Strange New Worlds Review: Off-Hour

Spoilers below

Strange New Worlds does 24, is it?

Felt like longer.

I talked in my review of "A Case Of Chiaoscuro" that a potentially interesting intellectual exercise for this season is trying to figure out the point in a given episode's development that the genre/gimmick was established. Even more so that than "Case...", the decision for "Off-Hour" seems last-minute. I'd even go so far as to hypothesise that this is a retrofit - an imposing of broad season-long theme after the story's story has been established.

Certainly, the decision for "Off-Hour" to play out in real time has no effect on the episode's structure. Like, none. The countdown to hitting the warp threshold is essentially indistinguishable from putting an unseen clock on the need to solve a problem by episode's send, something the franchise has done hundreds of times before at this point. The use of split-screen offers nothing unachievable by basic editing; it's there simply because it was in 24, which is apparently all that we need for this week's gimmick.

There are basically two ways we can respond to this. The first is to be annoyed at how completely "Off-Hour" fails to do anything with its self-imposed restriction. This was clearly going to be a problem in a single TV episode. Much of what made 24 work was tracking Jack Bauer's disintegration over what was one day for him, and almost half a year for us. Things get worse with making this a wholly shipbound story. There are obvious difficulties involved in trying to make a real-time TV show work with a plot featuring multiple characters travelling around an entire city. 24's approach threw up legitimate logistic and narrative challenges, and watching how the show solved them was interesting in itself.

In "Off-Hour", everyone is stuck on the same ship - a ship with technology allowing instantaneous travel, no less. There's no sense the show is having to come up with clever solutions to the problems the format introduces - they just don't have those problems to begin with. It's like a teetotaler giving up alcohol for Lent: they might want to make a point of telling you what they're doing, but that's the only change involved, making you wonder what all the fuss is about. The Doctor Who episode "42" made a similar mistake, but at least that story had bulkhead doors which would only open if you got a trivia question right, linking the race against time to a race through space. It was an exceptionally dumb idea, and "42" is considered one of the weakest episode's of the Tennant era, but at least it did something. It would not be unreasonable to note that an episode of Strange New Worlds which compares unfavourably to a Chris Chibnall script is perhaps in a spot of trouble.

The other approach, though, is to note that the total irrelevance to our genre-of-the-week to this week means we've basically gotten what people have been asking for all season: an episode of Strange New Worlds that's actually an episode of Strange New Worlds. "Off-Hour" is almost reassuringly basic in its concept - the Enterprise suffers a disaster, and everyone in the crew gets to contribute to either solving the crisis, or helping those hurt during it.

Which, fine. The point here is neither the nature of the danger (standard space anomaly fare), nor of the solution (noticeably but not uniquely egregious technobabble). The point is to explore how this specific crew, at this particular time in their lives, responds to the situation, While "Off-Hour" gives something for every member of the main cast to do, the episode mostly concerns itself with Sickbay and Engineering. More specifically, it

focusses on the relationships between Chapel and M'Benga, and Pelia and Scotty. The episode sets itself up to succeed or fail primarily on how these two pairings fare.

And reader: I'm just not feeling it. It's good to see Jess Bush finally get the chance to do something this season, and her friendship with M'Benga has always been one of the most interesting relationships in the show. Returning to that should have been a highlight of the season. In practice, though, it doesn't feel like the episode is putting in the work necessary to actually sell us on, well, much of anything. M'Benga announcing he's thinking about leaving Enterprise is more or less out of nowhere - I guess the implication is he's reflecting on what his life should be after his daughter's departure and his recent/recent-ish encounters with the Klingons? Him being annoyed that Chapel will always choose to run now rather than risk any chance she can't run later makes more sense, but this is turned from a sensible observation into the flashpoint for a full on fight, suggesting a building of friction that we've not seen either (Chapel especially comes across as needlessly combative). Put simply, the way to redress so underserving Chapel this year (M'Benga too, though to a lesser extent) is to actually develop her character, not to pretend you've been doing that all along. And while there's very little point in getting worked up about technobabble in Trek - that's simply part of what the franchise is - having Chapel find a neutrino-related miracle cure for being cut in half (which wasn't remotely the medical problem M'Benga was researching, of course) that also shows her how to refuel the ship feels like a wholly unearned win.

