8.2/10
93%
68%
77%
79%
Well, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has done it again! They’ve managed to divide their viewers with another Marmite episode — people are either loving it or hating it. Personally I’m kind of in the middle: it has good bits and bad bits and I didn’t think it was terrible, but I didn’t think it was great either.
So what’s got everyone in such a tizzy?
What Happens In “Level-Five Transporter Accident“?
The Enterprise is heading towards Vulcan so that Spock can spend some time regaining his logic — it’s intimated that the events on The Griffin are still affecting him greatly and he needs to get his emotions back in check. They’re pulled from their destination when Starfleet asks Enterprise to patrol Rizonian space due to increased pirate activity.
Because of the delay, Spock contacts his ex-fiancée T’Pring for some advice on settling his loud mind. As someone who isn’t overly fond of humans, T’Pring chides Spock that he’ll never find true mental peace on a ship filled with humans as their nature is inherently chaotic, but she obviously realises that Spock is in need of assistance and agrees to meet with the Enterprise if they will take her the rest of the way to Vulcan. There is a condition though: No hijinks.
Meanwhile, Scotty is trying to get one-up on his arch rival from the Academy, Declan Milder, who is currently aboard the USS Witmere. Midler is responsible for the longest transport on record and just pipped Scotty to the post by one 16th of a point to become class valedictorian.
Still seething all of these years later, Scotty plans to beat Milder’s record by beaming his old manky puppet, Little Ricky, into Milder’s quarters on the Witmere to scare the crap out of him, beating his longest transport record in the process.
Using a shuttle, Spock helps Scotty set up a series of relay buoys around the ship that will help boost the transporter signal so that Little Ricky can make the 29,647 kilometre trip to Declan Milder’s quarters. As Scotty energises the transporter, there is a big flash and the beam begins moving through the ship, beaming crew up to goodness knows where.
Spock’s shuttle is untouched but the Enterprise is beamed out of existence for a few seconds and then beams back again, facing the other direction — our first indication something is not quite right. Spock tries to raise the crew on the Enterprise and not being able to do so, returns to the ship in the shuttle.
The ship is eerily empty, filled with light smoke and with no crew in sight, that is until Spock reaches the bridge and Captain Pike raises himself up from behind his fancy new chair. Except Pike isn’t his normal human self, he’s been transformed into a puppet!
Luckily he doesn’t have strings or a hand up his backside and is able to move freely around, but his puppet status means that the ship no longer recognises him as Captain so he can’t control any of the ships systems. Other crew members start to appear and they’ve all been transformed into puppets too!
Uhuru can’t get her comms device in her ear without Spock’s help, Ortegas has no control over the ship due to her eight puppet fingers not registering on the consoles and, similarly, La’An has no control over the weapons. The only person that can manage any of the ship’s systems is non-puppet Spock.
If the crew being puppets wasn’t bad enough, it’s just at this moment an Orion Pirate ship decides to turn up as they’ve scanned Enterprise and only found one life sign onboard — something that shouldn’t happen on a Constitution class starship.
Pike converses with the Orions over an audio only channel, but when trying to close it, Uhuru’s fat puppet fingers accidentally turns on the viewscreen so the Orions can see the Enterprise crew in all their puppet glory. Taking this as an opportunity not to be missed, Orion Captain Ch’Rol (played with a wonderful straight face by Rachael Harris of Lucifer fame) takes a boarding party over to the Enterprise to claim the ship — something that would obviously be very, very bad.
After Spock is captured, it’s up to the puppet crew to come up with a solution to rescue him and save the Enterprise from the Orions — but how can they possibly do that when the ship isn’t recognising them and they can’t access the systems?
Not Quite “Pigs In Space”*
🚨Red Alert: Spoilers for “Level-Five Transporter Accident” ahead!🚨
While the premise of this episode sounds weird and unworkable, strangely it does work. While it doesn’t go into the exact science of how the crew were turned into puppets, you can easily accept that it could happen.
I mean if we can accept Warp 10 Salamanders or Borg DNA implanted into the brains of anyone under the age of 25 using a transporter then it’s not a stretch to accept puppet fluff in the transporter matrix converting everyone into the same material.
The episode clearly relishes on the puppet aspect of it and uses it to full effect, Pelia being chopped in half by the Orion captain’s sword and still being able to talk, La’An having her arm fall off thanks to another transporter issue and being fine, Pike being jettisoned into space, and Red Shirt having a hole blown in his tummy à la Death Becomes Her.
Again, this is all believable in the context of the crew being puppets filled with stuffing and makes perfect sense.
The fact that the puppet crew also find it impossible to interact with the ship’s systems due to their hands/puppet fingers not registering or being recognised is also a great touch.
You know how things in Strange New Worlds are all touch screen but in The Original Series we have push buttons and flicky switches, do you think this incident is one of the reasons for downgrading the technology?
Well it would have been the perfect excuse wouldn’t it? Like the explanation for Enterprise stopping using the holographic comms which brought us closer to the TOS version of viewscreen use. We could have started to move to a more TOS style bridge design that would allow anyone, even those with puppet fingers, to operate systems.
Except it was all a dream so they can’t use it as an explanation for the technological “downgrade” — what a missed opportunity!
The puppets were used to full comedic effect but it was just missing a little “something”. I think the episode concentrated too much on the “Oh! I’m a puppet!” aspect of the plot rather than just getting on with the premise and moving on with the action. That way we could have had much more interaction between puppet Pike and the Orion Captain and boarding party which I think is a missed trick.
