Since last week’s episode was ostensibly comedic, it would seem that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is continuing its pattern for season 3 by offering a more horror-oriented outing this week. While some people (like me) are wimps and don’t always love horror, this episode also offers an interesting sci-fi concept as a central part of the story!
“Through the Lens of Time” follows a small away team on a mission to Vadia IX, a planet controlled by the M’Kroon, to study an ancient M’Kroon sacred site. The hope is that this site could reveal secrets to immortality and also help the M’Kroon learn more about their own history.
Of course, as away missions often go in Star Trek, not all is as it seems. A member of the away team is severely injured inside a temple-like building and is beamed back to the Enterprise. Meanwhile, the others find themselves trapped in the building and soon separated from each other after all walking through a mysterious door.
Aboard the Enterprise, the injured crew member, Ensign Gamble, begins to act strangely, as though he is possessed by an evil spirit. Gamble starts killing and threatening other members of the crew, and despite occasional moments of seeming like himself, he must ultimately be killed, and the noncorporeal entity contained and stored in the transporter pattern buffer.
Back on the planet, the away team realizes that they are not, in fact, in different rooms, but rather on different planes of quantum reality. Thus, after using the artifacts they found, they are all reunited and manage to escape from the structure and return to the Enterprise.
As the episode concludes, it is agreed that this structure on Vadia IX is meant to hold these non-corporeal entities, whom the M’Kroon call the Vezda. Commander Pelia states that the Vezda are the oldest things she’s ever seen in her millennia of life (being a Lanthanite). She then further opines that they are a truly evil and terrifying threat.
For the most part, this episode was pretty good. Vadia IX ties back to “Wedding Bell Blues,” from which the Wedding Planner (“Trelane”) had followed Chapel and Roger Korby back to the Enterprise, so there is a sense that the writers are suggesting that these ruins are the ancient remnants of the Q. I’m not personally keen on that concept, but let’s see what they do with it.
Really, the only critiques I have for this episode are that I’m not a huge fan of having spooky horror stories every other episode, some moments felt lifted from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and I would have liked more time and focus placed on the sci-fi concepts, rather than the horror.
The phenomenon on the planet, where everyone was on different planes of quantum reality, is by far the most interesting part of the episode. An episode of The Next Generation could have filled its entire runtime focused on that and made it a riveting adventure. Instead, this episode adds the horror elements with Ensign Gamble, which I’m not thrilled about, but as I said at the start, I’m a wimp.
Overall, this episode feels like a move towards a somewhat more Star Trek-y story in concepts and structure. We get to visit a strange, new world, and the problem is ultimately rooted in a sci-fi concept. Now, we just need serious explorations of some moral quandaries.
After being so deeply hurt and disappointed in last week’s episode, “Through the Lens of Time” does a small bit to reinvest me in Strange New Worlds. Next week’s episode is called “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” which sounds like it might be another, more light-hearted episode. I hope this one actually makes me chuckle. Fingers crossed!