In Review: Star Trek: Continues – What Are Ships For

Synopsis: Kirk struggles with aiding a society whose inhabitants view their isolated world in a very unique way.

Review: When the Enterprise visits a planet. They find that a strange radiation has prevented the inhabitants from being able to see in colour.

This leads to the planet’s inhabitants being infiltrated by the refugees from a neighbouring world, which creates a diplomatic headache for Kirk as he has to decide how to deal with the aftermath should he heal the planet of the radiation damage.

This is a superb episode, which deals with isolationism, racism and immigration.  The use of Black and White verses colour is an excellent metaphor. It’s like a reversal on ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, but with a more adult theme.

 Vic Mignogna puts in an awesome performance of Kirk as he has to deal with putting aside his own moral compass in order to try and help the world and heal the rift between the two apposing aliens that have peacefully co existed in ignorance of their differences. 

We get some brilliant guest performances from John de Lancie and Anne Lockhart as the two main politicians that Kirk has to deal with. 

But we also get an extraordinarily well judged performance from Elizabeth Maxwell as Sekara who is the first inhabitant of the planet to experience the gift of seeing in colour, but also the bridge builder between the two different alien species that live on the world. 

This is what ‘Star Trek’ should be in that it tells a story using smart metaphor and story telling to examine an issue from various points of view in order to provoke discussion.

It’s a real shame that this is pretty much the penultimate episode of ‘Star Trek: Continues’ given the little that we know about the new ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ series that we await with very, very mixed feelings.

This was a fabulous episode with some brilliant acting performances from all the cast.