Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Orders of Magnitude" | Season 4, Episode 8

First, the good news: “Orders of Magnitude” is not a gimmick episode. It is, in fact, a story (well, two stories) that would not have been out of place on the original series, and I don’t mean that as a back-handed insult. Kirk is once again on the Enterprise, but at least this time, he’s not a casual guest star; the focus of the script’s main plot has him butting heads with guest star Joe Morton. Yes, it’s a bit weird how much time the show has spent building Kirk’s character when Pike is still in the captain’s chair, but that’s been happening for a while now. I’ll acknowledge that it’s not ideal, but I’m not sure there’s much to say about it beyond that.

The other plotline focuses on Pike leading a mission with Una, Uhura, Chapel, and the Vulcan Intern (I’m sure she has a name, but I’ve yet to remember it, and I don’t think that’s a failure on my part) to investigate a distress signal. Of the two plots, it’s the more straightforward: our heroes quickly discover that the signal is a trap sent by a group of Andorian thieves, and the leader is more than willing to kill (or at least grievously injure) anyone who disobeys him. Uhura initially appears to be helping the baddies out in order to save the intern’s life, but she has a plan, and it’s all very exciting.

I’m sorry, that was too dismissive. The Uhura story is exciting, but throughout the episode I kept wondering what the hell it was doing paired with the Kirk story. Yes it provides an explanation for why Pike isn’t on the ship, but there was no reason for that explanation to be so complicated; the Kirk story, at least in theory, should’ve been strong enough to take the focus for the entire hour, and I could just as easily see an entire episode developed to Uhura’s hero turn. Surely we could’ve sacrificed one of the gimmick episodes to let these breathe more?