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A Case of Chiaroscuro
| Series: | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds |
|---|---|
| Medium: | Live Action Television Episode |
| Episode Number: | 404 |
| Production Number: | 404 |
| Original Air Date: | |
| Directed By: | Meera Menon |
| Written By: | Skylar J. Ojeda, and Dana Horgan |
| Casting Type | Actor | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Guest Star | Demore Barnes | Kor |
| Guest Star | Albert Chung | Ja'Lem |
| Guest Star | Andy McQueen | Roman |
Setup & The Black-and-White World
Una—embarking on her first major away mission as Commander following her promotion in the season premiere—pilots a shuttle to retrieve a Federation probe that drifted across the demarcation line into Klingon territory. She is accompanied by Dr. M'Benga and Ensign Uhura.
Don't adjust your set: everything on screen is in fact black-and-white. Uhura quickly notes that she is having trouble adjusting to seeing without color. We are given the technobabble explanation that a peculiar "infrared blackbody spectrum" from the Mat'aar sun alters light perception, causing everyone's vision to be limited to high-contrast monochrome.
Stranded in Casablanca
After recovering the probe, a Klingon D7 battle cruiser suddenly enters the system. Captain Pike orders the away team to take shelter on Mat'aar 12 and blend into the local populace until the warship leaves.
The away team disguises themselves in native attire clearly inspired by 1940s noir cinema. The entire setting features a retro-futuristic noir aesthetic heavily reminiscent of World War II-era classics like Casablanca—just with significantly more blimps in the sky than usual.
Not long after arriving, Una is mistaken for an influential local figure named Nevette. Una plays along to figure out what is happening, quickly discovering that Nevette lives a dangerous double life: publicly collaborating with the occupying Klingon forces who annexed the planet, while secretly leading the local Mat'Aaran underground resistance.
When Uhura asks what the mathematical odds are of running into an identical lookalike across the galaxy, M'Benga dryly notes that in the sheer vastness of the universe, encountering doppelgängers is bound to happen—in fact, it's surprising it happens as rarely as it does.
Interrogations & The Dead Double
While Una juggles Nevette's persona, Uhura is caught without native identification papers during a security sweep and taken in by Klingon forces for interrogation.
Meanwhile, Una and M'Benga search Nevette's private office and make a grim discovery: a hidden room containing the corpse of the real Nevette. Una is now standing in the shoes of a murdered martyr whose allies and enemies are watching her every step.
Uhura is interrogated by the imposing Klingon Commander Kor—played in this incarnation by Demore Barnes, taking over the iconic role originally portrayed by the late John Colicos in both The Original Series and Deep Space Nine. Uhura slips up slightly by making a reference to the color of trees, but otherwise holds her ground and reveals nothing. Kor, unaware that Uhura is fluent in Klingon, speaks openly in his native language with a subordinate. Uhura eavesdrops and discovers that the Klingons intend to place the entire planet under total military lockdown within 12 hours.
The Heist & The EMP
Once released, Uhura regroups with Una and M'Benga to warn them about the imminent lockdown. Despite M'Benga cautioning her against interfering in a local conflict, Una decides to see through a plan the real Nevette had set in motion: detonating a localized electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
After figuring out who murdered the real Nevette, Una cleverly plants the EMP's detonator on the assassin. The murderer accidentally triggers the device while attempting to report Nevette as a double agent to Kor. The resulting pulse disables the Klingon security grid, creating a window of opportunity for both the planetary resistance to stage an uprising and the away team to safely return to the Enterprise.
Back on the Enterprise: The Chapel Mystery
While the drama unfolds on the surface, La'an discovers aboard the Enterprise that the recovered probe's data logs were deliberately tampered with. She spends the shipboard side of the episode conducting a quiet internal investigation to uncover the culprit.
She eventually traces the sabotage back to Nurse Chapel, who wiped the logs to protect the crew of a Starfleet medical vessel that had crossed the border into Klingon space to render aid during a humanitarian crisis. In the end, La'an chooses not to report Chapel's sabotage, acknowledging that the breach of protocol was done for the greater good.
