Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Showing posts with label Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Show all posts

Saturday, July 25, 2026

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4.1: Safeguarding the Future

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds kicked off its fourth season with a cracker-jack episode of my favorite kind of science fiction: time travel. Now, I entitled this review "Safeguarding the Future", which is always a good thing. But it becomes a pre-eminently essential thing when travel to the past is involved. And Captain Pike is the perfect person to be helming this episode, making the crucial decisions, given that he is walking around with knowledge of a future he most certainly doesn't want to safeguard, because ...

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

In case you didn't already know this, Pike gets severely disfigured in "The Menagerie," a two-part episode aired on broadcast TV -- NBC -- in the original Star Trek series back in 1966. So, he'd love to avoid that future, not protect it, if there was anything he could do, any way he could prevent it from happening.

But the same, of course, is not the case with our human species. Because if that is not safeguarded, then there wouldn't be a Captain Pike or any human being in the first place. So that is Pike's guide when the Enterprise gets caught up in a cosmic storm (a frequent source of predicament in the Star Trek universe) and finds itself some 65 million years back in the past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. And since this is science fiction, a time when sentient Martians, which look a lot like we humans, are in mortal conflict with intelligent space-faring insects that come from a fifth planet in our solar system, between Mars and Jupiter, and are bent on destroying the Martians.

Now, as any Star Trek fan well knows, the Federation would want any starship to do whatever it could to protect a human-like sentient species from marauding insects out to exterminate the humanoids -- short of wiping out these Dol'Drm intelligent insects themselves. But as Pike to his credit realizes, far more important than Star Fleet policy is making sure that Star Fleet exists in his present, and that includes his crew and him. His own understanding, his own prime directive, thus leads him to allow the humanoid Martians to destroy the 5th planet (because it doesn't exist in our reality, which is Star Trek's reality). And, though he likes the humanoid Martians, especially Commander Cassel (pictured above in a scene with Pike), he accepts that the force of her destruction of the fifth planet will encompass her ship and her, with the energy from the blast turning neighboring Mars into a barren planet, and a fragment from the blown-to-bits fifth planet hitting the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs.

All of that, if not exactly cause for celebration, is certainly a source of satisfaction and happiness. Pike saved the Enterprise and all aboard and everyone he knows from being instantly erased from existence. He saved our human species on Earth, because had the dinosaurs continued, the little mammals that existed in their time might have been wiped out before they evolved into primates. That's not only good time-travel science fiction, but a cause for everyone watching this episode to be happy as well, that we're here and able to watch and enjoy episode 4.1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, right?

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead ... 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business ... 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science ... 3.6: Chris and Jim ... 3.7: The Medium and The Message ... 3.8: Pike's Hair and Spock's Smile ... [Note: I didn’t review 3.9 because, though it had a few good moments, I didn’t have enough worth saying about it.] ... 3.10: Season 3 Finale: The New Story

another kind of time travel story ...

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Finale: The New Story

I just watched the Season 3 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the series on Paramount Plus, which as you no doubt know if you're reading this, tells the story of Captain Christopher Pike, a character from a two-part episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Menagerie"), along with the story of Spock, James Kirk, Uhura, Chapel, Scotty younger than they were in TOS, as well as characters we didn't meet in TOS.

Now, if by chance you haven't seen the first season of TOS, you might not to want to read any further, because there will be a huge spoiler ahead ... Although, maybe not. How's that for a spoiler warning?

But what I'm getting at is we see about ten minutes of among the best Star Trek TV, movies, and streaming I've ever seen, tender and heartbreaking and beautiful, the story of Pike not getting disfigured which was the basis of "The Menagerie". Instead, we see Pike and Batel happy together for the rest of their long lives (until Batel is on her deathbed), raising a family, with all the good things life has to offer.

The question is (or, my question is): did this really happen, was it a glimpse of a real alternate reality, or was it an illusion in Pike's and Batel's heads? The rule of parsimony would make it an illusion. But I'd like to see the makers of Strange New Worlds make it a reality. The tragic brilliance of "The Menagerie" hinges on Pike being severely injured in a training accident. But with the super-potent powers in the universe we humans on Star Trek from time to time encounter, might not one of them, seeing what happened to Pike in the accident, prevented him for being in that place at the wrong time? What that would do is make "The Menagerie" a compelling Star Trek story that we know about but ultimately did not happen, but the rest of Star Trek corpus would remain intact.

