Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Recap: Hallucination Vacation

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Human Best Friend
Season 4 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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The crew of the Enterprise has been dealing with some heavy stuff lately and could use a vacation. And, honestly, those of us watching at home might need a vacation, too, after “The Griffin Incident,” the strong but extremely dark previous episode. And the sense that everyone needs a break is only reinforced by an opening sequence in which Scotty’s and Ortegas’s personal logs reveal that they’re both really stressed out. What’s more, they’re stressed out in no small part because of each other. Scotty thinks Ortegas pushes the ship too hard. Ortegas hates that he’s installed an alert system to let her know when she’s not staying within his preferred parameter (and taping over it only goes so far). Pressure has been building between them for a while now, and it seems like it will soon explode.

Then again, everyone’s feeling a bit burnt out, as Una points out. So maybe a stop is in order. So why not stop at the Cesnar Grand, a resort whose owner, Dendru (Dave Foley), promises visitors, in his words, “the time of your life.” He also invites them to think of him as their “new best friend,” which sounds presumptuous. But when you run a resort on a planet whose atmosphere provides an intoxicating high custom-tailored to each visitor’s needs, maybe it makes sense. Perhaps it’s time they take a “personal journey to de-stress station.” Also, it’s a tech-free zone, which sounds appealing, though the pages of fine print that appear at the end of Dendru’s ad suggest things could go wrong. Maybe it will be, as Chapel promises, “the best shore leave ever.”

Is it? Actually, yes, though the crew’s visit isn’t without some complications. After a rough landing filled with Scotty and Ortegas’s ongoing argument, they open the door to the shuttle and a wave of psychedelic distortions envelops them. Smash cut to Ortegas waking up in a trashed hotel room (complete with a crawling tribble and other bits of Trek lore). She’s wearing a cast and headband with Andorian antennae and almost immediately begins fighting with what looks like a Mugato but is actually Scotty wearing a furry costume. He’s still intoxicated. She’s not, but she’s deeply confused about the missing time when Dendru shows up with a message for Pike. “Sometimes if you’re hanging onto negative emotions it can negate or alter the effects of the atmosphere,” he explains. (It was in the brochure’s microprint, underneath the fine print.) So now she’s hungover, perplexed, tasked with a mission and — because Scotty’s too messed-up to be left alone — saddled with a sidekick she despises (or at least thinks she despises). Some vacation!

First stop: Spock’s room, where the science officer first doesn’t recognize them then apologizes because he is “quite incapacitated.” They don’t notice any difference, but Spock reveals he has “been hallucinating a manifestation of James Kirk,” then adds, “We have been playing board games.” He is curious about the dragon he heard Ortegas talk about fighting the night before, however. When they leave, Kirk (or is it Kirk?) emerges to give Spock a hand.

Next stop, Nyota’s place, where they find her in high spirits and wearing an elaborate costume. She can’t help them, and — what’s more — they stress her out. “That is so not my vibe right now,” she tells them before sending them on their way. She can’t even offer a clue to where Pike is beyond telling them “He is on his own journey” (though she would like them to bring back cookies).

In the lounge, they don’t find Una, but they do find Una singing a rousing rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in Klingon and Dr. M’Benga clumsily attempting to do an impression of Tom Cruise in Cocktail. He’s not very good, but he is clearly enjoying himself. Also, he does know where to find Pike: He’s in the tattoo parlor.

He’s also having a grand time, even contemplating a face tattoo as a follow-up to the elaborate horse tattoo he’s getting on his arm. His mood doesn’t change even after Ortegas delivers the news that the Rodaxian diplomats they were scheduled to meet in two weeks will be there in two hours. This doesn’t panic him, but it does alarm Ortegas and Scotty, who are charged with getting the shuttle so they can be on their way. “I like you two having fun together,” he tells them before they leave. “You should keep it going.” He’s got a point, too. The tension between them seemed a little forced in the season premiere, but here it helps create a buddy-comedy vibe that’s one of the most charming elements of this fun episode.

More complications ensue. It seems Scotty was given the chip needed to retrieve the shuttle. A tricorder might help, and they know Nyota has one. They acquire the tricorder, though Nyota makes her assistance contingent on the two apologizing to one another, but their relief proves short-lived after Scotty accidentally breaks the tricorder. Plan B: hack into the resort’s computer system. Scotty’s too out of his head to pull this off, so they bring Spock, who claims he’s also too inebriated for the task but proceeds anyway.

It’s a good thing they brought him, too, since there seems to be no computer to hack into at all. Unless, as Spock suggests, the unassuming houseplant on the main office desk is actually a piece of “photosynthetic technology.” This sounds absurd to Scotty and Ortegas, but after telepathically linking to it (“My mind to your leaves. My thoughts to your root system.”) he finds the shuttle. It’s in a dangerous area, so he recommends bringing a “much, much scarier” than usual La’An with them. 

