It’s Strange New Worlds day, it’s Thursday, and here comes episode six, “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach.” A threat to an idyllic planet reunites Captain Pike with the lost love of his life. To protect her and a scientific holy child from a conspiracy, Pike offers his help and is forced to face unresolved feelings from his past.
I don’t even know where to start with this one. I’ve been trying more and more to shift from just doing a recap, just saying this is what happened, to actually giving you my thoughts. I have thoughts. I tend to do better in a conversation, which is why I believe the episodes I have Mrs. Know-It-All on are a little more dynamic than some of these. That’s okay. I’m doing my best to shift.
And I wasn’t wrong about what was coming. Last week’s episode was the fun, jocular, comedy, haha episode. Very “Shore Leave,” if you will, the original series episode from back in the day. What do you get immediately on the heels of that kind of episode? You get something thought-provoking.
The truth is I loved this episode.
Why a Captain’s Past Matters
It starts with Pike giving us his captain’s log, his first one since the pilot, and I’m totally down. I’ve enjoyed seeing Pike come into his own in terms of the story and the character they’re giving us. We’ve got this Father Knows Best type of Pike at this point, and I love that. So I like finally getting to hear more about his past and a little more about who he was, because a lot of that is what makes Star Trek and its captains so good.
You have Kirk, who had his time on the Farragut, and who had officers and people he’s known from back in the day, people who later on either pass him in rank or whatever else. He deals with the past on a constant basis. You get to see things from his past where he’s like, oh yeah, I knew this person at this time. The exact same thing happened with Picard in Next Generation. You saw the Stargazer. You learned a little bit about his history. You understood his battle with the Nausicaans that caused him to have his heart. There’s a bunch of stuff from his past. We had similar things with Sisko, with Janeway, and later on with Archer.
So there’s a key to understanding the captains of starships where Star Trek is involved, and it’s showing us what happened before they took the center chair on whatever ship or place we’re looking at. Big long way of saying I like seeing stuff from Pike’s past.
One of the main characters, the second she shows up, is very much a product of that past. I liked seeing that part especially, because it harkens back to a version of him I don’t think we get to see enough of.
By that I mean the hardest sell you had with Patrick Stewart was that he wasn’t William Shatner. Same thing with Benjamin Sisko, and it was his hardest sell too. There are some people who might say that was about race. I was there in that era. I don’t think it was race. It was the same thing, because all Star Trek fans, like every other fandom of anything established, are all buttheads. We’re all the people who are constantly like, don’t touch the thing we love.
The Enterprise Rolls Up Like a State Trooper
The whole thing kicks off with a distress signal that comes from a shuttle. The Enterprise responds, and you find out this shuttle is being attacked by another ship. That ship turns on the Enterprise.
And by the way, the Enterprise just kind of rolls up like a state trooper. What’s going on over here? What’s happening? Literally, because they go from the shot of the shuttle and the battle cruiser that’s chasing it, and you immediately pan past them on up to the Enterprise sitting there like, what’s going on here? It was great.
The White Space Between the Panels
Uhura is currently doing her training with La’an. Pike even has a little moment with her in the turbolift where he’s like, oh hey, look out for lesson seven. She’s like, what is that? And he goes, I’m telling you nothing. Then Pike does a really cool little impression of La’an.
What does that do? We’re not getting 23, 30 episodes or whatever like we used to get. So they have to put time and experience and interaction in between the episodes, or what I call, from my comic book days, the white space in between panels. Pike doing that impersonation is very much his way of saying, hey, I’ve seen La’an in this scenario, in this type of thing. You’re starting to get the idea that between episodes there’s time. As you should, by the way, when you’re doing episodic television. I do believe these episodes happen in an order. I’m basing that off the growth of the characters and the interpersonal references being made.
So we’re learning as much as possible about these characters through what they’re saying about what we’re not seeing. That helps for when it sometimes feels like these characters get to know each other so well, so fast.
Another franchise had to deal with this exact thing, where you don’t have the time and you have to crunch the experiences into it: Doctor Who. Back in the day you’d get however many dozens of episodes, like 100-some-odd episodes a year of Doctor Who. Now you don’t. Now you get 10, and those 10 are solid, but those 10 also signify a large portion of time. They haven’t just been together for 10 days. Same thing with this. Strange New Worlds is set up to show you the experiences they’re having together.
And that’s literally still the beginning of the episode.
Roddenberry’s Template
Rolling through, you get to the part where Pike and Una meet the person they just rescued. They transport them off the shuttle, and it’s this woman he’s met before, who digs him in a big, bad way. I was very happy to see them explore that. I don’t think we get enough of that kind of stuff, and I like being able to see them explore other races.
For those of you playing at home, Gene Roddenberry set up a template. The basic idea is that this is evolution’s perfect form. The perfect form, evolutionarily speaking, is bipedal. It’s two appendages, though you can have more. It’s two eyes, a mouth, the ocular sensors, the auditory sensors, the whole shebang. Then everything is a variation thereof. That’s why all the species in Star Trek are humanoid. There is actually a scientific theory that says if this is how we evolved, then on a similar planet, if we’re the sweet spot, meaning what makes our planet what it is, other planets like this will have species that evolve such as we have.
Anson Mount is doing really good work in this episode. I like his perspective, I like his take on the whole thing. When they rescue them he’s all nervous. He’s like a schoolboy. It’s pretty amusing and kind of cute.
