Carol Kane's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Character Is A Different, But Familiar, Kind Of Trek Alien
This post contains spoilers for the season 2 premiere of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
One of the more tragic plot twists in the first season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" was the death of the Hemmer (Bruce Horak), the blind Aenar engineer on the Enterprise. Hemmer was a serious character, often put upon and annoyed by the crises on the ship, but clearly intelligent, principled, and even approachable under the right circumstances. That he died was a tragedy to the character's many fans.
The Enterprise, it seems, is now lacking a chief engineer (a condition, incidentally, that also plagued the first two seasons of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"). Stepping into the role for the second season of "Strange New Worlds" is Lieutenant Pelia, a casual, downright sloppy character played by Carol Kane. Pelia looks human but is actually a Lanthanite, a species that lives for thousands of years (and is new to "Star Trek" canon with this season). And along the way, she has lost her ability to adhere to Starfleet propriety. As she explains when she first assists the Enterprise crew, she's just bored, and wants some excitement in her life again.
Pelia's exact age is not made explicit in "Strange New Worlds," and it's entirely possible she has visited any number of Federation worlds in her lifetime. Hopefully, the "Strange" writers will eventually pair her with a noted celebrity from history; the temptation to say she once married Constantine would be too delicious to pass up. No such announcements have yet been made, however.
Lieutenant Pelia
Lieutenant Pelia stands out from other "Star Trek" characters in her utter lack of formality. Sure, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) might be a little flip, and Samuel Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) might leave crumbs on the table during staff meetings, but they all adhere to a strict protocol when engaging with complex space problems. Pelia, on the other hand, doesn't seem to step to the line during a crisis. She merely calmly solves it. She's not interested in the rules, a strange place for a Starfleet officer — and an engineer — to be. Previously, Starfleet engineers were obsessed with machines and technicals. Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) treated the Enterprise like a prized hot rod, bristling when people insulted it. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) was impressed with the capabilities of the Enterprise-D, and breathed everything technical, beyond the point of social awkwardness. Miles O'Brien (Colm Meany) was perpetually exhausted, always repairing the usual machines aboard Deep Space Nine. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) had little patience for people but became very excited when solving problems creatively.
Pelia, meanwhile, seems to be so skilled at engineering that she merely fixes the problems without having to be passionate or even thinking about it very much. Her capability as an engineer, at least as audiences have seen so far, is so far beyond that she'd rather fix an engine than ask permission.
There are few "just get it done" characters like that in Starfleet's chain-of-command-obsessed world. When audiences do meet a "just get it done," character, however, they tend to be gruff and no-nonsense. Like Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes). In both Ro's and Pelia's cases, however, they exist to challenge Starfleet's status quo.
The long-lived listener
Pelia is like a few other "Star Trek" characters, however, in one key regard. After all, being long-lived gives Pelia a perspective on humanity that a fellow human couldn't possibly possess.
One might immediately draw a parallel between Pelia and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) who served as a bartender on the Enterprise-D on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Guinan was an El-Aurian, a species that also lives for multiple centuries. Guinan served on a ship in the 24th century but looked more or less the same when she was hobnobbing with Mark Twain some 450 years prior. Confusingly, Guinan looked like a young woman (and was played by Ito Aghayere) when she found a job on 21st-century Earth. But then, her bar was called "10 Forward," a name that didn't exist until a bar was built on deck ten, forward, on the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. It seems there were some time-travel shenanigans somewhere in Guinan's life.
Guinan's most notable feature, of course, is that she listens well and gives sage advice. Like Pelia, her longevity has given her an apparent appreciation for the short-lived people she lives among. "Star Trek," as one sees, has a minor tradition of outsiders who look at humanity with compassion, interest, and bemusement. Our species, it seems, has foibles and idiosyncrasies that would make an immortal chuckle. Pelia seems to chuckle a lot.