Strange New Worlds is on a roll. Unfortunately, it's not a good roll.
Una, M'Benga and Uhura are assigned to retrieve info from the Klingon-occupied planet Mat'Aar XII, where it is the very night of a takeover and Una looks exactly like the leader of the local resistance.
The best thing about "A Case of Chiaroscuro" was just that, that some Treknobabble about infrared blackbody spectra from the local star affected how people saw color, or actually how they didn't see color. The photography was gorgeous, very noir, with forties clothing and fedoras, cigarettes in holders, and armbands reminiscent of swastikas. It felt like a holodeck adventure set in Rick's Cafe with the occupying Klingons playing the Nazis. Or... actually, this episode would have been better suited to the Original Series back when audiences were a lot more forgiving about impossible plots, because the amount of coincidence was just too much for me to swallow.
What was the point of this episode? The description said it was about Una learning how to be an effective leader after just being promoted, and yes, she did have to make some tough decisions on a world not her own. But hasn't she been an effective leader from the beginning of the series? The last shot was Una reverse fading from black and white back into color, which I guess is symbolic of something.
M'Benga got to play a supporting wise man role as Una's counsel with relevant Klingon war experience. He was the one to point out Commander Kor, a direct descendant of Kahless the Unforgettable. And I can't believe I missed it, but Commander Kor, played by John Colicos, was in the original series episode "Errand of Mercy" and in three episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He was our very first Klingon and Colicos' performances were terrific and much liked. I thought Demore Barnes did a good job with the role.
Uhura also had an important bit using her language expertise, translating information in a rare Klingon dialect about the takeover while she was being tortured.
Meanwhile back on the Enterprise, La'an is seeing Christine Chapel in order to treat her mounting aggression and paranoia. Currently, they're thinking that it was jumpstarted by her physical transformation in "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans." Chapel was also breaking the rules doing a favor for the commander of the Yang. I think. I probably missed a plot point there.
The most notable scene on the Enterprise was the obnoxious Vulcan cadet A'Sha (Bianca Nugara) telling La'an that she was too busy to follow an order. What is wrong with this woman? They were talking about a possible Klingon spy on the Enterprise. Is A'Sha too obvious a candidate? She is certainly being set up as some sort of future plot point. I guess we'll see.
Bits:
— Stardate 2122.4, Una's log.
— Chiaroscuro literally means "light-dark." It's an art term about using strong contrasts of light and dark to make flat shapes in art look three dimensional.
— It wasn't just the look of the bar and the costumes. There were two outright references to Casablanca: Uhura did a Bogart line, "Of all the gin joints..." and the famous scene where the Nazis are singing something very Nazi and the Resistance drowns them out with the French national anthem, my favorite scene in the movie.
— All that talk of poison in the bar, and Una downed a drink she was given. I thought for sure she had been poisoned, but no.
— Uhura looked unbelievably gorgeous in those costumes and black and white. Una was also stunning. Babs Olusanmokun is a handsome man, but I'm not sure the fedora is the best look for him.
Quotes:
M'Benga: "Trust the commander. This is not her first time pretending to be someone she's not."
Una: "This is baaaad."
Uhura: "I know 600 different words for 'bad'. This is worse than all of them."
Una: "Did I do the right thing?"
M'Benga: "Irony notwithstanding, few things in life are black and white."
The first episode of this season, "Valles Marineris," was terrific. And then we got a horror episode, a comedy episode, and this one, a gimmick episode. And I just found out that next week's episode is about... puppets.
What is happening here?
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
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