American daytime television soap operas have thrived since 1949, predating Star Trek itself.
So is it any wonder Trelane finds its melodrama and sensational plot twists a fascinating way to delve into humanity and the many facets of emotional truth on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?
His school project hits a snag when Pike goes off-script, literally, problematically self-aware in Trelane’s scenario of contrived relationships and internal-made-external struggles.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass”
The first thing the production team working on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 7, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” did here was nail the look of a soap opera.
Pike, unaffected by Trelane’s producer powers, notices immediately upon waking up in the med bay.
Pike: Everything looks so different. So bright and, I dunno, hazy? Did you change the lights?
Next on the soap opera checklist, the cast— except Pike—lean into the melodramatic cadence and delivery of lines, laden with heavy pauses and theatrical poses.
Chapel: To save him, I had to…
Pike: You had to WHAT? What is up with the dramatic pauses? Both of you! Come on!
Pike catches on quickly that things aren’t the way they should be, even if he does have a head injury.
It’s a quick leap of logic to connect what’s happening to the events of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 2.
Pike: Nothing looks the way it’s supposed to. No one’s acting the way that they’re supposed to. And even though the scan turned up no anomalies… I’ve seen this before. Our lives turned upside down by a higher-dimensional being who can evade those scans. The fancy coat god guy.
Trelane: Could Captain Pike please stick to the script?
“The fancy coat god guy” might be my favorite way to refer to Trelane, who has now been canonically established as a Q from the Q Continuum.
Proof of Concept
The genre choice for “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass” suits Q’s experimental project perfectly.
Trelane: Oh, no, no. This is nothing like my last visit. No, that was based on pettiness and spite. I’ve grown. What you are witnessing now is my Great Human Experiment. Of late, I’ve been studying your breed in a more formal capacity. And during my iridition, I fell in love with an art form that explores the raw, unrepentant beauty of human emotion. It is… Body Cleaning Theater.
Pike: You turned Enterprise into a soap opera.
Like John de Lancie’s Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Trelane’s fascination with humanity spurs him to dive deep into the messy, immersive experience of relationships and emotions.
Trelane: I feel you humans have very high potential, and I’ll be defending that thesis to my proctors.
Pike: You turned us into a soap opera for a school project?
Trelane: It’s more of a dissertation. The premise is simply “Space adventures leave little time for humans to deal with their inner struggles.” So I’ve crafted some individualized situations just to get around all that. Think of it as a gift. For last time.
He also sees it as an easy A (or B-, in any case).
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Get More of Our Coverage!That is, he does so until Pike proves uncooperative.
Pike: Apology not accepted. Now, put back our reality and leave Enterprise immediately.
Trelane: I’m afraid I can’t do that. For one, there’s my evaluation. And also, there’s that other hiccup.
Pike: What other hiccup?
Trelane: You, Captain Pike! You see, while the other storylines are snapping along spectacularly, you, for some reason, seem to realize that you’re in an experiment. And you’re not playing ball.
Pike: You didn’t do this to me on purpose?
Trelane: No, of course not. I learn from my mistakes, Captain. But, unfortunately, until you figure out your internal struggle, I cannot end the experiment.
Pike: So we’re trapped.
Trelane: Believe me, I’m as unhappy as you are. Because if you fail, I fail. And if I fail, well, you might become a stone or perhaps a squid or maybe even that chair.
So Pike’s left to muddle his way through his own issues while trying to undermine Trelane’s experiment.
Soap Opera Reality is the Soapiest Reality
Everything in soap operas has a name, a label, or an implausible explanation. Medical science is creative, at best.
M’Benga: Your injury’s worse than I thought. It can only mean one thing.
Pike: What?
M’Benga: You have… [zoom in] COSMIC AMNESIA! [dramatic music]
Spock — conveniently unconscious for the entirety of the (mis)adventure since he’s the only legacy crew member who will run into Trelane on Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1 Episode 17, “The Squire of Gothos” — is in the most dire straits.
Chapel: He suffered severe blunt force trauma to his torso. Where his heart is located.
Thanks, Chapel. Pike’s head injury might’ve caused him to forget where Vulcan hearts are located.
M’Benga’s diagnostic skills are equally concerning.
M’Benga: [gazing off into the distance] There is one hope. An experimental surgery. A living heart transplant. The risk is enormous. To clone a living donor’s heart?
Pike: What are you looking at?
