Strange New Worlds Season 4 Redeems One Of Star Trek's Most Mocked Jobs

This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 Episode 7 "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass."

There's a familiar face on the last "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" — Trelane (Rhys Darby), a young Q who, back in Season 3 Episode 2 "Wedding Bell Blues," brainwashed Spock (Ethan Peck) and Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) into believing they were engaged. Since then, Trelane has been studying humanity and has discovered our highest art form, which "explores the raw unrepentant beauty of human emotion." He means, of course, the soap opera.

So Trelane has once more brainwashed the Enterprise crew into acting out one of his scripted scenarios, namely a soap opera episode playing out aboard the Enterprise. Only Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) notices what's wrong, perhaps because he has some genuine emotional issues to work through. Here to help is the Enterprise's ship counselor, Dr. Chivers.

The title, "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass," is a play on the opening words of the famous soap opera "Days of Our Lives" — "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." The episode recruits long-running "Days of Our Lives" star Deidre Hall, who has played Dr. Marlena Evans (on and off) since 1976, as Dr. Chivers.

The idea of the Enterprise having a counselor goes back to "Star Trek: The Next Generation," with the main character Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). "Next Generation" fans have often mocked Troi for her supposed uselessness at her job. Plus, a therapist sitting on the bridge right next to the captain always made it feel like Starfleet had let military protocol get too lax. 

"Chronitons" zeroes in on where having a counselor onboard a starship would be genuinely useful. 

Dr. Chivers is easier to accept than Troi since she isn't part of the bridge crew. She also notes that Captain Pike has been ducking appointments with her, explaining why we haven't seen her before. That absence, in turn, feeds into the episode's message that, with all the insane adventures the Enterprise crew go through every week, maybe they should all stop by Dr. Chivers' office. 

Trelane's scenario for Pike features the soapy twist that Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) is actually his long-lost daughter. The only way Pike can get himself and his crew out of Trelane's grasp is to act out the twist in earnest, so he does. But it unfolds that this twist is really about Pike's buried trauma of losing his real (sort of) daughter.

Back in the "Strange New Worlds" Season 3 finale, Captain Pike went on his most heartbreaking journey yet. His lover Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) "ascended" into a new form of existence. As a last gift to Chris, she gave him a vision of the life they would have had together if not for fate's meddling hand. Part of that life was a daughter, Juliet (Anna Mirodin). Pike's story in Trelane's simulation concludes with him talking to Juliet and getting a proper goodbye; the episode itself ends with Pike sitting across from Dr. Chivers, finally letting himself cry about how he misses his daughter.

From Pike's perspective, he spent years living his life with Marie and Juliet. It may have been an illusion, but it felt real to him for all that time. It's also a clear echo of a famous "Next Generation" episode — "The Inner Light."

In "The Inner Light" (Patrick Stewart's favorite "Star Trek" episode), an alien probe zaps Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Stewart). He lives as Kamin, a simple family man on an alien world, for 40 years — but only 25 minutes pass outside Picard's head.

The aftermath of the episode speaks to the kind of man Picard was: a very private, formal, and emotionally guarded one, and not one to open up about profound life experiences to his crew. The rare moments that Picard did let himself be vulnerable were striking because of their rarity. In the episode "Family," he breaks down about his previous assimilation by the Borg in front of his brother Robert (Jeremy Kemp). Robert's response to Jean-Luc's tears? "My brother is a human being after all." 

We've seen across "Strange New Worlds" that Pike is a much friendlier, more lenient captain than Picard, so of course he responds better to Chivers' therapy than Picard ever did to Troi's. It's worth noting that "Star Trek" itself has sometimes pinpointed the ship counselor as a "useless" job. In the last season of "Next Generation," Troi herself realizes she's underqualified for her rank of Lieutenant Commander, so she begins wearing a proper Starfleet uniform and studies as a proper bridge officer. 

The animated series "Star Trek: Lower Decks" featured a ship counselor on the U.S.S. Cerritos — the anthropomorphic bird Dr. Migleemo (Paul F. Tompkins), an incompetent blowhard and a terrible therapist. "Lower Decks" is a parody of typical "Star Trek" tropes, with Migleemo being one of the "useless counselor." "Strange New Worlds" can be as self-referential as "Lower Decks," but it found an earnest reason for a Starfleet ship to have a therapist on board.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+.