In Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S4 – EP5) Level-Five Transporter Accident

Synopsis: A transporter malfunction turns most of the crew into puppets while Spock fights to reclaim the ship.

The Story

When Scotty attempts to extend the range of the Enterprise’s transporters, he uses his childhood puppet as a test subject. Unfortunately, the experiment goes spectacularly wrong and somehow transforms almost the entire crew into puppets. The only person unaffected is Spock, who was away from the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft at the time. Upon returning, Spock quickly finds himself having to perform many of the ship’s basic operations because his newly felt-and-fabric crewmates are unable to operate the Enterprise’s touch-sensitive controls. As if that wasn’t enough, matters become considerably more complicated when a group of Orions boards the ship.

Acting

The cast do a pretty good job with this episode in terms of performances, despite the absurdity of the material they have been given. Anson Mount is particularly good, and I loved the brief sequence at the beginning where Pike proudly admires his newly modified Captain’s chair. Unfortunately, what seems like a fun character moment ultimately establishes something that becomes a glaring plot hole later in the episode.

Carol Kane also deserves credit for completely embracing the absurdity of the story as Pelia and clearly understands exactly what sort of episode she is appearing in.

My biggest issue, however, is with Spock. Ethan Peck does the best he can with the material, but Spock becomes far too emotional in this episode and frequently doesn’t feel like Spock at all. I don’t blame Peck for this. The problem lies with the writing. Strange New Worlds has always presented a younger Spock who is still finding the balance between his human and Vulcan sides, but there comes a point where you have to remember who this character is ultimately supposed to become. At times, it feels less like the writers are exploring Spock’s humanity and more like they’ve simply forgotten that they’re writing Star Trek.

Overall

The title of this episode should perhaps be changed from “Level-Five Transporter Accident” to “Level-Twenty-Two Writers’ Room Accident.” And my problem has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to turn the crew into puppets. Star Trek has done plenty of strange and silly things over the years. My problem is with the inconsistencies, logical errors and glaring contradictions that run throughout the story.

I can completely buy the idea that the puppet versions of the crew cannot operate the Enterprise’s touch-sensitive controls. They no longer have human hands, so within the ridiculous premise of the episode, that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is being told that they cannot use the ship’s doors. The doors on the Enterprise open automatically. They have to. Imagine trying to push a trolley through the ship if you needed a free hand to operate every bloody door.

But the most glaring contradiction concerns Pike’s new Captain’s chair.

At the beginning of the episode, Pike is waxing lyrical about his new chair and proudly explains that it has biometric controls as well as voice commands. This initially seems like nothing more than a fun little character moment, but the chair later becomes an important part of the plot.

After Pike becomes a puppet, he cannot use the chair’s biometric controls because the system no longer recognises him. When he attempts to transfer command to Spock, that doesn’t work either. Fair enough. The episode has established a rule and given our characters a problem to overcome. Although apparently everybody has conveniently forgotten about those voice commands Pike mentioned earlier.

Except the episode then proceeds to contradict itself.

Later, Spock is somehow able to use the Captain’s chair to shut down the Enterprise’s life-support systems as part of the plan to defeat the Orions. The reasoning is actually rather clever: puppets don’t need oxygen, but Orions certainly do. There’s just one rather enormous problem. How is Spock now able to use the chair?

We have already been told that Pike cannot transfer control of the chair to him because Pike’s puppet form prevents him from authenticating himself through the biometric system. Nothing subsequently happens that appears to resolve this problem, yet when the story needs Spock to access those controls, suddenly he can.

What changed? How did Spock gain access? If there is an explanation, why didn’t we see it?

That’s the fundamental problem I have with this episode. You can give me puppets. You can give me an Enterprise crew made entirely out of felt if you want. But once you establish the rules governing your ridiculous premise, you still have to follow them.

And then comes the revelation that the entire puppet adventure was actually Spock’s dream.

Seriously?

This is not Dallas. It’s supposed to be Star Trek.

Despite my many issues with the story, Level-Five Transporter Accident remains an impressively produced episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The visual effects and puppetry are superb, the music works wonderfully well, and the cast commit themselves fully to the material. Unfortunately, all of those strengths are working overtime to compensate for a story riddled with logical inconsistencies and contradictions.

The result is an unusual episode where the individual production elements score extremely highly while the writing receives the lowest Story score I have ever given to an episode of Star Trek. The puppets weren’t the problem. The script was.