M’Benga: Both patients could die. Or worse.
Or worse? Really?
Everyone has inner struggles. M’Benga’s actual crisis of faith manifests as shaking hands. In a strangely intimate conversation with Una, he confesses his condition, both figurative and physical.
Una: You don’t have to face this alone, whatever it is.
M’Benga: I have… Space Madness.
Una: [gasps dramatically]
[In the background, Ortegas turns to look and cocks an eyebrow.]
Their closeness hints at something more, which might be laying the groundwork for both characters’ exits from the Enterprise before the Jim Kirk era dawns.
Una: Are you sure it’s Space Madness?
M’Benga: I have the key symptom. I can’t ignore it. It’s caused mostly by being adrift in space for too long, but there are other ways that I am adrift. I’ve lost my feelings of connection with Starfleet.
The two of them riding off into a new frontier wouldn’t be the worst thing, honestly.
M’Benga’s reveal opens the door for Ortega to share her experience of finding her confidence again after the Gorn experience.
Ortegas: Flying is who I am. But a pilot with tremors? And it was a heavy weight to carry alone. So lately, I’ve been trying something new. Allowing myself to be vulnerable. Trusting other people. This disease will ravage you. If you don’t have the support. But if I can pilot the Enterprise with Space Madness, you can do a living heart transplant. And if you ever doubt yourself, remember who you are and look to your friends. We’ll be there.
Her message is heartfelt, even if the false equivalency in her soap-opera reasoning is questionable.
Camera 4 Gets Spicy
The need for a heart transplant donor segues elegantly into La’an’s plot thread.
By breaking Sybok, Spock’s improbably identical brother, out of his prison, she contends with some interpersonal chemistry, possibly conflated with her lingering feelings for Spock.
Sybok: Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of the best prison break I have ever been party to? And I assure you, I have been party to many.
Sybok’s quite the delightful cad.
One can only assume Ethan Peck reveled in the chance to toss innuendo and contractions all over the place.
La’an: If Spock doesn’t get a living heart transplant in the next four hours, he will die. And whether you like it or not, you’re his only hope. So I’m giving him your heart, even if I have to tear it out of you myself.
La’an’s at her most militant and controlled. Deeply invested in the mission, she refuses to let her conflicted feelings stop her from saving Spock.
So conflicted.
Sybok: You were playing so well. But now, you’re second-guessing yourself. I know why, La’an, and you’re not alone. Everyone hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me and gain strength from the sharing.
Sybok’s Offer
Trapped in close quarters with the bad-boy version of a former lover is pretty hot stuff.
Throughout the season, La’an has harbored concerns that she will give in to her dark side and harm those she cares about, as well as do damage to the Federation.
Sybok: I will leave you on the nearest moon for the next Federation ship. Or you can come with me.
La’an: What?
Sybok: Don’t return to that ship where they will extinguish your fire. Run away with me, La’an. Let it burn!
La’an: Run away with you? You’re a liar and a cheat!
Sybok: And you haven’t said no.
When Sybok propositions her with a sort of freedom with him, we can see the appeal.
But Spock comes first.
La’an: I can’t abandon Spock! He’s more than just Logic, more than a Vulcan struggling to find his way. He is deeply kind and deeply good.
Sybok: We can have it all, La’an! Vulcan logic is cold, harsh. It leaves no room for kindness or compassion.
La’an: Logic allows Spock to see without judgement. It gives him empathy and grace. It shows him the best in people and the best in himself.
Sybok: And yet, it stops you from taking what you really want.
And although this version of Sybok — any version of Sybok, really — harbors no affection for his brother, he does allow emotion to sway his judgment.
La’an’s fervent need to save Spock moves him to act illogically.
La’an: I will fight you if I must, but I am not leaving here without Spock’s heart.
Sybok: You mean my heart.
In the end, he willingly gives his heart, not for Spock’s sake, but for La’an’s.
What She Really Really Wants
The best post-mortem (no pun intended) is La’an and Spock’s conversation after Trelane’s experiment concludes.
La’an: If [Sybok] was created from your mind, in a sense, he was you.
Spock: I cannot speak to that. And I would encourage you not to read too much into what happened. It was, by nature, contrived.
La’an: Maybe. But I recognized parts of you in him.
Spock: That seems unlikely. My brother and I are quite opposite. Perhaps you merely saw what you wanted to see.
In a dovetail of absolute finesse, the writers parallel La’an’s journey with Pike’s, even though the characters walk completely separate paths.
