“Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds traps the crew of the Enterprise into a soap opera forcing them to confront their unresolved emotions.

Emotional catharsis drives most film and television. Characters grow by confronting what unsettles them and finding ways to move forward. Soap operas build their entire identity around that process. They thrive on heightened conflict, exaggerated reactions and the appeal of watching familiar struggles pushed into melodrama. Audiences respond because the emotions are recognisable even when the presentation is outsized.

Across the season there has been a loose suggestion that Pike is overworking the crew because he refuses to process what he experienced in last season’s finale. It never develops into a full storyline, but it recurs often enough to feel like something he’s trying to outrun. His constant push from mission to mission leaves the crew exhausted and himself no closer to facing it. That avoidance collapses when the entity behind the reality shift in “Wedding Bell Blues” alters the Enterprise again, trapping the ship in a soap‑opera scenario. Pike is the only one who recognises the change, while everyone else is locked into their assigned melodramatic roles.

I’ve often pointed out that Strange New Worlds leans too heavily on gimmicks. This season makes that clear, with this episode marking the fourth time the season has leaned on a high‑concept conceit. It’s true that Star Trek stories often begin with a device that drives the plot, but the difference lies in how that device is used. “The Griffin Incident” builds itself around the gimmick of horror, but it does so through careful construction, meaningful character work and a direct challenge to the core motivations of a Starfleet crew. It treats its premise seriously and uses it to deepen the characters. This episode shifts into soap‑opera style and offers some character movement, but the intent is clearly to mine comedy rather than use the format to shape the story. Comedy is always a risk because it depends on the audience connecting with it, and here it never feels tied to the character work the episode claims to explore. “The Griffin Incident” uses its conceit to say something meaningful. This feels far more disposable, even with the step forward Pike takes.

Comedy is subjective and viewers will differ on how they respond to it. The dramatic closeups, exaggerated acting and self-aware nods to soap opera tropes don’t work for me, which made the episode tedious to watch. The setup feels dismissive of soap operas rather than interested in them as a legitimate style. Soap operas work because they approach heightened emotion with sincerity rather than irony, and the genre depends on that commitment to make its stories resonate. The tropes are being mocked rather than played with. A more thoughtful approach would find humour in embracing the format instead of sneering at it. Moments like Pike asking M’Benga what he’s staring at when he throws dramatic glances at the camera, or constantly pointing out how ridiculous the developments are, create a sense of superiority that undercuts the premise. It signals that the show isn’t engaging with the soap opera style in good faith and is only using it to chase easy laughs.

Everything being heightened and ridiculous undercuts the emotional truth the episode is trying to uncover. The idea of Uhura as Pike’s estranged daughter makes the story drift for a long time before it finally reveals the purpose of that development. The episode spends more time condemning how impossible the idea is than exploring what it means. Pike is right to call out how absurd it is, yet the story keeps pushing him to treat the fallacy as something he should take seriously.

His frustration is meant to reflect his refusal to confront his emotions, but his instinct is correct. An entity has infiltrated his ship and is forcing his crew to act out a fantasy of its own making. As Captain, and as the only member of the crew unaffected, he is responsible for resolving the situation and restoring their agency. Star Trek routinely depicts characters putting personal concerns aside in the face of a larger threat, so Pike’s focus on stopping this is entirely appropriate.

Eventually it becomes clear that playing along might be the only way to resolve the situation. Pike reaches this conclusion when he repeatedly tries to leave the contrived therapy session with Uhura claiming to be his daughter and is forced back into the room with the scenario resetting each time. He signals his understanding with “The only way out is through” and reluctantly sits down to indulge what he considers nonsense. His dismissive reaction is understandable because he knows Uhura isn’t his daughter and can’t treat the scenario as anything other than fabricated.

The episode frames this as emotional avoidance, but it reads as Pike refusing to engage with a false situation imposed by an omnipotent being. The setup is too artificial for the intended emotional breakthrough to register, so his reluctance feels logical rather than revealing.

What doesn’t make sense is that when Rhys Darby’s entity appears and attempts to introduce himself, Pike cuts him off and states he doesn’t care. As Captain, he should learn the name of this entity so he can better inform Starfleet and warn other crews who might become victim to his games. The assessment plot strongly hinting at the Q Continuum evaluating his worth is underwhelming because there is no deeper meaning to it beyond comments about the emotional depth being greater than expected and Humans possibly being more interesting than they thought. The episode gestures toward significance without committing to anything that would give the encounter weight. A meaningful version of this idea would have used the encounter to say something about why Humanity attracts the Continuum’s attention, even in a small way, which would align with how Q later frames Humans as uniquely compelling in The Next Generation.

Pike’s position softens when he next encounters Uhura. He realises that even though she isn’t literally his daughter, there is truth in the idea. She lost her family young and lacked the guidance parents are supposed to provide, which has left her doubting her ability as a mentor. It’s a reasonable insecurity, but her mentorship of Cadet A’Sha has barely been featured this season, so it doesn’t feel like a priority for her character. A’Sha doesn’t appear in this episode, and the melodramatic fiction isn’t clearly tied to that relationship because the show hasn’t explored it in meaningful detail.

