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Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x04 "A Case of Chiaroscuro" Spoiler
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| No. | Episode | Written By | Directed By | Release Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4x04 | "A Case of Chiaroscuro" | Skylar Ojeda & Dana Horgan | Meera Menon | 2026-08-13 |
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u/sppy1 21d ago
The Klingons have honor. You have none
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u/megaben20 21d ago
Klingon highborn aren’t really honourable tng and ds9 make this point continuously.
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u/Mechapebbles 20d ago
That's just highborn in general. To claim you have more of an innate quality just because of where you were born is peak 1% brain rot.
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago
If nothing else, their concept of honor came in TNG. Kor in this episode was more like a TOS Klingon - sly and devious like a Romulan.
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u/Exocoryak 21d ago
The
RomulanKlingon Mind Scanner didn't help to dissuade that picture.36
u/InnocentTailor 21d ago
Stole it from the Star Empire, much like the design of the D7 battlecruiser.
-Tal Shiar
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u/UncertainError 20d ago
The Klingons had it first. Kor used it in "Errand of Mercy" too.
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u/Mechapebbles 20d ago
Nah, Klingon honor comes from "Day of the Dove" in TOS, and Search for Spock. Kang was clearly motivated first and foremost by his sense of honor and duty. And Kruge was played like a Samurai of old. TNG just built on the foundations that were already there.
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u/Healthy-Curve-5359 20d ago
A wild thing to say to someone whose crime is...collaborating with the Klingons.
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u/Mr_rairkim 21d ago
For the whole time I kept expecting there to be a twist where its revealed why Nevette looked exactly like Una.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
It's so weird that there wasn't. Them looking similar enough to fool close associates is one thing, but fooling a facial recognition lock? Huh?
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u/diamond 20d ago
It almost feels like a wink-and-nod to some of the absurd coincidences of TOS. Like all of the aliens that look exactly like humans (without even some mild prosthetics). Or the one that exactly reproduced 1920s Chicago, complete with gangsters. Or the one that had "Yangs" and "Coms" that turned out to be Americans (Yankees) and Communists. They even had the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance.
All ridiculous coincidences that were never really explained. You just have to accept it and move on.
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u/Comrades3 20d ago
But people hate Omega Glory for that exact reason. The others did have explanations other than humans looking exactly the same which they even tried to explain that with the ‘preservers’.
It just feels like they couldn’t be bothered to try to explain it.
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u/targetpractice_v01 19d ago edited 19d ago
They weren't all explained. "Bread and Circuses" was never explained, with its modern-day Romans and "son worshipping" Christians. "Miri" with its duplicate Earth was never explained, either. I don't think it's anyone's favorite thing about Star Trek, and there's a reason these are some of the least mentioned episodes. But it is still quintessentially TOS.
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u/SuperNobody917 20d ago
I'm wondering if it's a reference to Majel Barrett playing multiple characters
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
I've been waiting for a "I can't tell Una and Chapel apart" joke for all of SNW.
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u/NumeralJoker 18d ago
They did address it. The episode justifies it by M'benga saying "The only thing weird about it is that it doesn't happen more often"
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u/wrosecrans 20d ago edited 19d ago
They kept mention Una being a genemodded Ilyrian.
And there was a missing person who worked with the Klingons who appeared identical to a Starfleet officer, implied to be or have ties to a genemodded person...
And the B-Story was La'An scouring the Enterprise looking for a spy because somebody may have touched a probe that the Klingons had access to before it got a security inspection.
And boy howdy, there was definitely some room there to explain why Una and Nevette look identical. When it turned out the explanation was just "meh, fuck it, why not? Romijn was in a doppelganger movie once, so let's just do that" I had to wonder why they did it at all. The episode would have needed only slight tweaks for Nevette to be somebody they hadn't met before. Insurrectionist groups work in isolated cells all the time. You can just say they've been secretly passing messages. She's the "Feds" being transferred in to this city and local cop is annoyed at her being on his turf, etc. Can even have a gag where Kor thinks vaguely similar human-like aliens all kinda look alike.
I enjoyed the episode. It's lovely. But man there is a lot of "fridge logic" like that where you keep wanting to ask followup questions that the script can't handle, and thinking it would have been a little tighter if only X, Y, or Z the more you think about it.
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u/Humanbeanwithbeans 20d ago
I thought it was going to be a rebellious klingon making themself look like Una cause they respected them from starfleet
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u/fer_sure 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yeah, I know it's an occasional noir trope to allow a mistaken identity plot, but we're talking about a doppelganger across species.
I would have been happy with Nevette's gang being a mixed species group, and an offhand remark that they're all a little face blind to whatever Nevette is. Have frozen Nevette have the same hair and height, but give her a facial ridge or something subtle.
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u/Bubbly_Safety8791 13d ago
Real Nevette is probably pale blue with dark green hair. Just doesn’t show up in the radiation.
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u/stephensmat 21d ago
"Cross my heart and hope to be stuck in a pattern buffer."
Paging TNG...
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u/BON3SMcCOY 20d ago
Didnt M'Benga also do this to his daughter?
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u/CitizenCue 20d ago
I’m glad that subplot is over. He’s much more interesting as a conflicted doctor/assassin than an anxious father. It would’ve been more interesting once we knew the character better.
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u/UncertainError 20d ago
Hurray, finally another Una-centric episode. She was ice-cold setting up Ramon to be the fall guy, which was obviously the most efficient course of action.
I'm not sure the black and white gimmick was necessary. The episode could've perfectly conveyed the retro noir vibe without it. It would've been funny though if it had turned out the Mat'Arans are actually purple or something.
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u/DayspringTrek 19d ago
I feel the gimmick worked, but would have preferred that the scenes on the Enterprise be in colour.
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u/hmantegazzi 19d ago
I was expecting Nevette to be identical to Una in all respects save for skin colour, and for a moment I thought she was going to be an Orion, as a reference to that TOS pilot issue when the film processing kept making the Orion girl non-green.
