How Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Pays Off Season 2's Darkest Storyline

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" follow.

One advantage of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" being a prequel to the original "Star Trek" is how it can have Klingon bad guys, no explanation needed.

The show is a spin-off of "Star Trek: Discovery," which followed the brief and brutal war between the Federation and Klingon Empire during its first season. "Strange New Worlds" retcons "TOS" characters Dr. Joseph M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) into Klingon War veterans. They specifically served together on the moon J'Gal, where M'Benga developed a steroid for Starfleet soldiers ("Protocol 12") and even took it himself. The infamous "Butcher of J'Gal" who killed some senior Klingons officers? That was actually M'Benga.

So M'Benga's PTSD flared up in the "Strange New Worlds" season 2 "Under the Cloak of War" when the Enterprise had to escort Klingon ambassador Dak'Rah (Robert Wisdom). Dak'Rah, who defected to the Federation, took credit for the deaths of his officers, claiming to be the "Butcher of J'Gal" himself. The tension between M'Benga and Dak'Rah slowly boils over throughout the episode. Dak'Rah professed to be ashamed, both for past atrocities and being a coward on J'Gal. He wanted to make amends with M'Benga, but seemed driven more by his own guilt than empathy for M'Benga.

Ultimately, M'Benga killed Dak'Rah with the d'k tahg (Klingon knife) that he used as the Butcher of J'Gal. The death was ruled as self-defense because Dak'Rah attacked M'Benga, but the episode left it ambiguous whether it truly was or it was actually murder ... until now, in "Shuttle to Kenfori," when M'Benga admits it was murder. The sins of M'Benga's past did not die with Dak'Rah.

In the "Strange New Worlds" season 2 finale/season 3 premiere "Hegemony," Captain Christopher Pike's (Anson Mount) girlfriend Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) came down with a Gorn larvae infection. "Hegemony" ended with Batel's condition stabilized, but not cured. In "Shuttle to Kenfori," the infection has regressed and again threatens to kill her.

Marie's only hope is a "Chimera blossom," a rare plant likely only found on planet Kenfori — which is located in contested Federation/Klingon territory. Pike doesn't let a mere treaty stop the Enterprise from going to Kenfori. But once he and M'Benga land on the planet, they run into two big problems. One, a native plant has taken hold of dead Starfleet scientists and Klingon soldiers, transforming them into, as Pike puts, "the Z-word." Second, there's a group of alive Klingons on the planet hunting our heroes.

The Klingons' leader (Christine Horn) is out to kill M'Benga and asks if he sees the face of an old enemy looking at her. "I have killed too many Klingons to know which house you're from," he answers, so she reveals herself to be the daughter of Dak'Rah. She isn't out to avenge her father, no. She wanted to kill Dak'Rah herself for dishonoring their house, and now she wants to kill M'Benga for robbing her of the chance.

"Our name remains soiled unless I kill my father's assassin," she declares, so she and M'Benga must duel to the death. When Pike claims that Dak'Rah's death was self-defense, M'Benga reveals that it wasn't:

 "I could have stopped him, but a mass murderer gave me the opportunity to kill him... and I did, willingly. I would do it again. So yes, his blood is on my hands. Was that dishonorable? I don't know. But there was justice. I lied to protect the monster that still lives inside me, should the day come when he is needed again."

M'Benga wins the d'k tahg duel, no Protocol 12 needed, but this time he holds back the "monster" and spares his opponent. Dak'Rah's daughter instead finds a warrior's redemption by staying behind to keep the zombie horde back as M'Benga and Pike escape.

Once they're back on the Enterprise, M'Benga asks if Pike will turn him in for Dak'Rah's murder. Pike ducks the question; since the whole mission was unsanctioned, he won't be filing a report on anything that happened. If he were to, "hypothetically," M'Benga asks? "[I'd say] I had a knife to my throat and you told a story to save my life... You're not a monster, Joseph, just a man."

"Shuttle to Kenfori" ends much like how "Under the Cloak of War" did, when Pike suspected M'Benga might be guilty but didn't press the issue. That episode made the two friends into foils; Pike, as usual, represented the Federation's idealism that even the evil deserve second chances. M'Benga, who only confessed then to being glad that Dak'Rah was dead, thought the victims deserved justice more than the penitent.

It's fitting, then, that Pike is the one who learns the truth in "Shuttle to Kenfori." M'Benga said in the closing moments of "Under the Cloak of War" that Pike has "the privilege of believing in what's best in people." In this episode, Pike chooses to apply that to his friend Joseph, because he saw M'Benga hold the monster inside him back on Kenfori. If our enemies deserve second chances, so do our friends.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+. New episodes warp in on Thursdays.