‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 4 opener is a pulpy sci-fi joy packed with dinosaurs, martians, and a 5th planet where the asteroid belt should be
If you’re of a Martian persuasion, “Strange New Worlds”‘ season 4 opener couldn’t have timed itself much better.
Not only does this week mark the 50th anniversary of Viking 1 touching down on the surface of the red planet, new research from University of Oxford scientists recently suggested that Mars once had an active, interconnected system of magma beneath its surface. If accurate, this discovery might have made our Solar System next-door neighbor more habitable in its distant past.
While life on Mars has long been an obsession of sci-fi creators — from HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds” to “Doom” via John Carter and John Carpenter — “Star Trek”‘s Martians have tended to be human expats. Indeed, by the 24th century of “The Next Generation”, “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager”, it’s home to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards that would later be destroyed by rogue synths ahead of “Star Trek: Picard”‘s debut season.
SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH “VALLES MARINERIS” SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.
Homegrown Martians had traditionally been in shorter supply, however, until “Valles Marineris” paid them a visit. The only catch? Captain Pike and his USS Enterprise crew have to travel a mere 65 million years back in time to say hi.
There’s something undeniably delicious (though not, luckily, the crew) about Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) getting to visit the real Jurassic Park (technically Cretaceous Park) on an away mission to recover the iridium they need to repair an Enterprise stricken by its accidental trip through a quantum entangled spatial anomaly.
In the tradition of “Planet of the Apes”, it turns out that this particular third rock from the sun was Earth all along. It also, according to star Rebecca Romijn, features an actual puppet from the original “Jurassic Park”, and gives La’an that rare opportunity to punch a dinosaur in the face. That’s definitely one to tell the grandkids — assuming, of course, you can avoid stepping on a bug, unleashing a butterfly effect, and preventing them (and the entire human race, for that matter) from ever being born.
But it’s no coincidence that Pike has a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess of Mars” on his bookshelf, because it’s what happens in orbit that makes this episode such a pulpy sci-fi joy.
Although Battle Commander Cassell (Saffron Burrows) and her crew have the familiar, human-esque appearance of most “Star Trek” aliens, Martian evolution has got them there millions of years before Vulcans, Klingons, and the rest become top dogs in the galaxy. (Spock notes that Martian DNA is present in many modern-day species, though it’s unclear how their family tree aligns with the “Progenitor” origin story of “TNG”‘s “The Chase”.)
These technologically advanced Martians are embroiled in a bloody ongoing war with a “Starship Troopers”-adjacent arachnid species known as the Dol’Drm, who call the fifth planet of the Sol System home. Science purists will note that this strange new world is not the famously gaseous Jupiter, but an extra, science textbook-rewriting ball of rock located roughly where the Asteroid Belt is now.
Unfortunately, once Cassell has sneaked a peek at a future where her “homeworld is a barren red wasteland”, she’s in no mood to listen to Federation lectures about finding diplomatic solutions. She subsequently steals some of the Enterprise’s antimatter and fashions a makeshift weapon of mass destruction to eliminate the Dol’Drm once and for all. But the shockwaves of this cataclysmic blast will stretch far beyond the fifth planet.
Spock confirms that many of the fragments left behind by the obliteration of the Dol’Drm homeworld will form the Asteroid Belt, essentially a riff on the so-called “Disruption Hypothesis” of the belt’s origins.
Originally postulated by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers in the early 19th century, the theory suggested that a rocky planet, roughly the size of our Moon, existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
It was the destruction of this world (by means unknown, though we doubt anyone suggested an antimatter explosion) that led to the formation of the belt. The hypothesis is now largely discredited — current scientific thinking suggests that the belt is the result of dust and rock coalescing due to gravity — but it’s a fun revisionist spin on old scientific ideas.
And the Enterprise’s involvement in the Solar System’s origin story stretches even further. The gravimetric shift caused by the absence of the Dol’Drm planet shifts Mars’ orbit, making it too cold to support life. It also launches arguably the most famous asteroid in history, the Chicxulub meteorite, on a collision course with Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, kickstarting the Cenozoic Era, and sending the planet on an evolutionary journey that will eventually lead to, well, us.
When it comes to interfering with past events, the implications are rather larger than Scotty passing on the formula for yet-to-be-invented transparent aluminum in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”. Even the Borg meddling with a few centuries of history in “First Contact” is small fry next to killing off the dinosaurs.
The intriguing twist here, of course, is that humanity’s existence is briefly on a knife-edge, as Pike makes the biggest decision of his (or, indeed, anyone’s) life. Standard Starfleet protocol would usually dictate that the Enterprise intervene to prevent the Dol’Drm being destroyed by stolen Federation technology, but its commanding officer sees the bigger picture.
What if the Enterprise was always meant to be there? What if the human race only exists because the ship has gone back in time to answer its own 65-million-year-old Mayday? “In our future there is no fifth planet,” he reasons, before allowing the Martians to deliver their deadly payload.
It’s a wonderful “what if” that puts 65 million years of history in one man’s hands. Indeed, you could tie yourself in knots with all that timey-wimey stuff, but the episode is so much pulpy fun that you barely notice the unbearable weight of those existential dilemmas. Dinosaurs, Martians and an origin story for the human race? What more could you want from a season opener?
New episodes of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.
