Strange New Worlds has prided itself in its first season on a somewhatsense of fleetingness — that even at itsdirest of stakes , our enterprising heroes would come out the other side and move on to the next big adventure . This week ’s next-to-last episode of the season turn out just how scary and unbelievable the series can be when it confronts arguably its honest estimation of horror : lasting consequence .
“ All Those Who Wander ” commence out both innocently enough and distort with a sadness that will become much more touchable as the sequence progresses . commence with another dinner party in Pike ’s quarters , we ’re tell that Uhura and another cadet , Chia , are draw near the death of their tours of obligation on the Enterprise — and with it , Uhura ’s reassurance that in spite of all that she’slearned aboard the ship , she ’s ready to have go of Enterprise and Starfleet alike . But before she can be too certain — even without our own metatextual knowledge that if she does leave , she wo n’t be gone forever and a day — a novel precedence mission that override Enterprise ’s other priority missionary station gives Pike reasonableness to ship Uhura off with one last escapade .
This is all dealt with in a casual , cool , and confident personal manner that gives us a wonderful import with Pike brief the bridge circuit gang on their newfangled missionary station — a search and delivery surgery for the U.S.S. Peregrine , an significant Constitution Class - adjacent vessel that has seemingly crash set down on an polar world , cut off from comms contact lens . balance Pike ( and a roped - in Benjamin Spock ) doing looker as they talk over the risks — and the fact the Enterprise will necessitate to ship an Away team in solo so the ship can stop its other mission delivering supply — with Pike becoming a Space Dad and treat it like a road misstep , this all feels very much of Strange New Worlds ’ oeuvre : face at these cool space heroes , so good at their jobs , so calm and collect that balancing the endangerment of two life - and - death missionary post is just something that can be casually discussed over a home base of dinner remnant among friends as much as they are fellow worker . Woo , go space geographic expedition !
Captain Pike doesn’t know how bad his day’s about to get.Image: Paramount
call on out , however , this is not a “ woo , go space exploration ” episode of Strange New Worlds . The moment Pike ’s sizeable outside team is cut off from the initiative — our two young cadets , a new raise Lieutenant Duke , Spock , Nurse Chapel , La’an , Doctor M’Benga , Sam Kirk , and Chief Hemmer — the work party substantiate that this is not going to be an easy commission . Finding the Peregrine and the dismembered remnants of much of its work party , and a content for Starfleet to stay the hell forth , what was entail to be a fun road trip suddenly becomes extremely tough for our champion . And then it get unfit when “ All Those Who Wander ” reveals that its classic sci - fi Riffian this week is n’t a Star Trek installment plot , it ’s Alien . With Gorn babe .
Now , Star Trek hasdone Alien riffs beforeof row , but this episode storm up to a tier of repulsion unlike anything we ’ve seen the dealership really attempt . The hearing and the crew rule this out at the same time by watching in repugnance as an alien subsister the Peregrine picked up hold tight his chest , only for it to violently explode with four rakehell - covered small Gorn — straightaway and bloodily belt down the poor Cadet Chia on the commission , and Lt . Duke shortly thereafter — and there ’s an immediate spirit change for the entire episode . This is n’t the dire stakes Strange New Worlds has put its Hero in before , but a complete and full via media of who we suppose these Starfleet fighter were . It ’s matched by the presentation of the episode , a genuine sequence of horror that is explicitly brutal , explicitly violent , and compact with blood and entrails that hammers home , basically , that as good as these citizenry are at their jobs , space is dangerous , and space will get you kill . Definitely when outer space is really four rapidly growing feral lizard exotic baby monsters absorbed on destroy either you or themselves to be the alpha of the litter .
It is , honestly , incredible . Not just for its pitch - perfect , rampant thievery of every outstanding horror movie trope around as the Away squad finds itself being hunt for bloodsport , but for all the ways this immediate , scandalous encounter with a scenario that can not be deal with diplomacy and reason immediately breaks almost everyone available . Nurse Chapel , so equal to and so used to confronting and healing the sick and wound , is shaken to her core over Chia ’s destruction , barely able to utter while La’an — herself pressure to reckon with darker impulses and her past with the Gorn as she did in thesimilarly splendid “ Momento Mori”—thrusts a phaser rifle into her hands . Sam Kirk almost immediately freaks out , break up engagement and holler at his acquaintance , robbed of any composure expect of a Star Trek hero even in the fount of heavy danger . Even Spock is n’t innocent of this , finally breaking down his mental logic inhibitor to rap into a primal , excited fury to fight the Gorn once the Away team re - unites and incubate a plan to survive . It ’s as authentically formidable to watch these cleft issue and splinter wider and wider open as the sequence march on as it is to watch the Gorn cut up a gory path through the Peregrine .
