While not entirely remarkable, “The Serene Squall” is a fun, enjoyable episode with some good added lore — and who doesn’t love pirates? Beyond that though, it doesn’t really tread new ground for either Strange New Worlds, or the Star Trek franchise as a whole.

Unexpectedly, we begin the episode with T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) hard at work at the Ankeshtan K’tilk Vulcan Criminal Rehabilitation Center — she refers to it as a ‘retreat,’ but it seems just like a fancy prison — where outside of her official duties, she’s been researching ways to ‘spice up’ her relationship with Spock… by reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, and Maggie Wilson’s The Argonauts.

Spock (Ethan Peck) is rather taken aback by his fiancé’s headfirst dive into human sexual literature, and while he admits his appreciation for her efforts to understand his human side, it clearly makes him uncomfortable. It’s played for humor, but there’s a slight seriousness to it as well — in the sense that Spock isn’t ready to face the raw, external image of his identity that T’Pring’s research literature discusses.

By the standards of Star Trek’s usual discourse on mixed-race identity, this is somehow above average — barely. Putting Tropic of Cancer aside for another day, Spock connects with Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) on the way to head to dinner with Dr. Aspen (Jesse James Keitel), a guest who boarded the Enterprise to assist in a search for three colony ships lost outside of Federation space.

Apparently, the ships are being threatened by a pirate vessel called the Serene Squall, which doesn’t seem to concern Captain Pike (Anson Mount) very much — at least, not until La’an (Christina Chong) reports that two of the three colony ships have been found… in pieces.

The lack of survivors among the wreckage seems to suggest that the pirates were after the colonists themselves for slave labor — a grim callback and reminder of the casual native of galactic slavery that was discussed repeatedly in both Enterprise and the Original Series. With the threat of Federation citizens ending up in chains, Pike chooses to take the Enterprise out into unclaimed territory, beyond the reach of any help from Starfleet.

While the Enterprise searches for the colonists, Spock and Aspen engage with each other, with the counselor teasing more and more personal information from the Vulcan along the way. It’s a little bit wooden; perhaps even forced, and at worst is rather filler-y. It’s made up for by the tense scene when the ship gets trapped in an electromagnetic laser net (which viewers may recognize as apparent Tholian technology), and Spock has to pick the right asteroid to target to save the ship.

He’s horrified by the need to rely on his gut, which is a terrifying prospect, in a nice nod to some of the best Spock moments of years past, like when he is forced to rely on instinct and hunches instead of logic in “The Galileo Seven.”

Spock’s fear of his gut instinct (and his own reservations about being labelled either human or Vulcan) are easily deconstructed by Aspen, who points out that his species’ expectations limit him — something Spock has, apparently, not thought about before. He doesn’t have much time to reflect on this, however, before the Enterprise finds the last colony ship, where pirates are holding the missing civilians as hostages.

A routine landing party led by the “Boy Scout” captain himself goes wrong, however, as Pike and La’an soon learn that there are in fact no colonists on board the third ship at all — the entire scenario was a ruse to lure in the Enterprise, and the pirates use the chance to board and take over the starship while Pike and team are taken prisoner.

It’s a rather successful coup de main operation, with all of the bridge crew — save for Spock and Aspen — incapacitated in less than a minute, while Chapel flees into the Jefferies tube as the only other crewmate to avoid the pirates’ siege.

The plot bifurcates into two through lines here, with Captain Pike and his captive crew — including La’an, Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olansunmokun) — trying to throw off their chains aboard the Serene Squall, while Spock, Chapel, and Aspen work to take back control of the Enterprise, Die Hard-style.

While Spock and Aspen head for sickbay, Pike tries his best to charm the pirate crew by cooking an alternative meal to the Orion gruel being served up by their current captain, which is definitely not a solution Kirk would have used.

Chapel meanwhile fights off two pirates with a hypospray, as Spock and Aspen head to Engineering while arguing over whether or not to abandon the ship to the marauders. It turns out that Aspen was married to a Vulcan, and their husband was killed by this group of pirates — which, though severe, is still not enough of a motivation to dissuade Spock from trying to take back the ship.

The Pike food gambit (and his own subtle twisting of the Orion captain’s arm) seems to pay off, as the Orion decides to sell the Starfleet captives to the Klingons — much to the pirate crew’s disdain. With Pike gearing up to start a mutiny, everything seems to be in the favor of our heroes… that is, until Spock and Chapel end up handing control of the ship inadvertently handing over full control of the Enterprise to the pirate crew’s leader: Dr. Apsen.

Aspen reveals that their real identity is Captain Angel of the Serene Squall, and Jesse Keitel ramps up her performance to a level near the vicious, camp brutality of Rainn Wilson’s turn as Harry Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery — but with even more cruelty here. Angel revels in how hurt and betrayed Spock is, which is a bit painful to watch, and just a bit more labored.

But that first twist brings a second, as Angel reveals that Spock was in fact their sought prize the entire time; the pirate captain uses Spock’s relationship with T’Pring as leverage to force the release of a Vulcan dissident from the Ankeshtan K’tilk facility. Angel begins to threaten T’Pring with promised harm to Spock, if she doesn’t release someone named Xaverius from captivity.

