Chris Connor reviews the sixth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2…
Strange New Worlds’ second season has committed to giving the Enterprise crew their moments in the spotlight. While this has led to a slightly reduced role for Captain Pike it does give us a sense of who each member of the crew is and what makes them tick and their motivation for joining Starfleet. Our latest episode ‘Lost In Translation’ sees Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura take centre stage, witnessing some strange occurrences that no one is able to pinpoint the cause of.
This episode gives Paul Wesley’s James T. Kirk a prominent role, this time not an alternate version as has been the case earlier this season and in the first season. Of course, Uhura and Kirk are an iconic duo from the time in the Original Series played by William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols and so this is a fun spin on their first meeting and initial interactions with Kirk helping get to the bottom of Uhura’s visions and what is causing them.
This is one of the more action-packed episodes of the series and makes for thrilling viewing, full of suspense and tension with a genuine sense of unease and Horror about Uhura’s plight, haunted it seems by Henner and his sacrifice in the opening season. This lends those events more meaning, and the episode also cleverly picks up the events of the third episode which saw La’an paired with an alternate version of Kirk so even though the episodes have been serial of the week, there is a sense of a narrative through-line.
Building the episode around Wesley and Gooding gives both a chance to dive into their takes on these iconic characters still feeling in keeping with the Original Series but not simply a caricature of the work of Shatner and Nichols, the pair share fine chemistry, and we can only hope we’ll see the two together again further down the line in the show.
‘Lost In Translation’ is another standout episode of Strange New Worlds’ second season, action-packed but still finding room to dive into the Enterprise crew. It is another intelligent plot, with a largely unseen threat and a sense of mystery, building on horror elements that have come into play in previous episodes. Paul Wesley is coming into his own as Strange New Worlds’ Kirk, with his first chance to play a proper version of Kirk and interacting with the wider Enterprise crew.
Chris Connor