In fiction, in general, prequels are always hostage to stories we already know, the stories that came first to our awareness but come from a time later in the overall narrative. But I would argue that science fiction has a special permit to diverge from this, if need be, because the essence of science fiction is our encounters with different realities, including those in which a future element in a story we know could be changed by something in the prequel, with the result that we have a more satisfying story.

Actually, The Next Generation at least once already sort of did this, in "The Inner Light," in which Picard experiences his entire life on another planet, only to wake up still Captain, same age he always was, on the Enterprise. What happened to Picard was not a dream, it really happened.

Whatever happens from now on with Captain Pike and Strange New Worlds, "The Menagerie" deserves even more credit than the warranted kudos it's long been receiving. It generated in the Season 3 finale of Strange New Worlds a signally important episode among the best in the Star Trek series since TOS and TNG.

Monday, September 1, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8: Pike's Hair and Spock's Smile

Well, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8 served up the obligatory comedy of the season. It wasn't as funny as TOS's "Trouble for Tribbles" (which got David Gerrold's career going), but it did have its moments.

[Spoilers ahead ... though it seems a bit off to warn about spoilers where laughs are involved ... ]

First, the set-up: Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura are temporarily turned into Vulcans. But the temporary takes much longer than expected, and hence this close-to-entire episode.

Here are some of my favorite results:

Pike's hair looks funnier than ever as a Vulcan. They must've applied Brylcreem to Anson Mount's hair, but he deserve credit for some fine deadpan acting as Vulcan Pike.
La'an (Christina Chong), on the other hand, looked great as a Vulcan, and her dancing with Spock, likely about the closest we'll see of them making love, was fun to see.
Speaking of Spock, the title of this episode -- "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" -- though not a result of the change into Vulcans (because it's a title), is so good it deserves a shout-out. The half, of course, is Spock, who's half-human, so Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura = 4 + Spock (1/2) = Four and a Half, and the title itself reflects Vulcan precision with language.

Also outside the theme of this episode -- but deserving mention -- though it could be seen as a reversal of the theme (and related to the theme as per Marshall McLuhan's tetrad)* -- is Doug (played by Patton Oswalt!), a Vulcan who is fascinated by humans, and may want to become one of us. He and Spock have a coda scene, in which Spock tries to teach Doug how to use word contractions, etc, and all of that ends with Spock's smile, a rarity and always good to see.

*See Andrey Mir's Digital Reversal for more.

Sunday, August 31, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.7: The Medium and the Message

One of the joys of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the way it bends conventional TV/streaming narrative structures, weaving it into the stories it tells -- blending, as per Marshall McLuhan, the medium and the message, into one -- playing, in Season 2, with animation (episode 2.7) and the musical (episode 2.9), and this summer, in episode 3.7, with the documentary as a vehicle of exposition.

That's a good choice for a Star Trek story vehicle. A documentary seeks to present the truth, to pose and answer questions about the subject of its investigation. I've long thought about the fact, going back to the original series in 1960s, that it was significant that the explorations Star Trek showed us were conducted in a military context, by a group of people who had to obey orders, could be court-martialed (as per what seemed to happen to Spock in "The Menagerie" in TOS about what he did for Captain Pike!), etc. There have been lots of scientists and science in every Star Trek series, but their stories were always governed at some ultimate point by the military. It thus was refreshing to hear the documentarian in Strange New Worlds 3.7, entitled "What is Starfleet?", voice his prime question as: are the crew of the Enterprise and Starfleet, soldiers or explorers, military or scientists?

The answer, of course, is that they've been inextricably intertwined throughout all of Star Trek, and that's one of the things that help make Star Trek in all its forms so compelling. The individual stories have usually been riveting too, raising deep ethical questions as our characters risk their lives. Episode 3.7 tells us the story of an intelligent, literally interstellar organism which a more conventional humanoid species has enlisted, against its will, as a weapon in its battles. The Federation has some responsibility to support the humanoid species, but will the Enterprise support its enslavement of the interstellar being?

Well, I didn't warn you about spoilers in this review as yet, and it's a little far into the review to warn you now, so I'll conclude this with no warnings and just my recommendation to make sure you see this episode of Strange New Worlds, and for that matter, the superb whole series.

