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Posted in: Review, Star Trek, streaming, TV | Tagged: Babs Olusanmokun, Christina Chong, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, paramount, Review, star trek, strange new worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E01 Embraces Spock's Light: Review
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E01 "The Broken Circle" offers an exciting opener highlighted by another excellent turn from Ethan Peck.
The season two premiere of Paramount+'s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds addresses one of the two augmented characters in Christina Chong's La'an Noonien-Singh, who's taken a leave from her duties. As the bulk of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew is on shore leave, we're operating at somewhat reduced capacity as Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) tries to find a way to free his Number One in Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) from Federation custody as she's arraigned on lying about her augmented nature on her Starfleet application, which carries series penalties. The following contains minor spoilers for "The Broken Circle."
A Golden Opportunity for Ethan Peck's Spock in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
With Pike away, Spock (Ethan Peck) receives a distress signal from Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) that coincides with the whereabouts of the security chief. After following up the inquiry with Robert April (Adrian Holmes), the admiral vehemently opposes such a follow-up, citing the potential galactic ramifications with the Klingons. Naturally, we wouldn't have much of an episode if the Enterprise simply towed the company line, so the crew that includes Spock, Uhura, Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Chapel (Jess Bush), devise a way to rebel so to speak and achieve the greater good with the help of new addition in Carol Kane's Pelia, their mysterious new engineer sick of her Academy duties as an instructor.
What follows is an arc heavy on action, some on conspiracy, but highlights everyone involved, especially Peck, Olusanmokun, and Bush. For a show looking to reintroduce its viewers to the characters they've come to know over one season, the episode found a way to effectively pull that off without sacrificing the action, pacing, or tone. The latter two I just mentioned certainly upped the ante for stunts and actions, showing shades of the Kelvin timeline universe films and the John Wick franchise. There are also some The Undiscovered Country vibes there to catch up on. Directed by Chris Fisher and written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman, "The Broken Circle" allowed Peck to be front and center, which previews what a great leader Spock is and will be, playing off of what we learned in season one while the cohesiveness of Pike's crew was still being established. It certainly highlights the potential Peck has as the character in ways that we saw Zachary Quinto barely scratch the surface of in the Kelvin films, evoking but not copying The Original Series' Leonard Nimoy's performance. We don't see much of anything from Mount or Romijn, but that's okay since the show isn't dependent on them to build a quality story. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E01 "The Broken Circle"
9/10
In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E01 "The Broken Circle," Ethan Peck's Spock takes charge as Anson Mount's Pike figures out what to do for Rebecca Romijn's Una in this action-pack episode. You might see Babs Olusanmokun (M'Benga) and Jess Bush (Chapel) in a new light after this, with the second-season opener picking up on the excitement from the previous season and dialing it up in some seriously intriguing ways.
Credits
Director
Chris Fisher
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