strange new worlds la'an – Trekking with Dennis

Strange New Worlds: Taking Stock

A Strange New Worlds-themed spoiler warning.

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, Discovery, and Picard.

At time of writing, Season 3 of Strange New Worlds has just concluded. With Starfleet Academy on the schedule for the first half of next year, and with Season 4 having only finished filming a few weeks ago, there’s gonna be a wait of a year-plus before we’ll see it – late 2026 or early 2027 is my guess, barring any strikes or similar disruptions! So it’s a bit early to look ahead – but Strange New Worlds is on my mind right now.

What I want to do this time is try to take stock of how the series has performed so far, as well as look ahead to a few things that I’d like to see in Seasons 4 and/or 5. This isn’t going to be a review or a recap of Season 3, though obviously we’ll talk about Season 3 along the way, but rather a broader overview of how I see Strange New Worlds now that we’re three seasons in – and, regrettably, past the halfway point of what will be a forty-six-episode run.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing the Enterprise at warp. — The final shot of Season 3.

As always, a couple of caveats before we get much further. Firstly, I have no “insider information,” so anything I say about possible future episodes and stories should be viewed through that lens! And secondly, all of this is the subjective, not objective, opinion of one old Trekkie. If you disagree with me about Strange New Worlds, hate my take, or want to see the series go in a completely different direction… that’s okay! There’s enough room in the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion and polite disagreement.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way… let’s talk Strange New Worlds!

Season 3 was, on the whole, pretty good. There were a couple of dud episodes, but even those had some redeeming qualities. It felt a bit more serialised this time, thanks to the ongoing Batel-Gorn storyline, but still episodic enough that we got a diverse mix of stories. If I had to highlight two episodes for special praise, I’d pick Through the Lens of Time and Terrarium. I think Through the Lens of Time is, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps somewhat let down by a weaker conclusion in the season finale, but on its own it’s still a solid episode. And Terrarium is just fantastic across the board.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing Ortegas on an away mission. — Ortegas in *Terrarium*.

In terms of characters, I’d like to see Strange New Worlds do more with some of its original creations, rather than leaning so heavily on the younger versions of TOS characters. Scotty seems to have taken precedence over Pelia for a lot of engineering storylines, such as in A Space Adventure Hour, and because Pelia is just a ton of fun… that doesn’t sit right. She’s the chief engineer, and he’s… what? A glorified assistant at best. And although sometimes lacking in confidence, this version of Scotty is still working engineering miracles. We’ve seen that before, and while there’s definitely fun to be had in seeing Scotty’s growth and the development of some of his friendships with folks like Uhura and Kirk… I don’t want that to overwhelm an original character like Pelia.

I’ve said this before, but if Star Trek had relied so heavily on legacy characters when considering spin-offs in the 1980s and 1990s, the franchise would feel a lot smaller today. We might never have met the likes of Picard, Sisko, or Janeway if the folks in charge had insisted on retaining characters from past iterations of Star Trek – and I’m just a little concerned that the attention dedicated to legacy characters is beginning to overshadow the rest of the cast. Spock was almost omnipresent this season, and we got stories heavily focused on Kirk, Chapel, Scotty, and Uhura, too. I’m glad that we finally got an Ortegas episode – and that it was so darn good! But with only sixteen episodes remaining, I’d really like to see Strange New Worlds strike more of a balance between characters who’ll go on to play big roles in TOS and the rest of the cast.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing Kirk in the captain's chair of the Farragut. — Kirk in command.

I mentioned this in one of my Season 3 episode reviews, but La’an being related to iconic Star Trek villain Khan has been a complete nothing-burger so far, and unless something major changes on that front… I’m gonna reach the end of the series wishing she’d been given a different last name. If you know me, you know I’m not a stickler for the tiniest minutiae of “canon,” but given how important Khan is to Kirk, Spock, and really to Star Trek as a whole… making La’an a direct relative of Khan kind of treads on the toes of what was established in Space Seed. If there’d been a big narrative payoff for that, it could’ve easily been worth it. But so far? I’m afraid it hasn’t been.