Monday, August 18, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.6: Chris and Jim

I was just talking with Sean Fodera yesterday on LinkedIn about how much I was enjoying seeing earlier versions of characters from the original Star Trek series on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds -- Sean was commenting on my review of SNW 3.5, which I just posted yesterday -- and little did I know that the most current SNW episode, 3.6, which I just got around to seeing last night, would have a remarkably excellent Christopher Pike/James Kirk story, indeed, one of the best episodes of the series so far.

[Some slight spoilers ahead ... ]

The basic story -- not to give too much away -- is the Enterprise and the ship on which young James Kirk is a Commander are involved in a mission in which both ships and their crews are threatened. Kirk becomes (acting) Captain and must move in a hurry, in a damaged vessel, to save Pike and La'an who are fighting for their lives on the Enterprise.

One of my favorite scenes involves young Scotty and young Kirk, who orders Scotty to get their ship traversing space as quickly as possible. In a scene we've seen many time in TOS, Scotty objects that the ship they're on is too damaged to move that fast without damaging the ship even more. Now in TOS, Scotty almost always manages to get the ship moving at the speed Kirk wants, anyway. In SNW 3.6, the ship indeed breaks down as it moves so quickly. And this results in young Kirk having a crisis of self-confidence, and his leaving the Captain's chair, after he so significantly occupies it and crosses his legs.

Kirk feels he was wrong to order Scotty to get the ship moving so fast, over Scotty's objections. (One question I had: did the ship break down moving at that speed because Kirk's order was foolhardy, or because young Scotty just didn't have the know-how to get it moving safely? Maybe that question was the point.) It's left to Spock to talk the situation through with Kirk, get him back to the deck to lead the life-and-death mission both ships are in, and therein begin to establish the relationship they'd have in the future, which was the mainspring of the original series and in effect everything that came after.

All in all, 3.6 did a really fine job adding a crucial chapter to the back story of Chris and Jim, as well as Spock, Scotty, et al, which deepened my appreciation of this saga now playing out on our screens for six decades. You can't ask much more from a prequel series.

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science

One of the most endearing things about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is how it picks up the flavor, the ambience, the beat of the original Star Trek that was on NBC for three years in the 1960s. And that's as it should be, since SNW takes place right before TOS, with many of the same characters -- Spock, Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, and of course Pike -- on board the Enterprise at a younger age (even though Pike looks older in SNW) than they were in TOS.

It's difficult to describe exactly what it was in the ambience of TOS that made it so appealing. There was an innocence, sometimes almost a clumsiness, not just in the way TOS was filmed, but in the stories themselves. It was, after all, a successor to Captain Video and his Video Rangers from the 1950s on the Dumont network, which I saw and loved as a kid, too. Both TOS and Captain Video tackled complex topics (the fate of Tobor the robot on Captain Video is a great example), and they did that it in a way that was relatable if not completely scientifically clear.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The quest for immortality, and its connection to quantum physics, was a great example in SNW 3.5. The science wasn't wrong per se, but it was not quite right, either. It was rather an extrapolation from the quantum mechanical principle that one thing could be in two different states at the same time. Weaving that into a story that included monsters taking over some of the Enterprise crew was a typical TOS move, though, improbable to the point of being cartoonish, even laughable, even as people were dying. But like the episodes in TOS, it all somehow worked to make a refreshing hour.

It also was good to see Spock, Chapel, and La'an and their complex almost romantic relationship, as well as Pike with his true love. I'll be back soon with another review -- very soon, I've somehow fallen an episode behind in my viewing of SNW. Hmmm ... could be a QM time-warp in my neck of the woods.

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business

Well, "The Trouble with Tribbles," an episode from the original Star Trek series, written by David Gerrold, is generally aptly recognized as the funniest episode in all of Star Trek's iterations. I'd say that honor now has another contestant in Star Trek: Strange New World's episode 3.4 on Paramount Plus.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The serious part of the plot involves a holodeck that could end up killing its inhabitants. Now, as far as we knew back in the 1960s, the holodeck wasn't around in TOS -- it was introduced in TNG in the 1980s. And now we know the reason: the holodeck in this Strange New Worlds prequel to TOS can kill if you don't treat it right. And, before that, it can lock you inside it if you don't solve the mystery you asked it to solve, that is, the reason you wanted to walk into the holodeck in the first place.

