Oh, hey, Hemmer, I almost forgot, when you were getting the systems back online,
did you by any chance run across a way to turn on the lights? Hemmer?
This is a review of “All Those Who Wander,” the ninth episode of Star Trek:
Strange New Worlds. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, take heed: spoilers lie ahead.
So! First things first, for those of you playing Premise Bingo this season,
we have “Crew finds another ship that looks just like their ship” — a tried and true
method for keeping that budget under control! And, we also have “horror episode” — big time!
But, for this episode you can go beyond Premise Bingo and play another equally entertaining game
that we might call, I dunno, Inspiration Spotting! Because everybody is going to point out the
similarities between this episode and the Alien movies — there are several obvious references to
Alien in the form of either plot developments or visual quotes. But, that’s easy — of course
the episode is a riff on Alien. The little baby Gorn even burst out of a guy’s chest! Come on!
But, we also get a dash of Predator in here, as well as few generous pinches of Jurassic Park,
both in the way certain scenes where the heroes are being stalked by the Gorn are staged,
and in the character design of the Gorn themselves — they’re like mean
little velociraptors with great big eyes — the better to kill you with, my dear.
The plot of this episode is pretty simple. The acting is excellent as always, and carries no
real surprises. There are some very nice character moments, but those mostly don’t come until the
end. So, for most of the show, the real star is the production design and the cinematography.
I know I’ve mentioned this during my videos reviewing Star Trek: Discovery in the past, but I
can’t recall if I’ve brought it up in relation to Strange New Worlds yet, so I’ll say it right now:
this show looks fantastic. The sets are gorgeous, some of the best designed, best looking sets I’ve
ever seen in a Star Trek show. I love this version of the Enterprise, I love how the major sets that
represented the Enterprise in Classic Trek have been reimagined and modernized so that you can
clearly see the inspiration, but they also feel new and unique to this show and this era — by
which I mean our era here in the real world, not the imaginary era depicted in the show, which has
taken on various appearances as it’s been depicted in different shows, which is fine because it can
look however the hell the people making the show want it to look because it’s all made-up anyway!
Those sets do a lot of work in this episode, because they not only represent the Enterprise,
they also stand in for the Peregrine, the crashed ship discovered by Pike and his crew.
We see how well the sets and the cinematography work together to make this feel like a different
ship. A lot of it is the lighting — the corridors and various rooms are dark,
with lots of corners and shadows to hide in. And a lot of it is the camera work, which
is uniformly excellent throughout the series, and does a good job here of imparting tension,
and danger, and the feeling that something is just . . . wrong in this ship. It’s remarkable what you
can communicate emotionally to an audience just through a low, slightly tilted camera angle.
So, the atmosphere is great. The execution of this Alien plot is confident and
efficient and hits all the right beats. The direction and the editing are on point,
the episode builds excitement and suspense and pays it off when it needs to, and finds time
amidst the tension for quiet moments, like when Dr. M’Benga instinctively defends the young girl
they find from La’an’s interrogation by calling her his “daughter,” showing that the events of the
previous episode have not been forgotten, which is good characterization, which is good storytelling.
The only flaw I see in this episode worth mentioning is that it’s a little too simple, too
straightforward. As the story unfolded, especially in the latter half, I kept waiting for there to be
a turn, or a twist, or for something to go wrong with the heroes’ plan, and it never did. Granted,
their victory does come at a price, and I’ll talk about that in a second, but right now I’m focusing
just on their plan to get rid of the Gorn. Once they figure out what they’re up against — two
adolescent Gorn who have killed the rest of their brood and are now going to fight each other for
dominance — Pike, La’an — the resident Gorn expert — and the others put together a plan to herd the
two Gorn together so that one can kill the other, and then lure the remaining Gorn into a trap.
And then, they do that.
And it goes pretty much according to plan. Which is . . . fine. Certainly not bad.
