Combining well-paced action and medium-to-high stakes with emotional depth, “Hegemony” ended up being better than I expected. That foundation was a good base upon which to build an insightful fleshing out of the Gorn — beyond just ‘monsters’ — undercut only by a classic Trek cliffhanger that leaves half the story in the air.

The following contains major spoilers from the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season finale!

We open with the USS Cayuga’s crew on planet Parnassus Beta, helping to support the colony with logistical and medical needs. While Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) has tagged along in trade for a ride to Dr. Korby’s internship, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) loses comms, gets distracted by a falling shuttlecraft, and then watches as a large Gorn warship descends on her position — all within a matter of moments.
 
While Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is worried for Batel’s safety, Enterprise rushes to their aid… only to discover the wreck of the Cayuga strewn across orbital space.

It’s a good, punchy, high-stakes start to the finale. The next act is a little slower, as the gang try and figure out what’s happened — all as the writers set up the hurdles that will make everything a lot harder to do. While a Gorn-created dampening field around the planet prevents transporters, sensors, and comms from reaching the surface, the reptilian race has also claimed the planet as part of their territory (and their warships are watching the Enterprise like a hawk).

Starfleet honors the Gorn territorial demands, so it’s up to Pike’s usual disregard for regulations to save the Cayuga crew from the colonists. Thankfully, his own crew shares those sentiments, so Pike whips out a box of super-secret anti-Gorn weaponry — most of which conveniently look like their regular arsenal — and he leads a landing party to go, uh, bug hunting.

Honestly the visceral tone towards killing the Gorn (especially from scientists and healers like Spock, Sam Kirk, and M’Benga) is really grim. It’s clear, perhaps, that it’s being done on purpose — especially from the way that Pike tells April that sometimes “monsters are just monsters” — so there is clearly a reckoning coming. But it still comes across as a little shallow that our Starfleet heroes have embraced “We Come in Peace, Shoot to Kill” to a level that is no longer amusing.

We do, however, finally get some good moments from she-who-flies-the-ship, Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia). With the Gorn monitoring all orbital activity, our helm officer suggests floating a strike team aboard a shuttle disguised as the Cayuga’s wreckage –which is a cool suggestion, and is immediately followed by an incredibly slick sequence involving a sneak past a Gorn Hunter… before crash-diving through the atmosphere at high speed, showing how much Ortegas likes her job instead of just telling us about it.

They finally made Ortegas cool! With character! It only took 2 seasons!

Planetside, the strike team — consisting of Pike, Ortegas, Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte), M’Benga (Babs Olosunmokun) and La’an (Christina Chong) — make their way through the abandoned town, where their new weapons work well on the young Gorn infesting the colony. With signs of survivors nearby, the team sets out to find a lone biosignature among the seemingly-deserted town…

…which turns out to be decoy trap set by none other than one Lieutenant Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn)! The intrepid Aberdeen pub-crawler was aboard the stellar study vessel USS Stardiver (great name, by the way) in a nearby system when it was attacked by the Gorn, and he made his way to Parnassus in that crashing shuttle seen earlier.

I can understand why some might be irritated at the introduction of another legacy character from the Original Series; we’ve had a lot of Jim Kirk this season, and with this addition, we’re already halfway to the iconic Enterprise crew in someone else’s show. (Which, fair.)

However, this is Montgomery Scott we’re talking about — the man who knows Enterprise better than Jim Kirk himself! If it were me, I’d have had him on the Enterprise from day one, but I will absolutely take this introduction to the character, especially as in this thankfully-unspoiled surprise.

Back on Enterprise, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Pelia (Carol Kane) crack the location of the Gorn jamming device, and the crew devise a plan to use the Cayuga’s saucer to destroy the Gorn transmitter on the planet — but it requires that Spock (Ethan Peck) spacewalk over to the floating wreckage to attach special thrusters.

Spock’s just really here to worry about Chapel, which is fine, but I’d have preferred him to pretend otherwise for a bit longer than he actually does. These sequences are a slightly annoying (but plot-necessary) distraction from the action on the ground, where Pike and the team link up with the remaining survivors under the command of a weary Captain Batel — who is just as mad to see Pike as she is happy to see him. How nice, I guess.

With no way to evacuate everyone by shuttle alone, Batel and Pike decide to use Lieutenant Scott’s fake Gorn transponder as way to move people secretly. Well, no, that’s not right: it’s more of a contrivance that Scotty can’t build them a new one, so Pike decides to go alone to the engineer’s crashed shuttle — but he gets caught by both Batel and Scotty before he leaves, so they go as a trio.

Aboard the Cayuga, the camera ventures slowly into the mangled and dead saucer section to find Nurse Chapel alive and alone on the floating corpse, struggling to save herself as she sees the Enterprise — and then Spock — coming to her rescue. While Spock is busy placing thrusters to push the Cayuga into the planet, Chapel decides to don an EVA suit to find him. What’s the worst than could happen?

