- Title: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Broken Circle
- wiki: link
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds kicks off its Second Season not with delving into the fallout of the arrest of Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and her impending trial, which is briefly mentioned but almost immediately shelved, but instead picking up the thread of Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh‘s (Christina Chong) universal walkabout. With the ship in space dock, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) has left to find a lawyer for his friend leaving Spock (Ethan Peck) in command when La’an’s call for help arrives from a key planet to both the Klingons and the Federation warning of dangers to the fragile peace.
After being denied the attempt to look into the matter, Spock and the rest of our regulars steal the Enterprise to suss out the situation on where warmongers are working to try and reflame war between the Klingons and the Federation for maximum profit (no, sadly they aren’t Ferengi). The episode pulls in bits of Star Trek III, Star Trek IV, and Star Trek VI. The fun of the episode allows you to overlook several flaws in the storyline including the scale of the Klingon frame job, who else was involved that provided all of the Federation tech, and, of course, the fact that there were no repercussions offered for anyone involved (also reminiscent of Star Trek IV).
In terms of callbacks and ongoing storylines we see Spock continuing to struggle with controlling his emotions after letting down his blocks last season and the obvious feelings for the ship’s science officer, Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) internal struggle with the Klingons bringing back memories from his past, and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) whose death he has to contemplate at a crucial point in the episode. It wasn’t what I was expecting from the premiere, and I’m not very excited for the tease that the show is doubling down on the Gorn as the show’s main baddies (which we learn in the epilogue), but “The Broken Circle” offers a fun episode with plenty of callbacks to last season while leaving the major cliffhanger to be dealt with in our next episode.
