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Human Best Friend
| Series: | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds |
|---|---|
| Medium: | Live Action Television Episode |
| Episode Number: | 403 |
| Production Number: | 403 |
| Original Air Date: | |
| Directed By: | Yana Gorskaya |
| Written By: | Kathryn Lyn |
| Casting Type | Actor | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring | Paul Wesley | James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk |
| Guest Star | Dave Foley | Dendru |
Setup & Mandatory Shore Leave
The Enterprise crew is severely on edge—a direct result of burnout from recent harrowing missions (including last week’s terrifying The Griffin Incident, which leaves the audience with lingering trauma, so one can only imagine how La'an and Spock feel). Most notably, the ongoing rivalry between Scotty and Ortegas, hinted at in previous episodes, has reached a fever pitch.
Upon advice from Una, Captain Pike orders mandatory shore leave on the resort planet Cesnar Grand before the crew has to host a critical alien peace conference. Cesnar’s unique atmosphere causes "atmospheric inebriation," which effectively means everyone on the planet is high... all the time. Personal tech and tricorders are locked down upon arrival, ensuring a strict "what happens on Cesnar Grand stays on Cesnar Grand" policy.
The Hangover
Erica Ortegas wakes up hungover on a resort couch with zero memory of the night before, a broken arm, and Scotty trapped inside a Mugatto costume. Dendru, the resort manager, played by the great comedic actor Dave Foley (NewsRadio, The Kids in the Hall), delivers a physical paper letter in an envelope to Ortegas and Scotty, informing them that Captain Pike needs to receive an urgent message right away.
What follows is a series of hilarious vignettes as Ortegas and Scotty navigate the resort to locate Pike, witnessing how the atmosphere has affected their crewmates:
Uhura: Has let her hair all the way down, throwing a rules-free rager in her hotel room to help everyone on "their journey."
M'Benga: Exhausted by the life-or-death decisions of being a doctor, he has decided he is a bartender now, somewhat unsuccessfully trying to pull off fancy trick-pours with booze bottles (and raising the question of why the resort is letting him run the bar).
Una: Has signed up for every single slot on the resort's karaoke machine. She belts out a frankly amazing cover of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"... in full Klingon.
Side Note on Tragic Timing: This marks the third episode in a row this season paying homage to someone who passed away between filming and broadcast. Episodes 1 and 2 paid tribute to Sam Neill, while Bonnie Tyler passed away last month which is well after production wrapped on this episode, creating a strange and poignant coincidence.
Fun Background Easter Egg: The sign-up list behind Una during her song reveals her other karaoke picks for the night: "Yellow Battlecruiser", "Romulan Rhapsody", "Let It Go", "Honor or Cowardice", "Smells Like Bad Bloodwine", and "Aim for the Second Heart".
Chapel: Has transformed into a ruthless "bingo bully," terrorizing senior citizens playing in the resort lounge.
La'an: Channels her stress by turning a peaceful resort exercise class into an outright brawl ring.
Spock: Is unexpectedly the funniest of all. Acting completely normal on the surface, he immediately apologizes for his "obviously compromised" state over a mild mess (a sofa pillow is roughly one centimeter off-center). He confesses he is panicking because he keeps hallucinating James T. Kirk hanging out with him.
Race Against the Clock
When Scotty and Ortegas finally locate Captain Pike, he is plastered and in the process of getting a "horsey tattoo." He reveals that the alien delegation for the peace treaty is arriving at the Enterprise two weeks early, requiring everyone to get back to the ship immediately.
To make matters worse, Ortegas and Scotty discover their shuttlecraft has gone missing. After a series of hilarious hijinks across the resort, they locate the shuttle and head back to the ship. However, the leadership is still visibly compromised. Pike now sports a massive face tattoo covered in alien script, serving as a direct homage to the infamous face tattoo in The Hangover.
Translation Detail: While the facial tattoo looks like Klingon at a distance, it is actually written in English using a Klingon character font. The text across his hairline reads "Hair today, Gorn tomorrow", while another section reads "What's over the horizon?".
Resolution on the Enterprise
Back aboard the Enterprise, Ortegas and Scotty work separately to repair damage to the shuttle while Pike badly stumbles his way through the initial peace talks.
While repairing the shuttle, Ortegas and Scotty have a genuine heart-to-heart, finally setting their season-long feud aside. However, they discover a explosive device attached to the ship. Scotty is forced to manually hold the triggering mechanism, knowing that if he lets go, the bomb will detonate.
To save the Enterprise, Ortegas and Scotty fly the shuttle out into open space. Spock and Kirk beam them off at the final second before the shuttle explodes.
The Kirk Twist: Spock is horrified to discover that Kirk was never a psychic hallucination or a projection of his subconscious—Kirk was actually on vacation at the exact same resort the entire time, gamely going along with Spock's existential crisis and listening to Spock spill his deepest secrets.
In the transport room, Scotty realizes his thumb was broken during the emergency beam-out. Meanwhile, the alien delegation—who were on the verge of walking out on the peace talks in anger—view the massive, fireworks-like explosion of the shuttle as an ancient, sacred honorific tribute. Delighted by the gesture, they agree to stay and continue the negotiations, saving the day.
