In the Dark Reviews

If you're the sort of binge-viewer who can't stand to start a new season of a show until it's all online, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that all 10 episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 2 are now on Paramount+.

The bad news is that, at the risk of revealing spoilers, the "Strange New Worlds" Season 2 finale ends on the biggest cliffhanger since "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I," on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

"Strange New Worlds" continues to be the best "Star Trek" show of the 21st century, with even its least-best episode ("Among the Lotus Eaters") still making for reasonably compelling viewing.

Season 2's peaks have spanned drama to comedy, with morally fraught legal proceedings ("Ad Astra per Aspera"), history-threatening alternate timeline adventures ("Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"), Vulcan courtship dramedy ("Charades"), fourth wall-poking crossovers with the "Star Trek" franchise's cartoon tie-in, "Lower Decks" ("Those Old Scientists"), and even an in-universe musical reality ("Subspace Rhapsody").

Before playing Capt. Christopher Pike, Anson Mount's steely eyes, silver hair and chiseled jaw got him cast in stoic roles ranging from AMC's "Hell on Wheels" to the MCU's "Inhumans," but "Strange New Worlds" has discovered his capacity for deadpan humor.

Whenever anything sufficiently ridiculous happens, Pike's eyebrows and mouth form perfectly parallel straight lines of disgruntlement, and he goes from being Space Daddy to being your dad when he's done with your nonsense.

Since Pike is defined in the "Star Trek" mythos as being the Enterprise captain who came before Kirk, "Strange New Worlds" allows him to make mistakes, like trying too hard to be his crew's best friend rather than their leader, which makes his crew members feel guilty about saying no to his requests, even when they should.

Speaking of James T. Kirk, Paul Wesley reprises his role as the future Enterprise captain in three of Season 2's 10 episodes, and I appreciate that, just as Ethan Peck wisely chooses not to try and imitate Leonard Nimoy's mannerisms as Spock too precisely, Wesley manages to capture the spirit of Shatner's Kirk, while still making the character distinctly his own.

James and his more bookish, neurotic brother Sam (Dan Jeannotte) bicker with an authentically fraternal fractiousness, and Jim displays the platonic empathy that makes him so appealing to women, as he immediately accepts a young Ensign Uhura's hallucinatory visions as valid after first meeting her, and proves to be an almost perfect partner for the otherwise emotionally closed-off Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh.

It helps that Celia Rose Gooding is delivering character-defining performances as Uhura with virtually every episode, exploring the origins and nuances of Uhura's strengths and motives to a degree I wish Nichelle Nichols had been granted, along with giving Gooding an excuse to break out her Broadway-trained pipes on two songs in "Subspace Rhapsody."

Christina Chong covered La'an's Gorn-related trauma in Season 1, but an unexpected star-crossed love affair in Season 2 allows Chong to reveal La'an's vulnerability and lighter side, just as the troubled fallout of nurse Christine Chapel's questionably advisable hook-up with another Enterprise shipmate ultimately affords Jess Bush the opportunity to showcase Chapel gaining a much-needed sense of her own worth.

Melissa Navia can't help but win me over as ship's pilot Lt. Erica Ortegas, not only accurately conveying a war veteran's resentment for old foes turned allies, but just being endearing in general with her kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for almost impossibly perilous stunt-flying.

And while Rebecca Romijn continues her strong work from Season 1 as "Number One" Lt. Cmdr. Una Chin-Riley, proving she's long since transcended her blue body-painted days as the shape-shifting Mystique in the "X-Men" franchise, it's Babs Olusanmokun as the ethical yet vengeful Dr. Joseph M'Benga who has quietly been absolutely killing it throughout Season 2.

Olusanmokun's raspy voice and pained facial expressions underscore how much M'Benga the healer hates resorting to violence, but Olusanmokun's well-honed skills in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, in which he's both a black belt and a champion, makes M'Benga a complete beast when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

Like Bill Hader in HBO's "Barry," Olusanmokun's M'Benga is terrifyingly good at killing people, no matter how badly he feels about it, and it's a sign of how much the Starfleet of "Strange New Worlds" has yet to evolve into the civilized austerity of the Starfleet of "The Next Generation" that Pike kind of has no clue what to do when M'Benga finally loses control of his emotions.

I don't have much to add to what I already said about Carol Kane as the ship's new chief engineer, Pelia, in my review of the Season 2 premiere - like Peter David's Mackenzie Calhoun from the "Star Trek: New Frontier" novels, she remains a Mary Sue, but a fun one - but I was overjoyed to see Martin Quinn make his debut, during the Season 2 finale, as Pelia's new assistant engineer, who arrived fully formed as his spoilery original series character.

It's going to be difficult to wait a year to see how this season's cliffhanger gets resolved, but in the meantime, the third and final season of "Reservation Dogs" is at least three episodes in on Hulu, and so far, it's focused heavily on the coming-of-age journey of Bear Smallhill (played by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), as he struggles with the sense that he's outgrown living on "The Rez."

And don't forget, Shelton's free-admission "Movies in the Park" screening of 1985's "Back to the Future," starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, is slated to start between 8:30-8:45 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 25, in Kneeland Park, after the Shelton-Mason County Journal runs my review of the film that week.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]