We've Got Pirates in Strange New Worlds SE 1 EP 7

The Enterprise crew heads out of Federation space to rescue colonists attacked by the pirate ship “The Serene Squall.” Written by Beau DeMayo & Sarah Tarkoff, directed by Sydney Freeland.

Mark Turetsky: Will! So glad to see you again!

Will Nevin: Don’t call it a comeback, Mark. I’ve been here for many solar days.

Our Space Flag Means Death

Mark: So, I think we need to start our discussion of this episode with the standout guest performance by Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen/the pirate captain Angel.

Will: Quite the scene chewing turn, wasn’t it? If there was a mystery to be had in this episode, I was accidentally or kinda on purpose spoiled on all of them — I even learned that Pike got his hair mussed! Anyway, the Angel spoiler was simple — just a shot of her in the Enterprise captain’s chair — but since my fiancee called that turn while we were watching, I suppose it’s a wash. Keitel sure looked like she was having fun, didn’t she?

Mark: I loved the switch in her character between the outgoing, kind Dr. Aspen to the Montalban-worthy performance as Angel. Star Trek, as a franchise has had a checkered past when it comes to portrayals of trans and nonbinary characters.

Will: For example, there’s that Next Generation episode, “The Outcast,” where they got real close to being brave (for 1992) and then punted.

Mark: And a few years later, there was the character of Dax on Deep Space Nine, who’s been embraced to a certain extent as a trans allegory, and is the source of this meme:

More recently, Discovery introduced Blu del Barrio as the nonbinary character Adira and Ian Alexander as their trans boyfriend Gray. While those characters were largely embraced, there was also some pushback because, well, at the start of the season, Gray was dead, and only appeared as a ghost/hallucination/science ghost (it was never very clear).

And this was after the same series had killed off half of its first homosexual couple a few years earlier. In both cases, the dead lovers came back from the dead, but fans took real issue with anchoring their LGBTQ stories in tragedy.

And it seemed like they were repeating the same pattern here in “The Serene Squall.” Dr. Aspen is portrayed as a humanitarian who left Starfleet after experiencing a personal tragedy, the death of their Vulcan husband, and working with refugees that have been preyed on by pirates. But then the whole tragic origin gets subverted and they get to be a badass pirate. How fun is that?

Will: Maybe not completely subverted, since Angel is still pinning for a certain Vulcan locked up in an aesthetically pleasing Vulcan super prison. And there’s probably someone out there ready to push back against a trans-coded character as a villain. But on the whole, this was a fun story — who would have guessed that Spock would be a central figure in both of the episodes that got closest to comedy?

Mark: And I dare say it, but this was a much more fun episode than the trying-too-hard-to-be-goofy “Spock Amok.” Was much of this episode’s plot dumb? Extremely so. But it wasn’t dumb in a tedious way. It was fun dumb.

Will: The anti-”Stardust City Rag,” as it were. I swear to Space God, I will never forgive that episode for being so irrepressibly stupid. The best comedy here, of course, was Pike’s interactions with the pirates (which we’ll get to here in a bit), but like I said, it was clear to see the fun Keitel was having. Who wouldn’t want to be a pirate captain able to get one over on the crew of the Enterprise? And it was the same with Patrick Stewart in “Stardust City Rag” — I’m sure he had a friggin’ blast. But the plot was garbage, and an 80-year-old hamming it up in a bad French accent (or whatever it was he was going for) did not play well at all.

That all said, I think Keitel could have turned it down by about 5%, specifically when she started to mock Spock on how easy it all was to deceive Pike and the crew. Scale that back and you give the unburdened Angel a bit more of an edge — the same one they had when they explained that love was the only reason to do anything.

Mark: I wish I could have met the Will who lived before being so thoroughly changed by “Stardust City Rag.”

I tend to disagree. Star Trek thrives on over-the-top villainy. Khan, Lore, Dukat, Kai Winn, Gowron, they’re great because the performers don’t hold back. Villains playing edgy realism is how you end up with Malcolm McDowell being utterly forgettable in Generations. Or for another example, Christopher Lloyd was saddled by a shitty movie, but he was a great Klingon. But I’m not here to argue.

