After a year-long hiatus, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is finally back for Season 2 and in “The Broken Circle,” we join the crew of the Enterprise on an unsanctioned mission into Klingon space. The premiere episode tees up the resolution to Season 1’s cliffhanger, as well as rising tensions across the galaxy that will likely come back later in the season, and gives us our first introduction to Carol Kane‘s Pelia as she joins the crew in a rather unconventional manner.
Penned by showrunners Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman, and directed by Chris Fisher, the Season 2 premiere of Strange New Worlds catches up with Captain Pike (Anson Mount) but swiftly puts Spock (Ethan Peck) in the spotlight — and in the Captain’s chair — for an adventure that kicks off the season with a hearty balance of suspense and action alongside heaps of heart and humor.
It’s been no more than a few weeks after the cliffhanger that saw Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) arrested for concealing her Illyrian heritage and breaking Starfleet’s rules against genetic modifications. While the Enterprise is in spacedock for a routine inspection, Captain Pike speaks to Una via 23rd-century FaceTme, and while she seems resigned to her fate Chris isn’t willing to let her go. At face value, Una is guilty, and she’s not willing to drag his name through the mud to clear her own. The depth of their friendship drives him to take personal leave to ensure that she has a fighting chance to win her case, leaving the Enterprise in Spock’s capable hands.
I Would Like the Ship to Go, Now
With Pike on shore leave and Spock still struggling to control his emotions following Hemmer’s death at the end of Season 1, the new acting captain takes a trip down to Sickbay to see if anything can be done to help him manage the stress of being in charge. Spock doesn’t want his emotions to impact his judgment, and while Doctor M’Benga’s (Babs Olusanmokun) primary word of advice is to learn to live with his human side, he also offers the young Vulcan an alternative form of stress relief, gifting him with the lute he’s often seen playing in The Original Series. When Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) walks in, Spock swiftly makes an excuse and leaves the room. M’Benga naturally calls out the awkward tension between his two friends before Christine reveals that she’s thinking about applying for an archeological medicine fellowship that would see her take two months off to study on Vulcan.
Up on the bridge, the crew hovers while the inspectors nitpick all the ways they’ve customized the Enterprise when Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) receives a distress signal from La’an who appears to be calling out from a world on the edge of Klingon space. With the Federation barely a few years removed from the end of the Klingon war, Admiral April (Adrian Holmes) cannot allow Spock to investigate the message because they could shatter the fragile state of peace with the race of alien warriors. Still learning to balance logic and instinct, Spock comes to the only natural conclusion: They must steal the Enterprise and go after La’an.
As the crew stages their ruse, Chief Inspector Pelia (Kane) lingers on the bridge, seeing right through them because she’s spent the last week carefully inspecting the ship, and she knows there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. She interrogates Spock with an almost unhinged fervor, revealing a wealth of knowledge and personal connection to his mother Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner). When the crew believes they’ve been caught red-handed, Pelia shocks everyone by telling them the “correct” way to steal a starship. She jokes that it’s been 100 years since she had a good adventure and her chaotic nature sends a thrill through the crew and the audience. Uhura clocks her accent as Lanthanite, a seemingly new species of long-living humanoid aliens, and Spock welcomes her aboard as their new Chief Engineer.
Enterprise, Destroy This Ship
On the edge of Klingon space, La’an drinks a boisterous warrior under the table, downing a full goblet of Klingon Blood WIne with ease. She’s here in an unofficial capacity but still using every ounce of her Starfleet security skills to uncover a mystery that could spell the end of the Federation’s alliance with the Klingons. The crew arrives in stunning undercover wear, and they rendezvous outside the local village, with La’an revealing that she suspects a sect of Klingons are attempting to re-start the war. Chapel and M’Benga immediately have their guard up because, while the rest of the crew was away, they served together in the war, and they’re not at all interested in seeing that wound re-opened. They split off from the group to offer medical aid to some familiar faces, but it goes sideways when a Klingon woman arrives and insists that they offer their services elsewhere.
La’an trades weapons for information, as Spock and Uhura watch from the shadows. It looks like they’ve arrived just in time as whatever the Klingons have planned is on deck for tomorrow. Spock is hesitant to do anything just yet, but that’s subject to change as he gets word that the ship actually has no idea where Chapel and M’Benga are, having lost track of their signal when they were taken hostage. Underground, the doctor duo finds that the Klingons have either stolen or rebuilt a Federation vessel, and they immediately realize what they’re planning to do with it. M’Benga reveals a green substance that they both take via hypospray that gives them the strength to take on Klingons in hand-to-hand combat, and they fight their way out. Together they call upon everything they learned during the war and even let some of their own demons out in the process. M’Benga is able to send a message to the Enterprise, but when the ship takes off suddenly they’re swiftly cornered into an airlock with no discernable way out.
In orbit, we learn that Ortegas (Melissa Navia) also served during the Klingon war as she expertly keeps the ship hidden to avoid an unnecessary conflict when all of a sudden the ship carrying Chapel and M’Benga takes off and sets a course straight for the Klingon Battle Cruiser. Spock displays excellent leadership skills as he works through his thought process out loud and orders Ortegas to follow the false ship. Despite being fired upon, Spock hesitates to follow through with the message to destroy the other ship suspecting that Chapel and M’Benga are on board. Spock does exactly what all of our other favorite starship captains have done at some point, stalling as long as possible in order to save as many people as possible — including those he has personal feelings for. It takes tremendous effort from him, but he makes the decision to destroy the ship before it can fire upon the Klingons.
In a last-ditch effort to make it out alive, M’Benga and Chapel plan to airlock themselves with an EV transponder (but no protection from the atmosphere of space). Somehow it works, and they’re beamed aboard — while M’Benga is still breathing, Chapel has lost consciousness, but Spock refuses to let her go beginning chest compressions and demanding that she not die. Back on the bridge, Spock holds his own against a Klingon commander who suspects that he’s lying and once again it’s his uniqueness that proves he’s so much more than a “typical” Vulcan. The alliance is safe for another day and in breaking the rules, Spock may have even strengthened the relationship between their two worlds.
Another fantastic scene with Pelia and Spock confirms that she is Lanthanite, as Spock reveals that her species lived on Earth for centuries, undetected until the 2100s. Kane perfectly balances humor and emotion as she tells him that his mother was one of the first people she ever “came out to,” indicating a deep friendship. She makes this scene heartwrenching and hilarious in equal measure as she tells Spock that the loss of those we love is “a pain shared by all those who live with even a half-open heart,” before revealing that the worst part of living for hundreds of years is, in fact, boredom, and she’d love to join the Enterprise in a more permanent capacity.
“The Broken Circle” serves as an excellent character study for Spock as it wraps with him explaining how logical his actions truly were and how, despite breaking about a dozen regulations, it was the right thing to do. April lets him off easy before revealing to the audience that the Federation is on the verge of war with an even more terrifying enemy: The Gorn. As the episode fades to black, the series offers a beautiful dedication to the legendary Nichelle Nichols who passed away last year. Nichols changed the face of television and opened countless doors for Black women in both entertainment and STEM. The dedication reads, “For Nichelle, who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 arrive on Paramount+ every Thursday.