Think about it like this: what would change about La’an if her last name had been… Shellac-Wombat instead of Noonien-Singh? She could still have been a descendant of augments. She could still have survived the Gorn as a kid. She could still have felt shame about her ancestry. She could still have developed a friendship with Una, fallen for Kirk, and gotten into bed with Spock. Her iconic ancestor doesn’t matter one iota – and because of how important Khan still is to the franchise, I don’t think that’s good enough. There’s just no reason to have made her a member of Khan’s family – and right now, the name feels like little more than cheap nostalgia bait.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing La'an peeking out from a hiding place. — La’an in Season 2.

What appealed to me the most about “the Captain Pike show” in the aftermath of Discovery’s second season was spending more time with Anson Mount’s take on the character. Season 1 gave us a decent mix of Pike and other characters, but the captain seems to have stepped out of the limelight a little in Seasons 2 and 3. There were whole episodes this season where Pike got remarkably little to do, and one of his bigger roles – in Four-and-a-Half Vulcans – was far from his best. Anson Mount did a great job, by the way, in that kind of comedic role… but I just wasn’t thrilled about the end product.

So in Seasons 4 and 5, I hope we get to see a bit more of Pike. That doesn’t mean every story needs to put the captain front-and-centre, but there have been moments in some episodes which could’ve been perfect for Pike to step up and play a role – but where writing decisions meant other characters came to the fore. Maybe you think this contradicts my earlier wish to see more of Strange New Worlds’ original creations – but I kind of include Pike, Una, and Dr M’Benga along with the brand-new characters, as their roles prior to this series were much smaller.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing Pike holding a wine glass. — It’s still “the Captain Pike show” to me!

There are plenty of great characters on the show, and with only sixteen episodes left – and presumably at least one or two new recurring or secondary characters to be added – there are clearly gonna be constraints on how often Pike can be centre-stage… and I get that. But this is, for me, still “the Captain Pike show,” so when Pike is absent, relegated to a background role, or even mischaracterised – as I’d argue he was, to an extent, in episodes like Under the Cloak of War and Four-and-a-Half Vulcans – then a big part of Strange New Worlds is missing.

This leads into one of the concerns I have going into the remainder of the series: filming for Season 4 has already concluded, and Season 5 is currently underway. There’s no time for Skydance/Paramount to address feedback from Season 3; it’s too late to make any changes to the stories that have already been created. And given that Season 3 did have a couple of misfires and, I would argue, an over-use of characters like Kirk and Spock at the expense of Pike and some of Strange New Worlds’ original characters… that could be a problem. Feedback is important, especially in the modern streaming television landscape, and unfortunately, Strange New Worlds went ahead with producing Season 4 and 5 before there was a chance for any significant responses to Season 3 to be known. Hopefully, because the show is still pretty good, that won’t be too much of a problem. But I worry that the creative team may have doubled-down on some of the things that fans and viewers have been less keen on this time around.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing the Enterprise bridge. — Pike and the crew on the bridge.

Returning to Pike, I don’t think we need to see his accident and disability again at the end of the show. That story has already been told in Discovery, in The Original Series, and in a couple of Strange New Worlds episodes, so ending the show that way would, I would argue, be repetitive. If Kirk hadn’t been such a big presence this season, I’d probably have said that the series finale should show Pike handing over the Enterprise to Kirk – and a big part of me still believes that will be the final shot of the series. But given Kirk’s expanded role… I think some of the impact of that will be lost, even if the moment itself is handled well.

Instead, I think Strange New Worlds needs its very own Undiscovered Country-type of story. Perhaps Pike and the crew get word that the Enterprise is to undergo a major refit, and that Pike himself is to be promoted. The crew have one final mission to undertake – perhaps against the Klingons, the Gorn, or another well-known antagonist. The mission could be intense, explosive, and action-packed, but rather than the final moments of the show depicting the handover to Kirk… I’d like to see Pike on the bridge, setting course for parts unknown one final time.

