The season premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds began with something unexpected: Captain Christopher Pike, La’An, and Dr. Joseph M'Benga on horses, dressed in cowboy garb. But that wasn't the only unforeseen moment in the episode; no, those continued as the USS Enterprise is caught in a solar flare and transported to somewhere that becomes on-brand for a Star Trek program.
When the crew appears after the solar flare, the USS Enterprise doesn’t have a lot of power. They soon find out that the where isn’t the issue: They’re exactly where they left. Spock discovered that they're still in the Sol system. However, he deduced that they are now millions of years in the past.
That means La’An, Una Chin-Riley, and Erica Ortegas are on Earth. If it’s 65 million years in the past, then there’s imminent danger. Not just because of the dinosaurs, but everything the party on Earth does can affect the future.
Later, the three Martians take antimatter tech from the Enterprise after finding out that Pike failed to mention that his crew and ship are from the future. This “dishonesty” is why they refused to listen to Pike and continued with their mission to eliminate their enemies, the Dol’Drm. This has catastrophic but positive effects on the universe.
The Martians convert the antimatter tech into a weapon and shoot it towards the Dol’Drm homeworld. Pike has to decide whether to intercept, but chooses not to, and the weapon destroys the Dol’Drm planet. The debris from the planet finds its way to Earth and causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. The absence of the planet caused a "gravimetric shift" that moved Mars further from the Sun. The Mars atmosphere cooled, and that’s why Mars looks like it does. On the plus side, these events are the catalyst that starts the evolution of humanity.
So, in a typical confusing time-travel TV and movie trope, the future is caused because of something that happened in the past by someone who came from the future. So, what came first: The chicken or the egg, or Starfleet or the dinosaurs?
Stardate 04.01 review and ramblings
This was a fantastic episode to start Stark Trek: Strange New Worlds' fourth season. The main storyline with the attempt at diplomacy with the “Martians”, time-travel, and living with consequences are all major staples of the Star Trek franchise. So, for anyone who decided to start with season 4, you’d get a perfect sample size of what the show is about. And, if that's the case, go back and start the series from the beginning.
Another storyline that we haven't mentioned yet involves La'an Noonien-Singh. While on Earth, she punches a dinosaur. She thinks that this will cause unknown ripples in the timeline, but that doesn’t happen thanks to the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs. The problem is that La’An broke her hand and doesn’t feel anything. Now she’s concerned that this is the beginning of her turning into something unlike herself.
Since La’An is a descendant of Khan Noonien-Singh, it’s understandable that she’s concerned that her latent Augmented genes have activated. Everyone should pay close attention to how she acts throughout the rest of this season. We could be looking at the beginning of her villain origin story. If that does happen, it will be reported on Bam Smack Pow.
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