Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Finale Is Just A Monster Episode
The season 2 finale of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," called "Hegemony," in attempting to leave the season on a high note, falls back into comforting, familiar territory.
For a series that has largely — especially during this season — taken numerous big narrative swings, it's almost disappointing to see it rely on traditional "high stakes" action storytelling for its finale. Why just last week, "Stange New Worlds" was a musical. A few weeks prior, animated characters from "Star Trek: Lower Decks" were sucked into live-action. There was a fun time travel plot, a harrowing tale of war trauma, an old-fashioned farce, and an episode where prejudice was put on trial. The varying tonal textures and classical "Star Trek" stories have kept "Strange New Worlds" one of the best Trek shows in decades.
But for "Hegemony," the showrunners regressed into slick special effects, action, death, and fights against an alien menace. This wouldn't necessarily be bad if the alien menace in question was unusual or clever (see: the Borg in "Best of Both Worlds," the third season finale of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"), but in "Strange New Worlds," the recurring threat are the Gorn, the reptilian species first introduced in the original series episode "Arena."
"Hegemony" is the third SNW episode to heavily feature the Gorn, and the series has made them remarkably similar to the creatures from Ridley Scott's "Alien." Their young incubate inside human bodies, they burst out of your chest when gestation is complete, and they instantly go on killing rampages. Also, adult Gorn are said to eat their prey. In a universe of warmth and diplomacy, it strikes this critic as uncreative that any aliens should be presented as mere monsters.
The internet is for Gorn
The story is simple: Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) is aiding a remote Federation outpost that just happens to look like a small town in 2023 Wisconsin (a budget-saving conceit that is winkingly referred to in the episode's opening dialogue). Out of nowhere, a massive attack ship appears in the sky and begins laying waste to the colony, as well as Captain Batel's ship, the U.S.S. Cayuga, up in orbit. Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) is also present for this attack. Chapel, one might recall, is currently embroiled in an affair with Spock (Ethan Peck) and Captain Batel has been in the midst of instigating a relationship with Captain Pike (Anson Mount). Hearing that various paramours are in danger, the Enterprise charges to the rescue.
It seems the Gorn has no beef with the Federation other than the Wisconsin colony's planet is in their spatial territory. The Gorn are trying to exterminate infiltrators, and the Enterprise fires back. It's not long before crew members have been paired off in order to address the attack from their individualized venues. Captain Pike finds Captain Batel, sadly infected with Gorn eggs, on the planet below, and they attempt to fight off encroaching Gorns while hoping to destroy the enemy control tower. In a fun character reveal, a young Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (Martin Quinn) is there to help.
Meanwhile, Nurse Chapel has become stranded on the remains of the Cayuga, which was nearly destroyed in the first Gorn volley. To rescue her, Spock will put on a space suit and fly through space without a ship to get her.
This is all very exciting, of course, and the action is tense and expertly presented. After nine episodes of whimsey and/or thoughtfulness, it seems that it's now crunch time.
Star Trek and violence
Naturally, however, "Star Trek" is at its weakest when it's crunch time. As previously written, "Star Trek" can be any genre, but high-stakes action and "badass" moments of violence are when the franchise is least interesting. It's not until the franchise delves into the consequences of violence that it gets interesting. This season's "Under the Cloak of War," perhaps the season's best episode, shows that wartime combat can leave one emotionally damaged to the point of moral emptiness. Being able to fight well and survive desperate situations are not acts of bravery or heroism, but a sign that one has been broken.
In "Hegemony" the violence is an act of self-defense, perhaps — the Gorn attacked first — but the episode also features a scene wherein Spock stabs a Gorn officer in the head, murdering him. As the life drains out of the Gorn's body, Nurse Chapel and Spock both breathe a sigh of relief. One might be reminded of the dumb, out-of-character scene in "Star Trek Into Darkness" wherein Spock (Zachary Quinto), blinded by rage, pounds Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) repeatedly in the face on the roof of a speeding bus. "Hegemony" is hundreds of times better than "Into Darkness," an abysmal film, but its attitudes toward cathartic violence are the same.
"Star Trek" typically tries to humanize all its aliens, no matter how strange. With the Gorn, "Strange New Worlds" gave itself an all-purpose monster the crew could feel free to blast away at without having to negotiate. The Gorn are essentially video game avatars. They are hungry monsters whose only motivation is to bite and kill. As monsters, they're plenty scary. But one might wonder why a show as strong as "Strange New Worlds" needs to employ such a frustratingly simple "Bad Guy."
Mr. Worf ... Fire.
In a long-standing Trek tradition, "Hegemony" ends on a cliffhanger. The Enterprise is cornered, having been ordered away from the Gorn conflict ... just as the aliens kidnapped hundreds of human colonists. What the Gorn will do to the colonists has only been hinted at in previous episodes. Know, however, that it couldn't possibly be good. Pike is left with a tense final command decision. The final moments of "Hegemony" are evocative of the final moments of (mentioned above) "Best of Both Worlds," the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" season-ender wherein Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) was assimilated into the Borg. The final line of the episode was Captain Riker (Jonathan Frakes) facing his former commanding officer, now a murderous cyborg, imploring that his tactical officer begins firing. The cliffhanger is now considered by many Trekkies to be an indelibly classic moment in the franchise's history.
Pike is given a similar moment, given a choice between following orders and staging a rescue. Audiences will have to wait until the next season, however, to find out what he decided. Season 3 will likely drop at the end of 2024, so we must remain patient. Also keep our fingers crossed that the WGA and SAG strikes are successful and that Paramount+ isn't abruptly liquidated. Contemplating the state of the modern entertainment industry may be scarier than any Gorn monster that Pike has to face.
All told, "Hegemony" is effective action storytelling and a fine-enough capper to a strong season of television. The tension runs high and one is never anything less than entirely riveted. Once the action dies down, however, and the characters can begin taking stock of their emotional states, then the interesting part of the tale can begin.