Executed well, with style and good timing. Just a bit flat. It’s what I call the A Few Good Men
problem, because the same thing happens leading up to the climax of that movie. Tom Cruise meets with
his fellow lawyers and he’s like, “Okay, here’s the plan: I’ll call Jack Nicholson to the witness
stand, and I’ll get him real pissed off, and when he’s pissed he’ll admit that he did the crime!”
And then Tom Cruise does that, and that’s what happens, and then the movie’s over.
Like I said, it’s not necessarily bad. It just feels like it could have been more.
“Character explains the plan, and then everything goes according to the plan” is not the most
dramatic or compelling plot structure, you know?
But! Once that nicely realized though somewhat rote sci-fi/horror plot is resolved, we get
to the best part of the episode, where we actually stick around for a few minutes
to see the consequences experienced by the characters.
The most significant of those consequences is felt by Hemmer, who dies,
sacrificing himself after realizing he has been infected with Gorn eggs that are about to hatch
and pose a whole new threat to his crewmates. Hemmer’s death is definitely a surprise — I had
him pegged as an ongoing regular character for sure — but then again, it being a surprise is
the point. And while I supposed it would be fair to point out that Hemmer’s death might have meant
more if his character had been developed a bit more, at least this wasn’t a repeat of the death
of Airiam in Star Trek: Discovery’s second season, where a character who had been given next to no
development at all was suddenly the center of the universe for one episode, leading up to her death.
Hemmer has not been the most visible or central character this season, but we have seen enough
of him throughout multiple episodes to have a sense of who he is. And, significantly, we
have seen different sides of him as the season has progressed. He was introduced as the gruff,
smug intellectual who frankly described his own senses as superior to those of the others.
Then, we saw his friendship with Uhura begin to grow when they were stuck together in a cargo bay,
and we learned that, despite his superficially antisocial bearing,
things like purpose and connection are important to him.
And then, in last week’s episode, we saw that he also has a capacity to loosen up and live
in the moment and have fun, when he embraces his role as a wizard in the fairytale fantasy.
We get to know Hemmer enough, and we get enough of a sense of his connection to the rest of the crew,
that his death means something. When Uhura speaks at his funeral, her words ring true
because we’ve seen that she and Hemmer had a rapport, and cared about each other. It doesn’t
feel like a random character baring her soul about another character we know nothing about.
Similarly, when Spock is so overwhelmed by emotion that he leaves the service,
it tracks because even though they didn’t get a lot of screen time together this season,
we saw enough to establish that Hemmer and Spock had a friendship,
or at least a strong bond of mutual respect, so that his loss would have meant something to Spock.
Finally, and most intriguing for me, Hemmer is not the only regular character to move on,
so to speak. Uhura’s rotation as a cadet aboard the Enterprise ends with this episode. She
is leaving, although the final shot lets us know — if we didn’t know already — that she
will definitely be back. And, La’an also requests a leave of absence from the Enterprise so that she
can hopefully return the last survivor of the Gorn attack — the little girl, Ariana, who Dr.
M’Benga instinctively called his daughter — to her family. It makes sense for La’an, and is a good
culmination of her character arc this season, but it’s interesting that it happens in episode nine
of a ten episode season. Will we see La’an and Ariana in their own subplot in episode ten?
Or will La’an be totally absent and we’ll pick things back up with her next season?
This episode feels very much like a season finale. We get a major character death,
the apparent — albeit probably temporary — exits of two other major characters. And yet,
we still have one episode to go. I wonder what they have planned.
With how excellent this first season has been so far, I cannot wait to find out. And as I’ve
said many times, that’s the most important thing a series can do: get me to care what happens next.
Strange New Worlds has done that from the very beginning, and I’m looking forward to
next week to see how it ends this season, and where it looks to go in season two.
Those are my thoughts. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
If you want to support my channel, you can become a patron at patreon.com/steveshives,
or become a channel member by clicking the join button, or make a one-time gift via the Thanks
button below the video, or PayPal or Venmo — links to all of those are in the description.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next week for a review of the season finale!