Cropped comic book cover from the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds spin off series. — Ortegas, Una, Chapel, and Spock from one of the *Strange New Worlds* comic books.

We’ve had it confirmed in a recent interview that the creative team weren’t sure a renewal was coming after Season 3, which I think explains a few major decisions this time around. It explains why there was such a rush to do the “backdoor pilot” for their Year One idea, with Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Chapel, and Uhura all working together. It explains why some characters – like Chapel and Uhura – now feel like they’re coming to the ends of their arcs on the show. And it explains that epilogue in the season finale, which I said in my review felt like it was intended to serve as the ultimate ending to the show if it hadn’t been picked up for more episodes.

Some of those decisions could, if the creative team are aware of them, open up different possibilities in Seasons 4 and 5. We’ve already had the “Kirk in command” Year One spin-off episode. So check that one off the list – no need to do that again. Chapel’s relationship with Dr Korby has emerged, gone through a couple of bumps in the road, and gotten to a point where he doesn’t need to regularly reappear. Uhura’s grown in confidence and ability, taking her from a raw cadet unsure of her place in Starfleet to a confident officer who was even willing to bend the rules. Spock has just been all over the place… but even if we never got another Spock episode, I think we can safely say we’ve spent more than enough time with him, too!

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing Spock. — Spock.

So that should open up other opportunities. We haven’t had a major storyline for Una since the beginning of Season 2 (and no, getting horny for Patton Oswalt doesn’t count). We finally got our Ortegas episode, three seasons in, but there’s still scope to do more with her character. It would be nice to get a story for Dr M’Benga that doesn’t revolve around either his violent past or some other secret he’s keeping from his shipmates – perhaps one that could explain why, by the time of The Original Series, he’s no longer the chief medical officer.

Then there’s the secondary cast. Mitchell’s been a regular on the bridge – maybe the show could do something with her? Admiral April’s family was hinted at in the Season 3 finale, as was his friendship with Pike, so perhaps a story in which he’s in focus would be well-received. I’d also love to get one more story featuring Hemmer! Perhaps a time-travel story, of some kind, could see Hemmer getting some screen time with Scotty? That could be absolutely fantastic if handled well. And Sam Kirk has been rather overshadowed by Spock in the science department and his brother, but it would be lovely to get a story in which he’s in focus, for once.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing Sam Kirk holding a machine. — Sam Kirk in Season 2.

You’ll have heard me say this before (I often use it as a bit of a caveat when talking about episodes I didn’t like!) but I’m really glad to see Strange New Worlds remaining a mostly episodic show. Discovery and Picard both went for big, season-long serialised arcs… but for me, that’s not really what I’ve wanted from Star Trek. In past shows, where seasons were longer and there was more room for manoeuvre, arcs like the Dominion War worked pretty well. But in the modern television landscape, where there are fewer episodes and fewer seasons available, I think Star Trek really needs the diversity and options that only an episodic format can deliver.

So, as production gets underway on Season 5… please keep the episodic format! A two-part or even three-part finale could work, sure, but I hope that at least some of Season 5 can retain the episodic charm that has made Strange New Worlds feel like such a nostalgic throwback in the best possible way. It wasn’t until I started watching Strange New Worlds that I came to recognise how much I’ve missed episodic television – and how essential the format is to a franchise like Star Trek.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing zombies. — The zombies in *Shuttle to Kenfori*.

Star Trek shows need the freedom to explore strange new worlds… pretty much every week. The Enterprise needs to visit a planet, meet an alien, then warp away to a different destination next time. As Strange New Worlds has demonstrated, that doesn’t mean you have to lose character growth, personal relationships, and other modern television trappings. But it means that, for a franchise all about exploring the galaxy, spending too long in one place or having too narrow a focus isn’t what works best. And I’m not alone in feeling that way, I suspect.

