Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 6 Review: Off-Hour

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

I’m just saying: Being puppets would’ve come in real handy this week when the Enterprise got sucked into a neutrino slipstream.

The fact that real-time scripted shows — 24, Hijack, The Pitt — have become a genre of their own says something about the quality of action-adventure writing in this day and age.

And while I see the appeal — and laud Star Trek: Strange New Worlds for doing a bang-up job embracing the style — I’m just not built for that level of sustained anxiety.

Also, Una leg breaking and M’Benga’s injuries (and Chapel’s finger!) not to mention Spock’s radiation poisoning puts this one right up there with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 2, “The Griffin Incident,” for its own kind of body horror.

Yeah, like super ick. No, thank you.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Off-Hour”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 6, “Off-Hour,” addresses three separate character arcs while endangering everyone and the ship.

There’s M’Benga’s plans. Canonically, he’s not the Chief Medical Officer when James Kirk takes over. And when he does return to the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Original Series, he works under Bones, indicating a demotion of some sort.

So him making plans to move on, requesting Dr. Boyce’s transfer to the Enterprise, makes some sense.

Then there’s Chapel. When she takes her cue from his preparations, voicing her own plans to leave, he comments on how she’s never planned to stay.

This sparks the most confrontational discussion we’ve ever seen them have. M’Benga and Chapel’s relationship has spanned battlefields, secret ops, pandemics, and conspiracies. And yet, it’s a conversation about career changes that brings the knives out.

In keeping with the genre, it’s usually when characters get emotionally distracted that catastrophe strikes.

And while the rest of the ship is contending with weird and injurious gravity, radiation, and having everything electrified, Chapel has her own ship in a bottle to pilot.

Unable to leave the med bay, she must use the resources on hand to keep M’Benga alive and formulate a plan to save him.

To do so, she defies Dr. Boyce’s direct order — a decision I don’t think was hard to make — and ignores M’Benga’s repeated pleas to leave him and save herself.

Chapel decision to apply for a permanent position on the Enterprise is also in keeping with canon as Nurse Chapel is part of James Kirk’s Enterprise crew.

Notably, Boyce is not. But that’s a tangent for another day.

A Man and His Ship

The final character arc “Off-Hour” focuses on is Montgomery Scott’s. Scotty’s had some time to settle in with this crew and form friendships.

What he needs to work on is his bond with the ship. Pelia coaches him to listen to the ship. To be aware of everything so he doesn’t have to depend on sensors and warnings.

In short, to become the miracle worker Montgomery Scott comes to be known as.

A little aside: when Scotty touches the bulkhead in the Jeffries tube and declares the ship will keep them safe right up to the warp threshold, it reminded me of Snowpiercer‘s Melanie Cavill “reading” the train.

I guess it really doesn’t matter what sort of transport machine it is; engineers are always going to connect with them at a soul level.

Strong Force Neutrinos

Call it techno-babble, or plot armor, or a deus ex machina (although technically it would be a deus extra machina, I guess) but the strong force neutrino research Chapel finds in M’Benga’s Rukiya files saves the day.

It’s a nice throwback to those early days of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1. Back then, we were just getting to know M’Benga.

The only secret we knew he had then was the chronically ill daughter he hid in the med bay transporter buffer.

In a way, M’Benga trying to help Rukia provided the inspiration Chapel needed to save him. Fitting, circular, and also a bit mind-bending.

Demanding Lemons

I cannot emphasize enough the need for a bonkers character like Pelia on a show like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Even when she’s not a puppet.

As a Lanthanite, she’s centuries old and has a lived experience unlike anyone else on board. And yet, she’s constantly delighted and surprised by what the Enterprise encounters and how the crew react.

She also cares deeply for the crew, has high expectations for them, and does her best to help them find their way.

“Great idea harnessing strong force neutrinos from the slipstream. Ah, now that is turning lemons into lemonade. Actually, you know lemons are a hybrid. They didn’t exist before us. Life never gave us lemons. We demanded them! I know. I was there. Funny story, there was this nice lady in India who made the most refreshing brunch drinks. I think her name was Hajinder.” — Pelia

And when everyone is injured, trapped, and otherwise overwhelmed, while a chronometer ticks down to imminent disintegration, Pelia will still try to cut the tension with an irreverent anecdote.

Making the Dream Work

Consider for a moment the level of teamwork — or neatly laid out plot armor, potato/potahto — needed for the Enterprise to survive this experience.

Pelia pitches the idea of using the ion pod to collect information on the neutrino slipstream.

Spock volunteers to do the space walk to activate the ion pod.

Chapel finds the strong force neutrino research in M’Benga’s files when she refuses to leave him to die. She proposes the theory to Pike.

Scotty theorizes the strong force neutrinos can also replenish the ship’s deuterium. Pike has Spock focus on strong force neutrino data.

La’an insists on going out to look for Spock because she refuses to leave him to die. (Sound familiar?)

The data chip is damaged but La’an mindmelds with Spock — to Dr. Boyce’s ire — and everything turns out okay!

Another aside: Brian Markinson as Dr. Boyce is some genius casting. Not only is Boyce a plausible canon-based bridge between Pike’s Enterprise and James Kirk’s, Markinson is a legacy Trek actor.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is his fourth Star Trek series and Boyce his sixth character. But by all indications, he’s going to make Bones look like a pep squad cheerleader in comparison.

Now back to everything turning out okay:

Una’s leg will probably heal pretty quick with her Illyrian upgrades. And it looks like Chapel’s fingertip grew back.

Spock and La’an’s radiation poisoning should be treatable. M’Benga’s whole and hale thanks to strong force neutrinos. And the ship didn’t disintegrate.

But a LOT of people died in Engineering. There were probably other casualties on parts of the ship we didn’t get to see. And one wonders where Starfleet orders replacement pianos from.

Beyond the Threshold

One danger of so much genre-hopping is the continuity threads get mangled. And some trope cards get played a lot, possibly just to see how they look in different contexts.

For example, so far on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Spock has mindmelded with a plant, a puppet, and La’an. That’s three times in six episodes. His brain’s welcome mat’s probably showing some wear and tear by now.

Also, I’m fascinated to see where Cadet A’Sha pops up next. She started as Uhura’s mentee at the bridge’s coms station, but was doing work for Spock on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 4, “A Case of Chiaroscuro.”

On “Off-Hour” she suddenly operating the transporter and repairing coms. If her Vulcan self craves a traditional and predictable training schedule, I could understand her finding this cadet placement problematic.

It would’ve been logical for her to seek out T’Pring for advice when she was last onboard, but young people, even Vulcans, do tend to make things hard for themselves.

Over to you, Fanatics! Did “Off-Hour” have you glued to the screen? Hit our comments with your big emotional takeaways.

Were you appropriately apprehensive about the outcome? Did you think M’Benga was doomed?

Speaking of that, here’s a fun poll to vote on. Putting aside what you know about who survives to crew James Kirk’s Enterprise, who had you the most worried that they were going to die?

After all, Pike jettisoned that pod without confirming Spock was clear. Pike himself assigned the con to Ortegas before knowingly getting himself zapped in order to raise shields.

Who did you think was possibly a goner? Vote!

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