With the fate of the Enterprise and T’Pring’s career at stake, Spock makes the drastic move of declaring his infidelity — a supposed affair with Chapel — as a gambit to prevent the prisoner transfer. He does so by saying he is in love with Nurse Chapel, which… yeah. They had to do this at some point, and I feel like half of us were dreading it. This isn’t the worst way they could have done it, but it’s not good either.

There probably wasn’t a good way, to be honest, but the fact that Chapel seems to immediately feel something after the two kiss is even more iffy. (Truthfully, I share Angel’s complete disbelief in it.)

The actors sell it — they really do! Jess Bush is excellent, but I can’t say I enjoyed it, or that her emotional reaction was well-earned. It seems to be enough for T’Pring though, as she joins in the act by immediately breaking off her engagement with Spock (to Angel’s shock), thus ending any chance of the prisoner exchange.

Before Angel can exact their fury on the Vulcan’s ship, the Enterprise goes into lockdown as Pike and crew swoop in aboard the Serene Squall, using override codes to save the day. Angel doesn’t stick around to end up in a rehabilitation center, beaming off before the crew can place them under arrest… but not before sharing that the mysterious Xaverius had “always talked about” him, cryptically sharing some final words of wisdom that appear to shake Spock to his core.

It’s a nicely-rounded ending with some tasty foreshadowing; first from T’Pring and Spock, who — despite renewing their engagement — are perhaps a little more more distant from each other, with Spock’s own humanity still misunderstood by his betrothed.

Chapel and Spock’s relationship also seems to be a little more fraught, with Spock’s attempts to apologize dismissed quickly — just as they had been by T’Pring — who points out that Spock would never cheat on his fiancé. He agrees, remarking that “She knows him well,” with a little apprehension — just as he also did with T’Pring.

However, he does share with Chapel something new: Angel’s parting words revealed to him that the dangerous, incarcerated Xaverius must be a pseudonym for someone the Vulcan has known for years…

…his emotional half-brother, Sybok.

CAMP NONSENSE OF THE WEEK

This week’s award has to go to Jesse James Keitel’s delicious performance as Captain Angel — but special mention to Captain Pike’s talk-like-a-pirate banter!

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Erica Ortegas continues her long run as the resident quip machine in this episode — for which I have no complaints — but the lack of any character focus on our helmswoman is beginning to show. Where’s the love for the Enterprise’s own Hawkeye Pierce?
   
• Spock’s explanation of the two-day communication delay back to Starfleet — because of the ship’s distance from subspace relays — offers a simple and elegant solution to the varied communication times with Starfleet we see across the Original Series.
   
• However, the subsequent piece of worldbuilding — that Starfleet doesn’t like its ships operating outside of Federation space — is a lot more confusing. If Starfleet doesn’t like
  having ships outside of the Federation, then where exactly has the Enterprise been exploring? Within the boundaries of the UFP? I get the point of the line, making it clear to viewers that Pike’s going out on a limb… but it should have been clearer as to what boundary exactly the Enterprise crossed in this episode.

• The Squall’s Orion first mate’s plan to sell the Enterprise crew to Klingons is an allusion to key accusation against the Klingon Empire in “Errand of Mercy,” where Kirk attests to the Empire’s planetary labor camps. This is, however, the first time that such an accusation has been confirmed on screen.
   
• The Enterprise crew was to be sold on Qu’Vat Colony, the Klingon world where Phlox was taken to cure the Augment virus in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Affliction.”
   
• When Angel takes over the Enterprise, they fire the ship’s phasers as a test; eight beams, in four groups of two, are fired forward. Despite being the sort of person who is informed enough to know where exactly all the phaser batteries are on the Enterprise, I have no idea where those eight beams came from.

• T’Pring’s colleague on Ankeshtan K’Til is Stonn, the man who will ultimately win the Vulcan woman’s heart after her future falling-out with Spock.
   
• Sybok (a.k.a. Xaverius) is said to be a member of of the V’tosh ka’tur — or “Vulcans without logic” — introduced in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Fusion,” and reintroduced to the modern era in “Spock Amok.” Sybok had been theorized to be a member of this dissident group by fans after its first appearance in Enterprise.
   
• This episode marks the first mention of Sybok in 33 years, after his single appearance in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

“The Serene Squall” isn’t a bad episode, or even a mediocre one. Keitel is exceptional as Angel, and I certainly hope we’ll get to see her back as that sneering, exuberant pirate, hopefully arm-in-arm with Sybok himself. But apart from that, it’s enjoyable enough — while allusions to the wider, dangerous galaxy are always good, compared to last week, it’s not really taking any big swings.

It’s a safe bet of an episode, from the pirate plot down to the Spock/Chapel kiss. Is that a bad thing? Possibly. One of my mild worries is that “Strange New Worlds” may not try anything wild with its formula, and will stick a little too close to old ground.

Most of the previous six episodes have in one way or another subverted a standard Trek episode formula, but this does just about everything by the numbers, from start to finish. I hope that isn’t a sign that they’re not willing to push the boundaries of their storytelling.

This does not, of course, mean I did not enjoy the episode. But there was room for more, I think. Explore different characters! (We’re still overdue for a full-fledged Ortegas episode!) But I’m not unhappy; it was well cast and decently paced, and will be an easy rewatch — but it could have been more.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “The Elysian Kingdom” on Thursday, June 23 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

The first three episodes of the series will arrive to the UK and Ireland on Paramount+ on June 22 (with weekly releases following); additional international distribution has not yet been announced.