least some attempt to justify the similarity. The 1920s gangster world in “A Piece Of The Action” evolved because a Federation ship visited the planet 100 years ago and accidentally influenced its culture by leaving behind a book about the Chicago mob scene. The Nazi world in “Patterns Of Force” sprung up because an Earth historian landed on a primitive, warlike planet and actively recreated Nazism there. Even more crucially, Kirk and his crew were shocked and confused to find such familiar Earth iconography on foreign worlds. (In fact, Spock and Kirk literally point out that the chances of another planet spontaneously recreating 20th Century Nazi iconography are so slim as to be virtually impossible!)
Here, however, Una, M’Benga, and Uhura land on a world that looks like a retro version of Earth and just never acknowledge the similarity, which is truly bizarre. Uhura seems more shocked that the planet isn’t solely inhabited by Klingons! Perhaps the writers thought having M’Benga say that Una’s doppelgänger is a quirk of the universe was enough to cover their bases with the world-building too. But I genuinely spent most of this episode distracted, wondering if there was going to be some kind of twist or mass delusion at play. It doesn’t help that Voyager had a pretty iconic two-episode arc where the crew believed themselves to be French Resistance fighters in a Holodeck version of Nazi-occupied France run by Hirogen aliens, which really primed me to feel like there was some kind of rug pull coming.
It’s a shame because if you break this episode into its component parts, there are actually two really good episode ideas here. On a style level, this hour looks great and Babs Olusanmokun, Celia Rose Gooding, and Rebecca Romijn have a lot of fun vamping it up in a film noir homage. Meanwhile, on a thematic level, there’s strong character work to the way M’Benga, Uhura, and Una handle this complex undercover mission—with M’Benga as the experienced war vet, Uhura as the newbie proving her mettle by refusing to break under torture, and Una as the leader learning to see shades of gray beyond the Starfleet handbook.
Yet the episode’s form and function are too often in opposition to one another. The character work would have been stronger if the episode explored themes of occupation and resistance in a more grounded setting without all the winking retro references. Meanwhile, the style homage would have been stronger if it were allowed to be a little fizzier, rather than getting bogged down in what’s ultimately supposed to be a genuinely weighty story about Una stepping into another woman’s shoes and learning to challenge her own way of thinking. Visually, this episode says “turn off your brain and enjoy the ride.” Narratively, however, it requires a level of emotional investment in its dark morality play. That creates a cognitive dissonance the hour never entirely recovers from.
The upside of the 1940s setting is that it does seem to unlock something in Romijn, who certainly has the look of an Old Hollywood femme fatale. She’s really effective at switching back and forth between Una’s confident “in character” improvisations and the moments when she lets her guard down with M’Benga and Uhura. While this may be one of the weaker installments of the season, it’s paradoxically one of the best Una episodes the show has delivered in a while. Though Strange New Worlds has struggled to take its first officer beyond being a generically likable rule-follower, this episode delivers an interesting riff on her past as someone who grew up hiding her identity on a Federation colony where genetically modified Illyrians were persecuted.
It’s just that with so much else going on, it’s hard to fully zero in on Una’s arc. La’An’s parallel paranoid Cold War thriller back on the ship is meant to echo the idea that “few things in life are black and white,” as she investigates potential tampering with the probe and discovers Chapel erased some data to protect friends on a Starfleet ship that secretly crossed over into Klingon space. Yet, in practice, that just means even more plot details to hold onto in an episode that’s already overstuffed with evil Klingon Commanders, resistance double agents, secret EMP plans, and long-lost daughters.
There’s also the fact that, for a franchise that used to be quite progressive when it came to addressing the prominent social issues of its day, there’s something a little anodyne about rooting a story about occupation and colonial oppression in this kind of familiar World War II setting Trek has literally been doing since the 1960s. Though “A Case Of Chiaroscuro” hinges on the idea that the world isn’t black and white, it’s chosen just about the easiest good vs. bad iconography it could have pulled from. That aids the film noir homage, but undercuts the complex morality that’s ostensibly bubbling underneath the surface. While Una claims her time on Mat’Aar has taught her to take more chances as a newly promoted Commander, this stylish hour ultimately plays it a little too safe to truly be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Stray observations
- • This was the third episode they shot, so it seems like the season is mostly unfolding in order other than moving the horror episode up earlier in the run.
- • Not only did Voyager do the French Resistance stuff, they also did the black-and-white gimmick with Tom Paris and Harry Kim’s The Adventures Of Captain Proton serials! Who knew that show’s legacy would linger so long.
- • I don’t know what else I thought the “empire” in Klingon Empire meant, but it never occurred to me that the Klingons colonized non-Klingon planets. Is that something we’ve seen before?
- • The burgeoning M’Benga/Uhura friendship is sweet, but I worry this is going to be like the time “Shuttle To Kenfori” introduced M’Benga and Pike as best friends and then the show just never acknowledged that again.
- • On the other hand, we get confirmation that Ortegas and Scotty’s friendship is now a full-on running throughline of the series, which is lovely! They’re filling that Geordi/Data, O’Brien/Bashir sweet spot in a way Strange New Worlds has never really had before.
- • The Trojan Horse is one of the most basic references someone could make and yet La’An referencing The Odyssey felt weirdly topical thanks to Christopher Nolan.
- • Vulcan cadet A’Sha is back and incredibly rude when La’An comes to ask her for help. Insane to speak to a superior officer like that, especially when you’re literally still a student. If I were La’An, I would have demoted her.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.