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The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 3.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds kicked off its fourth season with a pair of relatively dark — at least for this show — episodes. The premiere was a timey-wimey installment that saw the Enterprise crew forced to allow objectively terrible things to happen to preserve humanity’s future, while the season’s second outing was a literal horror story, complete with the sudden reappearance of a missing ship and what may or may not be actual ghosts. It’s about time we get to have a little fun. And that, in a nutshell, is what “Human Best Friend” is all about.
A wildly silly installment that calls back to beloved Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Shore Leave,” the story is both a buddy comedy that forces two at-odds crew members to work together to save the day and a character study about the ways the Enterprise crew chooses to let loose. The result is something a bit like Star Trek does The Hangover, just with more overt lessons about the power of friendship and teamwork involved. In short, it’s Strange New Worlds down to the ground. Is basically everything about this episode completely ridiculous? Absolutely. Is it a great time anyway? Heck, yeah.
“Human Best Friend” sees the ship’s overworked (and deeply stressed out) bridge crew dispatched for a week of relaxation on a pleasure planet that’s calibrated to meet everyone’s individual definition of whatever that term means. Thanks to its unique atmosphere, which essentially renders everyone some variety of inebriated within five minutes of arriving, there are few inhibitions, and basically no rules. Bonus, there’s also no technological record of anything that may or may not happen, since tricorders and other communications devices are locked down upon arrival. On paper, it honestly sounds like a blast. (My only real complaint is that Pelia isn’t somehow involved in this escapade. Imagine.)
Instead, the episode primarily revolves around Ortegas, Scotty, and the bizarre animosity that’s developed between them this season. Their mutual antagonism doesn’t actually make much sense, particularly since it’s difficult to remember them sharing so much as a scene before this season. The specifics of their shared dislike are fuzzy: Ortegas may or may not drive the ship too fast. Scotty may or may not be controlling and overbearing about system warnings. (It’s not a particularly interesting conflict, is what I’m saying.) But Melissa Navia and Martin Quinn make for an unexpectedly entertaining odd couple who must work together when they wake up with no memory of the previous evening — including how Ortegas broke her arm or why Scotty’s in a Mugatto costume. The pair sets off on a quest to find the rest of their crew (and the shuttle they’ve also apparently lost) in time to salvage an extremely important peace negotiation to end an alien civil war.
As they scour the resort for their shipmates, we’re treated to a variety of excellent little character moments for the whole cast. Since the whole trick of the pleasure planet is that it taps into a specific individual’s needs, its various delights are keyed into each crew member’s personal psychology. Uhura rejects structure and rules in favor of going with the flow. La’an finds an outlet for her violent tendencies. M’Benga eschews life-or-death decision-making in the name of mixing drinks. And Una channels her emotions into performing Klingon power ballads. (RIP to the legend Bonnie Tyler.)
Even Pike lets his freak flag fly, making the sort of spur-of-the-moment poor decisions — tattoos! – he would never allow himself to indulge in normally. Though, to his credit, Pike seems like he would probably be the most fun to hang out with, the kind of chatty, overenthusiastic drunk who would definitely help you fix your hair in the club bathroom and tell you your boyfriend sucks.
But, perhaps the group’s most emotionally meaningful moment belongs to Spock, whose brain decides to relax by “hallucinating” a vision of James Kirk, because what he needs most at the moment is a best friend to play chess and spill his guts to. Sure, it might be a little early to drop the BFF label, but the show hasn’t been subtle about the fact that it’s laying the groundwork for a truly generational friendship, and Ethan Peck and Paul Wesley have sold the growing depth of the bond between the two men. That it turns out Kirk was really there — ignore the truly insane contrivance of them both being on leave at this particular location at the same time — and genuinely wants to be someone Spock feels safe turning to in times of need. Well. It’s all very sweet. (And there was a hug!)
The episode builds to a surprisingly dramatic climax, given that its ending also involves a still-inebriated Pike and Una white-knuckling it through complex alien peace negotiations. Granted, Scotty and Ortegas’s plan to sacrifice themselves to save everyone else probably would have hit a little harder had it not involved a character who appears in both The Original Series and seven of the feature films that followed. But, at this point, Scotty’s not alone. Pretty much every major character on Strange New Worlds who isn’t Ortegas or La’an has industrial-strength plot armor at this point, which makes it difficult to take any supposedly existential threat all that seriously. Yet, as a sign of how far these two managed to come in a single episode? That, as the kids say, is growth. Maybe they can sing a duet at karaoke next time.
The post Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 3 Review — Human Best Friend appeared first on Den of Geek.
