'Strange New Worlds' Has Lost the Art of the Bit
'Strange New Worlds' has pushed the boundaries of its sillier episodes into empty farce—and could learn a lesson or two from some actually funny 'Star Trek.'
A few weeks ago, I wrote with hope that the now-airing fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seemed like it might have learned some lessons from its disastrous downturn in season three.
How funny that that hope would be gone by just its third episode.
"Human Best Friend," which aired late last week, only barely escapes being one of the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made by the virtue that it is at least not actively offensive (they saved that for one of last season's silly episodes, "Four and a Half Vulcans," a showing that was both deeply unfunny and about as racist as Star Trek can get without engaging in real-world bigotry).
It is another of the show's penchant for lighthearted episodes, this time taking place in a Hangover-esque scenario where the crew goes for shore leave on a resort planet where the atmosphere makes people feel inebriated within moments of exposure. But it's also just incredibly unfun about it: watching drunk people when you are, presumably, a sober audience just isn't fun, and it doesn't help that the core pairing of the episode, the criminally wasted Melissa Navia's Ortegas and Martin Quinn's Scotty, is having a terrible time throughout because we've been told they suddenly hate each other out of nowhere in the season premiere.
But it's also because the episode only really knows how to have fun by metaphorically grabbing you by the collar and screaming, "Isn't this so fun? Aren't we funny?" in your face, rather than using its sense of humor to engage with its characters.
My complaint isn't that Star Trek shows should be self-serious all the time. Star Trek, of course, can be an incredibly funny show. It can also do episodes where the crew loses its inhibitions and gets out of character (although, like this episode, they're not always great—see "The Naked Now" just three episodes into TNG's tenure). But it can do them right. And I know that, because while I've been rewatching Deep Space Nine's third season lately, I've just hit its own silly inhibition episode, "Fascination," and it's remarkable to see just how much it completely dogwalks Strange New Worlds' own attempt at a drunk-humor comedy.