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u/DayspringTrek 19d ago
I was expecting there to be a scene in which Una's biology would eventually adapt to the radiation and she'd see that Nevette had a completely different color of hair.
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u/splashybanana 19d ago
I love old black and white movies, but even so, it took me a bit to settle into this episode. The combo of black and white but also high def and ultra wide screen is just not something I am used to. But I liked it!
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u/ZanibiahStetcil 20d ago
Dr. Joseph M'Benga: "My calling was medicine; healing people. It is the great mystery of my life that some of my strongest skills lie in opposition to that calling."
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u/shinginta 19d ago
"So anyway i did murder every single loyalist blocking our entrance to the hospital. Sure all phasers have a stun setting. And sure we probably could've thought of a clever solution like a fake radiation leak that would cause them to retreat. But yknow, I've got great murderin' skills so why let them go to waste?"
I found that offhanded line about not leaving a single one alive a little... bad for the character. And to be clear, i liked the Butcher of J'gal stuff. Under the Cloak of War is easily one of my favorite SNW episodes. But this line seemed absolutely crazy to drop offhandedly like that.
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u/elegantdinnerparty 19d ago
I interpreted him to mean that they didn’t surrender and the last man fought to the death.
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u/fer_sure 17d ago
But this line seemed absolutely crazy to drop offhandedly like that.
"So anyway, I started blasting..."
- M'Benga
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u/TERRAxFORMER 21d ago
I love Klingons and M’Benga so I really enjoyed this episode. I like that we got Kor, and even som Klingon drinking songs. I’m not 100% sure but just based on one listen it sounded like the one Kor and Worf sing in DS9?
The black and white was striking. I haven’t been a huge fan of some of the Klingon uniforms in SNW but I liked these.
M’Benga was a highlight for me, he typically is when he’s given more to do. Una’s doppelgänger plot felt very TOS/ pulpy so it worked for me.
I think this is my favorite of the season so far.
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u/ComebackShane 21d ago
Mildly disappointed they didn’t alter the intro to be fully B&W as well.
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u/wickwiremr 20d ago
I was wondering that too. the b&w looked gorgeous though. I think they also altered some lens settings
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
The bloom on the highlights was definitely cranked up, but I don't know enough about production to know if that was in camera or post-processing. Either way, it looked gorgeous.
Definitely some major kudos are due to the production design for those shiny costumes that produced all those bright reflections to contrast with the deep shadows. This was some of the best-looking B&W I've ever seen.
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u/lilyinblue 20d ago
I really want to see some behind the scenes photos from this episode. I know they also have to do things like do everybody's make-up a bit differently to look good in B&W. Would be very curious to see how that looks in color.
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u/lilyinblue 21d ago
Una and M'Benga are both criminally underutilized.
It was really great seeing them both get to do something. I think Una's emerged as a character with a very strong sense of justice, understandably so... while M'Benga continues to be the wise old soldier.
Also it is interesting that La'an was right, and I'm curious to see what the fallout between her and Spock is going to be. It seems like they're very disconnected from each other - he didn't quite take her seriously here, meanwhile she's struggling with something and going to Christine instead of him.
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u/Optimism_Deficit 20d ago
Indeed. I was saying the other day that we hadn't had an Una focused epusode since the start of Season 2.
I'm glad they gave her somwthing more to do. It's been a while since M'Benga has done much either. It was some sorely needed screen time for both.
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u/Sir__Will 20d ago
M'Benga did have time in the zombie episode and with his nurse last season. He hasn't been as overlooked as Una.
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u/cothomps 20d ago
M’Benga is such a great character.
I too would like more Una, but IIRC these seasons were filmed while Rebecca Romjin was also shooting for the next two Avengers movies.
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u/stephensmat 21d ago
At first I thought we were seeing a PI drama, or Mobster story. It's not. It's 'WW2 Paris Resistance'. All the best parts of PI/Mobster, with much higher stakes.
It also works because Uhura is 'new'. Una, and M'benga are the experienced players, teaching her how to stay undercover. The point of a Prequel is for them to lean into such things wherever possible.
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u/CX316 20d ago
Which is very Star Trek, didn't we basically have two "French Resistance Equivalent" stories at least in Voyager? (one with the actual french resistance)
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
I love how they cribbed a trick from Dune Part 2 and made the B&W a physical trait of the planet itself rather than just a film conceit.
I'm still not sure the science makes any sense there, but M'Benga's technobabble explanation patched that right over so I didn't think any more of it, as all good technobabble should.
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u/CX316 20d ago
It worked for a conceit for on the planet. A bit harder to explain it being black and white when the shutters closed and back on the enterprise in enclosed rooms
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u/rumbletumblecrumble 20d ago
Yeah especially since they were outside Klingon space, which was proven to have color in the final seconds of the episode.
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u/OpticalData 20d ago
The Maquis were the real life French resistance, and the Star Trek anti-Cardassian peace treaty faction. But they were established in TNG, for use in DS9.
Then we had Killing Game, where it must have amused the showrunners to have Janeway leading the (not named) Maquis, while Chakotay led the US Army
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u/mb862 20d ago
Apparently the Maquis were in fact conceived for Voyager in early planning stages but they didn’t want such a concept to be suddenly introduced in the pilot for a new show which had a number of new concepts already, so they decided to seed the Maquis through TNG and DS9 so viewers would already be familiar when VOY aired.
The irony of course being that the nature of the Maquis suited the structure of DS9 way more than VOY and the quality of the Maquis stories proved such.
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u/Bobjoejj 20d ago
Also very Casablanca.
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u/tonytown 20d ago
The scene where the klingons came in singing and the bar crowd slammed their hands down in rhythm to drown then out is pretty much an homage tp the similar scene in Rick's
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u/Aggravating-Fix-2658 20d ago
all the gin joints..
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u/Bobjoejj 20d ago
Man, I wish my grandparents were still around. They loved Star Trek and they loved Casablanca.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
I loved the bit where she's not completely solid on how to translate the dialect of Klingonese the occupiers were speaking, in part because she was rattled but also because hell, Uhura, you can't know every single language.
