Movies & TV Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “Starships are also capable of miracles” — Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Off-Hour” Things are tense this week, but it’s hard to understand the stakes… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on August 27, 2026 Image: Paramount Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Paramount If I had to pick one word to describe the fourth season so far of Strange New Worlds, it would be polarizing. Every episode that has aired prior to today has had the most extreme of reactions in both directions. There has been very little by way of middle ground, the episodes are either viewed as superb or terrible. There also has been a rather tiresome trend toward gimmicky storytelling. How forgivable the gimmicks are depend a lot on how much you like the episode. For example, I was willing to forgive the black-and-white filming and the noir trappings of “A Case of Chiaroscuro” because it was a really good vehicle for Number One and just a generally strong story. I was less willing to forgive the Hangover riff that was “Human Best Friend” because I thought the episode was dumb. We won’t even get into the extremes of the reactions to “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” which were all over the map… All this is by way of saying that “Off-Hour” gets us back to basics. No gimmicks, no “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” storytelling, just an adventure in space where our heroes have to science the shit out of things to solve the problem. Co-executive producer Bill Wolkoff’s script also has the DNA of a bunch of other episodes, but it’s all in service of an excellent story. We’ve got a little of the original series’ “Court Martial,” more than a little of TNG’s “Disaster,” a very little of Voyager’s “Threshold,” and a little of Homicide: Life on the Street’s “Subway.” And we get another legacy character, but rather than a younger version of someone we know from the original series, instead we get another character from “The Cage.” It’s established here that Dr. Philip Boyce—played in 1964 by John Hoyt—was only the interim chief medical officer on the Enterprise when we saw him, as Pike was waiting for M’Benga to be available. Boyce had transferred off the Big E some time between “The Cage” and “Strange New Worlds,” returning more recently as the beta shift medical officer. Here, he’s played by Brian Markinson, who, like Hoyt, is from New York, though he’s appeared mostly in Canadian productions (and ones that film there, like SNW). This is Markinson’s fourth appearance and fifth role in Trek, having played Vorin in TNG’s “Homeward,” Durst in Voyager’s “Cathexis” and “Faces,” Sulan also in “Faces,” and Giger in DS9’s “In the Cards.” It’s an interesting bit of casting, as he looks younger than Hoyt, although he’s actually five years older now than Hoyt was in 1964; he’s also three inches shorter. Still, the casting works—Markinson’s an excellent actor, and he does a good job with the sour Boyce in a supporting role here. Image: Paramount (This also nicely presages M’Benga’s status quo on the original series, setting a precedent for a previous CMO to return to the ship as the beta-shift medical officer under a new CMO.) The plot is pretty straightforward. Just as the Enterprise is switching from alpha to beta shift, they hit a wormhole and wind up in a slipstream that sends them careening at high speeds. There’s no power, many systems are down or malfunctioning, and they are trapped. They have to find a way to restore power to get out of the slipstream of the wormhole, and they have a ticking clock, because they’re approaching the warp threshold (there’s the mercifully tiny “Threshold” reference) and will disintegrate if that happens. Cleverly, they don’t put a number on it, as the Voyager episode posited warp ten as the threshold, but the original series gave us occasional warp speeds in excess of ten; rather than deal with that dichotomy, Wolkoff’s script just avoids the issue all together, thus avoiding the nitpicky fangoober arguments. Plus, because of the power disruptions, people are stuck in limited areas of the ship and it’s tough to move around—made tougher when Scotty has to, in order to conserve power, cut off life support to the corridors. (That’s the similarity to “Disaster,” though at least the crew here are able to communicate with each other around the ship, unlike in the TNG episode.) It’s tremendous fun watching the crew deal with the various issues, and I especially like how they make use of already-established stuff, not for the purposes of making the reference, but because it makes sense in the story. My personal favorite example is the use of the pod that’s designed to study ion storms. We previously saw that in “Court Martial,” and the plot of that episode revolved around when Kirk was forced to eject the pod because it built up too much energy to be safe. That pod was never referenced again—until now, when Spock has to go into the pod because sensors are down and an attempt at sending a probe out to do a scan fails. And Pike is confronted with having to eject the pod with Spock still in it or risk the ship. There are other crises here and there, from the inertial dampeners—which also provide artificial gravity—going wonky. Several of the crew—among them Number One, Spock, La’an, and Boyce—are in the lounge for a piano recital when the