Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x02 "Children of the Comet" (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! How are you all doing? I'm great. My family is having it's first barbecue of the season tonight, so I'm really looking forward to that. Right now though I'm here to talk about "Children of the Comet", which is this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So let's get right into it. There will be some spoilers for the episode because I want to actually talk about parts of it rather than just give my overall thoughts on it.

One of the things that I love about SNW (Strange New Worlds) is that we're finally getting to learn about characters that have been part of the franchise since 1966, but were never fully developed on screen. Even though Uhura is celebrated as the first black female character to be a lead on a TV show, being that TOS was produced and aired in the '60s, she didn't actually have much development. While Roddenberry had tons of background information written up about Uhura, as shown in the 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Edward Poe, under the pen name Stephen E. Whitfield, but he never used any of it on the show itself. Uhura's first name, Nyota, which actually originated in novels and comics in the '80s, wasn't made canon until Star Trek (2009) and wasn't made canon to the primary timeline until the pilot episode of SNW. So it was kind of nice to learn about a character that I've been with for so long.

One of the benefits of SNW returning to character and exploration/discovery types of storytelling is that it brings back the casualness that Star Trek used to have in the TV shows from the '60s through to the mid 2000s. For example this episode opens with Pike and the crew having dinner together in Pike's quarters, which is something we haven't seen since Enterprise went off the air in 2005. During the course of the classic shows, there were many episodes that opened where the crew would be on the Holodeck, in Ten Forward, playing poker in Riker's quarters, or just hanging out together in some capacity. But because Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and even Prodigy focus more heavily on the heavy, galaxy threatening, high stakes situations, we never really have that down time and when we do it feels out of place on those shows. So to have a return to form here is amazing. Especially because it shows the audience just what kind of person that Pike is outside of the missions, and beyond what little we saw in "The Cage". It also shows how comfortable the crew is with him as their captain. While characters like Chapel, Hemmer, and Uhura haven't been there for very long, Una, Spock, and Ortegas have, so they're able to relax around him in a way that we haven't actually seen in the Star Trek franchise before. I genuinely laughed at Pike's story about chasing a Nausicaan who had no pants during Pike's stint as an ensign, or a cadet, in the security department. 

I also appreciate that Uhura is unsure of herself at such an early stage in her Starfleet career. Normally when we see Starfleet Cadets, they're confident and so sure of themselves, apart from Wesley Crusher in the seventh season of TNG, and Tilly in season 1 of Discovery, that it can be almost off-putting at times. So to have someone like Uhura, who hasn't yet become the legendary communications officer of the Enterprise, be unsure of herself and her status within Starfleet, it's refreshing.

Now one thing I wasn't too sure of was Sam Kirk. Being that he's essentially a brand new character given that he was a corpse played by William Shatner in the season 1 finale of TOS, and everything else we know about him comes from non-canon novels and comics, I wasn't sure how he would fit on the ship since we got him for less than a minute at the end of the pilot. I thought the actor who played him did a good job at establishing Sam as a character. I don't know how many episodes the character will appear in given that he's not a main cast member, but I think he'll stick around for the rest of the season as an Ensign Ro/Chief O'Brien type character. Though he did sort of act like the Redshirt of the group when he touched the alien artifact that the away team came across on the comet's surface, so that was fun. He didn't die though, which is good, since he has to live long enough to make it to the end of TOS season 1.

I also liked Hemmer's introduction. Even though he came aboard at the end of last week's episode, it's clear that enough time has passed that Hemmer, Kirk, and the others have been onboard long enough that introductions weren't necessary. He simply fit in with the rest of the crew. Which is nice to see.

Doctor M'Benga was absent from this episode. Unlike with Adira mid-way through Discovery's fourth season though, M'Benga's absence feels more like what we'd see on TOS or TNG, where the episodic nature of the show means that not every character needs to have a storyline in every episode and can simply not appear if they aren't required for the episode's story. It also shows that Chapel is capable of handling away mission prep when Medical needs to be involved. 

Speaking of Chapel, I like that we saw her flirting with Spock in this episode, unknowing to the Vulcan science officer. One of the things that Nurse Chapel, unfortunately, is known for on TOS is her crush on Spock. In a way that was meant to almost be fan insertion since so many young women who watched Star Trek in the '60s, had fallen in love with the character themselves, though Spock could not reciprocate, and Chapel ends up being that on the show itself. Here though, it's sweet, playful, and doesn't define the character. It also fits in with her more playful side that we saw in last week's episode.

This episode felt like a TOS episode. Right down to Pike trying to peacefully hold off a potentially hostile race while the landing party complete's their mission on the surface of the comet. I'm also glad that the race they encounter here, simply known as the Shepherds, answered Pike's hail instead of merely attacking the ship outright. This is the kind of thing that Kirk dealt with alot in TOS, and it's the kind of thing that has been sorely lacking in all of the modern Star Trek shows up to this point.

Overall this was another solid episode. You have no idea how happy I am that Strange New Worlds is such a good show so far. As much as I love Discovery and Prodigy I have my problems with them and there's still alot the showrunners can do to improve both shows. But SNW's format is really helping the quality of the storytelling and the ability to give us characters that we can care about and enjoy watching on screen. Even Spock feels alot more like TOS Spock on this show than he did in Discovery season 2. 

And that my friends is all I've got for you for today. But, I will be back next week with more reviews and other blog posts including posts about the magazines for both Star Trek and Star Wars. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.