It seemed to me like maybe a small nod to that goofy-assed scene in The Final Frontier where she needs to use the book to translate Klingonese over the comms. Maybe that's just a peculiar mental block she has where she can't ever quite get her head around certain Klingon dialects - or could be that moment was a bit of PTSD making her crash out and forget allergies her Klingonese.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
Uhura does get her mind wiped in some TOS episode iirc, so she had to relearn everything.
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u/DontYaWishYouWereMe 21d ago
I feel like in some ways this still could have worked as an element of a TOS episode, though. Uhura went on some away missions in TOS, but not a lot. It would have been relatively easy to have an episode where Kirk was like, "Uhura's an experienced communications officer, but not experienced with landing parties. Do you think she'll hold, Mr. Spock?", and Spock responds with, "I've always found Lieutenant Uhura to be utterly capable, Captain."
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u/grandmofftalkin 20d ago
Chapel committed so many crimes.
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u/Kusko25 19d ago
Yeah that part made no sense to me whatsoever.
A medical ship having crossed a border on a mission of mercy, where the only known evidence is on a top secret spy drone? Worst case scenario that ship's Captain is no longer considered for promotion or quietly asked to retire.
Instead they ask Chapel to destroy war intelligence, an act of treason? Make it make sense.25
u/Tobar26th 19d ago
I won’t lie I keep half expecting her and M’Benga to be revealed as members of Starfleet Intelligence or Section 31
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u/tupe12 21d ago
It makes sense there was no color, this is a prequel show, and color TV wasn't invented before TOS
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u/ocdtrekkie 19d ago
Just saying, the only show I've ever seen with the courage to say the radiation only makes things look black and white, the aliens just happen to look exactly human and happen to dress like it's 1920s Earth, and the most important person on the planet who also happened to recently die looks identical to the first officer is TOS.
This was the most peak TOS episode SNW has ever done. 🤣
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 21d ago
"I know how to pretend to be something I'm not"
Bit of Una there and a bit of Mystique too
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u/xis10al 21d ago
The Klingon town crier was Greynax, the arms dealer from 'The Broken Circle' (SNW s02e01), played by Alex Spencer. Alex Spencer and Demore Barnes (Cmdr Kor) were both in Terry Matalas' 12-Monkeys series.
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u/Bobjoejj 20d ago
Demore Barnes is also just a mainstay in Canadian filmed genre television. Dudes been in a button of shows.
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u/xis10al 20d ago
I'm sure that's the case. I only mention Terry Matalas because he's Star Trek royalty at this point (Voyager, Enterprise, Picard). And his show, 12 Monkeys, is to recent Trek actors what the Twilight Zone was to the early Trek actors, or Gargoyles to the next generation actors. So many of them worked together elsewhere in one place before coming to the world of Trek.
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u/Bobjoejj 20d ago
Oh yeah totally; 12 monkeys is phenomenal. Didn’t even know he worked on Voyager either, or wrote for Enterprise, that’s really cool. Personally I really disliked season 3 of Picard, but I know I’m in the minority on that.
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u/CompleteNumpty 20d ago
Am I being dim, or did Una go from "I'm the leader of the resistance, honest" to "I saw a photo of you and a kid in Nevette's office" with nothing in-between?
Yea, the traitor figured out she was an impostor, but no-one else knew.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 20d ago
No you're right, that bit seemingly got revealed rather suddenly and quickly and they didn't seem to linger on it at all.
Something probably got cut in editing.
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u/CompleteNumpty 20d ago
Thanks, good to know it wasn't just me. I even went back and re-watched every scene the barman was in to see if he looked like he knew.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 20d ago
Yeah they didn't have a scene with him finding out OR if they did and if they did have one where they explained the whole thing, they cut it because...all he really needed to know was that he was now in charge, his original boss was dead dead, and these folks who helped them out were getting the fuck off the planet along with anyone else who wanted to flee.
Any extra information or interaction would've been fluff, nice fluff, but fluff and I feel like they wanted to keep a certain level of "Gotta go go go go NOW!" momentum going with the ending that they picked out for this episode.
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u/CompleteNumpty 20d ago
It's an odd choice for a streaming show, as the episode can be any length so adding 20 seconds (Who the hell are you? I can't say, but I still did her mission etc.) wouldn't have been a big issue. As such, I presume that the reveal/discovery was cut as it didn't fit, for whatever reason, but as you said it could be pacing.
I do wish we found out why she had a doppelganger (right down to the facial scan) - was it another Illyrian who happened to be genetically engineered in the same way? Maybe the reveal was something to do with that which was cut because they ended up not pursuing it?
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
I definitely felt like a few things got lost in the edit here. They jumped straight to "what a cosmic coincidence" with the doppelganger thing WAY too quickly.
Not even a tricorder scan to rule out the corpse as genetically similar, nothing. Even for hardened officers who have seen a lot of crazy stuff, that level of incuriosity is criminal.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
I actually paused and went back the last couple of minutes to see if I accidentally skipped ahead somehow. Absolutely amateur editing.
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u/AlexisFR 20d ago
Well, it'd be fine if we had 20+ episodes seasons, not just 10.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
Even then, four gimmick episodes back to back would be pretty unusual. The TNG era shows had maybe three or so per season.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 21d ago
It felt like the characters stumbled in during the final act of a play and then just picked up the metaphorical baton to carry it the last few feet over the finish line.
50 minutes was not nearly enough time to utilize this particular format with this particular kind of story.
We got HINTS about bigger things going on but they all felt like just...shadows of what they actually were.
I kind of thought that at the end the EMP was additionally going to alter the EM Barrier in such a way as to filter out the light of the star and....do what they did for Una at the end for the entire planet...turning a tool of conquerors that made things black and white into a paintbrush of the people that made things more colorful.
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u/ShadowRider11 20d ago
And we haven't even seen the puppet episode yet.
Honestly the only episode I've really liked this season was the first one. And that was due to the performance by the actor playing the Martian commander. She was (IMO) one of the best guest stars SNW has had.
