Of course, that\u2019s not fair to the show, which had to wait for the 2023 writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strikes<\/a> to end before it could reveal how the USS Enterprise got out of its latest jam. And yet here we are, so a quick catch-up for those in need: The season 2 finale, \u201cHegemony,\u201d ended with the crew facing those nasty lizard people the Gorn once again. Anson Mount\u2019s Captain Pike just can\u2019t catch a break: His girlfriend, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano), winds up infected by the lethal creatures, meaning that she\u2019s facing an Alien<\/a>-esque eruption of Baby Gorn if Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) can\u2019t figure out a solution. Meanwhile, most of Pike\u2019s command crew \u2013 and a bunch of colonists \u2013 were beamed up to the Gorn ships where, well, they\u2019re gonna wind up on the dinner menu. Admiral April (Adrian Holmes) commands Pike to retreat, but what\u2019s a captain to do when half the stars of his show will be doomed if he follows orders?<\/p>\n A spinning camera move thrusts us right back into the action in \u201cHegemony, Part II,\u201d beginning in space as Gorn ships attack the Enterprise, and continuing inside on the bridge as Pike, exhausted and seemingly out of options, rotates in the frame as well.<\/p>\n The fancy technique from episode director Chris Fisher isn\u2019t out of place for modern Star Trek, which can do in one space battle the type of things that Gene Roddenberry only dreamed of in an entire career of Trekkin\u2019. But it\u2019s also illustrative of Pike\u2019s state of mind in this story. Mount and the episodes\u2019 writers, Henry Alonso Myers and Davy Perez, give us a Pike who is seemingly at the breaking point \u2013 it\u2019s very un-Captain Kirk of him (which is totally fine, by the way). Even driven to prayer at one point \u2013 which Roddenberry would certainly have raised a Spock-style eyebrow at, to say the least \u2013 Mount continues to bring a vulnerability to Pike that has proven to be one of the character\u2019s strong suits as far back as his time on Star Trek: Discovery and his trippy realization there that he\u2019s facing an inevitable and horrific future<\/a>.<\/p>\n Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Premiere Gallery What is very Captain Kirk of Pike here is the loophole he exploits to get out of Admiral April\u2019s order to retreat. \u201cOh, he didn\u2019t say retreat immediately\u2026?\u201d And so, in the opening scene of \u201cHegemony, Part II,\u201d Pike does two things that only the greatest of Starfleet\u2019s captains do: He breaks the rules and he relies on his crew to make him look better. Calling for ideas on how to track the Gorn ships, it\u2019s ops officer Mitchell (Rong Fu) of all people \u2013 she\u2019s not even a series regular! \u2013 who comes up with the \u201ctag them with a dud torpedo\u201d idea. Officer thinking, Lieutenant.<\/p>\n Speaking of creative visuals, there\u2019s always plenty of that stuff in this show, but another shot that caught my eye this week involved our shifting perspective of the bridge viewscreen. With the Gorn firing on the ship \u2013 at the viewscreen, basically, from our POV \u2013 the camera slowly moves from left to right, so from behind the con station to behind Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding). As it does so, the perspective of what\u2019s happening onscreen changes and the viewscreen goes out of focus as the camera trains itself on the back of our communications officer instead. It\u2019s just a cool moment, the kind of thing that\u2019s easily missed but which surely took a ton of planning and design work.<\/p>\n There are always plenty of creative visuals on Strange New Worlds.<\/p>\n Perhaps slightly less effective are the practical effects of the Gorn cocooning chamber, where our pals La’an (Christina Chong), Dr. M\u2019Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) are stuck. It\u2019s not that the set or the gunky pods that the crew are trapped in necessarily look bad, but they do ultimately feel like the modern-era equivalent of the old Planet Hell<\/a> set from 1990s Trek. It just never feels real.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s efforts to escape their situation and save the (mostly offscreen, conveniently cocooned) colonists is fine, if perhaps the dullest aspect of the episode. The actors are all game, and Chong\u2019s character is positioned as if she\u2019s dealing with the traumatic memories of her dealings with the Gorn from her youth, but there\u2019s unfortunately no emotional payoff there beyond \u201clet\u2019s throw in some quick flashes of the past\u201d here or there. It is fun to see La\u2019an in charge of the landing party, however, and certainly her imperative to save every last colonist is rooted in what the Gorn have taken from her in the past.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n