[SNW] Season 1, Episode 10: A Quality of Mercy
Rating: 4
Strange New Worlds ends its first season with its best episode, and a premise that is pretty difficult to pull off. We’ve been sort of ambivalent about Pike wrestling with the knowledge of his horrible fate as a through line for his character this season, and on paper revisiting that subject via the lens of a classic Star Trek episode probably wouldn’t be something we’d be interested in, but whattya know it all locked in pretty perfectly. It’s a simple but smart idea: Pike knows what’s going to happen, but it seems preventable… so what happens if he avoids his personal tragedy? Take a look at how he isn’t suited for a potentially cataclysmic scenario from the original series and find out. It does hinge on a mystical idea about fate and the dumb concept that there’s really only one “right” way for events to unfold, which intersects with this show being subject to fan’s expectations and ideas about canon in sort of annoying ways. Fortunately that isn’t really the focus of the episode though. The heart of it is Pike struggling with personal disaster and realizing he’s going to have to make a huge sacrifice for his friends. It really succeeds with this – the stakes are big and we feel ’em as an audience. Then on top of all that we get a pretty loving recreation of an alternate Balance of Terror. The way in which Quality of Mercy differs from Balance of Terror in regard to the actual conflict with the Romulans and how Pike and Kirk approach it differently is pretty sophisticated. Additionally, just on a plotting level it’s all tightly handled and makes for an entertaining ride. Sure it’s fan-servicy, but the fan service fits into a real story we care about in a way that makes sense.
Read more at Memory Alpha
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