The hour also ends in Strange New Worlds’ first real cliffhanger, a choice that’s almost guaranteed to immediately draw (likely unfavorable) comparisons between this episode and The Next Generation season 3 finale “The Best of Both Worlds.” In The Next Generation, Riker is forced to make the decision to fire on his own Borg-assimilated captain. In contrast, Pike must choose whether to obey Starfleet’s orders to flee and leave a significant chunk of the Enterprise and Cayuga crew members behind to what are presumably grisly deaths at the hands (claws?) of the Gorn. Yet, despite the obvious on-paper stakes of the moment, “Hegemony” lacks the extreme tension of its predecessor.
Don’t get me wrong, one of Strange New Worlds’ best decisions has been the way the show has reinvented the Gorn, reimagining one of the Enterprise’s campiest Original Series antagonists as something straight out of a horror movie, complete with blood, gore, and a vicious killer instinct. These are aliens that are genuinely terrifying and distinctly not cute or friendly, so the thought of them invading a suspiciously Earth-like planet on a mission to kill all its colonists feels like the show finally getting back to the potential Gorn war the season 2 premiere hinted was coming. (And, not for nothing, but that the full grown Gorn that Spock and Chapel face off with is…something else.)
But the outcome of Pike’s big episode-ending choice seems incredibly obvious. Yes, he’s a goody-two-shoes boy scout who is a poster child for Starfleet values and rules, but we’ve already seen that he’s willing to do anything to save those in his charge (whether they’re his current crew or the cadets whose deaths he knows he’ll one day be responsible for). His hesitation is perfectly in character. It’s a big decision, after all, and one which will risk his crew, the woman he cares for, and perhaps launch that Gorn war his superiors are so worried about.
And Mount certainly does his best to sell Pike’s increasing sense of shock and terror—he looks like he’s about to throw up all over his helmsmen, his face has truly contained multitudes this season—but there’s little question (in my mind, at least) about what he’s going to do. If you ask me, his decision to risk bringing a Gorn spawn-infected Captain Batel onto the Enterprise is a great deal more shocking and potentially dangerous, and something I wish the show had spent a bit more time on in context. I mean…what are the odds that containment field isn’t going to break at the most inopportune moment?
I’ve mentioned this before, but as amazing as Wynonna Earp’s Melanie Scrofano is, one of the weakest aspects of Strange New Worlds season 2 is how little depth they’ve given Batel as a character in her own right. Despite being Pike’s romantic partner and technical equal in rank, she’s often treated as an idea as much if not more than an actual three-dimensional person—an emotional touchstone to ground Pike’s memories in “Among the Lotus Eaters”, an awkward duet partner in “Subspace Rhapsody,” a hostage to be rescued here on Parnassus Beta. Despite initially showing us Batel on an away mission with Chapel, we never really get to see much of her perspective on what happened to her or her crew, which means that the imminent threat of her horrific death matters more in terms of how it might affect Pike than her story. Do I particularly want her to sacrifice herself to save her crewmates from the Gorn spawn she’s now carrying inside her? Not really, but that would at least feel like the sort of active agency this character’s been largely denied.
And although there are certainly a lot of lives at risk on the Gorn ship, we already know that the bulk of the Enterprise team probably isn’t at any real risk. M’Benga and Sam Kirk have the safety of future-proofed plot armor, and while it’s possible the show might choose to kill off La’an or Ortegas, it’s not super likely. The show has barely scratched the surface of either character, and while that certainly wasn’t enough to save Hemmer back in season 1, there’s just no way this show is done with either of these women just yet. Sorry to the array of nameless Cayuga folks who are inevitably about to get eaten, I guess!
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