So that was one of the three serious parts of episode 3.4. I'll tell you the second and third, after I go over the funny parts. These all center around the cancellation of a faux TOS -- The Last Frontier -- after only one season. The was a send-up of TOS in more ways than one, but fundamentally because TOS was cancelled after three seasons.* But unlike TOS, which was one of the best shows ever on television, and deserved to run at least 20 or more years, TLF was idiotic, and it was literally science fiction that it wasn't cancelled after the first few episodes.

But the clips we were treated to in episode 3.4 of SNW was first-class comedy in all kinds of ways. Here are some of my favorite:

"I'm an actor, not a doctor!" The actor (Ortegas) who plays a doctor on TLF says defensively, a nice nod to McCoy on TOS,
"My lines and my skirts have been getting shorter and shorter with every episode," (Chapel) advises.
"social commentary with rubber masks and buried mask -- you know, science fiction" (Uhura) skewers science fiction!
And the funniest: I don't know, but to me, (Pike)'s character Bellows looks Al Franken. Would you agree?

Now, as to the other serious parts: that would be learning that Spock is a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle (through Spock's mother, obviously, which explains Spock's super logical mind as not just inherited from his Vulcan father), and the tango that La'an and Spock do at the end, and the kiss that followed. Maybe it was a very good thing after all that Chapel disappointed Spock so deeply ...

*See my essay “How Star Trek Liberated Television” in Boarding the Enterprise, ed. David Gerrold & Robert J. Sawyer (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books), pp. 185-196, for more.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back for its third season. I watched its first three episodes tonight, and I'd say it's better than ever. The series has really found its footing. Or better, it already had its footing, but really took off in all kinds of gratifying ways in this third season.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Episode 3.1 was really the second part of the fierce battle with the Gorn that began in the final episode of the second season. The battle scenes were sharp, and it was good writing to find that the price that Ortegas paid to beat the Gorn is she's not quite the same. That bore fruit in episode 3.3 and has yet to be resolved. (As I side note, it was also good to see Uhura's new hair.)

Episode 3.2 was my favorite of these first three episodes of this new season. Readers of my reviews of the first two seasons will know I've been a big fan of Spock and Chapel, and it was fun seeing them waking up in bed together, even if it was the result of someone on the Q level (figuratively not literally) having the ability to change almost everyone's reality. But why couldn't the two have really been together? Well, once again, we see the stern taskmaster that a prequel is always subject to: it's governed by what happened in the earlier broadcast series that told the story of a later time. To which I say to the writers: figure out a way to make Spock and Chapel a real reality. Hey, Star Trek is science fiction, that shouldn't be so hard to make happen. (In the meantime, there's a hint of something happening between Spock and La'an.)

Episode 3.3 could well have titled, Star Trek meets The Walking Dead. Right, it had zombies. But it also had another true love story, Pike and Batel, and was a good piece of biological science fiction, in which moss played a role as well as the Klingons. Biology means that M'Benga also played an important role. He's been one of my favorite characters from the get-go of Strange New Worlds.

Good to see everyone back in such good form, and TOS's Scotty doing so well. And I'll be back soon with another review of this fine new season.

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Podcast: Roundtable Discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 357, in which I join Captain Phil on WUSB-FM Radio (Stony Brook, New York) and Marybeth Ritkouski, Michael Rizzo, and Roy Bjellquist in a 2-hour in-depth, fun discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

my written reviews (w/spoilers) of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 2
Roundtable podcast discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 1
"It's Real Life" story and radio play

Check out this episode!

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9: The Operetta

Here's my one-line, non-spoiler review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9, which was, literally, an operetta: I liked a lot of it.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Here's more:

I thought the story was excellent, ingenious, and original: the Enterprise encounters some kind of force-field that has the effect of making the crew put into song their most personal thoughts. The addition of the Klingons added more tension to the story, and their actual singing number was pretty good.

I'll get to the singing of our crew in a moment. But sticking with the story, the resolution, of sorts, of the romantic attractions/relationships of La'an/James T. Kirk, and Chapel/Spock was powerful narrative, and fine writing and acting, but I would have rathered see both relationships go in a better direction. In particular, James T. Kick didn't have to be already involved in a relationship with Carol, who is pregnant, and Chapel need not have seen her upcoming time away from the Enterprise as ending her relationship with Spock (though, I suppose, maybe it's possible that she doesn't). As I've said before, I'm a hopeless romantic. And it seems that Strange New Worlds, encumbered by what we know of the future of these characters from the original Star Trek -- no relationship between Spock and Chapel, and James T. Kirk not being attached to Carol, La'an, or anyone -- had no choice but to put the brakes on these budding relationships on the Enterprise under Pike. Speaking of which, it was good to see his relationship still on track with Captain Marie Batel (Pike's future in the original series certainly doesn't preclude that at this point in his life). And it was great as always to see James T. Kirk on the Enterprise, in any case.