The other characters have similarly vague connections to their soap opera contrivances. It was mentioned in the previous episode that M’Benga is considering leaving, which seems to manifest here as him being crippled by self-doubt or “space madness” that renders him incapable of performing life saving surgery. He has a conversation with Ortegas, who also cites being afflicted with “space madness” but refuses to let it stop her from doing what she loves, piloting the Enterprise. There is a connection between them as both fought in the Klingon War and carry emotional scars from their experiences, but the link between the melodrama and reality is very tenuous. M’Benga considering leaving the Enterprise was only introduced in the previous episode, so it hasn’t had nearly enough time to embed, let alone develop. That lack of emotional grounding is noticeable because M’Benga’s stories usually carry moral or psychological weight, and this scenario offers none of the substance that defines his strongest material.

Similarly, Ortegas’ PTSD has barely been explored in four seasons of this show, so the link remains thin and anything meaningful is undercut by the comedically charged contrivance. It’s another missed opportunity to explore the insecurity that occasionally surfaces in Ortegas’ character, and the episode sidesteps any chance to give her a moment of genuine vulnerability.

La’an’s contribution is the most tenuous. She’s tasked with finding Spock’s brother Sybok, the only donor who can save his life, and is confronted with an intense attraction to this dark mirror of Spock. Ethan Peck embodies this version of Sybok, though it’s made clear Sybok doesn’t actually look like him when Spock mentions Sybok isn’t his twin and the scenario was deliberately contrived. La’an confronts her attraction and ultimately overcomes it to bring him back, only for Spock to dismiss the entire scenario as unreal. Her final admission that she doesn’t regret breaking up with Spock but will miss him doesn’t flow naturally from a plot centred on her attraction to Sybok’s manifestation. The episode ignores the far more logical thread of her fear of becoming like her ancestor and instead fixates on something with no thematic value.

The contrast becomes even clearer when considering Pike’s scenario, which only gains thematic weight once he realises what the daughter fiction actually represents. When he begins to put it together, he asks the ship’s counsellor, Dr. Chivers, whether something that didn’t happen can still be real, and she points out that the feelings are real even if the events aren’t. It’s an interesting idea. In Star Trek, reality is malleable. People can have experiences that didn’t happen but still carry full memories of them. The Next Generation episode “The Inner Light” deals with that directly. Picard lives an entire life as a different person on a planet he never visited, yet the experience becomes something he cherishes. Pike’s experience at the end of last season is similar. He lived an entire life and was then returned to what he considers reality. He tried to dismiss it as not real, but it’s clear that doing so isn’t as easy as he wants it to be. The episode briefly touches on that idea when Pike starts to understand what the fiction represents, but it never commits to exploring the implications and ends up burying the idea under the surrounding tonal clutter.

Once he understands that reality is malleable, he goes to his quarters and is faced with his daughter from that life with Batel that didn’t happen. Instead of trying to forget about it, he engages with it directly and treats this manifestation of Juliet (Anna Mirodin) as if she really is his daughter. It’s the strongest and most poignant scene in the episode because it’s Pike reckoning with what he has been running from. He misses what didn’t happen and wants that life, and his daughter, to be real. Juliet’s line, “Just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” could be the episode’s thesis, but it’s buried under the melodrama and attempts at comedy that prevent it from taking root. It also quietly reinforces how isolating command is for Pike, because he has no one he can share this grief with and must carry the weight of a life he remembers but never lived on his own.

After the situation resolves, the crew try to make sense of what they’ve experienced and whether it had any deeper meaning for them. Pike is in a healthier emotional place and is no longer denying his emotional truth, as shown by him promising to tell Una what happened over a drink. This doesn’t happen. Instead, he goes to Dr. Chivers and opens up to her. Dr. Chivers is a confusing addition because she has never been seen before and likely never will be again. Her inclusion is a meta reference, since she’s played by an iconic soap‑opera actor, but beyond that she stands out as someone who doesn’t really fit. It would make more sense if she were a manifestation created for this scenario rather than a character who supposedly exists on the ship but has never appeared.

There’s merit to Pike being truly vulnerable with someone he isn’t close to. If handled well, it could highlight the loneliness of command and how few options he has for emotional support. Moments like this are where the show could meaningfully explore the solitude that comes with command.

It doesn’t work here because Dr. Chivers is a distracting presence due to being a clear single use character, and the episode promises the conversation with Una but doesn’t deliver it. His close relationship with Una, which goes beyond Captain and First Officer, has been established, so having him open up to her would have enhanced that in a meaningful way. Instead, he opens up to a character with no established presence in the show. It’s another example of the series failing to capitalise on the potential of the connections that already exist within the cast.

The episode has strong ideas buried within it, but the execution never supports them. The melodrama, tonal inconsistency and reluctance to commit to the emotional implications of its premise mean the potential never fully takes shape. It fits a season long pattern of stories that gesture at depth without following through, and the result is another entry that could have been far more resonant than it ultimately is.

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Verdict

A disjointed episode where the mismatched melodrama and comedy undermine its emotional catharsis.

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