Enterprise goes exploring ancient ruins this week on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and digs up more than they bargained for in an episode full of baffling character choices.
The crew travels to a planet that is home to a species who have declined Federation membership multiple times. But they have agreed to let a small landing party scout out an unburied structure built by their distant ancestors that may hold the key to Dr. Roger Korby’s medical research and maybe the secret to immortality…or something(?) Instead they unleash a series of booby traps and a dangerous entity imprisoned within. “Just fun times,” as La’an would say.
There’s a version of “Through The Lens Of Time” that perhaps is only 10 minutes long because it involves the characters showing the bare minimum levels of judgment we would expect from any person of normal intelligence, let alone trained Starfleet Officers, whereas this episode’s plot requires profoundly poor judgment. Shockingly, the dumbest character in the story is not Enterprise’s new, young, inexperienced nurse Ensign Gamble or Dr. Roger Korby, fated for a fall by already established Trek canon. It’s not even Erica Ortega’s ambitious documentarian brother, Umberto.
Rather, the supposedly brilliant Christine Chapel wins the dumbest character of the week award. She inexplicably exposes herself to potential contamination or who-knows-what by offering up her blood to open the ancient alien structure and then leading the landing party inside without any consideration of what risks they may find. But of course, the rest of the landing party follows her inside without thought to sensible Starfleet protocols that even Spock only remembers after they’d already entered, when it’s too late. I haven’t seen characters make such obviously bad decisions while scouting an alien planet since the Ridley Scott film Prometheus.
Ensign Gamble is the other big problem with the episode. The first issue is with the old trope of Gamble’s body being taken over by some other entity. This is certainly not new to Star Trek. Several characters, for instance, were possessed by alien beings in The Next Generation episode “Power Play,” and Gul Dukat was ultimately possessed by the Pah-wraiths. But though good writing can sometimes salvage a bad trope, it’s usually not the strongest writing choice to take agency away from a character. And given that Gamble has appeared in several episodes, the second issue with Gamble was the decision to unceremoniously kill him off so quickly. It feels like a missed opportunity.
Assuming of course, Ensign Gamble is not coming back in some other form later. The final moments of the episode suggest whatever the ancient entity that possessed him was it’s still out there. Pelia even delivers this ominous warning:
“There is evil in this universe, as sure as there is good. As sure as there is matter. As sure as there is light. I know that being was ancient…malevolent. It desired to malign, to pervert, and consume. Given corporeal form, if any of those things ever escape that well down there, god help us all.”
Photo: Marni Grossman/Paramount+
The monologue felt reminiscent of Guinan’s warnings about the Borg, though Guinan actually had a history with the Borg and knew what she was talking about. Pelia has no specific insight into this mysterious being and is only speaking from intuition. Though the scene ends on a joke that undercuts the dramatic warning, making it unclear if the warning was intended sincerely or to be read as Pelia just screwing around for the benefit of Umberto Ortegas’ documentary camera.
Still, the message that this being is just pure evil feels reductive and not keeping with Star Trek’s usual message of learning to understand our enemies and finding a way to co-exist peacefully with them. Or maybe this is just another plot thread that will get dropped like when season one teased a future storyline involving Spock’s villainous half-brother Sybok that has yet to be paid off.
“Through The Lens Of Time” might be the weakest installment of Strange New Worlds yet. It feels like a dumping ground for marginal developments in several season-long plots that lacks its own identity as a standalone episode. In a series with 10-episode seasons, there’s no excuse for blah filler episodes that deliver such stale “mummy’s curse” narratives that are neither strange nor new.
All four of this season’s centered romantic couples — all banally and almost aggressively heterosexual — feature here but with almost no development beyond Christine telling La’an that she’s fine with La’an’s and Spock’s friends with benefits arrangement.
All three of this season’s recurring characters are wasted here, Ensign Gamble most of all. And if this is setting up this ancient evil as a larger antagonist down the line then it’s a lousy introduction. We’re halfway through the season, and the writers have their work cut out for them in the back half if they’re going to recover from the mediocrity with which they’ve led season three.
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds release Thursdays on Paramount+.
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