Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 6 “Off-Hour” delivers a gripping, high-stakes adventure as the Enterprise races through a deadly slipstream wormhole, pushing Chapel, Spock, Scotty, and the rest of the crew to their limits.
Strange New Worlds delivers its most intense episode ever as the crew of the Enterprise race against the clock to save their ship.
Things are going fairly well for the Enterprise and her crew as the ship makes its way to Starbase 7 — except that Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) and Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) get into a little bit of an argument as the doctor hints he wants to leave the ship, while criticizing Chapel’s refusal for a permanent posting on Enterprise. That argument takes a backseat as the Enterprise is unexpectedly thrown into a slipstream wormhole, leaving the crew scrambling for survival against increasingly slim odds.
Race Against the Slipstream
This episode finds our various protagonists in various parts of the ship as more and more things go wrong — and this episode’s main success is us believing these people are in real danger, despite assuming with reasonable certainty that everybody survives. Whether it’s Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) fighting against the gravity plating in the galley (and getting a nasty broken bone for her trouble), Spock (Ethan Peck) getting a healthy dose of radiation sickness as he helps executes a daring plan to save the Enterprise), or, most impactfully, Chapel trying to save a fatally wounded M’Benga, these characters are in trouble, no doubt about it.
M’Benga’s injury is a truly gruesome part of this episode. The poor man gets a biobed slammed into his midsection, trapping him against a bulkhead, all but cut in half as Chapel tries her damndest to save him. M’Benga, for his part, thinks Chapel should leave him and save herself, and disturbingly even tries to accelerate his own demise; of course Christine is too determined to leave his side, even when a reasonable physician would give up on the dying man.
In fact, a reasonable physician on the ship does order Christine to abandon M’Benga. Doctor Phil Boyce (Brian Markinson) is on the Enterprise during this ordeal — yes, that same Dr. Boyce from “The Cage.” M’Benga, knowing he might want to end his time on Enterprise soon, wants a decent replacement, and Boyce, the ship’s one-time interim chief medical officer, is a good candidate. After being told the extent of M’Benga’s injuries, Boyce orders Chapel to the galley where her services are needed more, but she is too loyal to leave M’Benga’s side.
“Off-Hour” is easily the best showing for Jess Bush so far this season. Chapel’s struggle to keep M’Benga alive is equal parts disturbing, heartfelt, and anxiety-producing. Thanks to the nurse’s dedication, M’Benga does live through the ordeal, but we’ll be honest — we weren’t so sure that was going to be the result. It’s not like this show hasn’t killed main characters before (RIP Hemmer).
Having Faith of the Heart
How does the Enterprise survive its tumultuous passage through the dangerous, irradiated slipstream wormhole, which, by the way, is making the ship go faster and faster until it eventually reaches the warp threshold and explodes? As she grasps for a way to save M’Benga, Chapel stumbles upon the neutrino-related research the doctor did when he was helping his daughter, Rukiya. Chapel suggests to the rest of the team that the intense concentration of neutrinos in the wormhole can both refuel the ship and heal M’Benga. It’s a technobabbly hypothesis, but in the end Chapel is right on the money.
Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) plays a key role in helping enact Chapel’s plan, as he beams himself into a Jefferies Tube to recalibrate an ion pod so they can learn more about the wormhole. “Off-Hour” turns out to be a formative moment — perhaps the formative moment — for Scotty as he journeys from young engineer to the miracle worker we know from elsewhere in canon. He starts this episode calling the Enterprise a useless “bucket of bolts,” but by the end he has bonded with the ship.
“After the Stardiver… I can’t keep doing this.”
“Yes you can. I’ll tell you why. Because starships are also capable of miracles… if you listen.”
– Scotty and Pelia
After a period of doubting his ship thanks to everything that goes wrong with it, we see Scotty become attuned with the Enterprise like never before, trusting the ship to do things it can’t do on paper. Helping him with this maturation is Chief Engineer Pelia (Carol Kane), who mentors the Scotsman through this particularly dangerous situation from the comfort of her quarters. While we generally find Pelia to be irritating, her role in this episode is undoubtedly valuable, and it’s clear by the end of the episode that Pelia has a newfound respect for Scotty — and perhaps realizes he can be a great chief engineer?
The other key player in Chapel’s plan is Spock, who goes on a spacewalk to one of the Enterprise’s ion pods, which is how the crew can learn about the wormhole that has ensnared them. Watching the Vulcan go step by step across the hull, with colorful bits of psychedelic wormhole material impacting his suit, is beautiful. And in a nasty bit of foreshadowing, Spock suffers no small amount of radiation sickness for his trouble. We know it’s not the last time the man submits himself to radiation to save his ship.
The end of this gripping adventure sees M’Benga alive, incredibly, and grateful for Christine’s help during what should have been a fatal crisis. Christine, meanwhile, takes M’Benga’s argument to heart and finally commits herself to a permanent posting on the Enterprise.
The Wounded Beast
“Off-Hour” is a hell of a ride. The ever-present countdown clock a la 24 helps sell the urgency the crew faces, and the dire situations these characters tackle is the best kind of anxiety-producing.
You couldn’t ask for a more different episode than last week’s puppet hijinks, that’s for sure.
Visually, “Off-Hour” stands out as arguably the most striking episode of the season. Watching the Enterprise navigate and ultimately break free from the spiraling wormhole offers spectacular imagery. Furthermore, the scenes of Spock and La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) spacewalking while being hit by wormhole particles are stunning.
More importantly, did anyone else feel that “Off-Hour” elevates the Enterprise itself, transforming the vessel from a mere setting into a living, central character within this narrative — depicted almost like a wounded beast unintentionally endangering the lives of those who care for it. This evocative dynamic is primarily anchored by Scotty, whose evolving relationship with the ship shows him now treating the Enterprise with genuine empathy and affection. Rather than viewing the starship as just a bothersome and complex arrangement of machinery and circuitry, he relies on her as a trusted partner, forming a bond that ultimately enables both ship and crew to pull through their harrowing ordeal.
After the fun but irreverent comedy episode last week, “Off-Hour” reminds us how dangerous space can be. Watching Strange New Worlds’ protagonists come together in the most dire of circumstances was thrilling, and the production value of this episode helps it stand out in our minds as one of the show’s most prestigious entries.
Stray Thoughts:
- What a great leader Pike is by risking himself to raise the shields and thus getting electrified. Lead from the front, right? Same with Una and fixing the galley’s grav plating.
- Seems like having the biobed able to malfunction and slide around the room shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Why isn’t everything nailed to the floor?
- It just feels right that Scotty’s major character development happens in a Jefferies Tube, since that’s one of his iconic locales from The Original Series.
- How does Chapel’s exposed face skin, or eyes, not freeze, just like M’Benga’s does, when she opens the sickbay door to let the cold in?
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