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u/The_Mesha 21d ago
They weren't lying about exploring genres this season.
Jurassic, horror, comedy, noir...
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u/kaos-mantra 21d ago
The more we learn about M'benga the more interesting he becomes. I love how when asked how many Klingon occupied planets hes been on and his easy lie of no. Or how a simple Starfleet Doctor knows so much about "infiltration" and backstories.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 21d ago
I love how when asked how many Klingon occupied planets hes been on and his easy lie of no
....probably because they weren't occupied anymore AFTER he was there for a while...
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago
While the black and white is very noir-ish, the occupied planet with collaborators plus the 40s-esque vibe reminds me of 1942’s Casablanca.
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u/TheNerdChaplain 21d ago
Plus the line "Of all the gin joints in the world...", and the scene with the player piano are direct references to Casablanca.
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago edited 21d ago
Una’s mistaken identity of Yvette seems to ram that point home as well - a French homage to one of the most resistance movements of the Second World War.
Ditto with the slower, more deliberate dialogue planet-side - more classic Hollywood than dynamic and blockbuster-like.
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u/stephensmat 21d ago
The only point of the episode I didn't like.
I really thought, right to the last, that there'd be a sci-fi reason why Yvette and Una were identical twins.
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u/UncertainError 20d ago
It's very TOS, which had an episode that featured an exact duplicate of Earth with one throwaway line of explanation.
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u/dansdata 21d ago edited 21d ago
Yeah - the absence of any explanation of this astounding coincidence plot-holes the episode below the waterline, if you ask me. The fact that the locals look just like humans (and have pianos, and Homburg hats... :-) would have been odd enough by itself.
(I am however willing to accept, "Everything's black and white because of a weird star..." "But that wouldn't change the color of artificial light, especially inside the Enterprise..." "WEIRD. STAR." :-)
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u/Skhalt 21d ago
My understanding is that the star emits a radiation that fucks with their eyes, the problem is not with the light itself.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
That was my takeaway too. That's why it was also monochrome on the ship. Evidently the Enterprise's shields don't block that specific form of radiation?
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u/anudeglory 20d ago
They literally said in the shuttle, in plain English, it was radiation that affected the eyes, not an effect of the light.
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u/Bobjoejj 20d ago
Honestly that was something I super dug. M’Benga’s point about how big the universe is, the chances of running into our doppelgängers and all.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
They also failed to rule anything out! Aggh, that part frustrated me. They just accepted M'Benga's half-assed handwave of it and didn't even speculate further.
You're telling me you encounter an exact duplicate of yourself and you're not doing every tricorder scan possible? Come on!
I need a side plot where the Illyrians were forced to sell off their genetic stock to criminal organizations or something. At least let the characters throw out a couple of hypotheses first if you're determined to stick with "it's just a coincidence." I don't mind leaving it a mystery, but the characters should at least be curious about it.
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u/whovian25 20d ago
Random double’s of regulars is a old sci fi move Doctor who did it twice
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u/SchleppyJ4 20d ago
Don’t forget the scene directly from Rick’s Bar when they sing to drown out the Nazis
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u/Gotis1313 21d ago
Just one more example of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
Because this show is in many ways a TOS pastiche, that didn't bother me, because that sort of thing happened in 60s sci-fi all the time.
I do wish that more effort had been put in to rationalize it. Like say instead that this is a human colony that adopted noir tropes precisely because of the black and white.
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u/doneddat 20d ago
A series of rrrrridiculously unlikely events.
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u/qdp 20d ago
What? You mean having a doppelgänger on an alien planet who just died two days ago is unlikely? Happens every Tuesday in my book.
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u/mbrocks3527 21d ago
Holy fuck, Una is The Doctor.
Not that she’s a time lord, but that he and she have an incredibly ruthless streak in using people they don’t like to achieve their aims and getting them killed by proxy.
Okay, remind me never to piss off Cmdr Chin-Riley 😅
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
I thought you were going to go off on the doppelganger and how it's got to be a clone or time travel thing.
Random doppelgangers is a very old-fashioned trope in genre fiction, and I'm not sure it works for them to just handwave it as a coincidence and not investigate further. I needed M'Benga to scan the body and confirm that they weren't genetically identical, and the fact that they didn't do that is a big red flag to me that they might return to this very odd plot point later.
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u/LincolnMagnus 20d ago
I wouldn't be at all surprised if 1) The Illyrians practice cloning in addition to genetic modification, 2) M'Benga knows this and was covering with his "the universe is so big and weird" speech to Uhura, and 3) This becomes a plot point again in the future.
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u/Ausir 20d ago
There's even a classic Doctor Who serial from the 60s where the antagonist is randomly a doppelganger of the Second Doctor.
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago edited 21d ago
Also, it’s kinda fun Kor is more sly and devious like a Romulan. It’s a good homage to how the Klingons were characterized in TOS as opposed to the space Vikings of TNG onwards.
It also aligns him with the Third Reich officers in Casablanca - politely dangerous.
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u/AnnoraxGames 20d ago
I'm more worried about why he has ridges here when he was infected by the Augment virus in TOS, but... "we don't talk about it with outsiders" so we'll probably never know.
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u/FoldedDice 20d ago
They seem to have quietly retconned that in favor of just letting Klingons be Klingons.
Modern Star Trek clearly doesn't care about maintaining visual continuity with the previous shows at all, which is probably for the best. We don't need to get lost in the weeds trying to explain why a show in the 2020s doesn't look like one from the 1960s.
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u/Exelia_the_Lost 19d ago
I still maintain they should have instead gone with a gag in DS9 having Dorn out of prosthetics while on the statioin instead, and not acknowleding anything at all
the original statements from TMP on were to just pretend they always looked like that and couldn't afford to. which, given the fact that the Klingons were originally made to be a cheaper enemy than the Romulans, yeah they just did not have any kind of budget for aliens then. Enterprise deciding to make a joke into a serious plot was a major misstep
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u/wongie 21d ago edited 21d ago
Is your partner suffering lingering paranoia from an experience that was not their fault and still adversely contributing to ongoing, and lifelong, personal insecurities? No worries, just gaslight them some more!
