Captain Pike and the Enterprise crew are thrust 65 million years into Earth’s past, where one impossible decision reshapes the future of humanity—and the Star Trek universe.
Captain Pike and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise find themselves at a major crossroads in time as they inadvertently travel far into the past and leave a legacy beyond their wildest imaginations.
Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) still hasn’t quite gotten over the loss and heartbreak he incurred at the end of season three, and he’s keeping himself and his ship busy to prevent himself from wallowing. The promise of a break is on the horizon, though, if the Enterprise completes one more mission: observing a unique stellar phenomena. Sounds easy, right? And there might just be a promotion awaiting Pike, according to Robert April (Adrian Holmes).
After receiving a mayday from within the fiery interstellar squall, the Enterprise is snapped back in time, which cripples the ship and leaves the crew scrambling to get their bearings. Luckily, a nearby planet holds the iridium the ship needs for repairs, but the away team, which consists of Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), and Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), find a large creature blocking their path.
As those aboard the Enterprise realize when they are, the away team realizes what’s in their way: a dinosaur. Yes, the Enterprise has been transported 65 million years in the past, to the age of the dinosaurs on Earth. Suddenly, it’s incredibly important that the crew not alter the timeline in any way, lest they destroy their future.
Stepping on Butterflies…
The crippled Enterprise makes an easy target for an alien ship that appears out of nowhere, snaring the ship in a tractor beam to haul off for salvage. Just before he learns when in time the Enterprise was sent to, the desperate Pike invites the aliens, led by Commander Cassell (Saffron Burrows), onto his ship, a tough and seemingly unwise decision by Pike that completely violates the Prime Directive since these aliens appear to be pre-warp.
The aliens are native to Mars, and Cassell’s sole focus is winning their war against their neighbors, the Dol’Drm. Cassell is quite interested in Enterprise’s weapons, and clearly has a martial and belligerent attitude toward outsiders. Pike, ever the Starfleet cadet, explains how the Federation focuses on unity among its members, and that the organization is thus greater than the sum of its parts. Pike even suggests that the Enterprise’s technology can possibly end the war between Cassell’s people and the Dol’Drm without violence.
Cassell, for her part, pretends to be interested in such a solution, and she even seems moved by the utopian nature of the Federation. But she soon shows her true colors when she steals one of the Enterprise’s antimatter pods — a terribly destructive device that could quickly end the Dol’Drm threat permanently. In their confrontation before she leaves the ship, Cassell reveals to Pike that she figured out he is from the future, and that she is terrified of her homeworld becoming the red desert wasteland we know it becomes.
Cassell’s plan becomes clear: she wants to launch the antimatter pod into the fifth planet of the Sol System. But at this point 65 million years in the past, the fifth planet is one that resides just past Mars, and it’s the home of billions of Dol’Drm. In a last-second decision, Pike realizes the brutal path forward. Cassell must be allowed to destroy the fifth planet, as that’s what needs to happen for his future to occur.
Cassell launches the pod, knowing full well the resulting planetary explosion will destroy her vessel, too. The bridge crew witnesses the ending of an entire civilization thanks to their tampering in the timeline. Spock explains via technobabble that the Enterprise can harness the shockwave’s intense energy to snap itself back through time to when and where it started. Safe in their own time, the crew is left to contemplate the impact of what they set into motion.
By Pike allowing the fifth planet to be destroyed, a fragment of that planet ended up slamming into Earth, thus causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, the eventual rise of humankind, and the creation of the Federation. Also, Mars’ orbit was shifted thanks to the fifth planet’s explosion, causing it to become a red wasteland. It’s a weighty, wild realization, and no small addition on Pike’s conscience as he reckons with his own ruminations of his past and future.
Choosing to live in the moment, Pike turns down April’s offer of promotion; that promotion is instead passed along to Una, who becomes a commander and one step closer to her own command.
Clever Girls
Let’s back up a minute and talk about what the away team did while on Earth. After realizing a killer dinosaur was blocking the iridium deposit, Una decides to stun the creature — which, according to her logic, was safer for the timeline than outright killing it. We suppose that’s logical, but surely the dinosaur being stunned for an undetermined period of time still poses a huge risk to the course of events?
Upon getting to the crashed ship that holds the iridium, the team finds some cryopods with deceased Dol’Drm colonists who were intent on making Earth their home. It’s a startling realization — Earth was close to being populated by another race besides humanity. The amount of lore this episode adds to Star Trek’s canon about the history of Earth and the Sol System is certainly striking.
“If they were settlers, I’m not sure if I should feel sad… or relieved.” – La’an, upon seeing dead colonists on Earth.
As the away team escapes the planet, La’an comes face-to-face with a raptor; like how one would disarm a bear in the wilderness, the security chief simply punches the animal into retreating. One would think this is only a good thing, but it’s a complicated moment for La’an. When she is back on the ship, La’an shares with the medical staff that even though she broke her hand hitting the dinosaur, she doesn’t feel any pain. She’s worried her recessive, latent augment genes are reactivating, which could cause all kinds of complications.
Having La’an come to grips with her augment nature — she is a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh, after all — would be a welcome plotline for this season. We’ve always thought La’an’s genetics deserved a bit more attention in this show, as it makes her a special part of Star Trek lore. Also, Spock and La’an are definitely still an item, and we’re curious how the Vulcan will respond to the security officer’s apparent genetic problems. Both characters face the same dilemma: how to reconcile two distinct, separated halves of one’s identity.
The return of Strange New Worlds offers a meaty ordeal for the Enterprise crew. Despite the initial impression that this episode veers a bit too much into campy, B-movie sci-fi — what with the inclusion of dinosaurs at all, let alone the ones from Earth’s past — “Valles Marineris” certainly left a striking impression about Pike’s latest adventure. To have the history of Earth and everything that sprouted from that history lay squarely on the shoulders of Captain Pike and his crew is an awesome premise; to have that history come at such a cost is sobering.
If Strange New Worlds continues to offer this kind of thoughtful storytelling, season four should be pretty good, indeed.
Stray Thoughts:
- This episode never explains why the Enterprise was snapped back specifically to Earth during the age of the dinosaurs.
- What’s the deal with the animosity between Scotty (Martin Quinn) and Ortegas? Their rivalry has come out of nowhere. Why exactly does Erica think Scotty’s alarms on her display are just there to annoy her, when he clearly states in this episode at one point that they are there for a reason.
- This episode contains another Doctor Who reference from Pelia (Carol Kane), who mentions she once observed an interstellar phenomenon from within a phone box.
- Did you catch how a panel in the shuttle’s nacelle moves to accommodate the ramp extending from the shuttle’s body? Neat little attention to detail.
- Was it really easier for the away team to confront the dinosaur and stun it than give it a wide berth and go around? The whole scene feels like an odd excuse for an action sequence.
- When she steals the antimatter pod, we see via a diagram at Spock’s station Cassell and her people phase upward through the ship. We get how Martians can phase horizontally through the ship, but vertically?
- Why didn’t the away team’s tricorders detect the raptor before it was within punching distance?
New episodes of Strange New Worlds stream Thursdays on Paramount+.
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