Strange New Worlds Season 4's 'Evil Admiral' Episode Honors A Star Trek Legend

This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4, Episode 8, "Orders of Magnitude."

In the latest "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," the enemy comes from within. Admiral Simon Reeger (Joe Morton) commandeers the Enterprise to track a mysterious cloaked ship that's raided Starfleet colonies — including the home of the admiral's family. 

Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Commander Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) are being held hostage on the surface by some Andorian pirates (who've scorned their people's membership of the Federation). James Kirk (Paul Wesley), on the Enterprise for a visit, winds up as senior ranking officer. Stuck as Reeger's second in command, Kirk has to stop the admiral from razing a whole planet.

The "rogue Starfleet admiral" is a patented "Star Trek" trope. (You know it's one when "Star Trek: Lower Decks" made fun of it.) The archetype came to particular prominence on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," specifically under Ronald D. Moore. 

The famed writer was often interested in peeling back the utopian ideals of the Federation and putting his characters in uncomfortable binds. Indeed, Moore's favorite episode of the original "Star Trek" is "The Conscience of the King," where Captain Kirk (William Shatner) wrestles with whether an aged actor might be a disguised, thought-dead mass murderer.

One of Moore's most beloved "Next Generation" episodes is the two-parter "Chain of Command," where Captain Edward Jellico (Ronny Cox) takes command of the Enterprise and brings a more militaristic edge than the on-assignment Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart). "Chain of Command" also introduced the iron-hard Vice Admiral Alynna Nechayev (Natalia Nogulich), who later reappeared on "Deep Space Nine." Now, Jellico and Nechayev aren't evil (just real hardasses), but they're still much less saintly and diplomatic than the Enterprise crew. 

"Orders of Magnitude" echoes "Chain of Command" and more.

Admiral Reeger's motivation, the death of his family, echoes "Next Generation" episode "The Wounded" (written by the late Jeri Taylor), which introduced the Cardassians and established their previous war with the Federation. The episode's villain is rogue Starfleet Captain Benjamin Maxwell (Bob Gunton), a veteran who lost his family in that war. He claims the Cardassians are re-arming for a new conflict. Is he right, seeking a pretense for vengeance, or both?

"Orders of Magnitude" also calls back to an original series episode: "The Doomsday Machine." In that one, Captain Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) have to manage Commodore Matthew Decker (William Windom), seeking Ahab-like vengeance after his ship, the Constellation, was destroyed by the titular machine.

Circling back to Ronald D. Moore, "Orders of Magnitude" bears striking similarities to his episode from "Next Generation" Season 7, "The Pegasus." There, Terry O'Quinn guest stars as Admiral Erik Pressman, who was once Commander Riker's (Jonathan Frakes) commanding officer on the USS Pegasus. The ship was lost with almost all hands, but Pressman leads the Enterprise to recover the long-lost wreck because he'd been testing some illegal weapons technology during the ship's loss, and most of the crew mutinied. Riker did what Kirk doesn't do this episode ("I grabbed a phaser and defended my captain"), and now has to accept he made the wrong choice.

Kirk and Reegar's dynamic mirrors Riker's butting heads with Jellico and Pressman, especially since Reeger has a checkered past. He's a war hero for defeating the Klingons at the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, where Kirk's father George was Reeger's first officer. But at the battle's start, as Kirk discovers, Reeger suffered a brain injury requiring emergency surgery performed by Enterprise's own Dr. Joseph M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun).

Reeger's crew on the USS Constitution falsified the ship's logs after their captain was celebrated as a hero for winning a battle he didn't fight. Reeger, in turn, always resented George Kirk, and now his son, for "stealing" his glory. The twist is similar to "Strange New Worlds" Season 2's own "Under The Cloak of War," which also revealed a part of Dr. M'Benga's secret past from the Klingon War, and where a celebrated hero turned out to be a poser. To that end, M'Benga is this episode's true analogue to Riker in "The Pegasus," having to confront the disastrous consequences of staying loyal to his old captain.

But there's another Ronald D. Moore creation that outranks Pressman and Reeger's vileness. When Moore got to showrun his own space opera, the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica," he pushed for the character conflicts and moral compromises that "Star Trek" had often frowned on. The leads of "Battlestar" were survivors of a destroyed society traveling the stars, and the pretense of upholding civilization often gave way to material desperation. 

In "Battlestar" Season 2, the Galactica's fleet encounters another surviving warship: the Pegasus, led by Admiral Helena Cain ("Star Trek" alum Michelle Forbes). Cain has become a power-hungry dictator, cementing her authority with lethal force and sanctioning the rape of Cylon prisoners as an "interrogation tactic." (It's hard not to see this episode, aired in 2005, as an allusion to the then-current Abu Ghraib torture scandal.)

The name "Pegasus" is a coincidence. (It's referencing an episode of the original "Battlestar," not "Next Generation.") But, Admirals Pressman and Cain both show soldiers sometimes need to question orders to be worthy of the uniforms they wear.

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