Two episodes in, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is representing what the original series was better than I expected anybody to pull off, and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it. The show has really begun to grow on me. If you listened to Trek Talk Tuesday this week, that’s one of the things I talked about.
This is episode 2, “Children of the Comet,” and it belongs to Uhura. She’s a cadet, and for the very first time she’s been invited to the captain’s quarters for dinner with the crew. It’s sort of a team building exercise, if you will. The captain’s table.
The Captain’s Table
The episode opens on a desert planet. Two characters, clearly an alien species we haven’t encountered before, are walking, and we get a brief closer look at them. I tried to come up with the fancy word for the climate and I’m going to stop: they live in a desert, man. If there’s a Tatooine on Star Trek, this is it. They look up at the sky, you see a comet, and that sets up the premise. Then you get a better view of the comet from space, one we’ve actually seen in some of the trailers.
Then Cadet Uhura (I keep wanting to say Lieutenant, and I can’t) gets off the turbolift, and Ortegas is waiting for her. Uhura’s doing the narration that opens the episode, her own little mini log, and according to it she was led to believe this was a formal affair and she’s supposed to be in her dress uniform. It is not, and she is. Uhura’s like, oh, really, so we’re doing this. Ortegas is like, come on, it’s fun, it’s what we always do. A little bit of fun hazing.
They get to the captain’s quarters and sure enough Pike’s like, ah, dress uniform, I get it, it’s cool, come on in. It’s a mix of crew in there. It isn’t always the same people and it isn’t always the command crew. I like what they’re doing. The familiarity is what I’m there for. It’s a very familial feeling setup and I kind of dig that right now.
Meet Hemmer
Then we get our very first look at the new chief engineer. His name is Hemmer, played by Bruce Horak. Hemmer is an Aenar, and if they look familiar you might be confusing them with the Andorians, like some of the ones we’ve seen in Star Trek: Discovery, because it’s very similar. The truth is they go as far back as Enterprise. If you ever watched Star Trek: Enterprise, the Aenar were, I want to say, an adjacent race to the Andorians, but they developed differently, and they’re telepaths because the majority of them are blind. So this was a really good opportunity for us to see that and engage with it.
Uhura, of course, is being hazed by Spock and Hemmer. It’s her first time at the captain’s table and they want to have a little bit of fun at her expense. Hey, things happen. We’ve actually seen this scene, it was one of the ones put out as a sneak peek. She tells him she’s read that the Aenar have a form of precognitive ability. “I knew you were going to ask that.” “Because you sensed my question before I asked it?” “Because everyone always asks that.”
She calls them both out for hazing her and walks away, and that’s when Hemmer says to Spock, “I like her.” And Spock’s like, yes, indeed. It’s cool. You get to see an interaction between two people who are both kind of stoic like that.
An Uhura We’ve Never Seen
A little further into the meal Pike’s telling some stories, and you notice Uhura is peeping everybody. She’s checking everybody out. That’s what you’d expect from someone who’s very much into language. Language isn’t just verbal skills. Language is oftentimes physical as well, and that’s important. We start to learn a little bit about how her brain works.
Then Pike asks her where she sees herself in 10 years. When he goes to say the words “in 10 years,” he stumbles on them himself, because in a decade’s time he’s going to be in that accident. Uhura starts talking about where she sees herself, and then she starts talking about how she’s not really sure she is Starfleet.
This is an Uhura at a stage in her career we’ve never seen, and to me there are several layers to it, because it mirrors Nichelle Nichols’ real life story from when she was on the original series. I’m sure many of you know this, so forgive me, I’m rehashing it for those who are new. Nichelle Nichols tells the story, and it’s been popularly published, that she met Dr. Martin Luther King. He wanted to meet her. They were talking, he was telling her what she meant, and she said, well, the truth is I’m thinking about leaving the show. And he told her she had to stay, because every day millions of Black American women were seeing not only a person of color on screen, but a woman.
So there was a point when she was thinking of leaving the show. I find that very interesting, and I like the dichotomy they pull in here. Uhura, you’re not sure Starfleet’s for you, because you just want to study alien languages. It’s what you’re good at. Being a xenolinguistics expert doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in Starfleet.
As they’re leaving, she and Spock have a very brief conversation in the hallway. She’s like, well, I guess I messed that whole thing up. Spock’s like, no, actually, you didn’t. The captain very much respects honesty, he asked the question honestly, and you gave him the truth. Then he says to her, look, a lot of us have worked our whole lives to be in Starfleet. If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you make space for someone who does?
Under normal circumstances I’d say this is Spock being crappy, or being mean. He’s not. He’s just laying out the facts, because that’s what Spock does. If A equals B, then maybe you should consider C being the truth. It’s very him, and it makes a lot of sense.