crisis hits. When the gravity goes bad, there’s a control panel that can reset them, but it’s in the part of the room where the gravity is so heavy, it crushed the piano. The genetically enhanced Number One goes over to do it, hoping that she’s stronger than a piano. At one point, her leg is shattered by the high gravity, and it’s brutal. Just in general, Wolkoff’s script doesn’t soft-pedal how dangerous everything is. Spock gets a nasty case of radiation poisoning from being in the pod, and La’an gets a slightly less nasty case when she rescues him, Pike is electrocuted getting the shields back up, Number One’s leg is shattered, and Scotty is stuck in a Jefferies Tube (another nifty reference, as I don’t think we’ve seen one of the diagonal access tubes on SNW until now). And then there’s the big one: when the ship first falls into the wormhole and everything goes binky-bonkers, the magnetic seal holding a sickbay table in place fails and the table smashes into M’Benga’s torso and impales him. He’s still alive, and will remain so until the table is moved—right now, it’s holding all his organs in place. (This is the Homicide reference, as the episode “Subway” had something similar happen to a character played by Vincent d’Onofrio, where as soon as the subway was moved, he’d die. It was based on a real-life event, allegedly.) Image: Paramount As much fun as the various bits of problem-solving are, the real meat of this episode is the characterization. There are small things, like La’an kicking herself for letting Spock be the one to go in the pod (even though as a Vulcan-human hybrid, he stands a better chance of survival). But the big ones are particularly compelling. First off, there’s M’Benga and Chapel, whose deep friendship has been seen all over the place, particularly in “Under the Cloak of War.” They get into an argument at the top of the episode because M’Benga is thinking of transferring off, and Chapel makes it clear that she will do the same if he leaves, and he accuses her of always running away when things get too serious. That argument is curtailed—but not completely ended—by the crisis. Chapel then spends the episode trying to figure out how to save M’Benga. My only issue with this part of the story is that Chapel disobeys a direct order from Boyce to leave sickbay and join him in the lounge where there are multiple patients who need treating. Chapel pretends the comms aren’t working and stays behind to try to save M’Benga. It reeks way too much of “I don’t care about these extras who don’t have dialogue, I have to stay here and save the opening-credits regular, sorry,” a sociopathic trope that is my least favorite in all dramatic fiction. Image: Paramount Then there’s Scotty, and this is again where SNW continues to shine in showing us younger versions of the legacy characters from the original series. We know Scotty as a supremely confident miracle worker who can, to quote a Vorta from DS9’s “Rocks and Shoals,” turn rocks into replicators. More to the point, we know Scotty as someone who started a bar fight in “The Trouble with Tribbles” because a Klingon insulted the Enterprise.But Martin Quinn is playing a Scotty who views the Enterprise as an obstacle, as a glitchy machine that won’t do what it’s told. Pelia reminds him—in one of several magnificent conversations between the two of them over the intercom, as Pelia is trapped in her quarters—that all ships will glitch, but all ships also can perform miracles if you just pay attention and listen to what the ship is telling you. I like that the episode gives the entire cast something to do, and I like that it has the usual Trek thing of smart people working to solve a problem. The solution to both M’Benga’s injuries and fixing the ship are something called strong-force neutrinos, which are in abundance in the slipstream they’re stuck in. I have no idea if strong-force neutrinos are a real thing or not—if anyone in the comments who is more of a science nerd than me can speak to that, I’d be grateful—but the discussion of regular neutrinos is, I know, accurate. So even if Wolkoff pulled strong-force neutrinos out of his ass, it works—for the same reason that dilithium and quadrotriticale and tricorder all worked, they take a thing we know about and modify it enough to be something fictional that can do what the plot needs it to do. If the episode has a flaw, it’s that the suspense is significantly muted. The characters who face the most danger and the most risk of dying are Spock in the pod, the impaled M’Benga, and Scotty stuck in the Jefferies Tube, and they’re three characters who we know will survive at least to the original series. But overall this is a taut, exciting, intense episode that works as a space adventure, works as a characterization vehicle, and just works. Credit especially to director Dan Liu for a good use of split screens. There are several conversations among folks in different parts of the ship, and by using split screens to show them, it ups the intensity without having to wait the half-second for the cut to the other location. If you’ve hated this season to date, this episode will restore your faith in it. If you’ve liked this season to date, well, this should keep that streak going. Either way, this is one of SNW’s best.[end-mark] The post “Starships are also capable of miracles” — <i>Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</i>: “Off-Hour” appeared first on Reactor.