“Those Old Scientists”
What They Say:
An accident while investigating a time portal sends Ensigns Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler through time from the 24th Century, and Captain Pike and his crew must get them back where they belong before they can alter the timeline.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One of either the most-anticipated or most-dreaded episodes of the season – the upcoming musical episode notwithstanding – Strange New Worlds gives us the crossover that many had hoped for brought into reality. I struggled with Lower Decks when it first started but it won me over by the end of the season before becoming a full-on fan as it progressed. The upcoming fourth season of it and the fifth season renewal has me glad for a humorous take on Star Trek but also one that explores interesting areas of the property and does a little story closure at times as well in a way that delights. The animated side has its own rules and how well that translates into live-action is always questionable. And then you get the meta jokes that come from animation and live-action as well. But even these are smartly played in the dialogue which again, can either be great or hugely distracting.
I watched it (and the series) with my 83-year-old mother who was introduced to Star Trek in the early 70s with my father, who had watched it while serving in the USAF in Greenland in the late 60s. Trek has always been a part of the household and in the 80s it was Saturday night steak night appointment viewing (unless football made it start late!). With this episode, we get the show doing a bookend piece of the animated side and a delightful iteration of the SNW opening credits in LD form. The animated side kicks off 120 years in the future where Mariner has taken on a mission to a remote planet for a regular checkup of a portal that’s been inactive since the Orions discovered it – a contentious belief in itself. Boimler’s excited to check out the portal and all that because it reminds him of the golden age of space exploration from the past when everything was new. With Tendi and Rutherford along to help, it’s a lot of silly fun in a couple of minutes space before they accidentally activate the portal and Boimler is thrown into the past.
Conveniently at the time when the Enterprise is there and a small away team is investigating it while amid another mission. This puts Boimler right in the heart of things and he’s just starstruck by it all. Mariner ends up showing up later, which is both good and frustrating because you want as much time with these two in this era as you can. But by giving Boimer some time to geek out on his own, it takes some of the pressure off and allows for a better dynamic when Mariner does show up because the two of them play off each other really well with a lot of shorthands and hand movements from Mariner that delight. The thing that really works is that because there have been so many time travel things happening in the century since this period, there are plenty of rules and the pair do try to stick by it. It’s not the usual over-explained elements or anything. They’re just taking it in and everyone is trying to play by the rules.
Mostly.
Boimler lets a few things out along the way and that are certainly meta, such as Pike’s hair, but we also get his huge concern over how different Spock is as he’s dealing with leaning into his human side more. It’s a lot of fun to see this with Spock and it’s certainly unnerving. But it also plays into the problems at hand as Boimler talks about it being a phase with Chapel and that look on her face is heartbreaking. She does admit that on some level she knows it won’t last and that she can’t change him, but for it to be a phase and all the emotion of that is just a hard punch. Similarly, we get a moment with just Boimler and La’An early on when he arrives and her cautioning him to not make attachments – which isn’t in the rules he knows – catches him off guard. But with the loss she just had in her own time travel adventure, it’s advice that has real meaning to be sure, and a reminder that she is still very much in pain from all of that.
The whole plot with the time travel and figuring out how to go back is fun and deals with some of the usual problems and pitfalls but nothing revolutionary. What I like is how it helps to soften the harder views of how things were presented in TOS and elsewhere. Tendi mentions that Orions had discovered the portal but it’s clear that it didn’t happen that way. With Tendi trying to get people to realize that there were non-pirate Orions running around in space for a long time as well, Boimler takes that to heart and we see that encounter in the past. Tendi having a relationship with someone there is the big coincidence but we don’t see them (and sadly, no Tendi or Rutherford live-action, but we knew that). What I like is that it adds a bit more to the Orions and gets away more from the monoculture aspect that populate so many of the older works.
This episode has so much humor and jokes and little references that there are plenty of places to find that. What I, and my mother, found was that it was just a lot of fun. There are plenty of things she missed but Jack Quaid does a great job of bringing the physicality of Boimler here without overdoing and Tawney Newsome was perfect in capturing Mariner. And her idolization of Uhura was great as it helped to bring a bit more out of her and the need to relax a bit while also coping with the pressure of being someone so recognized. Similarly, we get both Boimler and Mariner getting through to Pike about the importance of close bonds with those he serves with in relation to his not wanting to celebrate an upcoming birthday because of its meaning to him with his father. That it’s done as an animated bit at the end is even more perfect.
The most important takeaway for me is that the costume design for the Lower Decks side translates perfectly into live-action and I hope we get to see more of it because it’s the best of the costumes since the modern update on the original designs we get in Strange New Worlds. The costuming department for this series is just amazing and deserves constant kudos for the work they put in and how it translates to the screen.
In Summary:
Strange New Worlds may not light the world on fire with some of its stories, but each episode delivers something that just has me super excited about what it does for either the cast or the worldbuilding. This is like peak ensemble cast design for me and while some still need a bit more fleshing out, the end result is a show that I can’t get enough of. Bringing in some catalyst characters from Lower Decks with a smartly done time travel and medium-travel trick takes it to a whole other level. Everything about this worked for me from top to bottom and I completely understand why some or all of it doesn’t for others. I know a lot of Trek fans just can’t stomach Lower Decks at all so I get it and that’s totally fine. For me, this was the marriage of two worlds that I want more of and has me wishing for a full Lower Decks live-action episode or future project that they can work some of them into.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Paramount+
