When you commit to a long-term relationship with a TV show, you have to learn to see it for what it is and not what you want it to be. My ideal version of Star Trek isn’t a show driven by weekly pastiches of various genres. But it’s clear that, at least this far into its run, that is primarily what Strange New Worlds wants to be. This season alone has delivered a haunted -house thriller, a stoner comedy, a film noir, a Mpuppet episode, and a real-time disaster movie riff, with only the premiere as an episode that isn’t fundamentally built around a genre homage (and even that one had dinosaurs in it). Now this week’s installment adds “soap- opera parody” to the list. Rather than critique that overall structural choice, however, it feels more productive to dig into how these homages are and aren’t working to serve a Star Trek-ian ethos.
On an intellectual level, “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” is maybe the most interesting genre riff we’ve gotten yet, if only because it’s the first episode of the season to openly acknowledge it’s doing a genre riff. Pike wakes up from a “shuttle accident” shocked to discover he’s now in a melodramatic version of the Enterprise where the lighting is bright and hazy and the dramatic pauses are extended. Instead of just accepting his new reality, however, he calls out its strangeness and starts looking for an explanation. It turns out Rhys Darby’s “fancy coat god guy” is back after his last appearance in “Wedding Bell Blues” and he’s purposefully put the crew into a soap -opera world as part of an experiment for his dissertation on the human race.
The fact that there’s a reason for this to be happening makes it more palatable than something like “A Case Of Chiaroscuro,” where it was actively distracting that the crew never acknowledged they’d stumbled upon a Klingon version of 1940s Earth. Technically, Strange New Worlds still hasn’t confirmed that Darby is Original Series player Trelane and that Trelane is part of the Q Continuum, but that’s certainly the implication here. And there’s a long, proud history of Q characters messing with Starfleet crews for misguided but at least kind of well-meaning ends. After emotionally torturing the crew out of pettiness and spite last time, now he wants to help them access “the raw unrepentant beauty of human emotion” via soap -opera mechanics. The show even brings on real-life Days Of Our Lives star Deidre Hall as the ship’s counselor to drive home the idea that “the search for emotional truth and scientific truth are the same, you just have to want to see it.”
The trouble is, the actual execution of the soap- opera premise just isn’t all that engaging. The joke is that being trapped in a soap -opera world forces the crew to discuss their feelings in a way they usually avoid. Except other than a few extra camera zooms, the writing itself isn’t all that different from how this show usually feels week to week. While Trelane asserts that “space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles,” Strange New Worlds loves to have its characters openly explain what they’re going through, like all that stuff about Chapel having one foot out the door last week. The show’s true challenge is letting its emotional throughlines unfold in a subtle, nuanced way rather than in blunt conversations where characters just state their arcs. In that sense “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” is emphasizing a writing problem rather than addressing it.
There are a few solid laughs here, including Uhura dramatically announcing she’s Pike’s secret daughter and M’Benga’s self-diagnosis of “space madness.” But the way those storylines resolve with characters saying things like “remember who you are and look to your friends” is basically exactly how they would resolve in a non-soap-opera episode too, which means they don’t really land as parody. That’s also why the one subplot that really pops is Ethan Peck playing Spock’s evil brother Sybok, which is a very funny (and dare I say hot?!?) juxtaposition with how he’s usually used on the show. The idea of exploring Spock’s secret inner passion may be familiar territory for Star Trek, but the Sexy Sybok runner at least takes advantage of the soap -opera premise to showcase a steamier energy rather than just discussing that theme in the abstract.
Yet just as I was ready to write off this episode as another style-over-substance entry, it genuinely surprised me with the reveal that the thing Pike is truly processing this week is the loss of the daughter he remembers raising in the illusion Marie Batel projected for them in last season’s finale. At the time, Strange New Worlds didn’t make that big of a deal about the fact that Pike basically lived through his own version of “The Inner Light.” But that only makes it more poignant to unexpectedly return to it here. He may have made peace with letting go of Marie, but letting go of the future he could have had with her is a whole other matter.
Given how much Pike’s bittersweet ending in “The Menagerie” hinges on the idea of finding happiness living in an illusion, it’s always fascinating when Strange New Worlds preemptively plays around with those ideas. I’ve long wondered if this show is going to tweak Pike’s Original Series fate in some way and his longing to reunite with his imaginary daughter Juliet (Anna Mirodin) certainly raises one possibility ofon how it might do that. Still, given how moving the Juliet reveal is, I wish we’d gotten to spend more time with her and Pike together rather than rushing through their brief scene in favor of goofy jokes about Spock’s living heart transplant.
In the end, the most compelling thing about “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” is a quality it shares with the (much better) horror movie homage from earlier in the season: the lack of clear-cut emotional resolution. For as much as the Spock/La’An relationship has never really worked for me, I was unexpectedly moved by their post-breakup conversation this week. There’s something about her clearly conflicted feelings butting up against his placid demeanor that captures the poignant tragedy of Spock’s relationship with humanity. His simple “I thought our intention was to stay friends” pushes her away, not because he’s trying to but because she’s processing something his logical perspective fundamentally can’t understand. That’s emotional character work explored through something beyond blunt dialogue.
That emotional ambiguity extends to Pike as well, in the moving final scene where he breaks down in his therapy session. Though Anson Mount is the nominal lead of Strange New Worlds, he can feel a bit underserved beyond his wacky comedy chops. “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” lets him tackle some weightier material for once, which is a welcome change of pace and a challenge he more than rises to. I’m still not convinced we needed a soap- opera parody to get us to all that. But at least there’s something going on beneath the surface of this week’s requisite genre homage.
Stray observations
- • Pike hearing the strings of soap- opera scoring and immediately asking “Are we back in a musical?” made me laugh.
- • So was Uhura actually adopted or was that made-up backstory for the soap -opera world?
- • Trelane’s teacher is dressed almost exactly like Q in “Encounter At Farpoint,” only with a slightly different headdress.
- • La’An argues that logic gives Spock a non-judgmental sense of empathy and grace, which I don’t think feels true of Peck’s portrayal of him but is a great encapsulation of what makes Leonard Nimoy’s performance so good.
- • On the other hand, watching Peck as Sexy Sybok is the first time I’ve truly felt the fact that he’s Gregory Peck’s grandson. Let’s get him into some romantic dramas after this show wraps up!
- • So do we think the random Una/M’Benga romance is actually going to stick? Or will it be like the time “Shuttle To Kenfori” presented him as Pike’s best friend and then the show never returned to that dynamic again?
- • No Scotty or Pelia this week, which is a shame because Martin Quinn and Carol Kane both feel like they could crush a soap -opera parody.
- • Confession time: I was very conflicted about whether to grade this episode a C+ or a B- and I do think Trelane’s final project grade wound up swaying me. Congrats to the show for pulling an Inception.
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