Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 4, “A Case of Chiaroscuro.”
Alright, here’s the thing about Strange New Worlds. For whatever reason, at some point showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers decided that gimmick episodes were what this show needed. After a brilliant first season of adventure-of-the-week episodes, Season 2 featured occasional segments like “Those Old Scientists,” a crossover with the animated series Lower Decks, and “Subspace Rhapsody,” a musical episode, which lit a fire under the notion of what a modern episode of Star Trek could be. And that was great.
But somewhere along the way, the gimmicks became the focus, and frankly, they’ve grown kind of tiresome. I was really hoping with Season 4 that we’d just get back to regular weekly adventures. So when this week’s episode, “A Case of Chiaroscuro,” began and everything was in black and white, my mind immediately went to Yellow Alert. By the time we were on Mat’aar XII, the planet of the week (which is a kind of throwback to a film noir and/or Casablanca world), my inner Red Alert was in full effect. IT’S ANOTHER GIMMICK EPISODE.
When a newly promoted Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) leads an away team of Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Ensign Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) to retrieve a probe that’s strayed into Klingon space, the group find themselves stuck on Mat’aar XII, where not only does everything appear to be black and white to our heroes (due to the infrared something something radiation of the system), but also you have to dress up like knock-off Humphrey Bogarts and Carmen Sandiegos in order to fit in.
Look, it’s a cute enough idea I suppose. The Original Series did go to a gangster planet after all. And the visuals of the episode are pretty cool. But as “A Case of Chiaroscuro” labors through its beats to hit the tropes of the genre(s) it’s working to imitate, the hour just winds up feeling like a Cinema Studies 101 midterm paper: High-contrast and shadowy black and white photography? Check. Doppelgänger characters? Check. A central bar/cafe where conspirators and their foes can congregate? Check. Corrupt local authorities? Check. And so on and so on. The thing is, like that middling paper from the kid who only half paid attention in class, the episode really gets its film noir chocolate mixed up in its wartime/romance film peanut butter.
But whatever, let’s not quibble about that. The real problem here is that Una’s struggle isn’t really fleshed out enough. I understand that she’s torn between wanting to help the local resistance fighters who are pushing against the Klingon occupation they are enduring, and I also understand that this is a particularly personal issue for her due to her own childhood when it was the Federation who were seen as the occupiers by some of her fellow Illyrians. And yet, there’s little here that makes me feel much for Una’s current (or past) situation.
Indeed, it’s Olusanmokun’s M’Benga who once again steals the show, even though he’s depicted here as more of an advisor to both Una and Uhura rather than given his own plotline. The idea of the kindly physician who is also a skilled warrior and an adept spy is so darned cool as the good doctor counsels the young Uhura in how to navigate this strange (new) world while also reminding Una that she can’t let her responsibility to the resistance movement overtake her oath to Starfleet. He even gets the best line of the hour: “My calling is medicine, healing people. It’s the great mystery of my life that some of my strongest skills lie in opposition to that calling.”
The B story involves Christina Chong’s La’an, who’s been flirting with going over to the dark side all season, obsessing over what she thinks might be clues that there’s a traitor onboard the Enterprise. The thing is, nobody else buys her theories, not even her friend-with-benefits-but-actually-her-boyfriend Spock (Ethan Peck). Again, it’s a fairly low-impact plotline that culminates in the revelation that, whew, La’an is not crazy, but also, whoa, she just lied to Captain Pike (Anson Mount) to cover up the truth. Pike seems to maybe know there’s more going on here, and trusts La’an to do the right thing, but still…
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- So if Una’s next step up the promotion ladder is captain, how long until she gets her own ship and leaves the Enterprise for good? (Never to be mentioned or seen again, by the way.)
- In her opening log, Una says that they’re at risk of “re-starting a very Cold War,” but shouldn’t that be “re-starting a shooting war”? The Klingons and the Federation are in a state of Cold War by the time Kirk is in command of the Enterprise, and presumably that’s been the situation since the end of the war depicted in Star Trek: Discovery…
- The chief Klingon here is Kor, who I guess is supposed to be the Kor from The Original Series and Deep Space Nine who was played by the late, great John Colicos. Fine, I guess? (The House of Kor was also depicted in Star Trek: Discovery, although Kor himself was not.)
- Speaking of Discovery, the shuttle Una and the gang take in this episode is the Cervantes, which according to Memory Alpha is a Stamets-type vessel. It’s gotta be named after either the Discovery’s Paul Stamets (who is considered lost and MIA at this point in the timeline) or possibly the real-life mycologist Paul Stamets who the character is named after. Right?
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