I think there’s room for something like a two-part finale to wrap up the show, or even a two-part cliffhanger in between Seasons 4 and 5, as we got with Seasons 2 and 3. One or both of those ideas could be great. But what I don’t want to see, really, is for Seasons 4 and 5 to go down the Discovery/Picard route of being fully serialised, as I think that would take away so much of what has made Strange New Worlds work. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the Strange New Worlds model – which I’d describe as episodic with character arcs – should be adopted by Starfleet Academy and by any other Star Trek project that might get greenlit in the years ahead. It’s absolutely the best choice for this franchise.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing La'an on the holodeck. — La’an on the holodeck.

At this stage, with Starfleet Academy on the schedule for early 2026, I’m not convinced that Strange New Worlds’ fourth season will be ready in time for the 60th anniversary, which is now less than a year away! But if I could be allowed one “wish,” it would be for Season 4 to contain some kind of celebratory episode, perhaps a story akin to my Cardassia Prime pitch, which would bring in characters and factions from elsewhere in the franchise.

The 60th anniversary is an opportunity to celebrate a milestone that few franchises ever reach. And let’s be honest: with all the cancellations and Paramount+ struggling, being able to do anything big for the 70th or 75th seems unlikely! And speaking for myself… I might not be here by then! So I’d dearly love to see at least one Season 4 episode written as a “love letter” to Star Trek and to the fans, really leaning into the 60th anniversary and celebrating all things Star Trek.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showing an illusion of Hemmer. — A 60th anniversary episode could really celebrate the franchise.

Before we wrap things up, I have a couple of much siller, almost-certain-never-to-be-made ideas. The first is one I’ve talked about a few times here on the website: rescuing Captain Lorca! Lorca appeared in Discovery’s first season, and the prime timeline version of the character is assumed to have died in the Mirror Universe… but what if he didn’t? Captain Pike could lead a rescue effort, stepping through the looking-glass to save a friend. I think that could be a ton of fun as an episode.

And finally… I still kinda want to see a “Captain Pike versus the Borg” story! Yes, there are timeline problems. Yes, it would tread on the toes of canon. And yes, the Borg have been overused in Picard in recent years. But still… I think you could write a script which sees Pike’s Enterprise catapulted to an alternate universe where the Borg are dominant, with Spock saying “it’s unlikely a cybernetic race like this exists in our universe,” and where La’an, Dr M’Benga, and the rest of the crew have to battle drones and figure out a way home. I just think it would be a really fun idea.

Still frame from Star Trek: First Contact showing a borg drone. — I know, I know… it ain’t gonna happen!

So that’s all for today!

We’ve talked about Strange New Worlds, the show’s first three seasons, some of its characters, and a few things I’d like to see going forward. I’m still disappointed that the show has been prematurely cancelled – especially because it happened before Season 3 had aired a single episode. But we are where we are, and there are now just sixteen episodes left. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some wonderful adventures before Captain Pike and co. have to hang up their uniforms for the final time.

I hope this has been interesting. I wanted to talk about the show more broadly now that Season 3 has ended. I still don’t think we’re gonna see Season 4 before next autumn at the earliest – and a 2027 release doesn’t seem impossible, either, given the lengthy post-production involved for modern shows. So… it could be a while before we rejoin Pike, Spock, Una, and the rest of the crew. Before then, I’d like to finally write up some Season 1 episodes, which I didn’t do at the time because Paramount cut off Strange New Worlds from an international audience! And if and when there’s a trailer, a teaser, or more information revealed about the upcoming season, I daresay I’ll take a look. Until then… Live Long and Prosper!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform exists. The first two seasons are also available on DVD/Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance and/or Paramount. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 3: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Tue 04.07.23Wed 05.07.23Dennis

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: Picard Season 2, Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was an interesting episode – and one of the better time travel stories in modern Star Trek. Its central pairing of La’an and an alternate timeline Kirk was interesting, and one that accomplished the objective of putting them together but without treading on the toes of established canon; Kirk’s legendary conflict with the original Khan Noonien Singh is something that modern Star Trek needs to preserve at all costs!

There were a few contrivances in the episode, though, and both the opening act and Kirk’s willingness to erase his own timeline seemed to be quite rushed. That’s despite Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow being the longest episode of the season so far!

