When Strange New Worlds began, it had a clear vision: tell episodic adventure stories with strong, serialized emotional arcs for its central characters. And the first season excelled at that mission. Uhura’s newbie experience as a cadet, Spock’s engagement to T’Pring, La’An’s Gorn trauma, and, above all, Pike’s newfound awareness of his violent future gave the show an emotional spine as it hopped from planet to planet. It was okay if the episodic plots were a little basic because the emotional through-lines brought the real depth to the series.
Ever since Pike made peace with his future in the season-one finale, however, the show has struggled to recapture the same balance. Season two introduced some new emotional through-lines, like the La’An/Kirk flirtation and Spock/Chapel breaking the seal on their will-they/won’t-they dynamic. But the show shifted toward high-concept one-offs like the musical episode and the Lower Decks crossover. Individually, the episodes in season two were probably stronger than they were in season one. But the overall season felt more disparate and less cohesive.
To its credit, season three has tried to find a new balance. Where season two zeroed in on individual characters, season three has returned to a more ensemble-based approach. And while it’s kept the love of high-concept gimmicks, it’s also tried to find driving threads to anchor the season. In fact, on paper, this finale weaves together all sorts of ongoing through-lines: Marie’s Gorn infection, the introduction of Dr. Korby, the Vezda threat, and the burgeoning Kirk/Spock friendship from “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail.” It even brings back my beloved Ensign Gamble.
The trouble is, most of those arcs have been rooted in plot rather than character. And that’s left season three feeling kind of hollow. For all its ongoing story threads, this season hasn’t made us feel for its characters the way the show once did. Instead, everyone’s emotional arcs stop and start at random depending on what each weekly installment calls for.
Case in point: This finale is all about saying goodbye to Melanie Scrofano’s Captain Marie Batel. Yet it basically needs to invent its own self-contained short story in order to make us feel her loss. Though Marie has spent this entire season living on Enterprise, the show devoted more time to exploring the logistics of her Gorn infection than fleshing out her relationship with Pike. So while I was incredibly moved by the flash-forward dream sequence that imagines a happy domestic future for the Pike-Batels, it also feels really bizarre that the show didn’t spend more time building up to her exit. Why not give us a big Pike/Marie romance episode mid-season if this is what they had planned for the finale?
It’s frustrating because the flash-forward proves Strange New Worlds can have compelling character dynamics. I felt more for Marie and Pike in those 11 minutes than I have in the past three seasons combined. There’s specificity to the gifts they exchange on their second anniversary, to the way they comfort each other over his doomed future, and to the life they create when that future doesn’t come to pass. Though the ominous knocking and disorienting editing clue us in that this future isn’t real, it still makes you wish that Pike and Marie could actually have this picture-perfect happily ever after. Yet outside of those stellar 11 minutes, so much of Marie’s story comes down to plot mechanics instead of emotion.
This is a shame since the episode starts off with a nice character-centric focus too. Pike decides to throw Marie a going away party before she takes her new job at the Starfleet Judicial Department. That brings our whole main cast together in some fabulous space outfits to enjoy dinner and haze Scotty with their classic “make the newbie dress up” prank. And the subsequent reveal that Gamble’s body has been rebuilt by the Vezda trapped in the Enterprise’s transporter pattern seems to promise a return to all the emotional fallout I was missing back in “Through The Lens Of Time”—especially once Korby arrives on the planet of Skygowan to discover Vezda Gamble has established himself as a god there.
Yet so many of those through-lines just devolve into rote plot beats. M’Benga joins Una, La’An, Uhura, and Chapel on a well-dressed undercover mission to Skygowan, where he learns it’s his destiny to reunite with Vezda Gamble. Except the episode drops that thread almost as soon as it’s introduced. Though the Vezda makes a point of saying he still has access to Gamble’s memories, he winds up being just an eye-gouging Big Bad who happens to be played by Chris Myers. The episode spends more time on the logistics of how the Vezda travel through space to get back to the temple on Vadia IX than it does on the emotional fallout of Gamble’s return.
Similarly, the big twist about Marie’s destiny arrives in dramatically inert fashion. The idea that she has to sacrifice herself to become the Beholder and stop the Vezda should hit us like an emotional wallop. But instead, it’s dispatched in an expositional scene where she explains that her hybrid human/Gorn/Illyrian/Chimera flower DNA makes her a sort of Voltron of Goodness capable of containing the Pure Evil of the Vezda. It all plays out like a standard ready-room mission briefing rather than a woman realizing her life is about to end.