The thing I wonder about with Angel is, do they know who their lover Xaverius is in relation to Spock? But I guess we’ll discuss that later on.

Will: Indeed we will, for this episode is full of Vulcan drama and repercussions. And before you get my words and that Daqtagh twisted any deeper, I said Keitel would have done well to pull it back a little. A little, Mark! Also, “Space Seed” Khan >>>> Wrath of Khan Khan.

Mark: Now that is a bold opinion. Also, I’m sure this episode was filmed long before Our Flag Means Death became the cultural phenomenon that it is, but suffice it to say, I appreciate that Star Trek is keeping piracy queer. (Also, I’d highly recommend Elana Levin’s podcast Graphic Policy Radio’s discussion with Tea Fougner and Cayden Mak about the show and queer piracy in history).

What Happens on Alpha Braga IV…

Mark: While Spock, Chapel and Angel are aboard the Enterprise, the whole dang rest of the crew gets captured by pirates and put in a pirate brig.

Will: And once again, we see Pike’s ability to get out of any situation — this time using some good cooking and his leadership skills in order to foment a pirate mutiny. I mentioned the comedy earlier, but he had several laugh-out-loud moments and the great “Alpha Braga IV” in-joke. But he also had “Get the hell out of my chair” loaded and ready to go when the moment called for it. Once again, Mark, Anson Mount can do it all.

Mark: And with so little, too. The setup of the pirate ship, the Serene Squall of the title, is kinda laughably thrown together. The Enterprise crew seems to have been cut down to roughly half a dozen people (notably Uhura and Hemmer are nowhere to be seen anywhere in this episode). And Pike’s dealing with Remy, the burly Orion he assumes to be the captain, is the kind of nonsense you’d read about in a pirate story for kids from 150 years ago. And yet it all works! He makes them a delicious stew! He wins over other pirates! Within a few hours they’ve all escaped from their cage and are piloting the ship! How does that happen? Who gives a shit!

Will: It helps that there’s no cognitive dissonance between the comedy and the treatment at the hands of the pirates. Yes, Pike gets socked in the mouth and his precious, precious hair gets all messed up, but that’s not the same as the crew getting brutally tortured — that simply would have been too incongruous to enjoy. But in this story, certainly one written with those cares in mind, watching Pike operate was fun. Indeed, who gives a shit about the particulars.

Mark: And even some of the particulars, like their taking back the Enterprise using the ship’s remote transceiver codes get somewhat handwaved away. If you’ve seen The Wrath of Khan, you know about them. If you haven’t, well, does it really matter if they’re established elsewhere? Anson Mount can really handle the shifts in tone between last week’s gutpunch of an episode and this week’s light pirate romp. I’d like to put it to you that, although Captain Sisko on Deep Space Nine was a father (and a damn good one), Pike is Trek’s first Dad captain. He’s got amazing Dad energy in this episode, and it aired the week of Father’s Day! He’s making stew! He’s cracking bad jokes with a terrible “pirate” accent!

Will: He’s got that big daddy energy. *deletes rest of thought*

Mark: Not to mention that even though Angel captured his ship and is still at large, menacing the far reaches of space, he’s still gentleman enough to use their correct pronouns when talking about them.

Will: Only an asshole would misgender people out of spite, Mark.

The Search for Sybok

Mark: A few weeks back, I was a bit unclear about T’Pring’s job as a Vulcan cop. Here… I’m still somewhat unclear. In addition to apprehending Vulcans who have rejected logic to pursue lives of crime, she also… oversees them doing art classes? It’s a very holistic job, it seems.

Will: Whatever her job is, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to get to this episode’s second big reveal of… DUM DUM DUM Sybok. Really, we should have been expecting that at almost any time.

Mark: As someone who’s been involved in Discovery fandom, with the revelation that Michael Burnham is Spock’s (adopted) sister, I saw a lot of complaints from certain quarters saying that somehow the writers of Discovery were disrespecting canon by not bringing up Sybok. Of course, Sybok is the perfect example of Spock keeping his family life to himself, but I digress.

Here’s the thing: I, like most right thinking people, dislike Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. It’s an absolute mess of a movie. And yet, I got excited seeing Sybok here. It’s like he’s become cooler through having a pirate monarch for a spouse.