Pike Knows Their Names
Then Number One and the captain are cleaning up after dinner and just having a conversation. It’s the first half of a two-part conversation, and you get the second half at the end of the episode. She’s concerned about what this all means. She sits down and says, talk to me, how does this affect your life, what are we going to do?
And he tells her he sees their names all the time. It’s become a mantra in his ear: I have to make it to that point to save these people. He knows the names of the people he’s going to save. All of them. To veer off course and save himself is to make sure those people die, and in his own head he can’t reconcile that.
That’s when you find out there’s an issue with this comet.
I Love This Job
We cut to a planet exploding. You don’t know it’s a simulation at first. When they pull back, Spock is giving the mission parameters: we need to move this comet out of the way, or it hits the planet. La’an comes up with a really cool plan. What if we put these four little engine things on it, shear off some edges, and move it, and it should take a certain amount of time. Hemmer’s response is basically, great, thanks a lot, considering he’s the one who’s got to make the fix.
Pike’s like, all right, everybody, we’ve got a planet to save. And he leans over and whispers, “I love this job.”
I love this kind of stuff, because these are the things that are going to make him a memorable captain beyond just this series. I don’t care who you are. I love Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine, but I feel like he’s never stuck out in my head the same way, because he didn’t captain a ship. Janeway is wonderful, and they’re doing a wonderful job homaging her in Prodigy. But when you line them up, I’m thinking the Mount Rushmore is pretty soon going to end up being Kirk, Picard and Pike. You’ve got to remember, those are Enterprise captains. I don’t know if that’s how they’re writing him, but I’m digging it. If it’s about the legacy of the captains who’ve been on the Enterprise, I’m down with Pike being the forerunner and everybody else following.
They fire the little torpedoes with the thrusters on them, and the comet has a shield. Pike’s floored. The music crescendos, you cut to the commercial, and he’s sitting there going, what is all this?
A Building on a Comet
Then we get our very first staff meeting, with Number One giving the briefing. They’ve discovered the source of the shielding is a building. Why there’s a building on a comet, who knows. There’s a quick exchange where Pike points out that the mustache Samuel Kirk has grown is growing on him. It’s all part of Uhura noticing everything, because remember, mostly everything in this hour is being observed through her perspective.
They decide to beam down and see if they can figure out how to move the thing. While they’re getting ready, Chapel gives them something to help them, and apparently it’s painful, and she’s like, oh, I had no clue it was going to be painful, sorry. She has no bedside manner. There’s a bit of an exchange between Spock and Chapel that Uhura picks up on, and later she asks him, did you realize she was flirting with you? And he’s like, I don’t know, I don’t think so. Very Spock.
Then they have their astronaut moment, walking out in their suits to the transporter room. Uhura pauses, and you can tell she’s asking herself, do I even belong here? What am I doing here? Mr. Kyle’s of course there, the transporter chief, and he beams them down to the surface of a comet.
What’s really cool is the dust. It’s doing this very Now You See Me 2 thing where it’s going upward, the opposite direction you expect. Then the away team turns around and stares, and there’s the structure in person. They do a really good job characterizing it. Inside it’s a very Aliens-like chamber: a giant egg thing, all ripply, in a room with undulating walls.
At the centerpiece, Kirk says, hey, this could be a language of some sort, right? Uhura’s like, I mean, yeah, I guess, why are you asking me, I’m new. And the answer is that this is literally what you do. That’s the reason you’re here. And yeah, that’s exactly the reason she’s there. She starts getting into it, but then Kirk touches the thing, energy ripples out of it, and it shoots him back.
They call for an emergency beam out. Kyle tries. The shields are up, the same shield that stopped the torpedoes. This is a very bad thing. And Spock’s like, all right, well, get to work.
We cut back to the species in the desert, the mother and daughter. The little girl points upward, and she’s got the most amazing eyes. They really did a great job characterizing this species in a way I like. There’s the comet again, and this time its corona looks a little different.
That Is Not a Pep Talk
On the ship, Ortegas comes up with a plan. What if we take the phasers and raise the harmonics and punch a hole through the shield? It’s a sciencey plan. They science it, like you do in Star Trek, and I’m really loving that.
Meanwhile Spock comes over to check on Uhura, and she’s like, look, I don’t think you realize this is my first away mission. He knows. But he needs her help, he needs her to work this out, and he tries to give her a pep talk. It’s the scene we’ve seen in the trailer. She’s like, is that supposed to be a pep talk? Yeah. No, that sucked. So he says something a little better, and she’s like, okay, that’s better. And she starts really working hard on figuring this thing out.