Ostensibly, the M’Benga/Gamble and the Marie/Pike through-lines are linked by the theme of destiny. But in practice, it feels like the writers came up with one idea for this episode and then switched to another without doing a full rewrite. As is, I remain very unclear what M’Benga was destined to do here—or why “Shuttle To Kenfori” spent all that time establishing his close friendship with Pike if that was never going to be relevant again. There are a lot of plot mechanics to get M’Benga to his big reunion with Gamble, but there is no emotional payoff other than the fact that he continues to feel sad that his favorite ensign died.
The same goes for the Chapel/Korby and Spock/La’An romances, both of which have been stuck repeating the same beat over and over again this season without gaining any new layers or depth along the way. At least Spock and Chapel’s dynamic from the first two seasons had a sense of anticipation and longing to it. Here the season’s big romances have just felt one-note—especially since Original Series fans know both dynamics have their limits.
Indeed, destiny is a tricky theme for a prequel series with a preordained ending. While I do think Pike knowing his fate has added some effective emotional weight to the series, the idea that Marie was always destined to become the Beholder winds up undercutting her sacrifice by making it too easy for her to accept—even if the flash-forward at least somewhat tries to counter that. I also think the show has become a little too cute with steering us toward Spock and Kirk’s best friendship instead of simply letting their bond develop organically. This episode comes up with an excuse to have them mind meld for some synchronized flying/shooting, which feels like a cheap shortcut to emotional intimacy. (Plus, wouldn’t it make more sense for Spock to mind meld with the Farragut’s Vulcan captain rather than a human “willing to do things others are not”?)
The final scene where they agree to meet for regular chess games is a much better example of a friendship building naturally rather than getting jump-started with unlikely bridge missions and goofy mind melds. We’ve already got three seasons and six movies of Spock and Kirk as besties. There’s no need to rush them into a dynamic we already know instead of lingering in unexplored territory. Strange New Worlds is at its best when its characters feel like actual people, not chess pieces to be moved around a board. Unfortunately, that’s too seldom been the case this season.
In the end, the most interesting thing about “New Life And New Civilizations” is how much it feels like the closing of a chapter for one era of Strange New Worlds storytelling. Korby’s map of uncharted space kicks off a new five-year mission that will (presumably) lead right into Kirk taking the captain’s chair. But the loss of Marie also makes Pike a slightly sadder, more somber version of himself.
To the show’s credit, that is an example of subtle, compelling character work in action, the kind that shifts the show’s dynamics on an emotional rather than plot level. Pike still has time as captain of the Enterprise. But that time is going to be different now that he’s experienced such a seismic loss. That’s an interesting idea to drive the final two seasons of the show. It’s just a shame this season didn’t find its own emotional hook to get us there.
Stray observations
- • Kirk and Spock discussing the saucy secrets they learned in their mind meld then looking over at La’An was truly so gross to me. Leave that bro-y shit in the 1960s, please!
- • So, that eye gouging scene was a lot right? I know Alex Kurtzman-era Trek isn’t super concerned with being a family-friendly show, but that still felt like it was pushing the envelope.
- • The costume department really crushed it with the civilian looks this season.
- • Scotty’s Pelia impression is hilarious. I’m also glad we finally got a scene between the Kirk brothers, even if they didn’t exchange any actual lines of dialogue.
- • The “flashforward to a future we’ll never see” trope is a common one in sci-fi, but this one really reminded me of Doctor Who’s “The Family Of Blood.” Also, the idea that Pike can find joy and meaning living in a memory is a nice bit of foreshadowing for his eventual happy ending in the “The Menagerie.”
- • Thank you so much for following along with this season of recaps and for your lively discussion in the comments section! I’m not gonna lie: This was one of the more intimidating assignments I’ve taken on in my 10-plus years as a TV critic. (There’s just so much Trek history to keep track of.) But it was a pleasure to parse this uneven season with you all. We’ve got a fourth season of Strange New Worlds set for 2026 and a Starfleet Academy show on the horizon as well. You can find me on Bluesky and Substack in the meantime.