Will: Final Frontier does pretty well by the Trek Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity, and “What does God need with a starship?” is my go-to phrase for whenever something is nonsensical in a plot, but those are the only nice things I will say about that movie. Sybok is an inherently interesting character as the embodiment of everything his brother rejected, and depending on the casting (of which I cannot find any news of), Sybok and Angel could have some electric chemistry as two emotional and unpredictable characters. The non-news, though, gives me pause: Either this is a long-term plan, or this is a tease. I can’t quite figure out which.

Mark: Yeah, not showing Sybok’s face implies to me that they haven’t cast the part yet. Like when Thanos showed up in the post-credits scene of Avengers. I could be wrong, though. Still, you make a great point about providing Sybok with an interesting performer like Keitel to play against. I have nothing against Laurence Luckinbill, who played Sybok in STV, but he just didn’t do it for me.

Will: Quick, irrelevant fan casting since I never get the chance to do this sort of thing: Bill Skarsgård as Sybok.

Mark: I could see that.

There’s another thing about the Vulcan plotline: we get the opening scene from T’Pring’s perspective, with her giving the personal log voice over, and yet very little of the episode has her as the focus. It’s a bit of a weird quirk of the format that they’ve chosen for the rest of the series which made this stand out to me. It would be interesting to get a whole episode focusing on someone who isn’t part of the main cast (though we still haven’t gotten a Hemmer, M’Benga, Chapel or Ortegas episode yet, and we don’t even have enough episodes to do that before the season ends), but starting the episode with T’Pring’s log just felt kind of weird, what with the lack of follow-through.

Will: I’m sitting here trying to remember the cold open, and there’s just not much in my brain. Shows how effective it was, doesn’t it?

Mark: T’Pring is worried that she’s not appealing to Spock’s human side, and then starts reading up on human sexuality.

Will: Theeeeeere we go. The logs have historically been a tidy way to take care of exposition, but only in SNW, it seems, are they being used thematically/structurally. In this episode, though, I think you could have cut T’Pring’s log, and the scene wouldn’t have been much different.

Mark: T’Pring and Spock’s exchange at the beginning really brings home a clear conflict in their relationship: Spock doesn’t want to embrace his human side. He was raised on Vulcan, he wants to live as a Vulcan, and T’Pring brings up all the reading she’s done about human sexuality; she exoticises him. He’s living with a mostly human crew as the outsider, and T’Pring, unintentionally, makes him feel like the outsider in their own relationship.

Will: And, of course, Dr. Aspen/Angel has all of the inside knowledge about his identity to gain his trust, while also making some cogent points during their Sybok psy-op. Put that together with the Chapel business, and Spock really went through the ringer in this episode.

Mark: And it’s tragic, because we know how this will end: T’Pring will leave him for her coworker Stonn (he’s in this episode!) and Spock will sublimate his sexual frustration through homoerotic combat with his best friend, Kirk. Maybe there’s a future for him and Chapel between all of those numbered movies? Who knows.

Will: Dang it, Mark — you spoiled a 55-year-old episode. By Voyage Home, she’s stationed at Starfleet HQ; once again saddling poor Spock with the prospects of a long-distance relationship.

Mark: But also, he’ll make peace between the two halves of his identity. Maybe he eventually does take Angel’s advice to heart.

Will: It’s the essence of Spock’s lifelong journey, navigating his heritage, his father and his relationship with emotions. I know canonically Next Gen’s “Unification” is the last appearance of Spock in the main timeline, but I think Undiscovered Country is the best place to leave Spock as a character: one who’s using a lifetime of struggle to attempt to mentor another Vulcan.

A Vulcan who — if she had listened — could have learned so much.

Stray New Words

This makes two weeks in a row with no Chief Engineer Hemmer. It feels like T’Pring has had more screen time than him.
Head canon: Uhura was safely locked in her bunk when the pirates took over the Enterprise.
The Alpha Braga system was named for former Trek honcho Brannon Braga.
Spock’s gambit of declaring his love for Chapel in order for T’Pring to save face foreshadows T’Pring’s gambit of selecting Kirk as her champion in “Amok Time.”

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.