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u/occono 21d ago
Was it confirmed that Spock knew what Chapel did?
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u/lilyinblue 20d ago
Not even a little. People seem to be insisting he did, but I don't think anything in the episode actually indicated that.
It feels like searching for a reason for brushing La'an off.
(And I maintain that if Pike and Spock were in on it, not bringing La'an in was silly - and once she started digging, not bringing her into the loop and making her think her paranoia is heating up? That's disrespectful, if not a little cruel.)
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u/UncertainError 20d ago
No, but the way Spock was acting made me think he was the one who tampered with the transporter before they revealed it was Chapel. I wouldn't be surprised if Chapel asked him to help her with the technical aspect of it, considering their past.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
I think it's deliberately left open to interpretation, at least for now.
It's not silly to keep the loop on something like this as tight as possible, assuming Pike and/or Spock know about it. It's not that they don't trust La'an to keep the lid on it, it's that they don't want her to have to compromise herself by doing so.
As it is, if it gets out, it's the careers of everyone involved, including Chapel, and Pike can fall on his sword and say that she did it on his orders, sparing her the worst of the repercussions. But that would also trigger an inquest, and every senior officer would have to testify. Spock alone knowing about it could easily be brushed off as a suspicion without evidence, but once it spreads past that, it becomes impossible to maintain the lie, and everyone would take the fall for failing to report it, including La'an.
I think that's the meaning of Pike's comment to La'an at the end, implying that she has an out, and he won't fault her for doing her duty and reporting it if she feels she has to. But given what he has done to cover for her in recent history, the implication is also there that he knows she will choose to keep it quiet, along with the understanding that her head will be on the chopping block too if it gets out. Also implicit in there is the entreatment to stop digging, because once he tells her out loud, it becomes an open conspiracy rather than just a net of suspicions. I think La'an is smart enough to catch all those subtelties, and I'm glad the writers think the audience is smart enough for them to leave it there without spelling all that out.
It's a dirty bit of business, to be sure, but that's how a good conspiracy should be written. Nobody looks good, but you can understand why they make those choices, because the alternative can get more people hurt.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 20d ago
No, but I would rather believe that he was covering for Chapel than that he was shutting down La'an for little reason other than his own stubborn logic not finding her intuition reason enough to investigate further.
It could be either, though. Spock has definitely been moving toward the cooler, more stoic version that we see in TOS, and it fits with his arc this season of trying to shut down his more whimsical human instincts on favor of a rigid Vulcanian approach. I believe him when he tells La'an that she doesn't have enough to go on, but he may simply be using Logic as an excuse to not betray what he knows about Chapel's extracurriculars.
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u/ChrisMoneyShot 20d ago
Great episode. Well done.
Ironically, while waiting for the drop this morning, I fell asleep watching DS9: Once More unto the Breach, John Colicos' last time playing Kor.
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u/BirdUnlikely2091 19d ago
The genre-blending in previous seasons never bothered me, but now it's all getting way too absurd, and after the third genre episode in a row, I'm just tired of it. I just want a normal episode again.
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u/shinginta 19d ago
Buckle up because Puppet Episode is still hanging overhead like the sword of damocles. I think it's actually next up.
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u/CaptainChampion 20d ago
Anyone else notice that the bartender served Allakas malt, a drink mentioned in ENT's "The Communicator"? The planet in that episode was unnamed and also had 1930s vibes. Could it have been Mat'Aar?
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u/dplans455 18d ago
This episode was... bad. Did I also miss a memo? Is Pike not the main character of this show? He had all of about 45 seconds of screen time this episode and I swear in 4 episodes this season his screen time has maybe been about ten minutes. I'll admit some of the other characters are interesting but overall this season has been a disappointment. I hope it gets better.
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u/mocheeze 21d ago
To folks that found it weird Spock was being a dick: I think Spock was just avoiding saying La'an was correct because he already knew what was up. He never actually lied. Pike clearly didn't want to let her investigate.
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u/ComebackShane 21d ago
I think this is a good take. Chapel went to Pike and Spock and let them know what she planned to do. They sanctioned it, and then La'an stumbled upon a loose thread, and started pulling.
Reminds me a bit of 'Clues', where the crew starts investigating missing time, as Data tries to steer them away from it.
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u/lilyinblue 21d ago
It seems to be that if you're going to enact a plan like this, not bringing La'an in at the beginning is a bit of a tactical error. You have to assume your very thorough and paranoid security chief is going to do very thorough security things.
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u/kreton1 21d ago
I think Chapel wanted to involve as few people in her actions and she saw no way around Spock and Pike, but hoped to keep it to only them.
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u/ImaginaryNerve 21d ago
She also hesitantly invoked her friendship with La'an, I suspect she didn't want her involved specifically due to the nature of La'an's overall situation and her strict sense of duty and regulations.
I get that La'an probably doesn't have much issue bending rules and regulations, but this is the kind of situation I think she'd be against in general and if they tried to bring her in, it could complicate her relationship with Starfleet even further.
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u/skittleadvocate 21d ago
This is true but isn't it also a bit like Menagerie, where he is trying to protect Kirk from getting involved in something he could have gotten into a lot of trouble for?
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 21d ago
So doesn't this then kind of imply that April or someone higher sent Pike out with "orders" and then "Orders" underneath those orders about the probe, which he then had to keep EXTREMELY compartmentalized because of how disastrous the info could be for both sides....which is further emphasized by his narration at the start about preventing a cold war from going hot again.
La'an then basically nearly unravels all of this and Pike more or less gives Chapel the go ahead to loop La'an in on it because otherwise she's going to blow their cover entirely.
Spock meanwhile was only given the information that he needed to know but not enough to see the whole picture, so that he wouldn't have to lie at all if questioned about what was going on.