Pike: But what if I forget? What if I wake up one day and it’s all…
Juliet: No, we forget details, but never the feelings. I’ll always be here. I’ll always love you, Dad. Even if it gets a little fuzzy.
Pike: You just have to want to see it.
And that brings us back to Pike and his personal resolution.
Dr. Chivers FTW
Fun fact: In playing Dr. Chivers, soap opera icon Deidre Hall unseats Marina Sirtis’s Deanna Troi as the first Starfleet ship’s counselor.
Not that anyone could ever take Troi’s place in Trek fans’ hearts and minds, but this retcon introduces ships’ counselors a full century before the Enterprise-D maintenance crew has to update their replicator recipes for chocolate sundaes.
Dr. Chivers: Do you believe that your duties take precedence over your well-being?
Pike: That’s the oath. Federation, Starfleet, and my crew come first. Yes.
Self-care has never come easily to Pike. Faced with Uhura’s claim that he is her father, he tries to reason his way out, only to be met with an emotional backlash.
Uhura: If some part of you didn’t want me to find you, then why leave me this, hm? You circled page 28. Coq au vin. And you wrote, “A perfect meal to make with a perfect daughter.” Stardate 1443.2
Pike: Every page is blank. Look.
Uhura: Fine. If you want to pretend I don’t exist, I’ll just show myself out.
When he realizes the emotions are real, even if the facts aren’t, he begins to realize the challenge he faces.
Pike: Fine. I get it. The only way out is through.
Dr. Chivers: That’s the spirit, Captain.
Even within the parameters of the soap opera paradigm, Dr. Chivers offers good advice and a thoughtful perspective.
Building on Dr. M’Benga’s diagnosis of (fictional) Cosmic Amnesia, Dr. Chivers still manages to bring legitimate psychological analysis to bear on Pike’s situation.
Dr. Chivers: You know, in certain types of amnesia, there is a consolidation event. The last memory has significance. You said that, for you, it was the Captain’s Table, two weeks ago. Can you describe that to me?
Pike: It’s like a family dinner for the bridge crew.
Dr. Chivers: Interesting. If you want my professional opinion, you’re repressing something. And it’s tied to two weeks ago. I’ll get back to you.
She’s also not afraid to point out his standard operating procedure for avoiding complicated emotions.
Dr. Chivers: Uhura, why don’t you start? The captain seems like a man who needs a little time to warm up.
Uhura: Sure. I guess I want to know what anyone would. Why did you abandon me? Abandon your daughter? I promise not to judge. I just need to know.
Pike: This is crazy.
Uhura: I always thought my real father would have the decency to be honest with me.
Pike: I’m trying to, but in the present moment, it’s kind of impossible.
Uhura: Honesty’s never impossible! That’s something you teach every ensign on this ship!
Pike: You want honesty? Okay. The child godlike being has come back to Enterprise, and this time it’s turned us into a soap opera, which is why I have amnesia and you think I’m your father.
Uhura: You’d rather pretend like we were facing some reality-shifting anomaly than accept me as your daughter?
Dr. Chivers: This is becoming a trend.
A Tale of Two Daughters
To put it mildly, Pike has not had it easy.
His glimpse into his future sent him scurrying home to Montana. When he finally accepted his destiny, Marie gifted him with a second future before ascending to fulfill hers.
Pike: How can something be both real and not real?
Dr. Chivers: Is this about the ship being trapped in a soap opera?
Pike: Yeah.
Dr. Chivers: And what if it is? You’ve already dealt with time travel, Klingon zombies. With Batel’s ascension. Even in the most unusual twists of fate – a surprise child, a medical secret, an evil twin – there is truth. I don’t know if Uhura is your daughter, but I do know that her emotions are real, and so are yours. And I know that you would rather face a reality-shifting phenomenon than deal with your emotions.
Pike: I’m not sure that’s true, actually.
Dr. Chivers: The search for emotional truth and scientific truth are the same. You just have to want to see it.
Dr. Chivers comments on the many sessions that he has missed. For Trelane’s experiment to unwittingly provide the breakthrough Pike’s been avoiding is perhaps the best thing to happen to him in a while.
(Face tattoo, notwithstanding.)
Goodnight Uhura (Good Morning Juliet)
Obviously, Uhura isn’t Pike’s biological daughter, but she is looking to him for parental guidance as she moves forward as an adult and a mentor.
