This Week’s ‘Unusual New Worlds’ Is a Little Too Cute for Its Personal Good

Unusual New Worlds loves being Star Trek. That’s completely different from, say, Decrease Decks, a sequence that liked being about Star Trek and the metatextual acknowledgement of that to the nerdiest of levels. Unusual New Worlds is aware of that it’s Star Trek and enjoys that: its connection to the original, the warts-and-all embrace of episodic storytelling, its need to poke and prod at itself endlessly, and its willingness to vacillate its tone from high drama to excessive camp on a dime. Typically, that may make for extremely good enjoyable. However generally, when it’s just a bit too a lot, the present can lose itself, not seeing the forest for the bushes.

Sadly, this week’s episode leans a bit an excessive amount of into the latter.

“A Area Journey Hour” is a Star Trek holodeck episode. Nicely, actually, it’s an prolonged excuse to do a Dixon Hill-esque riff and do a holodeck episode although shipboard holodeck expertise wasn’t widespread in Star Trek till the time of The Subsequent Era, a century past when Unusual New Worlds is about. “A Area Journey Hour” acquiesces to that—it frames La’an as its main perspective and the individual answerable for testing an experimental holodeck system aboard Enterprise due to her historical past with holographic battle simulators, seen in Discovery, and even Pike nods to the eventual existence of the Rec Room seen in Star Trek: The Animated Sequence. It in the end concludes that the expertise isn’t there for use aboard starships but, setting the stage for its eventual refinement and arrival by the point of TNG.

However that’s all excuses. “A Area Journey Hour” exists as a result of the Unusual New World workforce thought, “We’re a Star Trek present, and you recognize what Star Trek does? Holodeck episodes.” And it’s, for probably the most half, a wonderfully superb a kind of. “A Area Journey Hour” suits into the milieu of that Trek trope effectively sufficient and doesn’t actually add a lot alongside the way in which: La’an is tasked with testing the system’s energy draw whereas the Enterprise is at full operational capability inspecting a dying neutron star; she does so by getting it to copy a Nineteen Sixties homicide thriller whodunit impressed by a sequence of novels she learn as a baby, populating her forged of holographic characters with the likenesses of the principle crew. It’s a holodeck episode, so issues go improper, security protocols go offline, and abruptly La’an finds out that to get out of the holodeck alive, she should clear up a thriller designed particularly to problem her.

That’s all stuff that we’ve seen from holodeck episodes earlier than, from Dixon Hill tales like “The Massive Goodbye” to issues like Voyager‘s “The Killing Sport” or, maybe most inspirationally, Deep Space Nine‘s “Our Man Bashir.” And “A Area Journey Hour” does a principally first rate job at hitting these beats, letting the common forged loosen up and play very completely different characters from their standard selves, however it doesn’t actually construct on the holodeck tales that come earlier than it a lot because it does simply level on the anticipated beats of these tales, going by means of the motions. Not less than, till the climax of the homicide thriller fizzles out with a “twist” reveal—extra on that later.

So it’s maybe higher than worse, then, that “A Area Journey Hour” isn’t actually about being a holodeck homicide thriller. Not less than, it’s not excited by being a very good one: what “A Area Journey Hour” is definitely about is telling you that the unique Star Trek, the present this present is a prequel to, is the best tv present of all time, one which modified the entire world, and one that ought to’ve lasted endlessly and ever, and any plan to cancel it, or something prefer it, is an act of profound hubris and misjudgment. Very humorous for that message to return now, in Unusual New World‘s third season, weeks after Paramount introduced that it would conclude with a truncated fifth. However anyway!

Unusual New Worlds is just not a very delicate TV present, however it’s not telling you all this by actually simply having characters in Star Trek flip to the digital camera and go, “Star Trek is nice!” As a substitute, it’s a step eliminated: the titular “Area Journey Hour” and the important thing connecting conceit of La’an’s homicide thriller setting is a fictional Nineteen Sixties sci-fi TV present known as The Final Frontier, which has simply been cancelled after its first season by a studio govt whose homicide units off the entire whodunnit. Anson Mount performs T.Ok. Bellows, the shy author and Final Frontier creator who believes sci-fi reveals are a social good and the way forward for the business however longs for extra, within the vein of a Gene Roddenberry. Rebecca Romijn performs Sunny Lupino, a former mannequin and starlet turned Hollywood producer who backs The Final Frontier as a result of she believes in its potential, our stand-in for Lucille Ball. Paul Wesley is Final Frontier‘s main man, Maxwell Saint, a pompous actor enjoying the ship’s machismo-fueled captain, pulling off probably the most tortured William Shatner impersonation but dedicated to display screen. Critically, the pauses are interminable.