Image: Paramount
It ’s not just brilliant for its repulsion however , but the way this squad is made up of character we ’ve gotten to drop individual highlight episodes with this time of year : La’an , Chapel , Spock , Uhura . This moment , unlike anything Strange New Worlds has tried before , serve as the catalyst to climax their respective arcs over the entire season , a challenge that can only be contribute about by throwing them into a site that asks them to compromise all standard ideas of Starfleet behaviour and simply hold out . It ’s a noteworthy contrast with the aforementioned anterior Gorn sequence of the series , “ Momento Mori . ” There , the Gorn were an unobserved shadow , but one that asked our bomber to rise to this approximation of hope as a matter to guide them against that shadow with grace of God : as long as they all believed the Enteprise would support , it would . This episode , on the other hand , finds Leslie Townes Hope along a much more clearly bleaker path , that you may not just believe in subsist but have to make yourself wholly into doing so — and that in doing so you also accept that sometimes it ’s never enough to get everyone out of a bad situation alive , and it ’s just as heroic to come out of it down mass buthaving actually endured .
And that ’s what “ All Those Who Wander ” save its most intestine - wrenching example for : that the horror shift is not the only major frame change for Strange New Worlds we get to witness this installment , but the ground - shattering presence of choice and outcome for a show that has largely breezed by them with its episodic data formatting . betimes on in the episode , Hemmer gets attacked with an acid spitting from one of the Gorn , and everything seems fine except for some momentary shock and pain for the Aenar . And you call up , perchance , Strange New World wo n’t hit this picky repulsion figure , that everything ’s hunky-dory . After all , the instalment has englut its bloodlust by kill off the two obvious death flags : the cadet two weeks aside from proverbial retreat , and the newly promoted rookie . You ca n’t touch one-half of the cast for their place in Trek canon , otherwise . You ’re lull into that sense of security , that promise and bravado that our Starfleet heroes pump themselves up with , that everything ’s going to be fine .
Then it is n’t . When the Gorn are ruin and the day not saved , but salvaged , Strange New Worlds has one heartbreak hammer shock left to carry on : Hemmer had already gain , as had La’an having confront the Gorn before , that their acid spit is more than an attack , but away to taint a host with their eggs . Hemmer , accepting that this is his destiny in the way all Aenar admit the oddment , decides to throw himself out of the Peregrine ’s repair shed bay , killing himself and ensuring that any Gorn hatchlings grow inside him will pass away in the satellite ’s freezing environment . Even though Hemmer has had less to do in this first time of year than some of the other major cast members of the show , his death carries a system of weights here nonetheless — the same sorting of scary , sea - changing commotion for Strange New Worlds at large as this episode of rakehell , gore , and horror was for the show ’s tone . Things are suddenly that much more serious , and carry a riotous weight that persevere beyond the series ’ beloved episodic structure .
Image: Paramount
We at once get to sense those consequence beyond Hemmer ’s loss , too . La’an decides to take an extended leave of absence of absence seizure from the Enterprise to help one of the mobile subsister , a young child , happen their home beyond Federation margin . Spock , now ineffective to really operate his emotion again , finds himself and his relationship with Nurse Chapel changing in fundamental , and downright shivery , way . Even Uhura , so distraught by the loss of Hemmer , is left open - ended , unsure of whether to stick and put down solution aboard the initiative or leave as she in the beginning intended , the episode ending on a lingering blastoff of her staring out at the comm station on the bridge — the future we know she will have one 24-hour interval — and it ’s distinctly left up to interpretation as to whether she ’s look at it with pridefulness or dubiousness .
It ’s a bold ending to an incredible bold episode of the series — arguably , perhaps , its best in a very good opening move time of year . Its plasticity as an occasional serial publication is both challenge and proved in “ All Those Who Wander , ” not just for the pitch - perfect tone pivot , but with the somberness of moment it brought to rival such a major change that its has born down upon its characters . foreign New Worlds has spend much of its first season firmly settling into that vallecula of riffs , familiarity , and individualized , walled - off stories . With this installment , it suddenly experience like everything has changed as much for the series as it has its bomber : correctly now , Strange New Worlds feel like it can do just about anything , and that ’s one Scheol of a gauntlet to drop down in the penultimate instalment of a season .
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