Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "A Case of Chiaoscuro" | Season 4, Episode 4
Things become annoyingly black and white
Fans of “Grumpy Zack” will be thrilled this week, unless they loved “A Case of Chiaoscuro,” in which case they won’t be. It’s been a while since I’ve been this annoyed by an hour of television, one which has several pieces of things that I might have liked, but refuses to do anything interesting or unusual with any of them. I don’t have a problem recognizing the tropes in the media I consume; part of the joy of reading genre fiction is seeing how different writers use familiar elements in different ways. But you need to make an effort. At some point, thought needs to be involved in the process; otherwise you just get a bunch of stuff that’s been done better before.
It’s hard to know where to start, really. The basics of the plot sound competent enough: while attempting to retrieve a satellite in Klingon space, Una, Uhura, and Dr. M’Benga are forced to land their shuttle on a Klingon-occupied planet. Once there, Una is mistaken for an authority figure who’s also, secretly, a leader of the resistance. While our three heroes struggle with just how involved they want to be with the anti-Klingon rebellion, La’an is worried about the sanctity of the returned probe, and Spock thinks she’s over-reacting.
All right, I lied–I already have problems with this. Why in the hell is M’Benga, a man who the Klingons know and despise, on this mission? I guess you could argue he’s there because he knows about Klingons, but if the mission had actually gone the way it was supposed to go, there wouldn’t have been any direct contact; and it’s not a mission that needs any dedicated medical personnel, particularly not the ship’s chief medical officer. In practice, M’Benga is there to provide exposition whenever Uhura has a question about something. He’s not a person, he’s a tricorder with a voice synthesizer and gift for moralization.
