Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Hegemony, Part II" | Season 3, Episode 1

Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which enters its delayed third season as its fifth and final season has already been announced. This first review is free as always, but subsequent reviews—including tomorrow’s review of the second episode release today—will be exclusively for paid subscribers. To learn more about what we’re covering for the remainder of the summer, see our Summer Schedule.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I didn’t realize until digging out my old Google Docs review folder for the show, but Strange New Worlds has been off the air for nearly two years. My last review, of the season two finale “Hegemony,” was published August 10, 2023. The show never completely left my mind in the interim, but I did forget a lot of the smaller details (Carol Kane is in this? They’ve already brought Scotty back?), and before watching the season 3 premiere (cleverly titled “Hegemony, Part II”), I had to refresh myself on exactly where we’d left off all those years ago.

None of which is relevant, exactly—the passage of time can be a factor in criticism, but streaming production schedules are so wild these days that I’m honestly grateful to have the show back at all. But while my memories of Strange New Worlds were largely fond ones, I’ll admit to a certain amount of cynicism creeping back in. I’ve been vocal about having mixed feelings about the current era of Star Trek, and how the creative team currently in charge of the franchise has been fixated on the flashy over the thought-provoking. Lower Decks (RIP) managed to be funny, sweet, and smart, but Discovery, in its flailing perpetual attempts to re-invent itself, never landed for me, and I refuse to even watch the Section 31 movie.

Yes, Strange New Worlds has been a breath of fresh air, but maybe I’d oversold myself. Maybe I’d been so relieved to have a live action Trek series that actually cared about basic things like “stories that make sense” and “building an ensemble” that I’d over-praised it. After all, when viewed from a distance, SNW does a lot of the same things Discovery mucked about in, with lots of pretty special affects and action movie pacing. The dialogue can—at times—be a bit too twee, and it’s a prequel, and we all know what a mixed bag those are.

So I had some trepidation going into “Hegemony, Part II.” It’s no fun to be the guy in the room who can’t love the thing everyone else is over the moon about, and as much as I like making jokes, having to review a season of a show that never quite gels is a surprisingly unpleasant experience. (Almost like, y’know, work. Ha ha.) Thankfully, I got back into the groove within minutes, and I’m happy (and relieved) to report that I had nothing to worry about. Strange New Worlds is back, my friends, and if this premiere is any indication, it continues to absolutely rock.

Last season ended on multiple cliffhangers: Pike’s romantic partner (and a strong captain in her own right) Marie Batel was dying from an injection of Gorn eggs that Chapel seemed helpless to treat; La’an Noonien-Singh, Doctor M’Benga, Ortegas, and Sam Kirk had been beamed onto a Gorn ship with a hundred other colonists; and Pike had been ordered to retreat from a fight that there was no easy way to win. The episode’s final shots had Pike struggling to come up with a plan in the face of what looked to be insurmountable odds, confronted on all sides by despair, and for once, our beloved Space Daddy appeared in over his head. I even speculated in my review that this was intentional, underlining a lesson from earlier in the season that no matter how decent Pike is, he isn’t the captain James T. Kirk will one day become.

This was silly of me. “Part II” picks up right where we left off, and after a terrified second or two, Pike bounces back. If the first part of this two parter was about setting up all the different ways the Enterprise could fail, the resolution has our heroes rising to the challenge, succeeding at every demand the universe throws at them. Can’t win right now? Well, we’ll mark the Gorn ship with the hostages on it so we can track them later; and if we can’t just shoot a homing beacon, we’ll ram the Enterprise into ‘em and do the dirty work close hand.

“Part II” starts with tensions at their highest, and it never really backs down; even in moments of relative peace, there’s still about fifty different things to worry about. If you’re a fan of sequences where Trek crews work together to come up with crazy science solutions to crises, you should love this. There are plenty of good character moments, but the bulk of the episode is just techno-babble mixed with occasional “chin up!” speeches, and by god, it works. It all works.

I can’t find it in my heart to be critical about any of this. Part of me wants to–the problem with this level of intensity is that if you manufacture too many “Everybody lives!” escapes, the stakes will stop seeming quite as real. While we can quibble about the exact definition of “a no-win scenario,” all of this chaos should have a cost at some point, or else it’s just a children’s cartoon. As far as I can tell, no one dies in “Hegemony, Part II,” (well, apart from a few Gorn), and part of me wants to suggest that Pike can’t always get away clean, lest the show lose the sense of drama and impact it depends on to survive.

But that part of me, at least in this particular instance, is wrong. Yes, if you’re going to keep leaning into “This is the worst threat we’ve ever faced!” style stories, there needs to be some cost eventually. But the show gets around that here by making sure the characters all believe they’re screwed even if they ultimately aren’t, and the acting on SNW is so across the board strong that everyone sells it. Plus, there’s a reason why “Everybody lives!” still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I type it. Partly it’s because I really love that Doctor Who episode (“The Doctor Dances,” I think?), and partly it’s because every so often, it’s good to see the heroes triumph even when everything says the shouldn’t. Especially these heroes.

So yeah, this rocked. I appreciate that the writers found a justification for why La’an and the other captives wake up in cocoons; the idea that the ship digests prisoners for fuel is creepy, and it’s one of several smart touches throughout the episode that uses the idea of highly evolved Gorn biology in cool ways. I dug how Pelia tricks Scotty into getting over his insecurities (an insecure Scotty is quite fun), and I enjoyed how the sparks continued to fly between Spock and Chapel as they worked together to cure Batel. La’an went through trauma and was a bad-ass professional throughout, and Anson Mount did a fantastic job of showing Pike work through his fears and hold the crew together; his scene with Batel at the end was honestly lovely.

I haven’t watched the second episode released today just yet (review will be up tomorrow), but I’m excited to. In case you missed the news, Strange New Worlds has officially announced that it will be ending with season 5, and I won’t lie: that’s a bummer. But on the plus side, we’ve still got three seasons left. I can’t wait to see where they go next.

Stray observations

• So I guess this wraps up the Gorn plot? It doesn’t quite stick the landing in terms of fitting with continuity, but… eh, close enough.
• I really hope the writers find a believable way to keep Jess Bush around, I’ll miss–ahem, the show will miss her if she’s gone. (Seriously, Chapel is one of the most unexpected highlights of this series, and her continued sparring with Spock gives me so much joy.)
• “Don’t be rude, of course I can.” Really great work from Melissa Navia here; the expression she makes just after saying this is just perfect.