I’ve commented on this twice already this season, but here we go again: where oh where is Captain Pike?! Was Anson Mount unavailable for part of the season’s production? In the first episode, Pike was present only briefly before taking off on a mission of his own. Last week, the opening act saw Pike recruit Una’s lawyer – but he was then sidelined and didn’t have much to say. And this week, Pike got one line in a very short sequence right at the end of the episode. Is Paramount paying Anson Mount by the line these days? What’s going on?!

I say that jokingly – but Strange New Worlds was “the Captain Pike show” when we were campaigning to make it happen. You have to admit that it’s odd, at the very least, for Pike to have been so thoroughly absent in the first part of this season. Basically one-third of Season 2 has now progressed with very little input from the Enterprise’s captain. In past iterations of Star Trek there were always spotlight episodes for individuals and stories in which some characters were more prominent than others… but these came in longer seasons, and it was still relatively uncommon to go three episodes in a row with the captain having so little to do. In modern Star Trek it’s unprecedented; can you imagine if Discovery had run three episodes with so little screen time for Burnham? I just find the whole thing rather perplexing – even though I’ve enjoyed each of these three episodes.

Captain Pike was once again notable by his absence from the story.

Let’s talk about a specific story criticism. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow saw La’an make wild assumptions and leaps that had no basis in fact or logic. Given that she’s been thrust into a completely new and unfamiliar situation, her assumption that she must have been sent to a specific timeline to team up with Kirk, or to a specific moment in the past for a reason, or that the device she was given wouldn’t “unlock” until she’d completed her mission… all of these things and more needed more time to play out.

As much as I dislike Picard’s second season, the episode Penance is actually a reasonably good example of this “fish-out-of-water” idea. In that story, Picard and several of his crewmates find themselves in an alternate timeline, separated from one another and with no idea of what’s going on. It takes them basically an entire episode just to piece together what’s happened and get back together; it’s not something that can or should be rushed in the way that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow tried to do.

La’an and Kirk made some wild leaps in logic.

We know that La’an is capable and self-reliant, but her completely baseless assumptions – though validated in a way by the resolution of the story – undermine her characterisation and significantly weaken the episode. Because of the time constraint, it was necessary for La’an to quickly assess the situation she found herself in and come up with a plan – but there may have been ways to cut some other scenes and sequences down, giving this incredibly important setup more time to play out.

This is also true, to an extent, of other parts of the episode. After seeing the bombing and chasing after stolen parts, La’an and Kirk seemed to pretty quickly figure out – again, via baseless assumption – what they had been sent to the past to do. Although Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow found time to slow down in between these rushed moments, the main plot of the episode seemed to leap from point to point incredibly quickly, leaving very little time to digest what was going on. I wanted to shout at La’an and Kirk to slow down and give me a moment to catch my breath!

While we’re picking holes in the story, I’ll say this: time travel can be exceptionally difficult to get right in any fictional setting. It’s all too easy to write oneself into a corner, relying on paradoxes, tropes, and “you can’t tell anyone this ever happened” in order to get out of it. The end of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow raises such a point: if the Department of Temporal Investigations knew what was going on and were able to observe La’an and Kirk, why didn’t they intervene?

La’an is a 23rd Century security officer, and Kirk was a starship captain from a dystopian timeline that shouldn’t exist. They are categorically not the best-qualified people to stop a Romulan super-spy from the future… not without help or guidance, at any rate. If the episode had ended without the official from Temporal Investigations showing up, I guess we could have written it off as the first agent turning to La’an out of desperation. But knowing that this organisation had been watching her all along… it kind of smacks of Enterprise’s Temporal Agent Daniels teaming up with the 22nd Century’s Captain Archer. Surely these organisations have their own staff!

Doesn’t the Department of Temporal Investigations have its own staff?!

That being said, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow might just be my favourite Star Trek time travel story – or at least my favourite one for a long while! Time travel to the modern day is difficult to get right, and practically every Star Trek episode that’s taken this approach has also taken its crew to the sunlit coast of southern California. This happened in Voyager, in Picard, and even in The Voyage Home. By taking the simple step of visiting Toronto (where the series is filmed) Strange New Worlds was already doing something different. I appreciated that.

