At the time of writing we’re five episodes into Strange New Worlds’ first season. While we’re all struggling to adapt to the brave new world of yet another streaming platform (and one that isn’t worldwide by any means), Alasdair Stuart has been lucky enough to get screeners for those episodes and looks at how the series is picking up on Christopher Pike’s journey from Star Trek: Discovery season 2 as discussed in his Gold Archive on Through the Valley of Shadows…

Strange New Worlds is extraordinarily good and stands as a welcome new string to the bow of the always interesting, always diverse new age of Star Trek.

It’s also absolutely the next chapter in Christopher Pike’s life, and one that is defined by the events on Boreth in ‘Through the Valley of Shadows’. So, as we reach the season halfway point, now’s a good time to take a look at how the show is exploring Pike’s existential trauma.

As the show opens, Pike’s processing that trauma by ignoring it. It’s a classic beat in Star Trek – the traumatized officer standing themselves down – and it’s nicely realized here. Firstly because this isn’t Pike hiding, it’s Pike living. He’s in a relationship, he’s relaxing but he’s also… waiting. In a moment of odd cultural synchronicity given the Top Gun sequel is in cinemas right now, there’s a touch of Maverick to Pike when we first meet him. Brilliant, talented, running in place, aware his time is running out and not looking it in the eyes.

That makes what calls him back into service even more resonant. With Una (Rebecca Romijn) AWOL on a first contact mission, Pike doesn’t hesitate to come back but is also far from happy about it. We get a Star Trek tradition, the beauty pass of the Enterprise in Spacedock, from a very different perspective here. Anson Mount shows us Pike’s deep love for his ship but also shows us the caution. He circles the Enterprise like she’s a skittish horse, waiting for the kick he knows is coming.

This is where the core of Pike’s narrative over these episodes kicks in. He chooses to re-engage with the life he knows has an end date and this episode focuses on him trying not to focus on that. It manifests in two diametrically opposed ways too. When there’s work to be done, Pike is the avuncular, informal and highly aware Captain everyone knows he can be. The second half of the episode, which features an extended deep cover sequence, is a great example of this. Chris Pike works best when he’s working and the episode gives him plenty to do.

But it also gives him quiet moments and those are where trauma gets you. There’s a recurrent motif of Pike not being able to look at his reflection without seeing the man he’ll become. He zones out a little, the trauma getting too much for him as his mind wanders. He’s a man on a clock and he’s a man who can’t help but look at that clock every time he remembers it’s there.

This is a solid, compassionate exploration of trauma and Mount portrays it with the intelligence and compassion he’s justifiably known for. But it also ties into a fascinating new facet of Pike’s character, one hinted at way back in the Discovery Season 2 finale. He knows when he dies. Which means he knows when he doesn’t die.

Which means he can get some things done.

The closing sequence here doesn’t so much ignore General Order 1 as simply reprogram it so it’s possible to win. Discovering the civilization Una has been observing has reverse engineered warp-capable bombs from seeing the fight with Control at the end of Discovery Season 2, Pike goes public. He weaponizes the very existential terror we worry first contact would trigger as a means of benevolent social change. He knows what he can get away with and so he does it, and wins, this time. Or at least wins enough to be okay with returning to the Enterprise for five of his ten remaining years on a new mission. There’s work to be done, fun to be had. The test pilot suits back up, knowing full well where the envelope is and deciding to push it anyway because, like Maverick, what else is he going to do?

It’s not a perfect solution, because nothing is, and that’s where the show’s emotional honesty really shines. ‘Children of the Comet’ opens with a great scene where Pike invites the command crew over for dinner. It introduces us to new arrivals, sets the good-natured dynamic of his command and also leads to a moment where he’s ambushed by his own mortality. The conversation turns to the future and Pike mentions a decade, then stops. Mount is so good throughout but this is one of his finest hours as the Captain realizes he can only plan so far ahead. He trips. He covers it and, in one of my favourite moments in the show, the others do too. He’s not okay. But he’s their friend and this is what friends do.

