Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has never been afraid to experiment, but the puppet episode, “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” may be its most boldly ridiculous swing yet.
A transporter experiment led by Montgomery Scott turns the Enterprise crew into living puppets, leaving Mr. Spock as the lone non-puppet officer during an Orion pirate attack. The episode fully embraces the absurdity, with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop creating puppets that exaggerate the cast’s most recognizable traits.
Not every puppet gets equal screen time, but they all add to an episode that understands one of Star Trek’s greatest strengths: taking its characters seriously while having fun with a ridiculous premise.
Now, here is every Strange New Worlds puppet in “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” ranked.
11. Christine Chapel
Christine Chapel’s puppet is not a bad puppet. That distinction matters, because the bottom of this list is not a graveyard for failed designs. The Jim Henson Creature Shop’s work is consistently impressive, and every transformed crew member looks unmistakably like the character viewers know. Chapel simply has the toughest case to make against a group full of louder visual ideas.
Jess Bush’s version of Chapel is often defined by movement: she is quick, emotionally transparent, restless, and more openly expressive than many of her fellow officers. A puppet can convey some of that through vocal performance and staging, but Chapel’s specific energy is difficult to compress into a small felt-and-fabric counterpart.
Chapel’s feels more like a capable translation than a major reinvention. In an ensemble featuring a tiny Pike with enormous hair, a gloriously chaotic Pelia, and a redshirt who literally gets a hole blasted through his chest, Chapel lands at No. 11.
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