Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 304: “The Space Adventure Hour”
With Jonathan Frakes directing, Strange New Worlds delivers the season’s strongest episode yet: a murder mystery that cleverly reintroduces a familiar technology into canon and brilliantly homages The Original Series.
The Perfect Paradox
The pre-credits scene of this episode will surprise viewers if you aren’t familiar with The Original Series – and if you are, you’ll be chuckling the entire time. The scene in question is from The Last Frontier, a fictional sci-fi show from the 1960s that sees familiar faces playing characters on the bridge of a janky spaceship.
In the center chair is someone who looks like James Kirk (Paul Wesley). With him are crewmates who look like Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) and Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and the trio really ham it up in typical low-budget mid-century science-fiction style. Don’t worry, there’s a reason why these faces are playing these characters.
Back in reality, the Enterprise is approaching a flaring neutron star, but that’s not the mission La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) needs to tackle. Instead, Captain Christoper Pike (Anson Mount) tasks her with testing a new technology – a holodeck. Based on battle simulators, the kind of which we saw in Star Trek: Discovery season one, the holodeck is a marvelous technology that can potentially help humans’ mental states on long-term voyages. The Enterprise is a test bed for one now, and Pike wants Noonien-Singh to kick the tires. Noonien-Singh dives into the role excitedly, as she wants to play as Amelia Moon, a fictional detective whose stories she sought refuge in as a kid during the aftermath of her trauma with the Gorn.
To help sell the illusion, the 1960s Hollywood murder mystery in the holodeck is populated by realistic models of people from the Enterprise’s transporter buffer. So, that’s why the suspects Noonien-Singh investigate looks not just like the trio we saw earlier, but also Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Pike, Ortegas, Uhura (Celina Rose Gooding) and Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn). Here, though, these characters are either the cast or producers of The Last Frontier, a low-budget sci-fi series featuring powerful allegorical stories and inspiring characters. Sound familiar?
The list of characters in the holodeck include:
- TK Bellows (Mount), the creator of The Last Frontier
- Maxwell Saint (Wesley), star of the show
- Adelaide Shaw (Bush), the actress who plays the science officer on the show
- Lee Woods (Navia), the actress who plays the ship’s doctor
- Sunny Lupino (Romijn), the show’s producer
- Joni Gloss (Gooding), talent agent for three of the show’s cast
- Anthony MacBeau (Olusanmokun), Shaw’s “main squeeze”
Tony Hart, head of the studio where The Last Frontier is filmed, was murdered, and everyone is a suspect. After some initial investigative work that doesn’t bear fruit, and after witnessing Lupino get fatally poisoned, Noonien-Singh feels forced to enlist the aid of Spock (Ethan Peck), someone with whom she is developing an unexpected attraction. It started when the security chief was teaching the science officer how to dance back in “Wedding Bell Blues,” and a bit of magnetism developed between the pair as they practiced Spock’s dancing.
Trying their best to complete the story, Spock and La’an interview each suspect and discover a complicated tapestry of intrigue surrounding the production and cancellation of The Last Frontier. In the holodeck, Spock, ever the cold, calculating, stoic individual, is a useful partner as Noonien-Singh delves further into the mystery, including the motivations of each person for wanting Tony Hart dead. The holo-story gets more dangerous, however, as the holodeck suffers a malfunction that disables the safety protocols and prevents users from ending the program (we were shocked, just shocked!). Oh, and Lee Wood is murdered.
Suddenly under extreme pressure to complete the story, no one suspect fits the bill and, moreover, La’an and Spock are held at gunpoint by a drunk TK Bellows who is lamenting about his removal from The Last Frontier. It’s during this confrontation that Noonien-Singh realizes the Spock she has been working with is not only a hologram, but the murderer, a perfect foil for La’an that was created by the AI program running the holodeck scenario. The computer knew La’an would never suspect Spock of being the murderer, and the surprise reveal serves not only to end the holodeck story, but open La’an’s eyes about her feelings for the Vulcan.
Meeting again at the end of the episode to continue Spock’s dance lessons, the pair reveal their nascent feelings for each other and share a kiss. This romance seemed to come out of left field for us, as we know Spock has been hung up on Chapel for quite a while, but good for him for exploring other feelings since Chapel is taken by Roger Korby. And we’re happy for La’ann for pulling farther and farther away from the reserved, up-tight character to whom we were first introduced back in season one.
