‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Gets Melodramatic in Soap Opera Episode

This week, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds turns into a soap opera. While the first ten minutes or so were funny, ultimately… it’s a lot of melodrama. As “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” kicks off, Pike wakes in sickbay with a bandage on his head. The lights are brighter and everything looks a bit hazy. Dr. M’Benga is waiting there for him and tells him he was in a terrible accident. The last thing Pike remembers is hosting a Captain’s Table over two weeks ago. Dr. M’Benga is horrified—it’s much worse than he feared. Pike has… cosmic amnesia! Pike hears background music and worries they’re back in the musical. Chapel joins them, and tells Pike that Spock suffered severe blunt force trauma in the accident and they had to put him in an induced coma. They need to conduct an experimental living heart transplant on him. Pike glances over at Spock, who is lying on a bed nearby. Pike is overwhelmed; this isn’t the behavior he’s used to from the crew. They’re being overdramatic, taking long pauses, and staring off into space. He checks with the computer to see if he’s in a simulation. Nope. Dr. M’Benga says Pike is relieved of duty until the ship’s counselor, Dr. Chivers, clears him, and then sends him off. In his room, Pike scans for any known anomalies. Dr. Chivers (Deidre Hall—who happens to be a star on Days of Our Lives) comes in. Pike asks about why someone might act melodramatic. Dr. Chivers is instantly annoyed, wanting him to “focus on these tests” because he could be permanently removed from duty. Suddenly, we cut away and see Pike and Dr. Chivers from different angles on different screens. Someone is watching—and enjoying—every second of it. Uhura visits Chapel and offers to be a transplant for Spock. She’s not a match, but her DNA did reveal something else. (But see, in the world of soap operas, they don’t tell you right away because they want you to stick around as long as possible.) © Brendan Adam-Zwelling/Paramount+ Instead, we switch to La’An on a shuttle, returning to the USS Enterprise with the donor for Spock. She removes the black hood from the donor and reveals a man who looks identical to Spock, who is delighting in being part of a fantastic prison break. La’An slaps him and reveals him to be Spock’s half-brother, Sybok. Meanwhile, Pike is annoyed that Dr. Chivers keeps asking about the short timetable between missions. The ship reports back on Pike’s earlier inquiry and tells him that there are zero anomalous entities. He gets up and heads toward the door when he’s interrupted by Uhura, who says she has to talk to him immediately. “I’m your daughter!” she exclaims. “This is not happening,” Pike bemoans. Chapel tells Dr. M’Benga that La’An has the donor. Dr. M’Benga is thrilled and tries to prepare, but his hand is shaking fiercely. He takes off before Chapel can notice. Pike is impatient with Uhura’s admission and wants to know how he could be her father; Uhura lost her family in a shuttle accident years ago. Uhura says she was adopted and never knew her birth parents. All she had was this old recipe book, left with her at the orphanage. She’s convinced that Pike wrote it out for her. Dr. Chivers invites Uhura to sit and join them. Pike says, “I read your file—you are not adopted!” He admits he does see the crew as family, but is adamant that he doesn’t have a daughter. He knows that Uhura believes this all to be true—everyone on the crew does—but there’s something wrong. He’s seen this before—their lives turned upside-down by someone who can evade scans. “The fancy-coat-god guy!” Pike exclaims. Trelane (Rhys Darby) comes over the ship’s speakers and asks Pike to play along. “Show yourself!” Pike demands. © Christos Kalohoridis/Paramount+ With a snap of his fingers, Trelane appears in Pike’s room. He promises that this is nothing like his last visit, which was based on pettiness and spite. Trelane claims to have matured and says he wants to study humans more. He also says he’s fallen in love with “body cleaning theater.” Pike finally figures it out. “You turned the crew into a soap opera,” Pike says. Trelane turned them into a school project—one he likes to think of as a dissertation. Pike seems to understand that this is an experiment, and Trelane doesn’t much like that. Unfortunately, until Pike figures out his internal struggle, this experiment won’t end. Trelane snaps his fingers and disappears. The soap opera resumes, and Dr. Chivers suggest that she, Uhura, and Pike sit down for a family therapy session. Pike tries to leave—twice— to go deal with the “reckless entity” on the ship but is zapped back both times. Eventually, he relents. “I get it,” he says. “The only way out is through.” He sits down, surrendering to the situation. Uhura hands over the book, pointing out that page 28, coq au vin, is circled. Pike points out that every page is blank, causing Uhura to storm out. Back in his little screening room, Trelane is impressed. “You can’t plan for this type of drama.” The exam proctor appears in the background, asking if he did not plan for this. “Of course I planned for this,” he backpedals, trying to tell her that he can’t focus with her standing there watching. “Cut to camera one!” He snaps his fingers and we— Go to La’An’s shuttle. Sybok doesn’t understand why he has to give Spock his heart. He pulls La’An’s phaser on her and reveals that he has escaped from his cuffs. He’s willing to make a deal: they play kal-toh, the Vulcan game of logic. If she wins, he will give Spock his heart, willingly. In the galley, Chin-Riley sits with Dr. M’Benga. Chapel is very worried about him. Chin-Riley insists he doesn’t have to face this alone. Dr. M’Benga reveals his trembling hand. “I have… space madness!” Dr. M’Benga reveals. Chin-Riley gasps, and Ortegas looks over from another table, crooking her eyebrow. Back with Pike and Dr. Chivers, Pike is worried about being reinstated. Dr. Chivers tells him it doesn’t look good. She believes he is repressing something, and it started two weeks ago. She finally leaves, and he asks the computer to pull up all references to Trelane. But the computer can’t, because the files can only be opened by acting captain Chin-Riley. He tries to leave, and this time it works. Pike finds himself outside the galley, staring in at Uhura, who’s sitting at the