Uhura: I’ve been trying to move into that next phase, y’know? I’m not a cadet anymore. I wanted someone else to look at me like the adult in the room. But being a mentor is such a big responsibility, I’m just afraid I’m going to steer her wrong.
Pike: Space adventures leave us little time to deal with inner struggles.
Uhura: Excuse me?
Pike: Just something someone said recently.
When Pike gives in to the work involved in being the ship’s dad, he opens a door to the emotions of parenthood. And parenthood is a really mind-blowing experience.
When he’s ready for it, Uhura’s recipe book reveals the detail he’s repressed for months.
He made a kind of peace with Marie’s ascension by seeing her projected life through to its organic end.
However, he never got that closure with Juliet.
Dr. Chivers: When we lose someone, we don’t just mourn that person. We mourn the loss of a future with them.
Through the inexplicable mad-lib of Trelane’s contrivance, Juliet manifests in Pike’s quarters, entirely self-aware, both illusory and completely real.
It goes to show how far Pike’s come that he doesn’t even question her presence. Well, not really.
Pike: Your mom is gone. The life we had with you isn’t real. It was all just a cosmic hallucination. You can’t be here.
Juliet: Yet, here I am.
Juliet is a most unusual plot device but completely in keeping with the timey-wimeyness of Pike’s life experience.
They can reminisce about things they will never do together with all the richness of genuine memory, and she’ll still fade away when they’re done.
Pike: Sometimes, I wish our life was the real one and not this other one I’m living.
Juliet: Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. Everything we shared – the joys, the sorrows, even when I lit the stove on fire…
Pike: [laughs] Right, the salmon! God, I can still smell the charred oven mitts. It was real, wasn’t it?
Juliet: All of it. Just in a different way.
Pike, being Pike, learns from his interactions with both daughters and moves forward after the experiment, taking a seat with Dr. Chivers and letting himself grieve.
Watching the Watchers
Trelane keeps careful watch on his experimental subjects throughout, intent on recreating the Body Cleaning Theater vibe in detail.
Trelane: Like chronitons through the hourglass, so are the days of the Enterprise! Cue (Q) credits. [snaps fingers]
It’s wonderfully absurd.
Even more so is the Proctor sent to observe him completing his assignment.
Trelane: Oh, this is delightful. They were just supposed to hug and reconnect and blah-blah-blah. But this! You can’t plan for this type of drama.
Proctor: Did you NOT plan for this?
Trelane: Of course, I did! It’s “high drama,” the layered emotions of humans. It’s what this is all about! I’m just having a difficult time focusing on my assignment with you lording over me in your extensive robeage. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re lovely, lovely robes.
Love the throwback to Q’s Inquisitor’s robes, by the way.
From some tense moments at the start, Trelane seems to charm the Proctor into enjoying the immersive, addictive nature of soaps.
Trelane: That’s right, Captain Pike. You made your bed. Now you must lie in it.
Proctor: I think she’s right.
Trelane: Oh! Go ahead, talk to the screen if you feel so compelled by the tapestry of hope, love, courage. [Proctor shakes their head] Oh, you’re no fun.
And yes, talking to the screen is very much part of the experience. Trelane may not understand or relate to humans, but he does his homework.
A Solid B- For the Ants
Everything turns out okay, and the chronitons keep pouring through the hourglass even after Trelane hands in his project.
Trelane: A real daughter this whole time! I did not see that coming! How imperfectly perfect.
Proctor: I want to thank you for bringing these ants to our attention. They are more complex than expected. Perhaps worthy of more careful observation. Satisfactory marks. In human terms, a sold B-.
Encounters with cosmic beings leave us ants with a lot to consider as they move on to their next experiment.
Pike: The emotions this collective fever dream forced us to confront are, indeed, very real.
At least our medical specialists are back to normal.
Uhura: So there was no living heart transplant?
Chapel: No such thing as a living heart transplant.
M’Benga: I certainly didn’t rip open Spock’s ribcage.
Chapel: And I don’t have secret backups of everybody’s brains stashed in the supply closet… you guys didn’t see that part. Never mind.
Like the aftermath of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 9, the crew members are left with the uncomfortable realization that the quiet part got said/sung out loud, and there is work to do.
Whew, that’s a lot to unpack, Fanatics! Were there any particular scenes that moved you to laugh or sigh or scream at the screen? Hit our comments with your biggest takeaways!
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