There's a similar issue with Scotty's arc this episode. The idea he's frustrated by the ways starships can go wrong is I guess consistent with the idea he's great at engineering, but it isn't (yet) really where his heart lies. I can also buy the broad idea of Pelia teaching him to check on the status of the ship through his senses, rather than using the computer. As actual advice for engineers, I would assume this is all terrible, but in the age of AI it's broadly a timely message, and I can't deny that expressing a mistrust of computers is a big part of the classic Trek era this show is ostensibly riffing on. Pelia gets one of her best episodes here, too, mostly because in an episode where everything is dialled to eleven, Kane actually restrains herself a little, in a way that matches the nice little mystery the mystery of why she's taking down pictures in her (absurdly large) quarters. On the subject of high dials, though, Scotty's annoyance with the computer gets blown out into the idea he sees computer glitches as the Enterprise failing him, in a way that then triggers his trauma over the loss of the Stardiver (destroyed by the Gorn, rather than anything involving computer glitches).

In both cases, the episode feels like a decision has been made as to where Chapel and Scotty should be by the end of the episode, tried to work backwards from there, and had to cobble together whatever odds and ends they've been left with in the push to make this the Spock, La'An and Kirk Show. The episode's A to B is established in reverse order; rather than ensuring that B follows from A, A is shifted so that B comes within reach. The whole thing reads as the show trying to make sure they put the toys back in the box for the TOS era (Scotty learns how to be a miracle worker!), but in doing so, it reminds us how little these toys have actually been played with.

Other things niggle too. Sure, technobabble gonna babble, but far too much weight is placed on the idea that turning life support off in the corridors will almost immediately reduce them to airless zones approaching absolute zero. How would that happen without deliberately opening airlocks? In particular, the idea that M'Benga could be frozen so quickly and thoroughly his body will hold itself together, while Chapel suffers no ill-effects because only her upper face is exposed, makes it hard to concentrate on what's supposed to be a dramatic moment.

The way Beta Shift is used is also aggravating - we're introduced to their chief engineer and commanding officer, only for them to disappear within minutes of the emergency starting. The episode even calls attention to this by Pike explicitly giving Ortegas the conn before electrocuting himself, despite Rhada being right there.. Introducing Bianca Nugara as A'Sha this season has helped the show address its comparative dearth of characters with South Asian heritage, but even so, it rankles to see the show introduce a bindi-wearing South Asian woman as a commanding officer, only to forger her entirely a few minutes in. Doctor Boyce is at least around for more or less the whole episode [1]. Even here, though, a big deal is made of Chapel very clearly disobeying a direct order, and the consequences of that are... nothing. Not even a single line about how Pike has decided to take no action because her decision ultimately saved both M'Benga and the whole ship. Beta Shift are here solely to remind us of the importance of Alpha Shift, which somehow seems both unnecessary and rather unconvincing.

The fate of our betas is, I guess, as good a microcosm for where the show is going wrong as any other. There's a lack of object permanence here. Characters float on and off screen, showing up just long enough to provide whatever it was decided five minutes previously is needed. The same is true of storylines (see La'An's subplot about becoming a world-conquering monster, for instance). We've noted already that the twin problems of this season are that the show alternately tries to not be Trek, and tries to be Trek but fails. Here, it's not even clear the show is succeeding at being anything.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the mood in the writing room. It's certainly worth noting that the most prevalent theme of this season is the need for time off, and how things inevitably go wrong when that time off doesn't happen (note also here the themes of being trapped, being frozen, and acceptable exit strategies). We can ask ourselves what that implies about the treatment of Beta Shift here - perhaps the writers are telling us they've exhausted and overworked, but that it would still be disastrous to replace them. If so, they have a great deal of sympathy from me as a union rep, and indeed just as a guy who's also forced to live under capitalism.

As a Star Trek fan, though? "Off-Hour" makes the case that there's a serious problem with the work that's going on. It doesn't, at all, make the case that the solution isn't some fresh blood.

[1] I howled at his entrance here; the show makes it look like it's convinced netting Brian Markinson for his fifth Trek role will be a huge deal for the audience. Like, I love Brian; no shade on the guy here. Seeing him in a genre show hardly comprises a surprise, though does it? Crossman's Law: as a US sci-fi TV show's run grows longer, the probability of an appearance by Brian Markinson approaches one.

Ordering

1. The Griffin Incident

2. Level-Five Transporter Accident

3. Off-Hour 4. Human Best Friend

5. Valles Marineris

6. A Case Of Chiaoscuro