Spock can’t join them, however. This experience (and, presumably, the planet’s atmosphere) has caused him to hallucinate Scotty and Ortegas as plants. When they exit, Kirk enters, and they have Spock’s version of a heart-to-heart talk. He now knows why he’s hallucinating Kirk. He’s never had “what humans call a ‘human best friend,’” someone to whom he can really pour out his hopes and fears, which he’s on the verge of doing as the scene ends. 

When Ortegas and Scotty find La’An, they discover that Spock was right: She is much scarier than usual. They pull her away from her attempt to turn a relaxation class into a combat seminar and put her aggression to better use, pointing her toward the gang of toughs who know where their shuttle is. But instead of merely defeating them, she becomes their leader and, to set a good example, she demands Scotty’s shirt as payment for the information. 

Aboard the shuttle, they discover that Ortegas has had the shuttle hidden beneath her cast the whole time, a revelation almost immediately followed by the arrival of some masked figures who knock them out, whisk them away, and tie them to chairs. In the escape efforts that follow, the two discover they have a lot in common, including fractious sibling relations. When their kidnapper reveals himself, it turns out to be Dendru, who, by his logic, was just trying to keep them on “their journey” and honor their request to be kept away from their shuttle at all costs, a deal sealed with “big-up high-fives.”

When Dendru reveals that he’s been manipulating them, the revelation angers Ortegas. But doesn’t everything anger Ortegas? That’s Dendru’s working theory. What’s more, he tells Ortegas that he used to be a lot like her, that he “always be looking for something to be angry about.” This seems to get through to Ortegas even though she tells Scotty they need to be on her way. But first: They need to pull Chapel out of a bingo game that’s taken an ugly turn, one that threatens to turn even uglier when La’An and her gang show up.

Soon they’re headed back to the Enterprise, even though everyone is still, put simply, pretty high. Can this peace negotiation be saved? Well, if Scotty and Ortegas can become friends, then there’s always hope. And it does seem like they really are becoming friends as they open up and explain how their past failures and family experiences might have contributed to the tension between them. It’s very sweet. But the discovery of a bomb also means their newfound friendship might be short-lived.

Fortunately, Spock’s there to help, even though he still sees Ortegas as a cactus. What he discovers is, well, not that helpful: a message from past Scotty and Ortegas (who already became friends; they just forgot about it) to present Scotty and Ortegas telling them not to bring the shuttle back to the Enterprise because it’s been sabotaged. So now Spock, Scotty, and Ortegas have to find a way to get the bomb off the Enterprise, and the only solution they can think of is to pilot the shuttle away from the ship, transport off, and hope for the best. And the only person they have to help them is Spock.

Except it’s not: It turns out Spock has not been hallucinating Kirk. He’s been hanging with the real Kirk the whole time, and now his human best friend is there to help pull off this tricky maneuver. Not only does it work, the explosion miraculously saves the peace negotiations because it resembles a “formal rite of peace” (although Scotty almost loses a thumb in the process). That leaves Spock, after confirming Kirk is really there, to consider the repercussions of having spilled his “many, many secrets.” Perhaps he should take a cue from the others, who recount their misadventures on Cesnar over drinks. And, as the episode draws to a close, Scotty and Ortegas confirm their newfound understanding.

Every season of Strange New Worlds has featured at least one episode that emphasizes Star Trek’s silly side (and this may not be the last such outing in season four). But they’re rarely just silly, and the decision to put Scotty and Ortegas’s relationship at the center makes “Human Best Friend” more than just part of a long tradition of “the crew is under the influence” episodes that can be traced back to “The Naked Time,” the fourth episode of the original series. So does the subplot between Spock and Kirk that gives the episode its title. That said, it is a lot of fun watching these characters cut loose in ways that bring usually hidden aspects of their personality to the fore. Will we ever see Chapel ruthlessly play bingo again? The next time we see Pike, will he have a face tattoo? Almost certainly not, but knowing they’re capable of these shenanigans casts them in a different light.

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• Another question: Will we see Rebecca Romijn sing in Klingon again? Hopefully. She’s quite good at it (and the recent passing of Bonnie Tyler makes her selection kind of poignant, too). 

• This episode was written by Kathryn Lyn, a Lower Decks veteran who co-wrote some of Strange New Worlds’s funniest episodes (“Charades,” “Those Old Scientists,” and “A Space Adventure Hour,” as well as last season’s pseudo-documentary episode, “What Is Starfleet?”). Yana Gorskaya, whose credits include nearly two dozen episodes of What We Do in the Shadows, directs.