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Posted in: Paramount+, Review, Star Trek, streaming, TV | Tagged: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, paramount, Rebecca Romijn, Review, star trek, strange new worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E10 Review: Gorn But Not Forgotten
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E10 "Hegemony" offered an impressive finale & one hell of a cliffhanger as Pike & company battle the Gorn.
As we wrap season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the series returns to a familiar but far more dangerous enemy in the Paramount+ era in the Gorn in the season finale, "Hegemony." When we start the episode, we finally get to see the USS Cayuga in action with Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) and an away team that includes Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who's not off on her Fellowship just yet. They're helping the residents of Parnassus Beta, a world that modeled itself after the modern small-town American Midwest. After Chapel beams back onboard the Cayuga, the residents and the away team see a planet-side event unfolding as one of the Cayuga's shuttles is plummeting from the sky with its engines damaged and about to crash. As Batel tries to get an ensign's attention, his stare directs her to the ominous mass in the sky, which is a Gorn vessel. The following contains minor spoilers.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: A Familiar Sense of Dread
At the start of "Hegemony," we find the Gorn are even more ruthless than before when we last saw them in the season one penultimate episode, "All Those Who Wander." The Enterprise responds to an encrypted distress signal from Batel and heads on over, but Starfleet's Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) orders them to remain on their side of the border, not to risk a war with the Gorn. Pike (Anson Mount) and company must get crafty to evade Gorn detection with one of their vessels hovering around the planet. Once the plan is in motion, Pike sets up an away team that includes Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannote), Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and La'an (Christina Chong). To get to the planet, they use the debris from the Cayuga to disguise the shuttle as the away team is also prepped with modified weapons to be more capable of tackling the Gorn.
"Hegemony" is a chess match on multiple fronts as many of the essential processes like scanning and communications are down due to a Gorn inhibiting device, so the crew must rely on intuition and stealth. Like "All Those Who Wander," there are the familiar horror aspects of dealing with a threat that's immeasurable. The big surprise of the episode was the same major one in the season one finale, "A Quality of Mercy." While we can excuse it as an alternate timeline episode, it's more than an Easter Egg this time around as we find The Original Series favorite Montgomery Scott in a physical presence played by Martin Quinn, Matthew Wolf provided the voice in season one.
Directed by Maja Vrvilo and written by Henry Alonso Myers, "Hegemony" was able to expand upon The Gorn in such a nuanced way that TOS never did. I'm honestly surprised it's not a villain the previous spinoffs never thoroughly explored. Not only are their young a threat in gestating their victims a la the Alien franchise, but we're also starting to get a better sense of their intentions even though we never hear any of them speak. They're a fully fleshed-out lizard species that went above and beyond creator Gene Roddenberry and original designer Wah Chang. It might be a while before we see a proper conclusion, given the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but it's certainly one of the more memorable cliffhangers of the franchise.
Mount's Pike peaks with his familiar steely resolve, and we also see Scrofano reach more of her potential as Batel. Not that she didn't turn in an excellent performance in season two's "Ad Astra per Aspera," which was a more grounded episode in a courtroom setting than the traditional Star Trek episode. We see her actually captain and hold her own during a crisis and threat. Ethan Peck's Spock and Bush's Chapel have a memorable space sequence with survival elements. Quinn almost steals the show as Scotty with the youthful exuberance of Kelvin films Simon Pegg and some of the indelible charm from TOS' James Doohan. I hope we do see more of the character periodically as we do Paul Wesley's Kirk.
Strange New Worlds does a wonderful job organically integrating TOS characters without feeling like they'll immediately take over. Even as we saw more of Wesley this season, some of the major Kirk episodes were alternate timeline episodes, and he felt like a special guest star than someone who will eventually take over. If there's anything I do hope doesn't happen in part two, I don't want Scotty to immediately take over for Carol Kane's Pelia. I just have a bad feeling, given that the crew lost Bruce Horak's Hemmer in season one, they might have another major character death looming. If it must happen, I hope it isn't Pelia because Kane has so much to offer in that role still. On a side note, Melissa Navia's Ortegas is growing more on me as one of the most enthusiastic and charismatic characters. I'm also enjoying Babs Olusanmokun's M'Benga's arc of him initially traveling a dark path and making up for it with his life in medicine. As long as they're reintroducing TOS characters, there's plenty of show to go around, and we don't need to be in a rush to see Sulu or Bones right away.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 10 "Hegemony"
9/10
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ends sesaon two with a bang in "Hegemony" as the U.S.S. Enterprise discover more about their unknown threat in the Gorn. Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, Martin Quinn, Ethan Peck, and Melanie Scrofano turn in memorable performances in this action-packed thriller of a season finale.
Credits
Director
Maja Vrvilo
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