I was worried that, coming only a year after Picard Season 2 had spent eight-and-a-half episodes wandering in the 21st Century, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow might just turn me off before it even got started. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and we got a good mix of lighthearted moments. Kirk and La’an having to figure out how to dress and how to act in an unfamiliar environment stood in contrast to the heavier storyline involving time-travelling terrorists and a plot to stop the Federation from ever being created.

There were lighter moments to balance out a heavy story.

This last point – preventing the Federation from coming into existence – was a fascinating one that I would have loved to explore in more detail. Because it was only revealed at the climax of the plot that the Federation’s existence hinged upon disaster, genocide, and the reign of terror that Khan brought to Earth, there wasn’t an awful lot of time to get into the real implications of this – and of the decision that La’an was forced to make.

But this is such an interesting idea! I even wondered if Picard’s aforementioned second season might’ve been going for a similar setup, because the idea of having to consciously choose to permit something so horrific is a real moral quandary. In that moment, La’an was face-to-face with one of Earth’s most brutal dictators. She could have chosen to kill him, sparing Earth the torment that she knows is 100% guaranteed to happen. But she didn’t – she couldn’t. Not because she wanted it to happen, but because she knew that without those horrors, the future would be radically and almost unimaginably altered.

The fact that La’an has a personal family tie here makes it an even more complex idea. La’an has spent her life living in the shadow of an infamous, hated ancestor – and she was given an opportunity to prevent any of that from ever happening. The themes at play here, expressed through La’an’s decision and the impossible choice that befell her, are incredibly deep, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tommorow almost feels like an episode posing a challenge to its viewers: what would you have done in her place?

This storyline also updates that of Khan and his augments, changing parts of Star Trek’s internal timeline. The Romulan super-spy seemed to imply that the actions of a variety of time-traveling factions may be to blame for Khan’s rise to power taking place decades later than it was supposed to – and that’s something we’ll have to digest or figure out later if it ever returns as a major plot point!

For now, suffice to say that I’m not a canon “purist,” and I like the idea of Star Trek refreshing and updating itself. That being said, I don’t necessarily feel that the specific timing of Khan’s rise to power is some kind of gaping plot hole that needs to be plugged, even as Star Trek continues to tell modern-day time-travel stories that, in theory, contradict or overwrite parts of the franchise’s prior history. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow could have proceeded just fine without this somewhat ambiguous line.

This was, perhaps, Strange New Worlds throwing a bone to long-term fans: people like you and I who remember Spock’s line in Space Seed confirming that Khan’s ship left Earth in the late 1990s. Is that a discrepancy? Sure, of course it is. But does it matter? Should all future Star Trek projects avoid modern-day time-travel because the franchise’s fictional history tells us that the late 20th and early 21st Centuries are radically different from how they actually turned out to be? Personally I don’t think so – though canon purists may disagree!

The crew of the Enterprise will meet Khan again…

At first, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be sold on Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s Kirk-La’an relationship. But as the story progressed, this turned out to be one of the episode’s strongest elements. The slow buildup to their shared kiss stood in contrast to other story beats that felt rushed or blitzed through too quickly, and by the time Kirk was dying in La’an’s arms, the love story that the episode had constructed truly hit home and formed a much stronger emotional core to the story than I’d been expecting.

Paul Wesley has earned my respect for not only taking on the role of Captain Kirk – a role that is fraught with criticism and that is watched hawkishly by fans – but for putting his own spin on it. Wesley’s Kirk isn’t an attempt to mimic William Shatner’s portrayal – nor Chris Pine’s, come to that. Paul Wesley has made the role his own, showing off his own range, his own emotions, and his own comedic timing. It’s not a carbon copy – any more than Ethan Peck’s Spock is a carbon copy of Leonard Nimoy’s. But I’m impressed with what he’s done with the character – and this alternate version in particular gave the actor a fair amount of leeway.

