Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 8 “Orders of Magnitude”
Strange New Worlds gets its own badmiral episode as veteran actor Joe Morton anchors a story about the burdens of command, when it’s okay to question orders, and what separates right from wrong.
Lieutenant Commander James Kirk (Paul Wesley) is visiting the Enterprise on his way back to the Farragut (because of course he is), hoping to see La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong). As Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Cadet A’Sha (Bianca Nugara) investigate an SOS signal from the planet below, Admiral Simon Reeger (Joe Morton) commandeers the Enterprise to pursue an alien vessel that is responsible for a recent disastrous attack on a civilian colony, coined the Vaardan Massacre.
The Living Legend Arrives
Reeger’s arrival is a morale boost to the Enterprise crew, as the man is a beloved veteran of the Klingon War. As such, not too many questions are asked when he aggressively pursues the alien ship. But it’s when Reeger suggests destroying the surface of a populated planet that ears start to perk up, most notably that of Reeger’s temporary first officer, James Kirk.
Kirk has a bit of backstory with Reeger, as James’ father, George, served with the admiral on the U.S.S. Constitution during the war — most notably during the Battle of Zeta Reticuli. Reeger shares with Kirk that Geroge was a good officer but not when it came to combat, which James finds hard to believe.
“Don’t worry, Spock. I’m sure someday you’ll get to aim that logical mind at some lucky captain.”
– Kirk to Spock
We see James and his brother, Sam (Dan Jeannotte) talk a lot about their father. It’s no secret George was always in space away from his family, and that his career never really took off in the way one might have expected. After learning a little more about George’s time under Reeger, James figures there’s more to his father’s story than he ever knew — and that perhaps Reeger is hiding something.
Reeger’s aggressiveness in pursuing the alien ship is suspicious to Kirk, especially when Kirk learns shortly before a conversation with Doctor M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), who served on the Constitution at the same time as Reeger, that the admiral’s family was killed in the Vaardan Massacre. When Reeger aims to eliminate the population of Argus II just to be sure they destroy the alien ship, Kirk tries to impeach Reeger to Starfleet Command, but fails and is escorted off the bridge by La’an. Despite La’an’s reservations about Reeger’s plan, she doesn’t agree with Kirk’s attempt to sabotage the admiral, so Kirk has no choice but to escape her custody and try to sabotage the Enterprise’s phasers — and gets quite injured in the process.
“All I’m saying is that there must be a middle ground.”
“If war has taught me anything, it’s that the middle ground is where most people die.”
– Kirk and Admiral Reeger.
In a confrontation on the bridge, Kirk insists he sabotaged the phasers so the ship would be destroyed if they fired at the planet. Reeger starts to go a little cuckoo here, as he assaults Kirk to get the man to reverse his sabotage. This breaking point is enough for M’Benga to declare Reeger unfit, but the admiral only relinquishes command when he is stunned into unconsciousness.
During Reeger’s unraveling, he admits that he sabotaged the career of George Kirk because he wanted to cover up his own failing. To the crew of the Enterprise, a hero is fallen, and for the Kirks, a father is redeemed. But things are not so cut and dry, as M’Benga takes the fall for Kirk’s spiking of the admiral’s coffee with Cordrazine — you know, the same drug that Doctor McCoy gets an overdose of in “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Having Reeger go manic was the only way to expedite his removal from command; as Nurse Chapel realizes at the end of the episode, M’Benga’s sacrifice on behalf of James Kirk is a good reason for him to leave Starfleet, as he has been thinking about for a while.
A Star is Born
While the crew of the Enterprise deal with Reeger, Captain Pike and the away team follow a mysterious communications signal that leads them into a trap. A group of Andorian mercenaries want to transfer stolen goods across space, and they think Pike and the others can help. But when Pike counteroffers, their ruthless leader (Currie Graham) critically injures Cadet A’Sha, much to Uhura’s horror. After all, the communications officer has been mentoring the Vulcan, and she feels responsible for anything that happens to her.
After pretending to help the mercenaries, Uhura goes into action hero mode and attacks the mercenary group, killing their leader and saving the trapped away team. Upon arriving back at the ship, Cadet A’Sha realizes a life in Starfleet isn’t for her, which makes Uhura feel like she failed her mentee. But some wise words from Pike about making no mistakes but still losing — a familiar sentiment to those who know Jean-Luc Picard’s famous statement — make her feel better. And a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade is the icing on the cake for the young, rising star that is Nyota Uhura.
The Burdens of Command
“Orders of Magnitude” is a strong entry in season four, marked by a stellar performance from the animated Joe Morton, who initially presents Reeger as a congenial, fatherly hero but gradually transforms into the crazed trauma-ridden victim of war. Perhaps more importantly, it’s also an important episode for James Kirk, who, with each visit to the Enterprise, realizes there’s much more to command than what meets the eye, and he gradually is learning soft skills that we know become his staples. For example, Reeger imparts upon Kirk the lesson that thinking fast and improvising are essential skills for command, something Kirk practices in this episode and many future ones.
Our one major critique with this episode is that the rest of the Enterprise crew is set to go along with Reeger’s plan, with very few questions asked. No one on the bridge would stand up to Reeger like Kirk did when the man was a minute away from executing more than 5,000 people? Sure, he has a legacy and gravitas behind his orders — he was a hero of the Klingon War, after all — but we found it hard to believe that if not for Kirk, the Enterprise would have completed this deadly action.
We are curious if the alien ship will come back to haunt Kirk. Our money is on this ship being Romulan. The vessel is described as having an advanced cloaking device. Plus, the way Reeger says, “When that ship attacks again, and it will, the blood… the terror…will be on your head,” makes us think this is an oblique reference to the TOS episode “Balance of Terror,” which sees Kirk and the Enterprise fight a Romulan ship.
Stray Thoughts:
- How could the cave system block communications for the landing party, but still allow an SOS signal to go through?
- There was no other place on the ship for Kirk to transmit his damning indictment of Reeger besides the bridge, ten feet from the admiral?
- No one heard Kirk shoot La’an? And why didn’t he drag her body someplace to avoid detection?
- How exactly did Kirk disable the Enterprise’s internal surveillance without raising any alarms?
- Why did La’an have to go to the transporter room to learn where Kirk beamed to from the sickbay transporter? Couldn’t she have checked the sickbay transporter’s console?
- Why did La’an choose to have Kirk brought to the Ready Room and not sickbay after he was beamed out of the phaser control room? There’s no indication she was ordered to do so by Admiral Reeger.
- We know Reeger wasn’t exactly in a proper state of mind as he was trying to get the new phaser control codes from Kirk, but is there really no way for an engineering crew or command staff to reset the phaser codes in the case an enemy sabotages them, exactly as Kirk claimed to do?
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