Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Readies Uhura to Become One of Its Brightest Stars

Star Trek, from its very starting, has been about a whole lot of issues, however one factor above all: stunning folks performing competence porn. The idealized future utopia, the spaceships and costumes, the motion and journey, the sci-fi of all of it, that may be brushed apart if Star Trek offers you individuals who actually get pleasure from being good at their jobs. So what do you do if you take one in all its brightest and picture them in a spot the place they’re not fairly positive they’re that good but?

That’s what “Children of the Comet,” the second episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, is about at its core. On the floor, after all, it’s a little bit of traditional Star Trek storytelling that Strange New Worlds relishes in emulating, even when it doesn’t actually have extra so as to add to it: the Enterprise has come throughout a comet in peril of wiping out a pre-warp civilization on the planet Persephone-3, and finds itself having to navigate a rescue mission that places it at odds with a technologically superior ship that believes mentioned comet is a life-giving divine entity.

You’ve bought your area anomaly, you’ve bought robust first contact with an unknown species referred to as the “Shepherds”, and, don’t get too sizzling underneath the collar simply but Trek followers, however there’s even an away mission gone flawed thrown into the combination as nicely. When the Enterprise dispatches a staff—Uhura, Spock, La’an, and newcomer sciences officer Sam Kirk (sure, Kirk’s brother, no, sadly not performed by season 2’s Paul Wesley with a pretend moustache in homage to William Shatner, however by Dan Jeannotte)—to the comet’s floor, they promptly get trapped by a mysterious defend system on the comet, and discover themselves attempting to resolve the thriller of a glowing, egg-like core inside its cavernous buildings to allow them to beam out. Things get dangerous to worse, like all good Star Trek mysteries, when Kirk is injured and the aforementioned aliens start firing on the Enterprise for trespassing on the comet’s sacred grounds. But, additionally like all good Star Trek, our heroes work out a solution to resolve all the things amicably and the day is saved. The comet is diverted, the away staff get, nicely, away secure, and each the mysterious “Shepherds” and the aliens on Persephone-3 are all happy, the latter principally as a result of they weren’t worn out by a comet, as a substitute having it cross by their planet shut sufficient to deliver atmosphere-altering rainfall to the desert world.

G/O Media could get a fee

Save $70

Apple AirPods Max

Experience Next-Level Sound
Spatial audio with dynamic head monitoring gives theater-like sound that surrounds you

It’s all quite simple, and that’s what Strange New Worlds is superb at thus far—a easy, tropey plot that you simply test in each week to observe get resolved, irrespective of how briefly tense issues get, as a result of you’re watching a Star Trek present, and above all, you’re watching a Star Trek present in regards to the crew of the united statesS. Enterprise, so that you know all the things’s going to work out nicely. What makes “Children of the Comet” actually spark, nevertheless, that each one that’s layered over a very necessary journey for one in all its most potential-laden characters: Celia Rose Gooding’s younger Nyota Uhura. “Children of the Comet” actually is Gooding’s present to steal, and she or he does it with aplomb, giving us an unimaginable efficiency that navigates a aspect of Uhura that we’re very accustomed to—the assured xenolinguist who is aware of she will be able to get her job executed—with one which we’re actually not: a younger cadet who got here to Starfleet extra out of curiosity than honor and inspiration, and one who out of the blue finds herself surrounded by the very best and brightest the group has to supply, and likewise begins to search out herself pondering like she’s more and more misplaced.

From an impromptu Captain’s quarters dinner for the senior employees that opens the episode, to Uhura occurring her first official away mission to affix the staff on the comet, to her ultimately being the one which not solely unlocks the thriller of the comet to assist save the day, Uhura’s arc in “Children of the Comet” sees her develop from this younger cadet uncertain she’s in the best place for the place she desires to be in her life, to one thing nearer to the proud, charismatic younger lady we met within the authentic Star Trek. And positive, we know that issues are going to prove okay for her, even when Uhura repeatedly tells folks round her that she’s undecided her future is in Starfleet, or is shocked when her fellow officers flip to her for recommendation and experience, as a result of, nicely, she’s Nyota Uhura. Her destiny, identical to Pike’s in a means, is a executed deal.

But even then, there’s one thing extremely satisfying to observe the seeds of the character that we’ve recognized for over half a century at this level being to flourish by way of Gooding’s tackle the character. Her curiosity, her ardour for language—and a cute nod to her ardour for tune when she realises that the comet’s core can talk by way of harmonics after idly buzzing a folks tune—her assuredness in herself after she ultimately learns, with somewhat push from Spock when issues begin getting dicey on the away mission, to belief in the truth that she wouldn’t be the place she was if she wasn’t good at her job. It all comes collectively to offer “Children of the Comet” and its in any other case fairly fundamental Star Trek premise an actual sense of coronary heart, regardless of the inevitability of its final result.

If that’s what Star Trek: Strange New Worlds desires to ship week in, week out—nicely executed plots of the week with a heartful exploration of one in all its key characters, a well-known face or in any other case—then “Children of the Comet” is already setting a gold normal for the remainder of the present to match. And if it does, like its Starfleet heroes, then Strange New Worlds can take a whole lot of satisfaction from a job nicely executed.

Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the most recent Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and all the things that you must learn about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.