Star Fleet orders the Enterprise to carry out a fly-by and covert scouting of the planet Rygel VII. Pike and his away team had major casualties during their previous visit there several years before, having to cut-short their mission when attacked by warrior-like locals. However, a recent and cursory scan of the planet has shown that one of the enclaves now has a garden emblazoned with the Star Fleet insignia. Is it a sign of further culture contamination, directly at odds with the Prime Directive, or a call for help?
Beaming down – and in suitable, disguised clothing this time – Pike, La’an and M’Benga try to keep a safe-distance from the main tower but start to feel signs of dizziness and tinnitus. They are further surprised when they are challenged by soldiers who immediately assess they are not native to the planet and somehow know they are from Star Fleet.
It turns out that Pike’s last mission to Rigel VII may not have been the clean getaway he presumed and now the greatest danger of all may be the planet itself – if only he could remember that…
*spoilers*
After several weeks of spotlight episodes we now have a full-on ensemble outing, technically the first full-cast adventure of the second season and there’s an immediate feel of the TOS (The Original Series) era Star Trek – to the extent that if someone said this was a script that had been unearthed in a pile on Gene Roddenberry or DC Fontana’s desk and had been dusted off and retrofitted for a modern audience… well, that would be entirely believable. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing because what Strange New Worlds has consistently done since its inception is mirror the vibe of the classic era and given it a modern twinkle, a love-letter to the past with one eye on the future (rather than, say, Star Trek: Discovery that seems less and less like Trek but loosely wears its trappings as it constantly reinvents itself).
The use of Rigel VII as the planet of the week harks back to mentions made in Star Trek‘s original pilot The Cage (and reused later episode The Menagerie) about a recent away-mission that had gone wrong and some of the background and tragic events are what Pike relates here in greater detail, prior to Among the Lotus Eaters and the episode’s own main mission back to the planet. We’re essentially filling in a small gap, returning to a location that exists in in-series continuity, but we haven’t really examined in a long time.
While last week’s Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow might have divided audiences on its changes to canon and brushes with history, it’s likely that this week’s Among the Lotus Eaters, also acknowledging the early days of the franchise, will strike less of a confrontational note – but may have to suffice with a just-satisfied shrug rather than thunderous applause or gnashing of teeth…
There are a more than couple of scenes that strongly evoke the plastic planets of old: ominous back-painted towers perched on a hill, solitary boulders sitting unapologetically on multi-hued but conveniently flat sandy outcrops and behind which our heroes can ‘hide’ to avoid the enemy. The very idea that the central villain of the piece is a Star Fleet officer gone rogue (and a little mad) and starting up his own kingdom – complete with amnesiac serfs to do his bidding – also feels like the kind of throwback idea the original run liked to tackle. The central story conceit of a planet with the kind of sci-fi radiation that doesn’t kill you but wipes out short-term memory works fine as a convenient plot point though as the episode continues, there’s an awful lot of caveats thrown into the mix. You can remember emotions, you can retain everyday skills and have some muscle memory, but your everyday sense of self – name, history etc gets indistinct. But for some reason – perhaps given the superior standards of the CGI backdrop, the earnest with which it’s all delivered and the general sense of the cast willfully playing to those early and more simpler dynamics, it all fits together quite well. While not a groundbreaking episode nor one that will likely find a place in the ‘favourites’ list of the average fan, it’s still a passable romp that obligingly does what is asked of it if no more.
Anson Mount and his attack-tsunami hair are back from off-screen paternity-leave and the actor is finally center-stage again as he leads an away mission that predictably starts to have problems. Mount really is one of the current sf genre’s MVPs, finding just the right amount of fun and drama in a role that would be easy to over or under-play. We catch up with his troubled love-life, clumsily handling the ‘should we take some time away from each other?’ talk with Captain Batel (Wynonna Earp‘s Melanie Scrofano) who is, well, complaining about the time they have to spend away from each other. It earns him an immediate reprimand and eye-roll from Rebecca Romijn’s Una whose well aware of her friend’s ‘jump-before-pushed’ attitude to avoiding personal problems. There’s some subtle development with Babs Olusanmokun’s Doctor M’Benga, aware that his position in the away-team this time is built on his ability to potentially fight as much as to heal. Christina Chong’s La’an is the first to feel the effects of the radiation, but sustains an early injury which allows her not to be as central to events as the past two episodes. Ethan Peck as Spock , Jess Bush as Chapel and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura try to hold off the effects of the radiation ship-side but it’s Melissa Navia’s turn to shine as Erica Ortegas quietly panics and then manages to use her instincts and some common-sense , logical use of the Enterprise’s computer-system to solve the most immediate problems and get the ship to safety – all with a sense of innate glee at being so good at her job that she can do it without remembering how to! David Huynh as Zac Nguyen, the officer who has gone native and power-hungry is really nothing more than a cookie-cut foe, but certainly enters into it with gusto.
While last week’s Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow might have divided audiences on its changes to canon and brushes with history, it’s likely that this week’s Among the Lotus Eaters (its title coming from Greek myths in The Odyssey) also acknowledging the early days of the franchise, will strike less of a confrontational note but may have to suffice with a just-satisfied shrug rather than thunderous applause or gnashing of teeth. However a half-decent episodes of SNW is still better than many shows offer.
- Story7
- Acting8
- Direction8
- Production Design / VFX7