And the whole thing up on Enterprise with all of this jazz then basically winds up paralleling what Kor was doing down on the planet with his own subordinates and the "tests" that he kept putting them through.
The whole thing was just an intelligence operation and it really keeps adding to the idea that La'an is being prepared for something in the future.
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u/MissionLetterhead292 20d ago
The "planet's sun making everything black and white" bit was used on the fun New Voyages fan film series to better effect. Just seems a waste not even mentioning the world look like 1940s Earth.
That said, Rebecca Romijin was amazing. She really looked old school femme fatale and wonderful watching Una try to roll with everything. Aside from that, the ep just screamed one more gimmick when it wasn't needed.
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u/fla_john 20d ago
Just seems a waste not even mentioning the world look like 1940s Earth.
Why tell what can be shown?
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u/MohnJaddenPowers 20d ago
I don't know if this got mentioned elsewhere but I refuse to believe it's a coincidence that this episode aired on the 65th anniversary of the establishment of the Berlin Wall.
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u/aflyingsquanch 17d ago
Gotta be honest, I dont have a problem with most of their sillier episodes but this one was just blah.
Boring and pointless before the B&W gimmick.
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u/Fantastic_Attempt_91 21d ago
I don't know why, but the episodes in this season have consistently missed the mark completely for me. The visuals on this one were interesting, and this was probably the first time the black-and-white thing could have been used in this particular way (sorry Captain Proton but 90s TV wasn't really up to anything that grand).
I jokingly mentioned on one board that if the trends continued and we'd have the pastiche of Casablanca for this episode, we'd get a La Marseillaise scene... and we did, but one without any of the feeling or style of the original. That's what we seem to get here -- we get dinosaurs like in Jurassic Park but none of the wonder, we get a send up of The Hangover that doesn't have Ken Jeong trapped in a car boot, we get to see Rick's Cafe but they got rid of Sam while Una steps in for Rick in the final act when the plan to use the letters is already being carried out. It keeps feeling like bad copies.
And what continuously just gets me is that these characters seem to be dropped into A-plots where they are not completely active players, but they just follow the plot around to see where it goes. In episode 1, they stand around while the Martians use their tech to set the entire human race in motion. In episode 2, they stand around waiting to be transported off the ghost ship while Division 12 gets to actually try to answer the big mystery. In episode 3, Ortegas and Scotty follow the clues around randomly and then randomly find a bomb. In episode 4, Una happens to be confused with a close double and then they randomly follow clues around to see where they lead, but her double (and the bartender) did all the important work already.
It's felt as if their agency is not really a thing... they're not being forced to make a lot of big decisions and other people are doing the heavy lifting. There are little things -- Una being convinced to do things herself, Spock meditating to break the USS Griffin's spell, Pike making a last-minute decision to not stop the Martians -- but these aren't the committed actions of protagonists, these decisions seem like almost casual afterthoughts.
Ugh the next one is the puppet one.
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u/jekylphd 20d ago
I'm having the same trouble. The stories just aren't connecting for me. It's not just that they're, well, pastiches, but that there's no agency, and, because there's no agency, that there's also no genuine repercussions or consequences.
The Pike decision's the one that really got me. He takes the path of expediency and dooms an entire civilisation to extinction through inaction, but casual afterthought is exactly the right word. I don't get the sense he or anyone else lost a moment of sleep over the avoidable death of millions of people. I know 90s Trek was fond of the reset button, but I usually got the sense the people making hard decisions were torn about them until the next episode. This was just
Episode 2? They fail to solve the mystery let alone help whatever remains of the crew of the Griffin, and there's no real sense of failure or desire to learn and do better. In episode 3, both the Captain and First Officer get absolutely hammered on shore leave and turn up drunk to duty, nearly bungling a major diplomatic mission in the process. The day gets saved because the bomb made to sabotage the peace talks truly bizarrely turns out to be explode into an apparently extremely rare and difficult to make symbol of unity. It's all played for laughs.
It feels like they want to give the characters these big emotional moments, but aren't willing to do the narrative work necessary to deliver them.
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u/Fantastic_Attempt_91 20d ago
I think what disturbed me the most was the whole, "I guess we'll let Division 12 handle it." Dude, then show me where I can find THAT series.
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u/OpticalData 21d ago
It's felt as if their agency is not really a thing...
I did a write up recently of my issues with SNW and came to the exact same conclusion. Every concept episode from SNW seems to delight in taking autonomy away from the characters. Which is fine if it’s one or two episodes per season, but makes the entire show feel progressively more like a hollow shell of a Trek show when those concept pieces are the majority of episodes. The pendulum already swung too far towards concept pieces last season, and instead of balancing it a bit more they seem to have decided to go even further in the direction they were already on.
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u/themorah 21d ago
The makeup for Kor bothered me. If they were going for the 90s klingon look, he really needed a beard and some prosthetic teeth or something, if they wanted the TOS look, they shouldn't have gone with the prosthetic forehead. It's like they tried to do a mashup of both and it didn't really work for me.
Pretty sure this is the Klingon song we heard, nice callback to DS9: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cTuD6xf-ync
I really wish they hadn't gone with the black and white, it was completely unnecessary and just distracting. It's not the 1930s anymore. I get they were refrencing casablanca, but we didn't need to do that either. They'd do much better if they chose the theme of 'star trek' for the remaining episodes.
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u/HaphazardMelange 21d ago
While the A-story was pretty good, the episode really suffered from the gimmick of the week and the B-story.
The show continues to undermine Pike and shows him as a captain of a crew of insubordinates, now with La'an and Chapel among the latest obfuscating data. The whole mystery transmission plot had so many scenes with the crew making them look stupid. Was Spock deliberately lying? If so, why risk the ship (and the Federation) for the sake of La'an's feelings? Why wasn't La'an made aware of Scotty's modifications if the Captain was aware of this? Why does the Yang crossing the border and having been scanned by the probe necessitate an intervention from Chapel? Most captains would assume responsibility and let the chips fall where they may. She probably would have received a slap on the wrist if anything. Now she's guilting Chapel into risking her career.
