[SNW] Season 2, Episode 4: Among the Lotus Eaters
Rating: 3
In a lot of ways this feels like the most classic Trek that Strange New Worlds has gone, and not even because it’s a follow up to something from the original series, but because it’s a rare P+ era Trek story where the crew descends on an alien culture and we explore What Their Deal Is. I hope the show does more of this, because it used to be one of the main concerns in Star Trek.
The episode features some planetary phenomena that messes with the crew, this time erasing their memories and ability to perform their duties. The story splits the premise across two plots – the crew on the Enterprise trying to figure out how to keep the ship running even though they forgot how to keep a ship running, and the away team on the planet trapped in an exploitative civilization run by a crewman that’s gone mad after being left for dead years before.
The Enterprise plot centers on Ortegas, who hasn’t had much of a spotlight until now. She doesn’t get a ton of time here either – the main thing we learn is that she has a basically innate sense of piloting a ship, which isn’t the most in depth look at a character, but also that isn’t really necessary. Even though she doesn’t get a dramatic arc like La’an in the last episode, we do see an endearing mixture of vulnerability and bravery in her story.
The planet-side plot is more complex. Last season’s Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach is the closest we got to a classic short story style look at an alien planet, but the episode had to obscure basically everything about the society to preserve a twist. That isn’t an issue here, so we get a much better look at how these people operate when there’s an elite that can preserve memories and a slave class that cannot. Its a sci-fi-first look at real world issues, which is the kind of Star Trek social commentary that’s more interesting to me, compared to Ad Aspera Per Aspera, which has that equation reversed. It also fits into each of the three crew member’s personal stories pretty nicely. The main weakness is that it’s all very broad strokes, so interesting concepts and emotional backstories are gestured at but don’t have much time to be fleshed out.
Read more at Memory Alpha
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