All of the motivations for potential suspects within the govt’s homicide hinge on the truth that virtually everybody concerned in The Final Frontier believes within the present as a power for good, even past being nice tv. As extra our bodies start to drop and finger-pointing pokes and prods at particular person paranoias, so far as just about anybody within the holoprogram’s forged is worried, Final Frontier (and thru its skinny veneer, the unique Trek) is unimpeachable. The climax of the homicide thriller narrative is even paused so Celica Rose Gooding, enjoying expertise agent Joni Gloss, can provide that “flip to digital camera and say how good this present is” speech to La’an, evangelizing over a lifeless physique proper in entrance of her that The Final Frontier can, and ought to be given the chance to, change tv and the lives of the American folks for good. Once more: not a delicate present, however the take away from what it’s really saying to what it desires to say to its viewers may as effectively be glass, to the purpose you’re virtually a bit of insulted that Unusual New Worlds didn’t commit absolutely and have a holoprogram a couple of fictional homicide on the set of precise Star Trek.

Which is odd as a result of we do really get to see Final Frontier for what it’s—the episode is bookended by an prolonged scene from the faux-show as a chilly open, and its credit shut out over a “blooper reel” behind the scenes. And regardless of what the remainder of the episode goes on to do to evangelize its price, as a parody of the unique Star Trek, it’s oddly imply. The units are considerably cheaper-looking than a lot of what basic Trek ever did, and the script seems like an prolonged “Spock’s Mind” gag however by some means much more convoluted. The performing (Wesley’s Saint is joined by Jess Bush/Chapel and Melissa Navia/Ortegas as actresses Adelaide Shaw and Lee Woods, respectively) is deliberately clunky and ham-fisted, proper right down to Wesley’s exaggerated Shatnerisms. The present all these characters go on to laud as an enormous hit and a cultural recreation changer isn’t even near the unique Star Trek‘s high quality; it simply type of sucks. Unusual New Worlds has executed a a lot better job of loving homages to the look and route of Star Trek earlier than—the “Stability of Terror” homages in season one’s “A Quality of Mercy” stay one in every of the show’s finest hours—so The Final Frontier finally ends up feeling much less just like the present being in on a joke and extra just like the present simply laughing at what got here earlier than it. It’s an particularly odd distinction with what the remainder of the episode desires to say.

However as soon as it’s bought that unsubtle message out regardless, “A Area Journey Hour” remembers that it’s technically a holodeck episode and must wrap quick, which is the place the aforementioned “twist” is available in. La’an’s homicide thriller in the end doesn’t actually matter, as a result of the thriller plot was a complete misdirect: not one of the holoprograms in its setting dedicated the crime, however as an alternative a holographic rendering of Spock, who was inserted into this system to behave as if the true Spock had come to assist La’an out along with her take a look at. A assassin she by no means would’ve anticipated, she gasps as she figures it out, much less due to her private relationship to Spock however extra as a result of the opportunity of him being the suspect is thrown from to this point out of left discipline that it doesn’t really feel arrange by the episode itself and extra of a gotcha as soon as “A Area Journey Hour” remembered that it wanted to cease telling you that Star Trek is sweet and end its unique plot.

It’s made much more thorny by the truth that this revelation climaxes again aboard Enterprise in actuality with La’an going to Spock’s quarters to renew dance classes with him (a factor we’re reminded of this episode that he’s saved up along with her since “Wedding Bell Blues”) and recount her experiences testing the holodeck out and his position within the twist… culminating within the two revealing their romantic curiosity in one another, sealing it with a kiss.

It seems like an odd selection, wherever Unusual New Worlds takes this over the course of the remainder of the season. Spock’s barely moved on from his romance with Nurse Chapel, narratively talking—a plot that was given a ton of build-up after which all fell aside comparatively shortly as soon as they bought collectively. La’an herself was already given a will-they-won’t-they romantic arc with a legacy Trek character last season with Kirk, even when it ended unrequited. Particularly given how “Wedding ceremony Bell Blues” already used its three-month timeskip to justify La’an instantly compartmentalizing her traumatic historical past with the Gorn, it feels weird to simply thrust her right into a second romantic arc so shortly, like these are the one two choices obtainable to her as a personality.

It’s a peculiar finish to a peculiar episode, one which by no means fairly manages to increase its charms lengthy sufficient to successfully talk what it desires. Unusual New Worlds has gotten by on its charms an terrible lot over its previous seasons, however maybe it’s changing into more and more seen that these charms have a restrict.

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