This Week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Is the Worst Episode of the Season, But It Still Manages to Give Pike Some of His Best Scenes Ever

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 7, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass.”

Man, this episode. Five minutes into it, I was ready to tear it apart, but then it had to go and turn into an actual serious story about what is essentially the tragedy of Captain Pike’s life. And not just that, but how he is learning to accept the unfair circumstances of his situation and still be thankful for the moments of beauty and grace and family that he has been afforded in his time, however brief (or cosmically/paradoxically long) that time has been.

Which isn’t to say that I’m not going to tear into this episode some, because it is mostly a waste of what precious little time we have left with Strange New Worlds. Yeah, it’s the “soap opera episode,” and man, at this point I don’t know who the showrunners think they’re aiming some of these stories at.

Rhys Darby is back as Trelane (although they still don’t quite refer to him that way onscreen), the Q-like (or should we just say Q at this point?) being who plagued the crew last season in “Wedding Bell Blues” and who, of course, will also eventually cause problems for the Enterprise when Captain Kirk is running things, as seen in The Original Series episode “The Squire of Gothos” (where he was played by William Campbell). This time around, Trelane has forced the Enterprise crew to live out a soap opera – just like on the old tee-vee, dontcha know! – complete with overlit sets, awkward close-ups, ridiculous plot developments, and over-the-top acting.

So yeah, it’s yet another concept/gimmick episode. This is just what this show is now, I guess, and while it’s cute for a few minutes, the soap opera approach is not sustainable for a full-length episode. Which is probably why the show has to switch back to being, you know, a normal Star Trek episode about 36 minutes in. And that’s what’s so frustrating about “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” – not that it’s a dumb soap opera riff, but that it’s actually got a great Captain Pike story hidden inside it, albeit one that’s under-serviced because of the dumb soap opera riff.

I’ve given Anson Mount some grief lately about playing Pike in a way that was diminishing the captain and his status as the leader of an entire starship full of officers and crew. But then he comes along and acts the hell out of this episode, which is ultimately about his ongoing sense of loss and grief – and his inability to deal with either, as has been hinted at earlier in the season – over the loss of his lover Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) in last season’s finale.

And it wasn’t just Marie that he lost, but also the life that he lived with her – a complete life, where they had a daughter named Juliet (played by Anna Mirodin) and eventually aged into their golden years, all in a mere moment’s time in regular reality. Mount brings it in full force here, as he finally sits with the ship’s counsellor (played by soap opera legend Deidre Hall, of Days of Our Lives fame) and confronts what he’s been through. His memories of his daughter who never existed, and yet did exist – “I taught her to read” – are so touching not only because of the writing, but also thanks to how Mount handles the scene, and it all just further drives home what a wasted opportunity the prior 36 minutes had been.

“Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” is further hampered by the inclusion of Trelane, who is nothing but a bystander when all is said and done, literally watching events unfold from a TV control room. He’s surprised when Juliet manifests as an evocation of Pike’s subconscious, and he has no bearing on how Pike deals with that situation. He’s just there, presumably because co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman likes TOS, and that just isn’t enough, particularly when the character plays as nothing more than a lame imitation of the William Campbell original.

Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• For everyone annoyed – or just wondering – why Trelane keeps showing up in Captain Pike’s era when his apparent first encounter with the Enterprise doesn’t happen until the Captain Kirk era, let’s just keep in mind that Trelane/Q are capable of flitting around in time, and indeed, exist outside of time. So a first appearance isn’t necessarily a first appearance in this case.
• Speaking of which, yes, the “Proctor” played by Diane L. Johnstone is wearing a variation of Q’s “judge” costume from TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint.” Why? At this point for SNW, I guess the answer to such a question is “why not?”
• Once we’ve clicked back into the “real world,” La’an (Christina Chong) and Spock (Ethan Peck) have a nice scene which sure plays like the kind of non-closure closure that a break-up often finishes on. La’an saw in Soap Opera Sybok a glimmer of the more human Spock that she perhaps needed when they were together, but the real Spock is more Vulcan than ever here, unable to process what La’an’s going through when she mentions how hard it’s been since things between them ended. It’s another sad and very well acted scene.
• What’s the deal with Sybok? Last we knew, he was still out there, waiting for his chance to actually show up on Strange New Worlds after a brief, viewed-from-behind cameo in Season 1. Getting an Ethan Peck evil twin version here is very whatever, even if it is imaginary, particularly since the expectation after that Season 1 episode was that we would eventually get to see young Spock and young Sybok onscreen together. And man, is the clock ticking on SNW now.
• So the OG Enterprise did have a ship’s counsellor!

Verdict

I give the Anson Mount and Christina Chong/Ethan Peck scenes from the last part of the episode a 10, but the soap opera stuff gets a 2, which I’m going to average into a 5 here. The greatest frustration of this episode is in the wasted opportunity of it all – seeing Mount really get to play Pike’s tragic edge underscores how great a show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds should be. I gave the first season a 10, and the promise it held back then was incredible. “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” is a reminder of that potential, which is slipping through our fingers at this point like, well… screw it… like chronitons in an hourglass.