It’s Like Poetry… It Rhymes
“The Space Adventure Hour” is a brilliant piece of writing due to the level to which it pays tribute to Star Trek. Having the holodeck mystery center on a science-fiction show so reminiscent of the original Star Trek allows characters to remark on the impact and power of the show, showcased most articulately by Joni Gloss’ touching monologue about The Last Frontier inspiring generations of fans and showing how humanity can succeed if we work together. What an inspired meta-commentary on this franchise we know and love.
“I wrote the book on space jurisdiction. And I’m known for my… diction.”
– Maxwell Saint’s character in The Last Frontier, which clearly parodies William Shatner’s Captain Kirk.
On a more amusing level, Paul Wesley’s interpretation of Maxwell Saint, the actor who plays the captain of the U.S.S. Adventure, is clearly a charming and hilarious play on William Shatner’s classic portrayal of Captain Kirk, including Shatner’s love. Of. Pausing throughout. Sentences. Moreover, the opening credits for “A Space Adventure Hour” ditch Strange New Worlds’ typical montage and opts instead for a TOS-esque flyby of the Adventure as Saint narrates lines parodying the original Star Trek opening sequence. It’s clear the cast and crew behind this episode hold a deep regard for the show that started it all. “The Space Adventure Hour” is a remarkable tribute for Star Trek and the impact it has had in the last 60 years.
Elsewhere in the episode, Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) has his hands full trying to keep the holodeck operating, and even more so when the holodeck malfunctions. The young engineer, who doesn’t have Pelia to lean on, refuses to ask for help beyond coyly asking Uhura how to help get Noonien-Singh out of the dangerous holodeck. His hesitation is due to a disastrous experience he had on his former posting, the Stardiver. At the end of the episode, Scotty hears a bit of advice from Una Chin-Riley that will serve him well in the future: it’s okay to ask for help. Like previous episodes in this season, we see how the young man’s journey from nervous, hesitant engineer to the famous miracle worker we know and love is an ongoing effort.
Ultimately, “The Space Adventure Hour” is a masterclass in Star Trek storytelling, seamlessly blending a compelling murder mystery with deeply resonant meta-commentary on the franchise itself. We’ll likely remember this episode as a standout installation of this show, and certainly a high bar for season three.
Stray Thoughts:
- Canon purists, don’t worry. After dealing with the near-disasterous experience with the holodeck, Captain Pike orders the tech be shelved for starship use until it can safely be used. (Not that the holodecks of classic Star Trek are known for being reliable!)
- This episode did a great job fooling us into thinking the real Spock was on the holodeck the whole time, but where was the real Spock on the Enterprise during its trouble approaching the flaring star?
- Spock quips “the game is afoot” when the holodeck simulation begins, and that’s something he says his “ancestor,” Sir Auther Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, would write. Spock makes a similar passing reference to being related to Doyle in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
- Lee Woods, the actress who plays the doctor on The Last Frontier, utters at one moment “you know I’m an actor, not a doctor, right?” This line is likely a homage to Dr. Leonard McCoy’s famous, “I’m a doctor, not a…” recurring line in The Original Series.
- The reason for having Ortegas on the bridge, after she was reprimanded, seems weak. As Una explains to Dr. M’Benga, everyone on the ship is pulling an all-nighter because of the Enterprise’s survey work on the neutron star, so she recommended Ortegas be returned to duty. Sorry, but that doesn’t pass the straight-face test.
- With the ship’s power under duress due to their mission to the star and the holodeck operating, Una seems content to let Scotty work alone, as he asserts having a second pair of eyes can be detrimental. Why didn’t Una push back on this assessment? Why didn’t she assert the young engineer should be working with someone to ensure the Enterprise’s systems remain functional?
- How many Hollywood movie scripts has La’an seen to know a missing title page was apparently an important clue?
- How exactly did holo-Spock know when and where La’an was going to be standing in the room with the chandelier? To guess she would be in the correct position for when the sabotaged chandelier falls is just pure dumb luck.
- How great are Ethan Peck and Anson Mount in this episode? Once you know holo-Spock isn’t the real Spock, a second watch of the episode reveals how just devoid of emotion and humanity holo-Spock is. Ethan Peck is a master of acting with his eyes, which are, after all, the windows to the soul. Anson Mount, meanwhile, is almost unrecognizable as TK Bellows and delivers a fantastic performance as the consistently stressed out TV producer.
- Scotty recommends at the end of episode that holodecks have their own server room and power source, elements we know are part of holodecks in the future, including the one on Voyager, as noted in “Parallax.”
- This episode establishes that the Enterprise’s crew complement at this point (the year 2261) was 203, which is the same number it was in TOS’ “The Cage,” which took place in 2254. This number would inflate significantly later in TOS to 428, as referenced in “Charlie X” (which took place in 2266).
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