Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series and Enterprise.
I’m a bit late getting to Among the Lotus Eaters, so I apologise for that! I’m a couple of weeks behind with Strange New Worlds, and I hope to catch up over the next few days.
This episode brought several really interesting concepts to bear, gave Captain Pike his first proper outing of the season, and allowed us to spend more time with Lieutenant Ortegas than in any other story thus far. It took us back to a mission referenced in The Menagerie and The Cage all the way back in The Original Series, but put an unexpected spin on it. And all in all, I had a good time with Among the Lotus Eaters.
If I were to make one criticism of the episode it would be that it was perhaps a little overambitious – not in terms of its singular main story, nor even in its B-plot with Captain Pike’s romance, but rather in terms of the number of characters it tried to include. There wasn’t quite enough time to flesh out everyone’s experience with the memory-loss radiation, and I felt that Among the Lotus Eaters – somewhat ironically, given the storyline – seemed to jump quite quickly from one point to another, almost as if there were missing scenes or sequences that could have explained things a little more and provided the story with better pacing.
We missed out on seeing, for example, how the crew of the Enterprise regained their memories and returned to normal, how Dr M’Benga held off the Kalar warriors and went back for La’an, how Spock reacted to losing his memories, and how Dr M’Benga re-learned his medical skills. Unlike the deliberate time-skips – which were well-executed in the episode – these “missing” moments could have added something extra to the story, and if Among the Lotus Eaters had used fewer characters, or used the ones it included sparingly, more could have been made of some of these impactful moments.
For the past three weeks I’d been commenting on how odd it has felt to see Strange New Worlds proceeding with so little input from Captain Pike – and I stand by that, even as I enjoyed what each of those episodes brought to the table. So it was fantastic to see Pike back in action this time, even though he spent much of the episode without his memories.
Captain Pike isn’t just the heart of Strange New Worlds, he’s the reason why the series came to exist in the first place. The incredibly positive reaction that fans had to Anson Mount’s portrayal in Discovery’s second season led to the series being commissioned, and Mount has been a joy to watch in every episode of the series so far. He put in a complex performance this week with some unusual material, and Pike’s connection with Captain Batel managed to keep things grounded and understandable, even as sci-fi shenanigans about radiation-induced memory loss and a rogue forgotten yeoman played out around him.
This episode is the first since Enterprise’s second season episode The Communicator that really took a look at the idea of cultural contamination and its impact on Starfleet’s mission of exploration. The two stories play out very differently, and combined they make a great example of how Star Trek can take the same basic premise but have it play out completely differently each time. But as fans, and as people who are invested in this fictional setting, learning more about how Starfleet operates – and in this case, how the organisation behaves when things go wrong – is fascinating. We caught a glimpse of something we don’t always get to see in Star Trek: the aftermath of one of these “away mission gone wrong” setups that the franchise has used fairly regularly.
Speaking as we were of storylines that could’ve been fleshed out a little more, I think a flashback to the events of the original mission wouldn’t have gone amiss in Among the Lotus Eaters. Nor would a flashback depicting Zac’s rise to power on Rigel VII – or at least part of it. Zac himself, despite being the episode’s nominal villain, feels pretty flat and one-dimensional, and some additional explanation could’ve elevated him somewhat.
In fact, a better presentation of Zac could have nudged a fairly black-and-white story into a greyer area. If you think about it, what was Zac to do, stranded on a hostile planet with no hope of communication or rescue? Finding a way to preserve his memories – by using the ore that protected them – was about the only thing he could do, and using the resources at his disposal – i.e. his Starfleet kit – makes a degree of sense. There was a pathway here to tell a story with a villain who, if not sympathetic because of the extreme actions he took, was at least understandable, or the predicament in which he found himself could have been presented in that way.
Because we didn’t spend much time with Zac, I didn’t really get any strong feelings about him either way. I wasn’t desperate to see him beaten in the way I can be for some villains, but I also didn’t feel much by way of sympathy for his plight, either. He felt less a fully-rounded character than a plot device; an obstacle for Pike and the others to overcome just as they had to overcome their memory loss.
Captain Pike stated up-front that the cultural contamination of Rigel VII was on him – and he’s right, because as captain, the buck stops with him. He also noted that it was a chaotic mission that necessitated a rapid escape. But even so, I can’t be the only one who thinks that Pike and the away team managed to leave a lot of Starfleet junk behind, can I? I mean, Zac had at least half a dozen phaser rifles, an entire crate of Starfleet supplies, a tricorder, a medical kit, and more. Leaving behind a rogue phaser or communicator is one thing… but an entire crate full of stuff? Not to mention a crewman, too. That’s some sloppy away team work right there!
