I’ve always found the accusation that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has too many “gimmick episodes” a little unfair. When the show began, it promised a return to the kind of episodic, adventure-of-the-week format Trek lost in the increasingly serialized era of Discovery and Picard. Episodes about La’An time traveling to 21st century Toronto or the crew becoming Vulcans or taking shore leave on the planet that makes you high or even last week’s occupation resistance saga are really more episodic premises than they are “gimmicks,” even if the tone and style are extra heightened. Yet even with those generous caveats in place, I don’t know how you look at an episode where the crew are turned into Muppet-style puppets and call it anything but a cheap gimmick. (One Joss Whedon did first on Angel too!) And with just 11 episodes left in this show’s entire run, that feels like an absolutely baffling thing to spend time on—even before the reveal that this whole hour is just Spock’s dream.
Of course, the thing about comedy is that if it makes you laugh, you’ll forgive a lot more than if it doesn’t, which makes it a much harder genre to review than drama. If the idea of everyone on the Starship Enterprise except for Spock getting turned into puppets is inherently funny to you, “Level Five Transporter Accident” has done 50 percent of its job before the opening credits kick in. If that’s not inherently funny to you, however—as it’s not to me—then this episode has dug itself into a comedic hole from the jump. Objectively, I can’t say this hour is more ridiculous than the stoner comedy of “Human Best Friend.” All I can say is that episode consistently made me chuckle and this one gave me such a severe case of secondhand embarrassment I wanted to crawl into a Jefferies tube and die.
I almost feel bad saying that because this hour was clearly made with a lot of love and care for the art of puppetry. The Jim Henson’s Creature Shop-produced puppet versions of the main cast all look amazing (especially Pelia’s hair!), and Ethan Peck joins the ranks of Michael Caine and Tim Curry as actors who admirably commit to the insane challenge of giving fully embodied performances amongst a sea of puppet co-stars. It just feels like this should have been a 15-minute sketch that aired between seasons rather than a 54-minute episode that makes up a tenth of the entire season. As is, that’s just a lot of time to sit through the goofiest “Vulcan hijinks” episode the show has delivered yet.
To its credit, I did find the whole thing slightly easier to enjoy on a rewatch, once I knew the ultimate dream twist. Obviously, this isn’t the sort of episode we’re meant to take seriously either way. (“Scotty turned us into puppets, absurdity is kind of baked into the premise,” Ortegas notes.) But even the writers seem to realize that making this puppet transformation canon would be a step too far for the franchise. The first time through, half my notes were logic questions, like how Pike got back on the ship after getting ejected into space or why the level of puppet strength varied so much from scene to scene. The second time, I could let all that stuff go.
Still, the dream conceit brings up some logic issues of its own, namely the fact that half of this episode isn’t even framed from Spock’s perspective. While he gets a semi-coherent arc about the pressures of being a Vulcan science officer on a Starfleet ship full of chaotic humans, the other half of this episode is about the transformed crew learning to embrace their unique puppet abilities, which doesn’t seem to have any metaphorical resonance with their real-life story arcs except for the general idea that the Enterprise crew are committed to “knowledge, safety, and protecting each other.” (I guess it’s nice that Spock is dreaming about Scotty working through his insecurities with Pelia, though?) I almost wonder if this episode would have been stronger if it were a shared dream for a handful of characters, rather than something from Spock’s psyche alone.
It doesn’t help that using a comedic enemy like the Orions as the villains of the week feels a little bit like putting a hat on a hat. Instead of the juxtaposition of the puppet crew trying to fight a serious threat, we get a whole lot of silly action scenes in which they fight equally silly villains played by comedians Rachael Harris and Joe Lo Truglio. I was as baffled by the extended detour into the gender dynamics of Orion society as I was by the endless discussions of Pike’s new chair. (Is there some in-joke I’m forgetting or was that literally just there to set up Spock’s big oxygen-draining move? Also is human Pike going to give up his new chair just because a puppet version of him did in Spock’s dream?) This episode often has the feeling that it’s filling for time, even though less is surely more in an outing like this. Why are we watching the puppet crew enjoy the magical joy of floating in space if this is all a dream Spock is having?
It’s unfortunate because Spock’s journey back to logic is one of the most interesting arcs Strange New Worlds has introduced in a while, especially now that T’Pring is being woven so firmly back into the fabric of the show. Given the rather unclear nature of her relationship with Spock in The Original Series episode “Amok Time” (they’re in “less than a marriage, but more than a betrothal”), the show probably could have left things with her exit in the season two episode “Charades” and just handwaved the rest. But it’s intriguing to watch Spock and T’Pring find their way back to one another, especially when we know things don’t end well for them in the long run. Plus, given how much TOS explored Spock’s half-human, half-Vulcan experience from a human perspective, it’s fascinating to see it explored from a Vulcan one too. “Have you considered perhaps your struggle with logic could stem from serving on a ship of chaos?” T’Pring earnestly asks.
And yet… the puppets. Part of the reason the goofy Hangover episode worked for me is because the energy of the episode fit the sweet story of Scotty and Ortegas becoming friends. The form followed the function. With this much-touted puppet episode, however, Trek tries to make the opposite gambit. It wants to use the goofy conceit of the entire Enterprise crew becoming puppets to tell a semi-grounded story about Spock’s stress, his relationship with T’Pring, and the crew’s ingenuity. Yet that only serves to make the comedy less funny and the drama less interesting. If I wanted to watch an Adult Swim sketch, I’d just turn on Cartoon Network. As is, this is one strange new gimmick I never want to explore again.
Stray observations
- • If the show had aired these episodes in production order, this one would have come right on the heels of “The Griffin Incident,” which would make La’An and Spock’s breakup and T’Pring’s return a little less random. Still, I’m so happy to be done with the La’An/Spock romance, I don’t even care that their breakup is as clumsy and awkward as their relationship itself.
- • Had I been in the right mood, I might have found the Wrath Of Khan “needs of the many” reference funny, but clearly I wasn’t.
- • I’m not a total killjoy though. The puppets stacking themselves on top of each other to make a person did make me laugh. As did Pelia joking about the fact that they can inexplicably hear one another in space.
- • The comedic beat of Scotty casually getting himself out from underneath a torpedo while Spock is trying to help him is almost directly lifted from the scene of Rizzo sneaking under a fence in The Muppet Christmas Carol. I guess we’ll call it an homage.
- • Thematically, this episode blends “the Enterprise is chaotic” (something we’ve definitely seen before) with “the crew expects Spock to do too much for them” (not something we’ve seen before), which makes it harder to tell exactly what he’s processing in his dream.
- • In fact, if the central metaphor of this episode is supposed to equate Spock’s status as the only non-puppet with his status as a rare Vulcan among humans, why explicitly introduce a new Vulcan cadet on the bridge crew this season? Wouldn’t she have connected with Spock for Kal Rekk, the Vulcan day of solitude and atonement?
- • “Your lack of a promise is very Vulcan.”
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