Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "A Quality of Mercy" | Season 1, Episode 10
Strange New Worlds ends its first season looking forward and backwards at once
In retrospect, it’s not really surprising that the first season finale of Strange New Worlds would try and deal with the Pike Problem. It’s in the pilot, after all, and, apart from Spock’s romantic entanglements and the existence of the Gorn, the closest the show has to an on-going, big stakes plot. That I was surprised is less the show taking an unexpected swerve, and more a function of my disinterest in this narrative angle. While I can be a sucker for nods to Trek lore, SNW’s prequel status is the least compelling thing about it, and every attempt the show takes to remind us that Pike (and Ortegas, and Una, and Noonien-Singh) won’t always be around is, well, a bummer. It’s a flaw inherent to the prequel as a genre (or format, or whatever nomenclature fits)--the better it gets, the more invested we become in what’s happening now, and the less we want the end to feel like an inevitability.
There’s a line here that can be walked; Better Call Saul has mostly managed it…