Three episodes in, what could have been a coincidence in episodes 1 and 2 is now clearly an underlying theme for the season: Strange New Worlds Season 4 is essentially "_____ but in Star Trek." So far, every episode has paid direct homage to iconic real-world movies and books:
Episode 1: Paid direct homage to A Princess of Mars, while weaving in classic dinosaur cinema ranging from Jurassic Park (complete with the aforementioned Sam Neill connection) to Land of the Lost.
Episode 2: Borrowed heavily from iconic horror films, most notably Event Horizon (again, Sam Neill).
Episode 3: Is a full-on stoner comedy clearly modeled on The Hangover—with a healthy dose of Dude, Where’s My Shuttle? thrown in for good measure.
Scotty and Ortegas wake up with zero memory of the night before and spend the majority of the runtime piecing together their lost evening. While I could have done without the overly blunt "just in case you didn't get the reference, here's a face tattoo all over Pike's face" moment, the episode is overall a lot of good fun and executes its source material exceptionally well. The cast clearly had an absolute blast playing out what their respective characters' versions of "intoxicated" looked like.
Kling-Pop & "Original Klingon"
I have to give massive props to Rebecca Romijn. According to interviews, she was genuinely concerned about getting the song right:
"Because Klingon is an actual language that probably at least 20 people in the entire world can speak fluently, including college professors, I worked with a dialect coach to make sure I could get all of that correct pronunciation, translation, all of it."
The entire sequence works brilliantly. Why a resort karaoke machine in a recently post-Klingon War Federation contains a translated version of a Bonnie Tyler classic is beyond me, but honestly, I don't need an explanation. It feels spiritually linked to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where Gorkon asserts that "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." Apparently, Klingons have been appropriating Earth pop culture for centuries! The track is fantastic, and I suspect Kling-pop Karaoke is going to become a staple at Trek conventions for years to come. The only real question left is: when can I add this track to my Spotify playlist?
Sci-Fi Highs & Funny Bits
The "atmospheric inebriation" conceit is a great sci-fi mechanic that sets up some fantastic hijinks. One of the funniest recurring bits comes when Spock, trying to get his bearings, deadpan asks a hallucinating Ortegas, "Are you, in fact, currently a plant, Lieutenant?"—right before we see her brief hallucination of herself as a cactus!
It leads to a genuinely cool sci-fi concept about a photosynthesis/telepathy-based computer network: "My mind to your leaves, my thoughts to your root system." The joke is silly, but the underlying sci-fi logic is surprisingly clever.
I also loved the running gag about the insanely sexy party Uhura is throwing in her hotel room—and how Ortegas would clearly rather be in there raging than tracking down missing shuttles or lost captains. I really dug the subtle attraction Ortegas feels toward Uhura. On that note: I'm thrilled Ortegas and Scotty have buried the hatchet and become genuine friends, but I am begging the producers—please keep them purely platonic. Ortura on the other hand, I'm all for that being a thing.
The Kirk/Spock Dynamic & "Subtext vs. Text"
I did have a few minor gripes with the Kirk hallucination thread. First off, if Kirk is genuinely on vacation at the same resort, why is he the only person walking around in full Starfleet uniform? It’s an obvious visual cheat to trick the audience into believing Spock's "hallucination" theory. Additionally, Kirk walks alongside Spock at one point, yet Ortegas and Scotty somehow fail to notice him until they meet in the transporter room at the end.
On a similar note regarding character dynamics, the episode pays obvious homage to the original Kirk/Spock slash-fiction fan era. The Original Series famously had its fair share of loaded subtext between the two—the classic TOS shoulder massage comes to mind. But the writers are walking an extremely dangerous line here. It isn't just LGBTQ+ fans who get frustrated by teases that amount to queerbaiting—fans across the entire spectrum get annoyed when classic character dynamics are mishandled.
If the writers keep teasing romance without following through, they alienate the very fan communities that created slash fiction. On the flip side, if they cross that line and officially shift fifty years of established friendship into explicit romance, they risk alienating a huge portion of the fanbase that views their bond as the ultimate platonic friendship (and I'm not just talking about the homophobes who hate homosexuality at all). When it comes to Kirk and Spock, the subtext works because it's subtext. The producers need to tread carefully and leave that dynamic right where it belongs: as a deep, iconic friendship with room for fan interpretation.
Final Verdict
Overall, this episode is a ton of fun. I laughed out loud several times, and it was a deeply welcome, lighthearted palate cleanser after the intense body horror of last week’s The Griffin Incident. It isn't perfect, but it's a solid sci-fi comedy with a fun mystery woven through it.
It was an enjoyable romp that takes on its movie influences with a lot of charm. While it has a few minor logic bumps and tropey stumbles, it delivers plenty of great character beats and pure entertainment.
I rate this episode in the B-Tier with Lieutenant Commander, a very good episode, but not a great episode.
HD3 Episode Rank:
Lieutenant Commander
(B+ Tier)