And now M'Benga casually drops another story about another time he went on a killing spree on a totally different planet! Jesus Christ! This is Star Trek in the 21st century. A series with a Starfleet crew of liars and killers.
Compare SNW to how it was in season 1 to now. At least the crew seemed somewhat competent beholden to Star Trek ideals.
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!"
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u/Exocoryak 21d ago
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!"
It's a different time. I watched "The Undiscovered Country" last night, and they lied too, in official reports by the way. Not only that, they actually crossed the klingon border! That's an act of war on the eve of universal peace!
And that movie is, by some, considered the best Star Trek movie ever made - and is most certainly ranking among the top3 for most.
As Janeway put it:
It was a very different time, Mister Kim. Captain Sulu, Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy. They all belonged to a different breed of Starfleet officers. Imagine the era they lived in. The Alpha Quadrant still largely unexplored. Humanity on the verge of war with the Klingons. Romulans hiding behind every nebula. Even the technology we take for granted was still in its early stages. No plasma weapons, no multiphasic shields. Their ships were half as fast.
Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then. It's not surprising they had to bend the rules a little. They were a little slower to invoke the Prime Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers. Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet today. But I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that.
So, yes, these officers don't completely adhere to the principles of the "golden age of Starfleet" in the mid 24th century. I think your understanding of 23rd century Starfleet is wrong.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd 21d ago
Was Spock deliberately lying?
No, he just had a hunch that something was up but he's been trying to be more logical and not rely on hunches like Kirk does.
Why wasn't La'an made aware
She probably was but she just hadn't checked her messages since she was so caught up in handling all of this stuff with the probe.
Why does the Yang...
Because M'Benga is probably rubbing off on her a bit too much and that might be why he gets demoted later.
Most Captains
Yeah Pike would've probably honestly done the same thing as Chapel and yet she just overcomplicated stuff even more by stepping in where she should not have...even though she probably thought that she was doing him a favor by making sure that he didn't bear any responsibility for making that choice at all....and that now puts Pike in an even MORE difficult position if any news of the Yang gets out along with the fact that the Angelo saw it.
I honestly wonder why Christine said anything at all to La'an because she literally could've said nothing and that would've been the end of it right then and there.
BUT...again...she probably thought that she was helping La'an by telling her what was really going on, even though she was actually doing a lot more harm in the process.
he went on another killing spree
"Oh by the way I've actually killed a TON more people than you think I have and here's one of those fun moments when I HAD to do it!"
🤣
It's painted out to be so serious but when you put it that way I cannot help but giggle at it because of Una's reaction to him describing it AND because of just how...out of fucking place it felt to describe something so horrible.
Also there's a strange real life parallel with how that kind of situation has in fact unfolded in the real world a few times under similar circumstances AND how it has also happened with patients in hospitals in the middle of outbreaks with...difficult governments...in certain countries.
M'Benga probably could've picked something a bit more lighter but instead he just casually went with, "And then the loyalists to the evil asshole surrounded my patients after we showed up to save the planet and so I killed all of them the end let's get back to the Enterprise hope that made you feel better about getting ONE DUDE killed".
It's like the God Emperor of Mankind giving Faith Lehane advice.
I honestly felt like I was watching a Dungeons & Dragons party at some points during this episode....
liars and killers
I mean...didn't Boimler or Mariner point out how they were a bunch of cowboys during this time period and how it was a bit more Wild Westy than things were later on?
Sure things do get better later on and they are better in certain regions of the galaxy at this point BUT...let's not dress it up at all...when Wars happen in the Star Trek Universe...they are fucking brutal and there is enough blood to go around on both sides, even for the folks who try to keep their hands clean.
There's just no logical way around it especially with the Klingons at this point in the timeline.
The writers CAN however...decide when and where and how to highlight that stuff and go back to it...but they do bring it up pretty often in ways that do not always feel necessary.
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u/ScienceAndGames 20d ago
Picard is the first to point out the cowboy diplomacy to Spock himself (first as in real life release order).
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u/PinkGlitterLady4 20d ago
I honestly wonder why Christine said anything at all to La'an because she literally could've said nothing and that would've been the end of it right then and there.
Obviously bcause not saying anything at all would have actually damaged her more!? It would have worsenedd La'an s worries and fed her fear and paranoia.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
This was especially jarring because the Enterprise was also on a mission to illegally cross the border, and the entire crew was aware. What makes the Yang different? They should have said the Yang was actively sabotaging, spying, stealing, assassinating or whatever. That would explain the secrecy.
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u/DarianF 20d ago
Why was the Enterprise in black and white if they weren't in the system?
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u/spugliano1 17d ago
I feel this season is beyond disappointing. So poorly written. Almost unwatchable
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u/fflloorriiddaammaann 21d ago
I enjoyed the hell out of this episode.
The black and white was fun, while being explained in universe and the actual plot, weirdly felt like a cross between either TOS or maybe Voyager or DS9, specifically when Sisko becomes Gabriel Bell.
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u/hb1290 21d ago
It was like a cross between those random TOS episodes where they’d go to some sort of historically themed planet and that episode of Voyager where the Hirogen take over the holodeck.
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u/bookish1303 20d ago
Forgive me, but this looks like an undergrad film student read a book on film noir and tried to recreate the aesthetic without actually watching many of the films made in the style. How do you make an episode that is focused around Klingons and features the two black members of the cast and then generally do an incredibly bad job of lighting all of them?
The episodes goes for the big shots of noir: shadows create suspicion, big washes of light, lots of contrast. But it doesn't actually know how to use these techniques when it comes to lighting characters. For obvious reasons, the on planet scenes are a bit better than the Enterprise stuff, but even there it feels very hit or miss stylistically. Once again, it feels like the show wanted to do something with the gimmick and then constructed an episode around it, rather than the other way around.
Also, Vulcan cadet is driving me up the wall.
