7 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1 — Hegemony, Part II

6. UP — Binary Star Duos

At the heart of the second half of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' first two-parter lies a binary star. The symbolism is readily apparent.

Mirroring that duality, stellar and episodic, in Hegemony, Part II, was a set of duos on the Enterprise — Scotty/Pelia, Una/Uhura, Spock/Chapel, Pike/Batel. In binary code, four bits is also a 'nibble' — almost too accurate a description for the crew stuck aboard the Gorn destroyer (more on that later).

Amongst the four twosomes, Scotty/Pelia were the winning pair — comedic, though far from exclusively so. Pelia alone is one of the best additions to Trek in recent years. The combination of her frank yet infectious demeanour with a fresh take on a legacy character was always going to be intriguing. The on-screen result is a delight.

Pelia's methods might be a little heavy-handed (metaphorical "phaser to the head"), but it seems Scotty may have learnt a few of his more famous traits from his old professor, like the art of the possible from the impossible.

As for Spock and Chapel, the 'time to talk about these things' was at least only the time of the computer simulation. More would have been too much. Less would have deprived us of some great acting. Mirroring Spock's "… just need a little faith" to Chapel were Pike's own religious convictions, or at least those transmitted via his father ("Okay, dad. You win."), in prayer at Batel's bedside.