Strange New Worlds embraces every soap opera cliché imaginable while using Trelane’s bizarre experiment to confront the Enterprise crew’s deepest emotional struggles.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all on Strange New Worlds, the cast and crew of this show pull another genre-bending adventure out of their hat. This week, it’s an impactful, emotional story anchored in the most emotional genre of all: soap operas.
Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) wakes up in sickbay with a head injury after a shuttle accident he does not remember, and things start to get weird fast. The lighting in sickbay is overly bright, the environment is somewhat hazy, and characters such as Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) are overly dramatic and sometimes stare off into the distance while they talk. Meanwhile, Spock lies unconscious on a biobed and needs a “living heart transplant.”
That’s right folks, Strange New Worlds is doing a soap opera episode, and it’s all thanks to Trelane (Rhys Darby), who last appeared in “Wedding Bell Blues.” Trelane here is hosting his own soap opera with the crew of the Enterprise to help fulfill his scholarly study of humans and their emotions — but Pike is the only one who knows something is amiss, much to Trelane’s intrigue. Nevertheless, the soap opera can only end when Pike realizes what his inner emotional turmoil is.
Those who have ever watched a soap opera will find plenty to laugh at in “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass.” First of all, the name is a reference to the famous opening line from Days of Our Lives, which is perfect because this week’s guest star, Deidre Hall, who plays the ship’s counselor, Doctor Chivers, is a long-time actress on that series. Beyond that, the episode’s frequent intense dramatic zooms, high-drama acting, melodramatic musical cues, repetitive expositional dialogue, and unlikely turns of drama — like the reveal of an evil twin — are all soap opera staples. To see this style manifested in this sci-fi show kept us chuckling.
Trelane’s Great Human Experiment
Plenty of drama happens in Trelane’s production. Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) discovers Captain Pike is her long-lost father, which leads to an overflow of emotions as the young officer gets an old wound reopened after the loss of her family years earlier. Doctor M’Benga realizes he suffers from space madness, with which Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) sympathizes. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), meanwhile, is ferrying the only person who can possibly give Spock a new heart — his twin, Sybok, played here by a long-haired Ethan Peck. Having a secret twin is a killer soap opera staple, and to have Spock’s half-brother Sybok brought into the picture for this use is hilarious.
“The premise is simply… space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles.”
– Trelane as he explains to Pike why he is putting the Enterprise crew through a soap opera.
All this drama serves a greater purpose, though, and that’s why this episode is so successful. Trelane admits to staging this production because he wants to learn more about the connection between humans and their emotions — and he recognizes that humans being in space all the time tackling any number of adventures doesn’t leave a lot of room for them to deal with their inner emotional turmoil. In typical Q-like fashion, it’s amusing for him to see these emotions play out on a highly-dramatic stage.
Trelane’s theory about humans and their emotions is illustrated through various character arcs in this soap opera. The real-life M’Benga really does feel he has lost connection with Starfleet, as heavily alluded to in “Off-Hour”; this episode just illustrates it extra dramatically. Likewise with Erica’s real struggle tackling PTSD since her encounter with the Gorn in the last season, La’an wishing Spock were more human and fiery, as Sybok is, and Uhura truly feeling a missing connection with a father figure. It’s so clever how the writers for this episode chose to continue illuminating these various struggles within a soap opera format.
The cornerstone turmoil in this episode is Pike’s inner emotional demon: the fact that he experienced a lifetime with a daughter, Juliet (Anna Mirodin), back when he was living in Marie Batel’s cosmic hallucination in “New Life and New Civilizations.” When he exited that reality and realized he didn’t really have a daughter, it emotionally wrecked him, even if he didn’t fully acknowledge it at the time. After all, he has spent much of his time since that event actively avoiding dwelling on that trauma.
Pike coming to this realization screws with Trelane’s script for the soap opera, but he is happy enough when Pike confronts his feelings about his lost daughter. It’s a satisfying end to the dramatic episode he needed to produce for his studies, and soon enough things are returned to normal on the Enterprise. No more harsh lighting, no more unrealistic dramatic twists, no more melodrama. But the crew does remember everything they said and did during their time in Trelane’s production, which leads them to recognize how important proper emotional support and expression is.
“When we lose someone, we don’t just mourn that person, we mourn the loss of a future with them.”
– Doctor Chivers to Pike.
The most dramatic moment of the episode comes at the end, when Pike, outside of Trelane’s soap opera, sits down with Doctor Chivers for a real session on how to handle the emotions that recently reared their head. Seeing Pike break down and mourn the future with the daughter he never had is heartbreaking, and a killer scene for Anson Mount. What parent can watch this scene and not tear up?
… So Are the Days on the Enterprise
“Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” offers an unexpectedly meaningful lesson on the human condition. Like “Subspace Rhapsody” before it, and, to a lesser extent, “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” Strange New Worlds has again offered an impactful commentary by using an ambitious and unusual genre. By leaning into the archetypes and tropes of soap operas, the series explores deep-seated personal trauma, grief, and emotional suppressed feelings that the crew otherwise sets aside to perform their duties. Star Trek has always been a commentary on the human condition, and we’re appreciative that Strange New Worlds is so skilled at imparting that commentary through such unexpected means.
Stray Thoughts:
- There is zero chance Pike wouldn’t want to know the name of the entity that’s messing with him and his crew. But alas, canon must be protected.
- Much of Sybok’s characterization in this episode — what with his musings about exposing and sharing pain — is aligned with the man’s motivations in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
- This episode explains how and why humanity came to the attention of the Q Continuum, which is no small revelation as far as Star Trek canon is concerned.
New episodes of Strange New Worlds stream Thursdays on Paramount+.
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