And I know: that’s a nitpick. It was necessary for the story to have all of those things in place. But c’mon… we should expect higher standards from the Captain of the Enterprise! If Rigel VII wasn’t afflicted with that memory-erasing radiation, leaving behind an entire crate full of Federation goodies could have completely altered the destiny of the planet. As it is, Starfleet may just get away with this blatant failure. But it’s not exactly a great look!
I’ve been racking my brain, thinking about The Cage and The Menagerie, but I don’t believe that anything in Among the Lotus Eaters contradicts or overwrites what we saw in those episodes. Strange New Worlds has managed to thread the needle: expanding our knowledge and updating a classic story but without treading on its toes. That’s something the series has consistently managed to get right, and I’m pleased to see the trend continue here.
Rigel VII is a planet that has been name-dropped in Star Trek on multiple occasions, often in throwaway lines or even in the background of episodes, but that we only really saw in that first-season episode way back when. It was actually quite nice to take a deeper dive into the mysterious planet, learning more about its inhabitants. Seeing a softer side to the Kalar was interesting, too, as the only Kalar we’d seen before were violent warriors.
Among the Lotus Eaters takes more than its fair share of leaps in logic and contrivances with its central memory loss concept. What knowledge is retained and how after “the forgetting” seems to jump around at the behest of the plot, with the Kalar seeming to hold onto things like the basic operation of their tools in a way that Starfleet personnel didn’t. A central idea on Rigel VII was the totem – mentioned repeatedly but barely so much as glimpsed on screen. The Kalar seemingly retained enough knowledge to look at the totem and decipher its pictograms, understanding from that where they were and what was expected of them. But aboard the Enterprise, Spock and the crew seemed to lose a lot more of their memories and knowledge.
Connecting retained memories to strong emotions was an interesting idea – and one that has some basis in fact, or at least can in some cases. But again, the way this came across on screen seemed inconsistent at best. While everyone aboard the Enterprise wandered around the halls aimlessly, only Lieutenant Ortegas seemed to have a strong enough emotional connection to her work to be able to break through. Are we to assume, then, that Nurse Chapel in sickbay, Pelia in engineering, and everyone else in every department aboard the ship couldn’t do the same? It’s a bit of a leap.
On the planet’s surface, the same was true of Pike and the away team. Pike seemed to retain a lot more of his personality than the crew of the Enterprise, and even compared to the Kalar and the other members of the away team, he managed to hang onto more of himself. If the story had stronger foundations, with an explanation for these discrepancies in the radiation-induced memory loss that was perhaps more easily followed, I think this would’ve worked better.
I think that Among the Lotus Eaters wanted to include something about proximity; that the Enterprise crew were more severely affected because the ship moved closer to the radiation-emitting asteroids. And indeed the epilogue states this as fact in voiceover form. But it wasn’t readily apparent on screen in the moment just what was going on, nor why Pike was able to push through the memory loss to a far greater extent. And that explanation still falls short when it comes to Ortegas and her ability to pilot the ship with finesse, fire the phasers, and generally drag everyone out of the difficult situation they were in.
If we take Among the Lotus Eaters’ memory loss idea as being a metaphor for conditions like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, we can see Strange New Worlds doing what Star Trek has always done: taking a sci-fi lens to examine a real-world situation. I’m no expert, but I think many of us know or knew a close relative who suffered, to a degree, with a condition like this, and there are definitely areas where this episode seemed to be at least acknowledging the comparison.
Some dementia patients, for example, remember how to perform tasks through “muscle memory,” which isn’t a million miles away from how Ortegas knew how to fly the Enterprise. Seeing the Enterprise crew silently and absently shuffling through the ship’s corridors also brought back memories of visiting an elderly relative in a care facility some years ago, and seeing patients there behaving in a simliar way.
When Star Trek looks at real-world ailments through its sci-fi lens, one thing I’ve always found inspirational is the idea that one day, through advancements in science and technology, life-limiting or even fatal conditions that impact people today can and will be cured. Geordi’s blindness is a great example, and his line in The Next Generation to a Romulan officer that the 24th Century Federation sees value in everyone is something I’ve long felt embodied this aspect of the franchise.