Does La’an’s contact with Pelia form a paradox? I guess we could argue that it does! If Pelia was inspired to become an engineer by La’an in the past, then investigating her possessions was the reason why La’an was alone in the corridor when she crossed over to the alternate timeline, then… wait, my head hurts.

Pelia’s role in the episode was fun, paradoxes aside. It was neat to see Kirk and La’an tracking her down in the past, and the resolution to this side of the story both gives a bit of background to Pelia that we didn’t have before while also being a lighter moment as it became clear that she wasn’t an engineer and would be of no help whatsoever in creating a tracking device. Again, the resolution to this point felt rather contrived and rushed, but the scenes between La’an, Kirk, and Pelia were more than strong enough to carry the story through.

*Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow* was interesting for the character of Pelia.

Although it was obvious that there would be no “happily ever after” for La’an and Kirk, the way in which the latter was killed was still pretty brutal by Star Trek standards. The episode did a reasonable job at setting up the idea that La’an and Kirk had hope that he might’ve been able to transport back to the prime timeline, but it still felt like a sure thing that that wouldn’t be able to happen, no matter how much they wanted to believe it.

As mentioned, though, the let-down on this side of the story was the rapid, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turnaround in Kirk. The episode wanted to say something like this: after seeing Earth for the first time with his own eyes, learning of his brother’s survival, and hearing La’an’s tales of a United Federation of Planets and a peaceful, prosperous humanity, Kirk was willing to sacrifice his timeline in order to bring hers into being. Self-sacrifice is a well-established Kirk trait, so that tracks.

But there just wasn’t enough time for this to play out effectively, and it makes the story substantially weaker than it could’ve been. In order to fit in everything else that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow wanted – the visit to Pelia, the relationship buildup, the car chase, La’an’s run-in with Khan, etc. – this side of things took a back seat. And while other story points worked well, I’m having a hard time with this supposedly grizzled, battle-hardened version of Kirk being so willing to wipe everyone he’s ever known from existence.

This is something that could have been made more of, particularly in terms of a conflict between La’an and Kirk. Two characters from two alternate realities find themselves at the “fork in the road,” where one path leads to one timeline and the other path to a very different one. There was potential in the idea of them arguing over which way to go, because from Kirk’s perspective at least, don’t his people have as much of a right to exist as La’an’s? The episode just didn’t spend much time on what could have been a really interesting idea – and the result of that is that Kirk’s turnaround feels incredibly abrupt.

The episode’s epilogue contained a truly heartbreaking scene. La’an was confronted with the reality that the prime timeline version of Kirk had no idea who she was, and no recollection of the time she’d shared with his alternate counterpart. All credit must go to Christina Chong for a deeply emotional and raw performance; I genuinely felt La’an’s emptiness, loneliness, and heartbreak as she broke down and cried.

The end of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow feels bleak in more ways than one. La’an had to commit to her ancestor’s genocidal reign, but also lost the sole human connection that we’d ever seen her make. La’an has friendly relationships with her shipmates, but Kirk was something different – someone who seemed to understand her and who didn’t feel encumbered by the weight of her past. La’an caught a glimpse of what that could be like – but it was brutally ripped away from her.

La’an’s heartbreak was a sad end to the episode.

So a bit of a contradictory one this week! Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is one of Star Trek’s best modern-day time-travel stories. It was fun and lighthearted in places, dense and heavy in others, and it connected back to The Original Series in clever and unexpected ways. But it was let down by trying to cram in one too many storylines, with the result being that several key moments and elements of characterisation were missing, lessening the impact as the story wore on.

I had a good time this week, all things considered. Pairing up Kirk with La’an was a risk, but because this version of Kirk came from an alternate reality, I think we can say it’s a risk that paid off. It was a great episode for La’an’s characterisation, bringing her face-to-face with the monster from her past, but also taking her on an emotional rollercoaster and showing off a side of her that we haven’t always gotten to see.

There’s only one question left to ask: will Captain Pike finally get a role to play next time?!

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.