The Answer to M’Benga’s Prayers
There’s a lot in this episode. They’re told the attackers are from an alien colony that’s been long abandoned, the whole bit. Come to find out later on, Uhura tells them, spoiler alert, it’s them.
This alien species is very advanced, and as a result, this is the answer to M’Benga’s prayers in terms of his daughter, who’s currently in the transporter buffer. So he latches on to that part. Now, they’re not as advanced in weaponry and things like that, because their battle cruiser was really just pea shooting at the Enterprise.
Pike is very much interested in finding out why this all went down. They have to investigate why these people, insurgents, insurrectionists, whatever you want to call them, are trying to rescue this kid, this holy child. And while they’re investigating, the kid’s also kind of investigating, and one of the things he stumbles upon is M’Benga’s daughter.
You get this really sad moment in the very beginning where M’Benga is reading to his kid, and she says, you read this to me twice already. He’s like, oh, I’m really sorry, and he explains to her that she’s in the pattern buffer. She starts to realize, well, how long have I been there? He has an automatic setting so that it’s very unintrusive, so mid-sentence his daughter’s talking to him and she transports away. And you’re like, oh. Okay. I see what’s happening here. I think.
It’s an interesting setup they’ve got going on, and I hope I see where they’re going with it.
M’Benga talks to the child’s doctor, and the doctor is actually the child’s father. They ask him, are you the child’s father? And he goes, only in the biological sense. You find out later it’s because everybody on their planet sees this child as their family as well. The child forsakes all other bonds, and at the end of the day the whole world, the people, take him on.
Back in the 60s
It’s this planet that’s covered in clouds. You find out later on it’s got lava and stuff at the bottom of it, and there are buildings just popping out. It’s very “The Squire of Gothos.” Very Star Trek in how it looks, even in that there’s just literally clouds and then buildings coming out of the clouds. I’m like, okay, right on. Basically I’m back in the 60s. Totally love it, design sense wise.
As the story unfolds, there’s a failed attempt to kidnap the kid. The kid has his own subspace frequency, so Spock tracks him down that way. As with everything, it’s not what you think. Pike’s being wooed by his ex, the love of his life, if you will, and come to find out this culture hides a secret. A very big secret. We don’t have to understand it, because that’s the nature of science fiction. Sometimes you don’t understand the quandary or the conundrum you’re in. You’re just in it.
Is It Worth One Child?
Pike gets invited to the ceremony, and the ceremony is pretty tragic. The kid is brought to what looks like a throne. There’s a body there that they walk by, and Pike sees this, and they pull the blanket off of the body. It’s the body of a child.
Pike is immediately incensed, because our morals are Starfleet’s morality, and he’s like, I’m not going to let you do this. And they plug the kid in. You find out later the system is set up so that only the neural pathways of a child can do it. The child has to be the central processor for the duration, however long that is. It’s barbaric. It’s tragic.
Then there’s this really poignant scene. Pike’s woken up a little later, because they have to knock him out while he’s trying to stop the whole thing, and he’s talking to her. She asks him if he’s trying to tell her children don’t suffer in the Federation. The difference, she says, is that her people don’t turn their backs on it. They look at it. And as a result, only one child has to be sacrificed.
It’s the Purge conundrum. If you could essentially have peace, is it worth one night of violence? If your society could be prosperous, technologically, societally, whatever, and the only cost of that prosperity is the suffering of one child, is it worth it?
Boy, that’s tough, man. That’s the kind of stuff Star Trek asks. They’re in a conundrum. They can’t undo the scenario. They can’t change anything. He can’t unplug the kid, because to unplug the kid would be to kill him. At the end of the day you can’t solve those problems that way, and it’s just amazing, the questions this makes you ask.
So there you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, well then, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself. It’s a rather sobering episode, so I’m going to jump right to the Know-It-All Index.
The Verdict
Strange New Worlds “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” is a 10 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I genuinely enjoyed this episode. I didn’t see any issues with it. It gave me all the moral quandary stuff I’m looking for, and it gave me the resolution I thought was warranted and merited. I liked it. It checked all the boxes for me for what Star Trek is.
But mainly it’s a 10 out of 10 because, yes, I can compare parts of this to original series episodes, I can compare parts of this to Next Generation and every other thing, and this is still the first episode where I feel like Strange New Worlds really stepped into its own.
The great example I give is when Matt Smith shifted into Peter Capaldi for Doctor Who. Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes as the Doctor, I wasn’t down for. And the third episode, listen, he suddenly became his own person. He suddenly became his own Doctor, the writing was much better, and it was who he was going to be.
Prior to this, they were very member berries in how they’ve been doing the show, and they may still do a lot more of that going forward. This episode had its own unique voice. It’s very similar to how I feel about season one of Next Generation and “Where No One Has Gone Before.” That’s when Next Generation found its own voice. This is the science fiction we’re going to be, which is an evolution of what Star Trek is in general. They’re doing a great job with that.
I can’t wait for Trek Talk Tuesday to talk about this with Mrs. Know-It-All. I’m probably going to force her to watch it today, and we may very well just knock out next week’s Trek Talk Tuesday this week. My last Trek Talk Tuesday ran late, and that’s on me. Editing schedules are really tight and we’ve been really busy at my day job of late, so forgive me. I’ll do my best to get these things on more of a clockwork schedule. I enjoy having her on, so I tend to want to wait until her schedule’s free too. But we’re moving at a great clip.
Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments on the video above. I’d love to hear your thoughts and insights. I can’t tell you what it means to me that over 500 people want to subscribe to this channel, so share it with your friends. I’d love to see this thing grow even bigger.