With that in mind, if we stretch our dementia metaphor to its logical end point… I don’t really see what point, if any, Strange New Worlds intended to make. Its sci-fi ailment came with an equally sci-fi resolution, and while one of the Kalar expressed gratitude for regaining his memories and seemed to come to understand their value… that was quite a rapid turnaround for a single secondary character, and wasn’t really enough on its own to be a payoff to a story like this. Maybe I’ve overthought this aspect of Among the Lotus Eaters based on a couple of scenes that felt close to some of my personal experiences.
Spock’s role this week, while relatively small, was nonetheless an interesting one. Spock’s journey in Strange New Worlds isn’t about recreating exactly the character we’re familiar with from The Original Series, but exploring who he was before that and how he came to become that individual. Seeing Spock make a mistake, taking the Enterprise to the asteroid field on the assumption that it would provide cover, feels like something that could have been a big step for him.
We’ll have to see if this moment is called back to in future episodes, because based on Among the Lotus Eaters alone, I don’t think we really gained a lot of insight into Spock. We saw in a strictly factual sense that Spock can make a mistake, or that his assumptions can be wrong, and I can see how we might extrapolate from that and say that it’s one reason why Spock is so hesitant to make guesses or assumptions as he gets older. But none of that was explicitly stated on screen, and I’d like to see a bit more of that when these kinds of stories arise for Spock.
So here’s a question: was the Kalar palace on Rigel VII supposed to be the exact same one as Pike and co. visited years earlier? Strange New Worlds has updated and, for want of a better term, retconned a number of designs and aesthetic elements across both seasons so far, and when you combine that with the fact that Zac may have made changes in order to better shield the palace and its occupants… I think we can make the case for this castle being the same one that had been seen in The Menagerie and The Cage.
The design was neat in some ways, though I would say – not for the first time in Star Trek – that the castle’s interior and exterior didn’t quite gel. I’d have liked to have seen more of the palace’s exterior design reflected in the set used for its interior – or vice versa. The exterior sets were all created with the help of Paramount’s AR wall, and parts of the snowy, windswept landscape felt quite similar to Season 1’s Valeo Beta V – the planet seen in All Those Who Wander. Neither of these things were bad per se, but it’s the first time in the show so far where I felt that set design was perhaps letting the story down somewhat.
So let’s start to wrap things up!
Among the Lotus Eaters brought together two genuinely interesting concepts: the memory loss radiation and revisiting the only other mission and planet that we saw in The Menagerie and The Cage. Talos IV, remember, had been seen a couple of years ago during Discovery’s second season. Strange New Worlds has now exhausted “classic Pike” storylines, if we can use that definition here.
The memory loss idea was imperfect in its execution, with contrivances involving the extent of characters’ amnesia, the way in which it manifested, and how they were able to push through using emotion or connections to the world around them. Some more explanation – even if it had been little more than technobabble – could have limited the damage here, and built a stronger foundation for this idea.
As a metaphor for conditions like dementia, I’m not sure how well Among the Lotus Eaters’ memory loss storyline worked. There was a visual presentation of the Enterprise’s crew that felt uncomfortably real, and the real-world ideas of emotion and “muscle memory” being able to cut through have a basis in fact. But I’m not sure what – if anything – this story wanted to say. It was wrapped up neatly by the end of the episode, with the implication being that Pike’s decision to remove the meteorite would bring a permanent end to the Kalar’s “forgetting.”
On the other hand, the character moments in Among the Lotus Eaters – particularly with Pike and Ortegas – were strong. Pike’s internal dilemma about his burgeoning relationship with Captain Batel was believable, complex, and cute, and the way Pike reached out to Una for guidance went a long way to cementing their relationship as captain and first officer, too. Pike being able to break through his memory loss by focusing on his strong feelings for Batel and the gift she’d given him not only provided a (somewhat convenient) route for the story to take, but also told us a lot about Pike himself.
All things considered, I had a good time this week. Among the Lotus Eaters probably isn’t Strange New Worlds’ strongest episode, but it’s a Star Trek story through-and-through. It had an interesting mystery, a sci-fi/fantasy storyline that verged on the mystical, some exciting moments of action, and a villain who, while not as well-developed as I’d have liked, was strong enough to keep things entertaining.
I haven’t watched Charades yet, but I hope to take a look at that episode in the next day or two, and to get back on track with this season’s episode reviews. Thanks for bearing with me!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 