Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Finale Adds A Bittersweet Twist To Pike's Love Story — Grade It!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wrapped up its third season this week with a heart-wrenching love story — and a new bond between future pals Kirk and Spock.
As Thursday's Season 3 finale opens, Pike's girlfriend Marie Batel is returning to active duty after her near-death experience with the Gorn. At a crew party to celebrate her return, Scotty shows up in full formal dress, kilt included (ha!), and Chapel mentions that Dr. Korby is doing research on an alien planet where local clerics are working to achieve immortality — and Batel visibly shudders when she hears the name of the city he's in. During a routine ship scan, the crew notices that one of their bio signatures has been rebuilt. It's the deceased nurse Ensign Gamble... and sure enough, Gamble has been resurrected and is now being worshipped as a god by the alien planet, possessed once again by the evil Vezda.
Pike sends an away team to the alien planet to get Dr. Korby back, and Batel wants to go, too. She feels like there's something bad happening down there, and only she can stop it. On the alien planet, La'an uses a Vulcan neck pinch (learned from Spock!) to subdue the soldiers guarding a portal, and she and the away team walk through it to find Korby, who warns them the locals are fervently following Gamble... and indeed, we see them stab out their own eyes as Gamble tells them, "We are in the final days." Back on the ship, they deduce that the alien planet is right along an interdimensional trade route, making it a prime target for the Vezda to occupy.
The away team needs a containment orb to get the Vezda spirit out of Gamble, and Korby thinks they have one on the other side of a wall covered in words in different languages. M'Benga recognizes some of the words are about his life, and the wall opens for him, with Gamble reaching through to pull M'Benga in and closing the wall behind them. They're inside a cosmic chamber like they were during the previous Vezda possession, and Gamble fires an energy blast at the statue at the center of the room... and that blast hits Batel hard back on the ship, doubling her over in pain. Suddenly, her eyes have crazy sprawling galaxies inside them, and Chapel discovers that her bio scan matches the statue's exactly. In fact, "she is the statue," Chapel declares. Whoa, trippy.
M'Benga threatens to kill himself with a knife to the throat, and when Gamble lunges to stop him, M'Benga throws him out of the chamber. Back on the ship, Batel theorizes that the medicine that saved her life changed her, and she's now meant to be the protector against the Vezda. "Everything that happened to me was so that I could do this," she says — and that means sacrificing her life to stop the Vezda. Pike doesn't want that to be true, but he volunteers to join her down on the alien planet. They get stuck at the puzzle wall, though, with no way to open it. The Enterprise crew comes up with a plan to fire two ships' weapons at the wall at the same time... and that requires some very precise timing.
Since James T. Kirk volunteered to help in any way they need with the Farragut, Spock has a proposal: let him do a mind meld on Kirk so they can synchronize their ships precisely and fire their weapons at the same time. Kirk isn't thrilled with the idea ("I'm not big on intimacy"), but he allows it, only asking Spock to "be gentle" as he goes in. Now Spock and Kirk are connected, piloting their ships in perfect synchronicity before locking their weapons on target and firing. The blast opens the wall, allowing Pike and Batel to enter the chamber and find M'Benga, but Gamble reappears and knocks M'Benga out cold, firing a blast at the statue and hurting Batel. Pike tries to fight back, but he gets an energy blast to the chest, and Batel tells him she has to do this herself.
Batel stands up to Gamble, her hands glowing like Wanda Maximoff, and suddenly, we jump forward a few years, where Pike and Batel are happily celebrating their wedding anniversary in a cozy cabin. Huh? She got him a personalized apron as a gift, and we hear a knock at the door, and then we jump forward again, where Pike and Batel have a young daughter, and Pike frets about taking the assignment he knows will leave him horribly disfigured. We hear another knock, and now Pike is back from his mission, blissfully unharmed. Did his destiny change somehow? Another jump, and they're getting old and gray, with their daughter bringing home a family friend... who's now her fiancé. Another jump, and an elderly Pike sits by the bedside of a dying Batel, who assures him: "All you have to do is look at the stars, and know I'll be waiting for you there." (Man, is it getting dusty in here?)
After another knock, we're back in the chamber with Gamble, who fires an energy blast and destroys the statue, releasing a swirling vortex of evil demons. But Batel tells him, "I am filled with light you cannot vanquish," and she fires back at him, destroying him and the demons — and becoming the statue. Back on the ship, Kirk and Spock play three-dimensional chess (they're pals now!), and Pike is slowly recovering from the trauma of losing Batel, casting a meaningful glance at his chef's apron. "Maybe memory is as real as the present," he says, "and no one we have ever loved is truly gone."
He returns to the bridge, where Spock tells him that Korby has located a bunch of new planets for them to explore — "enough for a five-year mission," even. They wait for Pike to say "hit it," but he's feeling a little more contemplative than that. (He watches a comet streak through the sky, just like it did in his imagined future with Batel.) He tells Ortegas to take the ship out "as fast as you want to go," and they warp away to the next adventure.
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