Now as to the songs. I thought the singing and songs of Una, La'an, Spock, Chapel, and Uhura were top-notch -- not only in and of themselves, but working well in the story. The rest were ok, but at least to my ears sounded at times like a parody of an operetta, whatever exactly that means.

I'm not the biggest fan of Gilbert & Sullivan, anyway, though I think The Who's Tommy is great, and I always regretted Paul McCartney saying no to the story he had asked Isaac Asimov to write for a musical McCartney had in mind. In Strange New Worlds 2.9, the brief Klingon performance had the best beat, and the songs of the Enterprise crew would have gone down better, in my never humble opinion, had they more in common with rock 'n' roll, rock, hip-hop, and rap, than well, Cole Porter, even though I think he was one of the best lyricists of all-time.

Speaking of Cole Porter, my friend Ken Hudson brought this to my attention: Uhura in the original Star Trek singing (privately to herself) a few lines from Porter's "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" to, of all people, Spock, in an outtake from the "Who Mourns for Adonis" episode! We did see, in episode 2.9 of Strange New Worlds, Uhura looking romantically at Spock (he's seems totally unaware), and we've seen glimpses of this in earlier Strange New Worlds episodes. The outtake clip from the original series tells us that the makers of episode 2.9 of Strange New Worlds were likely inspired by this scene from the original series, and gives a nice unexpected meaning to the inclusion of Gene Roddenberry in the writing credits (though if Nichelle Nichols came up with this on her own, then she deserves a little of the writing credit for the Strange New Worlds operetta as well).

Anyway, on balance, I'm very glad I saw this episode of Strange New Worlds, and I'm looking forward to the season 2 final next week. And hats off to all of the singing crew, who actually sang, and had fine voices!

more on the McCartney-Asimov musical that was never written, at

the end of this story .... "It's Real Life" ... an alternate history of

The Beatles ... read the story FREE here ... get the Kindle or paperback

here... listen to the radio play FREE here ... winner of The Mary Shelley Award

for Outstanding Fictional Work (story and radio play) ... and a recent review

Friday, July 28, 2023

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.8: Ethically Wrenching

After last week's episode 2.7, which had almost as much good comedy as "The Trouble with Tribbles," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returned with episode 2.8, about as deadly serious and ethically complex and wrenching as it gets.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

The set-up: a Klingon General, Dak 'Rah, who slaughtered many humans including babies, has apparently had a change of heart, has defected from the Klingons and decided to pursue a path of peace, and has boarded the Enterprise with Pike's cautious approval.

Not everyone on board is comfortable with Pike's decision. In particular, M'Benga and Chapel were in the place where Dak'Rah did his worst work. We see most of their horrendous story down there, and come to understand their unremitting antipathy to Dak'Rah. (As an important sidenote, we also see that Chapel's turmoil about this runs so deep that she pushes Spock away when he tries to get Chapel to talk about this. Which is completely understandable, but I was not happy to see that.)

There's some question, at first, about whether Dak'Rah is sincere in his pacifism, but we eventually learn, in one of the more shocking developments in this series, that M'Benga, feeling guilty (to say the least) about how that battle with Dak'Rah's Klingon years ago changed him from a doctor to a killer, kills Dak'Rah as the two are arguing about war and peace. Chapel sees this, and she and M'Benga lie to Pike about what happened, telling the Captain that it was Dak'Rah who turned violent on the Enterprise, and M'Benga killed the not-so-repentant Klingon in self-defense.

I'm not sure that Pike believes M'Benga, and I don't like that Chapel and M'Benga lied to the Captain. What would have happened had they told Pike the truth? Were they concerned that Pike would have had no choice but to suspend them from theirs posts, and bring M'Benga up on charges? I can't see Pike doing that. But maybe M'Benga lied so as not to put Pike in that position. In addition to saving his own neck? Well, he's only human.

As I said at the beginning, an ethically wrenching and complex story, and the makings of another very different hour of great television.

"challenging fun"
- Entertainment Weekly

e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

42 reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates!