It’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale day! After 10 episodes, the latest series of adventures has come to an end. Of course, there are a couple of new seasons on the way, but if the last wait was anything to go by, this is going to be the last for a while. This season has, on the whole, been a genuine mixed bag for me, but after last week, I’m going in hopeful.
There’s a lot of ground this finale needs to cover. There’s the lingering threat of the Vezda, a looming Gorn hybrid, and a few character relationships to boot. All intertwined and wrapped up in the span of an hour. With Pike (Anson Mount) at the helm against an ancient evil, forced to make a difficult decision, I’m sure it’s doable.
WARNING – This article contains full spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale “New Life and New Civilizations”. By extension, the rest of the season as well. This is the big one.
Resurrection
The episode opens up with Dr Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) on an archaeological mission. He stumbles on stuff that resembles the Vezda, the bad aliens from a few weeks ago. At the same time, the Enterprise discover that Gamble (Chris Myers) has been resurrected. It’s a cold open that takes a bit too long to get to the point. By the time the penny dropped for them, I’d picked it up minutes ago. Then again, the recap definitely put the pieces in front of me.
Resurrecting a character through a pattern buffer is so insane. Sure, we’ve seen people hang around in there for decades before, but never brought back from the dead like this. The fact that it’s possible, never to be done again, raises so many questions about how transporters work. Needless to say, the episode started making me think that maybe Bones’ apprehension was based on fact.
Also, for someone whose presence formed the basis of the episode happening, Korby did end up feeling like a glorified cameo this episode. He and Chapel (Jess Bush) are a romance the show needed on a canonical level, at some point. But it’s a shame that the show used him as little more than a love interest. He appears in multiple episodes, but ultimately with no more real depth than before this season began. His presence, canonical necessity aside, was nought.
Absolute Evil
The scenes on the planet’s surface are strange. It feels as if the Vezda are a big bad that have had seasons of development. Cult-like chanting that feels ripped from the latter seasons of Stargate SG-1 as people rip out their eyes. It’s gratuitous, impactful, but there’s been so little in the way of concrete set-up for this finale showdown. Instead of building up a final showdown, the show instead feels like it’s desperately grasping for stakes.
Treating the Vezda as the origin of all evil, unquestionably bad, felt like little more than a way to up the stakes to an underdeveloped villain. The idea that Batel (Melanie Scrofano) and her enhancements through the season have been building to fighting it, were an equally contrived balancing act. Instead of an earnest and progressive series arc, it cobbles together what it can, desperately trying to make sense of it.
There’s also something about a manifestation of evil as a Star Trek villain that’s incredibly stupid. For an agnostic franchise, this season has been lurching into religion. Pike’s made references to being Christian, and now this. Also talk of predestination and technobabble exposition that felt like it came out of nowhere. It’s not necessarily a bad direction, but one that could’ve used more setup if this is where these story threads were always headed.
Four Seasons in One Day
In the Vezda chamber, which remains an ugly overuse of the AR Wall, Batel starts to regenerate. With her hands glowing, it genuinely feels like a Doctor Who crossover that was abandoned at the last minute. Given Pelia (Carol Kane) throwing around a reference to a time-travelling Doctor, I wouldn’t be surprised. But it’s from here, in a monster rising sequence that feels ripped out of the end of Ghostbusters, that the episode falls apart.
We cut immediately to Pike and Batel living comfortably, a transition that’s so jarring that it made me question if I’d somehow missed a whole scene. What follows in an overlong montage that becomes Pike’s answer to something like “The Inner Light”. Where it’s going is evident by the end that this fantasy land is too good to be true. Like the Nexus in Generations, it’s comfortable, it’s a nice memory for Pike, but it goes on for way too long.
Given that this isn’t Pike’s farewell, it feels drawn out. But like “Inner Light”, these are memories that comfort Pike. His reluctance to discuss it after this life he experienced in paradise, even with the added weight of Batel’s sacrifice, exacerbates the speed run of Picard’s Greatest Hits. It’s almost as if they tried to drag the show’s lead into a conflict that ultimately came down to two minor characters, in the name of emotional depth.
The Five-Year Mission
If you thought that the episode’s foray into stupidity was over, the ending makes it all feel like a series finale. The episode sees Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Spock (Ethan Peck) engage in a mind-meld to help defeat the villains. This has the unfortunate consequence of rushing their development and relationship, no doubt setting up many an interaction to come. Their relationship here culminates in a chess game, not unlike how we first see them interact in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.
Even though it was their first scene together, both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had more chemistry. These recasts are obviously necessary, but here, in place of actor chemistry, there are references and nods to The Original Series. They’re setting up TOS here, and all through the season, with all the subtlety of a brick to the head. There’s nothing inherently wrong with prequels, but the overreliance on nostalgia is becoming excessive.
Thankfully, unlike the last season, this one doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. So there’s no 2-year wait for “Hegemony Part 2”. What there is is an eyeroll-inducing setup for a five-year mission. It’s complete with Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) opening up hailing frequencies to nowhere in particular as the Enterprise departs for another planet. Whatever the next season has in store, I hope it’s better.
Conclusion
As far as finales go, this could’ve been far worse. Sure, there are plenty of contrivances, bits of stupidity that lean to me rolling my eyes, and a nostalgia-fueled conclusion that feels like it could’ve wrapped the series. But at the same time, the arcs at least converged and resolved themselves competently enough. In saying that, it could’ve used more setup, less science babbling, and a greater focus on the show’s lead characters.
The worst of it is knowing that Season 4 is already in the can, with Season 5 no doubt already written. Whatever future seasons are, these stories have already been told, no doubt through this exact same TOS nostalgia-infused lens. My hope that what lies ahead will be different, or start to approach these characters in their own lights, looks unlikely. I wish the show would embrace being the Pike series rather than morph into a test-run for a Kirk one that’s full of on-the-nose winks and weirdly devoid of chemistry.
More From Trek Central
📰 – Review – Strange New Worlds: Season 3 Episode 9 ‘Terrarium‘
🔥 – In Conversation – Star Trek’s Navia & Picardo
🔎️ – Review – Star Trek: Voyager ‘Homecoming’
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