Whenever you're ready, let's look at your draft thoughts for the review portion and determine where this lands on your Starfleet rank scale!
The "_____ but in Star Trek" theme of the season continues with this episode: Casablanca, but in Star Trek. Spending so many consecutive episodes paying direct homage to iconic films would normally be a cause for concern, but outside of a few moral stumbles in the season premiere, the writers of Strange New Worlds seem to really be pulling off this cinematic experiment . (Tune in next week for The Muppets, but in Star Trek—and no, I'm not kidding, we already know that’s coming. I genuinely hope there is at least some reference to "Pigs in Space," the classic Muppet Show sketch that parodied Star Trek to begin with!)
The Casablanca Homage & Visuals
I’ve never personally seen Casablanca, but I know enough of cinema history to appreciate how effectively this episode wears its influences on its sleeve.
Una stepping into a mystery surrounding her dead doppelgänger fits the noir vibe like a glove, and the high-contrast black-and-white visual palette works on a remarkably deep level. The scene where the Klingons burst into the bar singing that classic Klingon drinking song (previously featured in Star Trek: Klingon and Deep Space Nine), only to be loudly drowned out by the locals pounding tables and singing their planetary anthem, is a direct, brilliant callback to the iconic "duel of the anthems" from the 1942 film.
Beyond that, the plot mechanics seamlessly parallel the movie:
The native identification card sweeps mirror the classic demand for "letters of transit" and exit visas.
The resistance leader putting on the public front of a loyal collaborator directly echoes the film’s moral tightrope.
Anchoring the heart of the intrigue in a bustling, neutral nightclub grounds the entire world.
Seeing all these tropes remixed into the Trek sandbox hasn't just entertained me—it has actually reinvigorated my interest in finally sitting down to watch the classic Humphrey Bogart film. Once I do, I might just have to come back and add some bonus thoughts.
Sci-Fi Explanations & Timeline Bumps
I’ve seen some chatter online suggesting that the writers didn't need an in-universe sci-fi explanation for the monochrome visuals—arguing the show could have just presented it in black-and-white for style's sake. Personally, I loved the sci-fi justification. In fact, I almost wish they explored it further; the idea of a stellar body's radiation spectrum altering the biological perception of light to force high-contrast black-and-white vision is an exceptionally cool sci-fi concept.
If there's a flaw, it lies in the season's awkward internal chronology. It is my understanding that the production shuffled the episode order, meaning this episode was originally planned to air before last week's "Human Best Friend". While there are references confirming the revised order (namely Ortegas and Scotty operating as established best buddies ), there is a weird dialogue exchange early on where M'Benga mentions he hasn't had a chance to congratulate Una on her premiere promotion yet. Given that a significant amount of time has passed and they literally just spent a multi-day vacation together on Cesnar Grand, it felt like an odd continuity hiccup. It’s a very minor plot bump that I probably won’t care about on a rewatch, but it was noticeable on first viewing.
Kor & Guest Performances
The new actor portraying Kor (Demore Barnes, taking up the mantle of John Colicos) does a great job leaning into the menacing noir aesthetic, but it didn't quite feel like he was playing Kor specifically. If you aren't going to give the character the specific traits and presence that make him distinctively Kor, it could have just as easily been any random Klingon commander. That said, seeing Kor back on screen was still neat, and as a hard-nosed, authoritarian stand-in, Barnes did a fantastic job alongside all of the episode's prominent guest stars.
Final Verdict
Overall, I really liked this episode. What stood out most to me was the moral core: watching both Una and Chapel independently choose to bend or outright break Starfleet regulations because it was undeniably the right thing to do for the greater good.
This is easily my favorite episode of Season 4 so far. It breaks into the Commander Tier on my rating scale—fittingly matching Una’s newly earned rank with a solid A-Tier badge of honor.
HD3 Episode Rank:
Commander
(A Tier)