The puppet episode. An episode I suspect many fans were waiting for, if only to see if lightning could strike twice and Strange New Worlds could turn in two really strong unique genre episodes (the first, of course, being the shockingly good musical episode back in season two). Alas, this round of pushing the boundaries of television didn’t quite work. Not that it wasn’t a valiant effort – it was. And it had a couple of strong guest performances with the return of T’Pring and the scene stealing work of comedian Rachel Harris as the Orion captain. But the overall tone of the episode was off – it couldn’t decide whether it was truly meant to be a silly hour or if it wanted to keep some real dramatic stakes around not only the Orion attack but Spock’s continued difficulty centering himself. And that was its true mistake.
When you take a big swing like this, you have to make clear choices in the story itself. You cannot hedge your bets, because this is a truly crazy premise, and you can either lean into it and let chaos ensue or you can ground the story in reality. But you cannot do both. And when the episode embraced the weird and really let loose, I found it to be much more enjoyable than when it tried to work within the confines of a more traditional Star Trek story structure. Sure, there’s absolutely no reason the puppet crew should have been remotely successful in landing any punches or damage in that final chaos confrontation – especially since we saw how they never did before, even if life support was down near the end of the scuffle – but I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief because it was fun to watch. And the homage to Wrath of Khan with Kirk in the airlock? Yeah, I chuckled.
But to have Spock trying to deal with his own mental health while also trying to corral the entire crew and fly the ship? Yeah, didn’t love that as much. Of course, having the episode end like I suspect we all assumed it would – with Spock waking up a la Dorothy to discover it was just a dream? That negates a lot of the struggles he went through within the episode itself (as well as some of my quibbles with puppets and their physical abilities). What he learned, I suppose, will stay with him – and he’s going to get the chance to really chat with T’Pring and see if there’s still something there (which I approve of, seeing as she appears to have also done some work growing in their time apart). So, his weird puppet dream will have some positive outcomes for him moving forward. Especially since La’an rightly ended their relationship – she also needs to take some time and find herself, since she’s going through her own crisis at the moment.
Having said all this, we’ve reached the halfway point in the season, and I’m intrigued with the character balance of these initial episodes. So far, the season has been shockingly heavy on La’an, Spock, and Scotty, while several characters – mainly Uhura, M’Benga, and Chapel – have been almost non-entities thus far. Heck, I think Kirk has had more screen time than all three at this point. Which is strange, considering Chapel, in particular, was a focal point earlier in the series. I guess you have to be in a relationship with Spock to get a lot of screen time? I had hoped that this season would spread the focus around a bit more than it has. Spock and his difficultly reconciling the two halves of himself has been a plot point since the beginning of the series and continues to be one of the least interesting parts of the character, since we know it’s going to be an on-going theme throughout Spock’s life. So, why not explore other facets of the character? There have to be more interesting character beats. So, my hope for the back half of the season is that the show lets other characters shine. And that we get a little less of Spock and his existential crisis.
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