The Enterprise is about to do the phaser thing when they get hit by something. Come to find out there’s somebody out there trying to stop them from messing with this comet, because to these people it’s a religious object. They call it the M’hanit, or however you say it. Very cool species. I like how they look. It’s very clear they’re more advanced than us, so they’re getting some deference.
Pike’s doing his best. I don’t think he wants to offend, but even he understands this has to be done right or they’ve got a big problem. How he deals with aliens is something I see him constantly keeping at the forefront of his mind, and that’s a big thing. He’s listening to them very carefully, and he’s like, come on, let’s find some middle ground. And they’re like, no. No middle ground. You touch it, we destroy you. He turns around like, what the heck are we going to do? Everyone realizes they have to solve this problem fast.
Name That Tune
Back on the surface, Uhura starts to hum. Spock notices the chamber is starting to reverberate with that same tune. Uhura notices too, tries something else, and has Spock help her.
Aboard the ship they’re picking up a signal coming from the comet, and the signal is none other than her tune, the African tune. It’s so funny, because Pike does what we do with our phones. He’s basically like, computer, name that tune. And I’m like, oh, clearly, bro, you need your Shazam. Hey Siri, what’s this song? It’s a cool little moment.
She gets Spock to do a two-part harmony with her, the whole place is reverberating, and all of a sudden the center thing opens. This is when she gets a clever idea. Now, they never revisit how she pulled this off, so it may have been a scene that was cut from the episode, because they don’t tell you how she figured out how to just ask. But she apparently figured out how to ask, in song. The comet drops its shield. Number One’s like, they dropped the shield, Pike says beam them up, and sure enough they’re back on board.
Play Dead
The aliens are like, how dare you desecrate the temple. Pike’s like, come on, let’s work this out. They don’t want to work anything out. They immediately open fire.
I do love that every time the ship gets hit, the screens go RGB and blurry for a split second. It really helps sell the shaking set.
Then you get this really amazing flight scene, the likes of which we don’t see in Star Trek often. Pike tells Ortegas, you’ve got to do something, get us to the front of this thing, and she comes up with her own pattern and gets them as close as she can. Then the captain says, shut everything down. Play dead. Because the Shepherds are hailing them. That’s what the species calls themselves, the Shepherds, or that’s what the universal translator says, and they do have a funny little universal translator joke in here too.
So the ship goes dark and Pike tells them, we have a problem, we need you to rescue us. They’re a benevolent species. They’re going to come help. And you find out Spock is out in a shuttlecraft, triggering the shearing they talked about, getting rid of an edge to deflect the comet. You see him cutting through, and poof, they succeed in saving the day.
Ortegas and everybody are really excited. The rock shears away, the big piece goes one way and the sheared piece goes another, and it leaves a debris trail of some kind that affects the atmosphere on the planet. We cut back to the desert, and for the first time ever they have rain. It’s changed the potential ecology of the entire planet, and their evolutionary path, in a good and positive way. You can see Pike is really proud of what they’ve done. I like everything about it.
Something We Can’t Explain
Uhura has a brief conversation with Spock, who tells her, I know you had doubts, but I need you to know that if you decide to stay, Starfleet can be better for you being here. It’s a good moment for the two of them, and she reflects on it.
Then the other half of the conversation, Pike and Number One. Uhura translated the original signal they received, the music they couldn’t read. It was a prophecy. It showed the trajectory the comet is on now, and it was recorded before the comet was on that trajectory, before Spock ever had the opportunity to do his thing.
That’s a really cool, very Star Trek, philosophical beat. Yes, we’re scientists, but here’s something we can’t explain. It’s a pseudo-spiritual moment that says there probably are things in the galaxy we can’t explain. I’ve always loved these kinds of episodes and these kinds of moments.
I really appreciate seeing the episode through Uhura’s eyes, too. It’s helped me begin to understand her, and a lot of other people’s interactions with her and with each other.
The coda is Pike starting to really contemplate what it means to know the outcome. Is Number One right? Is there an alternate outcome where he still saves those people’s lives? He knows exactly who they are. He has the computer bring them up, and they’re all kids right now. They’re going to be old enough to be cadets and trainees 10 years from now. He knows exactly who they are, and it leaves you wondering what his next steps are going to be.
So yes, it’s episodic. But we’re watching the serialized story of Pike’s journey.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 2, “Children of the Comet,” is an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I enjoyed this episode. It was fun. It wasn’t incredibly huge, but I enjoyed the heck out of it, man. I’m excited.
Drop a comment on the video above and let me know what you thought of “Children of the Comet.” I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, and there’s a slightly deeper dive on this episode over on Trek Talk Tuesday.