Even the minor amount of screen time Captain Ch’Rol was given showed that she could have been a great character, if only she were allowed more time in front of us. In my opinion it was a real waste of Rachael Harris’s talents and I do hope she makes another appearance as a proper nemesis to Pike as their short interactions (even in Pike’s puppet form) were great.
* Pigs In Space was a sketch that was part of The Muppet Show that ran from 1977 to 1981. The sketches showed Miss Piggy and her crew in a variety of comedic space situations (The Muppet Vault has a playlist of sketches if you want to check them out) which usually involved them getting into accidents or breaking something.
What Was The Point Of That?
We have a couple of “What was the point of that” moments where I have to question why certain plot elements were included.
Pike’s New Throne
What exactly was the point of Pike’s new chair, other than to remove the chair with flicky switches from the equation just for this one episode? If that is the reason then it was done so heavy-handily it was embarrassing.
Why not have a brief “Captain’s Log” where Pike states after a recent skirmish with the Orions, the bridge received minor damage and his chair had to be repaired meaning he has a temporary one. This explains the new chair and that the Orions are on the prowl in the area ready to fight. Two birds, one stone. Simple!
Instead we got multiple lines of dialogue talking about touch screens and how the chair “hums”. A humming chair?
Pike: It’s fully biometric and the first of its kind in Starfleet. I can run different parts of the ship with just the touch of my hand. And some voice controls, of course.
[low humming]
Una: Oh.
Pike: You hear that? That hum says, “I am Captain Pike, captain of the starship Enterprise.”
Una: That hum says all that, huh?
And then by the end of the episode the chair’s gone. So what was the point?
Horny Spock Returns
What is it with how these writers treat Spock’s love life?
First he’s engaged to T’Pring but they break up as he wants to explore his human half.
Then he hooks up with Chapel but she breaks it off to concentrate on her career (and Roger Korby enters the scene to further complicate matters).
Then Spock hooks up with La’An out of the blue and they spend most episodes doing some form of ahem “calisthenics”. La’An has framed their “relationship” as just being a “little bit of fun” but over the past couple of episodes there have been signs that cracks are appearing — they were seen having an angry discussion in the background of one scene and didn’t take shore leave together in Human Best Friend.
Given the treatment of Spock’s romances by these writers it’s not surprising that La’An decides to break up with Spock at the start of the episode stating that they were heading in different directions and their relationship had come to a natural conclusion.
The odd thing here is that Spock apologises to La’An for not being there for her after the events on the USS Griffin as she was struggling with what she had done to Kirk.
What’s odd about it? It’s basically the same reason Chapel broke up with Spock! She was struggling to come to terms with memories of what happened to her during the Klingon War and Spock fails to help her with her feelings, the same way he has with La’An. So he’s not learned anything, or can’t learn thanks to his Vulcan half and we all know how much the writers love to bash Spock for being half-Vulcan.
So newly single Spock confides in puppet T’Pring, and what happens? They kiss!
Spock can’t even keep it in his pants for a flipping PUPPET!
The MVP Of The Episode
The best part of the entire episode for me was Random Red Shirt.
The character has no lines and no name (he’s just Red Shirt in the credits), but he is hilarious!
He knows what his fate is as a red shirt and so cowers, hides, runs away and squeaks every time danger is near. It doesn’t help him though as, as I mentioned previously, he gets the Death Becomes Her treatment.
Hats off to Landon Nesbitt for both his human and puppet performance of Red Shirt and I hope he’s brought back for more episodes (in human form and not on an away mission, obviously!)
Final Thoughts
Bringing in Jordan Canning as director was an inspired choice as she’s directed episodes of the puppet show Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock so knows how to work with the puppet technology and get the most out of it.
There are some great uses of the puppets: Spock flinging Pike across the bridge so he can distract the Orion Captain and 3 of them stacked “kids in a trench coat” style are both excellently handled.
There was a great scene between Spock and puppet Pike where Captain Ch’Rol orders Pike to be jettisoned out of the airlock. Spock is helpless as he watches Pike on the other side of the airlock door, with Pike holding his hand up to the glass and saying to Spock “The needs of the many…” with Spock holding his hand up against the glass in a recreation of Spock’s death scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
It was an brilliant little tribute and a fun nod to the future of Spock’s character (even if that does mean his death).
There’s little in the way of plot though and once again it’s writer/producer Henry Alonso Myers who is responsible for helping to pen another divisive script (he was also co-writer of Valles Marineris).
I’ll go back to a statement that Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman made: 10 episode seasons mean that you have less filler episodes. But once again, this episode was pretty much all filler and no substance.
And can we leave Spock alone please? We’ve been focusing so much on the fact that he’s Half-Human, Half-Vulcan we’re completely ignoring other characters like Uhuru, Ortegas and my new favourite Red Shirt.
The “Spock not fully human” trope is getting tired now and we need to move on, we know he’s embraced logic by the start of The Original Series, we can see why that change is happening given the events over the past few episodes. We don’t need to be hit over the head with that growth Every. Single. Week.
It’s time to move on and focus on the other characters and let them have the spotlight that they deserve.
Overall Level-Five Transporter Accident was a fun, if completely unnecessary episode that I think was just an excuse for people on the production team to play with puppets and cramming them into a Star Trek episode to scratch that itch.
While I did enjoy the episode on the surface, it was again another genre episode and not an episode in the “true” sense of Star Trek: adventure, high stakes, political commentary and thoughtful but difficult choices to be made.
I know we have a soap-opera rip-off appreciation episode coming up (Episode 7: Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass) so will next week’s episode be yet another genre-experiment or will be finally get a Star Trek plot six episodes into a 10 episode season?
There’s not much time left to get back to what Star Trek is actually about.
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