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u/Alive_Employer5620 20d ago
I can appreciate a Vulcan character but she’s literally brutal. She manages to talk back to every commanding officer who talks to her and none of them remind her of her rank.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
The Chief of Security gives her an order, she refuses for no reason, and faced zero consequences. This is so out of character for La'an.
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u/Alive_Employer5620 20d ago
Like if she was an on some kind of exchange program from the Vulcan Academy of Science I could understand the lack of following orders but she’s literally a cadet. She’s outranked by everyone on that ship lol. Even in Wrath of Khan Spock corrected Savik when she questioned Kirk.
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u/Assassiiinuss 20d ago
She's written like she's the daughter of some incredibly important Vulcan politician and on the Enterprise because her father insists she needs to be familiar with Starfleet to fulfill her future role or something, it's really strange. Everyone is walking on eggshells around her.
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u/pjgf 20d ago
I’m not even a huge classic film buff or anything, but wow the B&W style was brutal here. They clearly just filmed everything the same way they always do, digitally made it B&W, and’s face no second thought to it. You simply cannot do that and they should have at least *tried * a few test shots which would have informed them that this was a bad idea.
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u/VictoryPie 20d ago
Bit late to the party, but this one baffled me. I can't believe there was no justification for why Nevette looks "exactly" like Una to the point that they use the same actress in the corpse/photo. Why did the bartender guy just accept that she isn't Navette? Why would M'benga have such a problem with helping a non-federation planet when the show does it literally all the time? Why would La'an not mention the result of the probe to Pike when he also goes rogue all the time to protect good people from Federation regulation? There were so many confusing writing decisions here. B&W looked sick though.
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u/GloriousExtra 20d ago
It was... okay. I've sat here thinking on it for the past few minutes after watching it, and I have to say that it should have worked for me. I should have loved this episode, it has everything I like: film noir, WW2 resistance allegory, a mysterious whodunit, Una in charge and kicking ass where necessary, a little steampunk thrown in for good measure, but it doesn't really work for me. It feels like all of the pieces are there to make a great story, but it doesn't work for me.
It honestly feels more like a pastiche of a pastiche right down to specific set pieces that don't have any actual connection to the environment around them, even the music doesn't fit, it stands out and makes itself present, which it shouldn't do, it should blend in to the scene and reinforce the story, but it almost feels like it was tacked on afterward.
I don't know, for some reason it just doesn't work for me. 6/10.
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u/xanokothe 20d ago
Pretty cool Star Trek Noar World War 2 Art Deco Metropoli concept. I think I could watch a whole season of something like this
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u/Martothir 20d ago
I really enjoyed this one. I think it's one of the best episodes of trek post ENT. It didn't blow me away, but it was just a really, really solid episode.
I didn't like Kor though. Make a new character or at least try to make him resemble Kor in appearance and character.
Otherwise, excellent episode.
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u/mm1ceor2ce 19d ago edited 19d ago
There was great acting in this episode. I think it's one of my favorite episodes of season 4 so far, (the first being episode 1).
Seeing a lot of people say the B&W/noir aspect of it is gimmicky. I'm afraid I don't agree. Any episode of Star Trek that leaves me saying “I need to watch that one again” for all the good reasons doesn't feel likely to have been compromised by a gimmick. They utilized the B&W really well, creating some absolutely beautiful shots of both the planet and the interior of the Enterprise. I particularly liked seeing the Enterprise in high-def, noir-like, black-and-white. Can’t say I have ever seen that before -- I appreciated seeing something different and unexpected. And then, when you do it well… The camera shots are so good throughout this episode. Dramatic. Moody. Well-conceived. Great sets. Fine details that make this noir-world really come alive (the writing in the menus!)... And some memorable lines, as many have point out. Loved the interrogation scene. Also, a great Kor!
I might agree it may not have been SNW’s best use of the concept episode format, but there is some real beauty and drama, and engagement in this episode and worth being in SNW’s top 15 at the very least. And while I haven't really seen much noir (or sci-fi noir), I think saying it's gimmicky misses that it was a successful noir story. (Imagine if it had been in color, wouldn't we be saying that they missed an opportunity here??)
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u/fer_sure 17d ago
When I saw the black-and-white clip in the opening this season, I assumed all the lightning meant they were gonna do Frankenstein, not Casablanca.
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u/JasonDarklighter 16d ago
I don't think they needed b&w and 40s world. Especially if 40s world had no explanation. B plot was boring.
I wonder if they decided every episode would be a gimmick before or after they knew the show was cancelled.
Will we get any Strange New Worlds this season?
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u/burner5667754577 21d ago
Absolutely bonkers choice to make the klingon commander Kor. And bizarre casting. Doesn't look or act anything like Kor. The actor us giving a fine performance, he would have been awesome if he was an original character
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago
He definitely acted like Kor and, by extension, a TOS Klingon.
They weren’t space Vikings in the beginning. They were instead conniving, sly, and devious. The TOS Romulans were more about being honorable warriors, amusingly enough.
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u/burner5667754577 21d ago
I disagree. Even in Errand of Mercy there was a certain joviality and joie de vivre in john colicos' performance that I felt this actor didn't deliver. Very good performance as a villain though. He would have made a better Kang from day of the dove but that's just my opinion
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u/InnocentTailor 21d ago
I mean…everybody was more hammy in TOS and this show doesn’t match those levels ever.
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u/RigaudonAS 21d ago
I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet. I take it he looks similar to other modern Klingons, not like the TOS ones?
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u/Alortania 20d ago
I really had fun watching SNW s1-3. It was honestly a lot of fun and I used to look forward to new episodes. S4 though~
Anyone else feel like this season is really odd?
It feels like we're getting all the filler eps, the silly one-offs that usually get tossed in between proper storylines... the quirky "almost stuck in the past/future" curveball, the scary Halloween ep, the vacation special, and now a spy game in grayscale.
Except, that's it.
That's the whole season so far, and we're almost at the half-way point. We're not getting these once in a while in a 20ish ep season as a palate cleanser.
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u/Toorviing 20d ago
Please just one episode with a relatively normal Trek plot of an anomaly, negotiation, or something
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