This is a vital thing for series drama to do and I feel like it’s not being talked about enough. Strange New Worlds has a protagonist who could be read as having depressive episodes and absolutely could, and I’d argue should, be read as having a chronic illness. It doesn’t affect him all the time, but it does always affect him and the way the show and Mount are exploring how Pike negotiates with his life to get the job done is compassionate and honest and at times deeply moving. Starfleet’s King Arthur is not okay, like so many people. And like so many people, he’s working through it.

‘Ghosts of Illyria’, the third episode, has a light touch with this but it is there. It’s a fun episode, largely concerned with a disease outbreak on the Enterprise while Pike and Spock are trapped in the path of an oncoming plasma storm. As they realize there are creatures inside the storm, ones that want to apparently attack them, Pike becomes increasingly worried in a frankly very charming way. It’s a subtle beat but this plot makes it clear that while he knows when he’s going to die that doesn’t mean he’s complacent. It also leads to a gloriously prissy exchange as the creatures are about to break in and Spock is fiddling with a hard drive.  Pike, visibly worried, says: ‘Does that thing have a setting for stun?’

And Spock replies: ‘I am arming us with knowledge.’

It’s a fun little note that keeps Pike’s ongoing conversation with his trauma in play without centring it. As selfless, arguably, as the Captain himself

That brings us to ‘Memento Mori’, arguably the strongest episode of the show to date. A routine mission, on Starfleet Remembrance Day, turns into a frantic game of cat and mouse as the Enterprise is ambushed, badly damaged and pursued by the Gorn. Much like ‘Children of the Comet’ spotlights Uhura and ‘Ghosts of Illyria’ spotlights Una, this episode is very much a La’an story but one where Pike plays a vital role.

Reminiscent of ‘Balance of Terror’ from the original Star Trek, this episode brings the trauma and pressure of command crashing down on Chris Pike’s head at the worst possible time. He knows he doesn’t die here. He has no idea how many others certainly will and he spends the episode frantically trying to minimize that. Pike and his crew make every right call, and they’re still seconds from death until the very end of the episode. Their escape. detonating a failing piece of cargo to fake their death as they surf the edge of a black hole, is born from Pike’s self-knowledge. There’s a massively weighted moment where Lt. Ortegas notes the ship will be torn apart. Pike responds that the Enterprise will hold. He says nothing about its crew.

There’s also what reads, to me, as an extended riff on Apollo 13 here. Pike refers to this as ‘their finest hour’, a phrase Flight Controller Gene Kranz memorably uses in the movie. More resonant is a moment where, as the final manoeuvre hits, Pike is leaning on the guard rail at the front of the bridge, willing his ship to push through. Once they do, he folds in half, finally letting himself relax. Much the same as the moment in Apollo 13 where the crew are finally home and Kranz, played by Ed Harris, all but collapses. The Captain finally allowing himself a moment of weakness; the immediate terror replaced by the familiar terror he knows is coming.

It would be so easy for this version of Pike to brood and he never does. A lot of that is down to Mount, whose fundamentally likable presence gives the Captain a welcome combination of country charm and gentle, wry wit. But the show, like the Captain, also constantly finds new ways to explore what we all know is coming. At one point we learn Pike has learnt the names of the crewmen he’ll save and has found them in Federation databases; all children, all heading to the same date with destiny he is. At another, in glorious five-level farce ‘Spock Amok’, we see him revel not only in Spock’s body swap but also in a diplomatic puzzle he’s just one part of.

Captain Christopher Pike is always okay, but what okay means changes and the show is doing an extraordinarily good job of exploring that. A strange new world indeed and one Pike is charting, like the rest of us, one week at a time.

Alasdair Stuart’s Gold Archive examining Through the Valley of Shadows is out now and available here

Click here for our other coverage of Strange New Worlds