bar. On the shuttle, Sybok thinks La’An is hiding a secret pain. She leans in, moving like she is going to kiss him. Instead, she whispers “kal-toh” into his ear and he pulls back to see she has won the game. Sybok shakes his head and pulls the phaser on her. “You were never going to help Spock,” La’An realizes. No, he wasn’t, but he thanks her for the shuttle. He plans to leave her on a nearby moon… unless she wants to run away with him. She’s offended by the offer. La’An defends Spock, and promises she isn’t leaving without a heart for Spock. © John Medland/Paramount+ On the ship, Pike apologizes to Uhura and offers to cook that one recipe with her, the one dated the same day as her parents’ crash. The perfect meal on the perfect date, Uhura mentions. Uhura says she needs to think about having dinner with Pike—what he said before really hurt. Meanwhile, Trelane is still watching all this, and he laughs. The proctor says she agrees with Uhura, and Trelane mocks her a bit, telling her to talk to the screen. She doesn’t respond, so Trelane goes back to the drama. Chin-Riley asks Dr. M’Benga if he really thinks he has space madness. He has the key symptom (the shaking), and he has lost his feeling of connection with Starfleet. Chin-Riley says she will miss him if he leaves Starfleet. Ortegas interrupts with something to lure Chin-Riley away. She leaves, and Ortegas says to Dr. M’Benga, “I know you have space madness.” Dr. M’Benga gives her a wary look. Sybok finds it deeply irritating that so many people love Spock. He changes the course of the shuttle, sending it back to the Enterprise. La’An is stunned, and Sybok insists that Spock isn’t the only one who can be good. I’ve got to say, La’An does a really nice shocked soap opera look. Ortegas admits to Dr. M’Benga that she had space madness, too. She didn’t tell him about it because of fear and stigma. It’s a heavy weight to carry. She’s been trying to let herself be vulnerable, trusting other people. “This disease will ravage you if you don’t have the support,” she says. She tells him that if she can pilot with space madness, then he can do a living heart transplant. Back in his room, all alone, Pike is wondering why they’re still like this. He’s frustrated, but then Uhura comes in. She admits she’s still mad, but what daughter isn’t mad at her dad every once in a while? She calls him “dad,” and he chuckles. Cooking together will be their first bonding experience. He opens to the recipe page, then his expression changes. He leaves. This upsets Trelane greatly…. and he cuts to commercial. © Brendan Adam-Zwelling/Paramount+ In sickbay, Dr. M’Benga and Chapel are up to their elbows in green Vulcan blood. Dr. M’Benga has the heart in place; now he just has to connect the blood vessels. La’An watches from a distance. Dr. M’Benga remembers Ortegas’ advice, telling him to look to his friends. His hand stops trembling, and he digs back in. Vitals are stable: it worked! La’An is relieved—until they get a “patient vitals unstable” reading on Sybok’s screen. Dr. M’Benga insists they clear the room. Pike finds Dr. Chivers in the galley. “How can something be both real and not real?” he asks. She asks if this is about being trapped in a soap opera (so she knows…?). She tells him, “I don’t know if Uhura is your daughter, but I know that her emotions are real, as are yours.” He shows her the recipe book but, this time, there’s writing in it. The page is for coq au vin, and it has a note on it: “Juliet’s birthday dinner. The perfect meal for the PERFECT daughter!” This takes Trelane by surprise. He is unfamiliar with Juliet. Pike returns to his room, where Juliet, his imagined daughter with Captain Marie Batel from the end of Strange New Worlds season three, is waiting for him. “I know, I know, I’ll get the wine proportions right…” “When you’re old enough to drink the rest of it,” Pike continues, mesmerized by his daughter’s presence. She toasts him and wishes a happy birthday to herself—well, two weeks ago. It’s all coming together in Pike’s brain. He hugs her deeply, and tells her that the life they had with her wasn’t real. It was just a cosmic hallucination. He sometimes wishes that life, the cosmic hallucination, was his real life. “Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” she says. She assures him it was all real, just in a different way. She leaves to catch her shuttle, and Pike is left with tears in his eyes. Juliet fades out into nothing. Trelane is eating popcorn with the proctor as they both sit and watch. “A real daughter? I did not see that coming,” he murmurs, in awe. The woman thanks him for bringing these “ants” to their attention. She gives him satisfactory marks—a solid B-. Trelane is pleased, and he snaps his fingers, calling for credits. Instead, we go back to where the show would normally start, over a view of the Enterprise. In voiceover, Pike talks about the spell being over. Everyone remembers everything and Pike never had amnesia. The crew sits in the galley, comparing and contrasting what’s real and what’s not. (There’s no such thing as a living heart transplant.) Pike comes in and tells them that he and Spock have gotten rid of all higher dimensional beings. To Uhura, he offers that they make that dinner together. Uhura agrees to that, and is sure to call him Captain, not dad. Pike promises to tell Chin-Riley about his story later, but there’s something he has to do first. La’An is in sickbay, staring at the bed where Spock had laid. Spock comes in and assures her he’s okay, his brother was not here, he is still in prison, and he isn’t Spock’s twin. In fact, La’An never even left the ship. She thinks that because Sybok was drawn from Spock’s mind, it explains why she saw so much of Spock in his brother. La’An is just trying to figure out why she had such deep feelings for Sybok—or, really, why she’s still in love with Spock. She doesn’t regret their break-up, but she didn’t realize how much she would miss him. Finally, we’re back with Pike and Dr. Chivers. She wants to talk about loss. He thinks this is about Marie, and he assures Dr. Chivers he already let her go. “We mourn the loss of a future with someone,” Dr. Chivers says. Juliet was real “in Pike’s world.” Pike finally begins to sob over how much he misses her. New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds arrive on Thursdays on Paramount+. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.