The next bit jumps around a lot in perspective, something that Strange New Worlds has been doing a lot this season — whiplashing viewers from a Gorn-does-Alien³ encounter in Scotty’s shuttle to the equally terrifying shots of Chapel running into an adult Gorn in a full spacesuit aboard the Cayuga. Freaky! But, more importantly, a spacesuited Gorn is a good signpost that the whole “they’re just monsters!” thing has been a planned bait and switch the whole time.

The sequence on Cayuga’s bridge, where Spock and Chapel team up for a very “Arena”-esque slow-motion battle — this time in zero-G — was a good fight scene, and not overly complicated like some of the other action pieces this Strange New Worlds has thrown at us this season.

The way the adult Gorn fights — and how it horrifically dies when Spock breaks the seal on its helmet — definitely speaks to a more nuanced and intelligent understanding of Gorn worldbuilding than before… at least, I hope so. I certainly like the idea of the Gorn scouring the carcass of a starship for enemy intelligence and sealed records more than I do them using their children as biological weapons.

Speaking of Gorn younglings, Pike suspects there is something more to their organized behavior, especially after Scotty’s talk about solar activity influencing the creatures. But while that’s a supposition, it’s a fact that there’s something odd with Captain Batel’s behavior — as we find out that she’s been implanted with Gorn biologicals, much like poor Hemmer last season.

Just in time, the Cayuga’s crashing saucer smashes into the Gorn transmitter, knocking out the dampening field. Hooray! With sensors, comms, and transporter locks restored, the crew waste no time in beaming Spock, Chapel, Pike, Batel and Scotty aboard. Batel is rushed to sickbay with Pike and Scotty… who has a mortifying (and amusing) reunion with his former professor, Pelia.

With Gorn ships closing in on Enterprise and Starfleet ordering Pike to withdraw, it’s high time to hit the road — except the colonists and half of the Enterprise landing party (M’Benga, La’an, Ortegas, and Sam Kirk) got beamed aboard one of those Gorn ships when the dampening field went down.

As Pike must decide whether or not to go after his captured crew, the Gorn ships are set on tearing the Enterprise to pieces — leaving Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to end Season 2 with its first “To Be Continued” cliffhanger ending.

GIVING IT ALL HE’S GOT

Martin Quinn’s take on a young Montgomery Scott is fantastic. He walks and talks like Jimmy Doohan, but brings aspects of both Simon Pegg’s Kelvin Timeline performance to the role, along of course with his his own unique characterization.

There are elements of Scotty’s affable, unflappable engineering genius underneath the nervous junior officer’s stress of being in an unfamiliar environment — especially when he catches the Enterprise crew in his Gorn trap.

There are a lot of things about Strange New Worlds I don’t like, but they have yet to drop the ball when they’ve taken on the daunting task of recasting Original Series characters… and I didn’t have to try very hard to see Scotty in Quinn’s performance.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• The colony town’s midwestern United States design is a clever cover for the use of a contemporary Toronto filming location — and a fun nod to the often-reused city backlot sets used in the Original Series.
• Batel’s close encounter with the Gorn baby on Scotty’s shuttle is a clear homage to the Alien series — perhaps too clear a nod for my taste.
• Cayuga’s saucer crash has definite echoes to the crashing Enterprise saucer in Star Trek Beyond.
• Scotty says “Lieutenant” with the correct English pronunciation (“lef-tenant”), as opposed to that strange colonial pronunciation that everyone else uses in the franchise.

“Hegemony” is the best of the series’ three Gorn episodes to date — the stakes are high, but not they’re not galaxy-ending high; we learn a little more about Gorn biology and culture; we see how much Pike cares for Batel; we get some finality and normalcy between Spock and Chapel — but no conclusion to any of their stories.

It is in many senses, the archetypal Trek cliffhanger episode, and one that is going to last for a long time. With production on Strange New Worlds Season 3 on indefinite hold — since the show can’t proceed until the WGA and SAG-AFTRA union strikes reach a conclusion (solidarity forever, by the way) — it will be at minimum a full calendar year until the series returns, leaving this open story to become nearly as notorious as the summer following “The Best of Both Worlds.”

I think I would be more forgiving of this Gorn arc (and of the various character arcs in general) if this had been the end of a 20-episode season. As much as I like the slow serialisation in Strange New Worlds, would it kill them to finish a plot arc within one season?

Granted, the show was green-lit to a two season order, so the producers and writers knew how much runway they had a head of them… but this Gorn arc is so lengthy, and only now are we getting the nuance that all Trek adversaries deserve, something we deserve as a generally-intelligent and curious audience. It was an exciting episode, and I definitely enjoyed it more than I expected, but between the cliffhanger and the frustration that only now are the Gorn getting an ounce of depth… I’m not totally pleased.

But whenever this show comes back — more Scotty, please!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will return for Season 3 sometime after the resolution of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes; production on the next round of episodes has not yet begun.

Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to Paramount+ on September 7, with a two-episode Season 4 premiere.