Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 1
"Valles Marineris"
Writer: Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers, Alan B. McElroy
Director: Chris Fisher
Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Rebecca Romijn
"You Punched A Dinosaur?"
Ready the away team and set phasers to stun, because Strange New Worlds is back with a brand new season and a premiere of prehistoric proportions!
In "Valles Marineris," Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) leads the Enterprise into a solar storm to answer a distress call. The mission inadvertently sends the ship hurtling back in time 65 million years to the Late Cretaceous, a period in Earth's history dominated by dinosaurs. Crippled and in desperate need of iridium, the decision is made to send Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and La'An Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) down to the planet after a deposit of the element is located near an active volcano.
It doesn't take long for the trio to attract the attention of the local wildlife—a bad-tempered T. rex who's none too thrilled about having her latest meal interrupted. Realizing they can't kill the creature for fear of wrecking the timeline, Una takes it upon herself to stun the dinosaur in an impromptu showdown of tech versus teeth. Fortunately, ol' Rexy really can't handle a well-placed phaser beam to the back of the mouth and goes down for a nap without much of a fight.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise finds itself captured by Martians who are at war with the Dol'drm, an insect-like species from a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. Captain Pike offers to help end the conflict peacefully, but their leader, Cassell (Saffron Burrows), decides to use a stolen antimatter fuel cell to destroy the Dol'drm homeworld and end the conflict once and for all.
Back on Earth, Una, Ortegas, and La'An arrive at the volcano, where they discover the remains of a downed Dol'drm colony ship. There, they're able to obtain the iridium needed to repair the Enterprise. Before they can head home, however, La'An gets up close and personal with a hungry dromaeosaur, leading to another prehistoric encounter that serves to remind the audience just how dangerous and unforgiving our world once was.
Back aboard the Enterprise, the crew races to stop Cassell from carrying out her deadly plan before Pike makes the last-second decision not to interfere. The Dol'drm planet is destroyed, creating the asteroid belt and shifting the orbit of Mars just enough to set it on the path toward becoming the barren world history remembers. In the ensuing destruction, a fragment of the shattered planet plummets toward Earth, becoming the Chicxulub asteroid that ultimately brings about the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The Enterprise then uses the energy released by the explosion to return to its own time, where Pike turns down a promotion from Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes)—but not before seeing Una promoted to commander.
Overflowing with moral quandaries, Cretaceous carnivores, and even cowboys, "Valles Marineris" is, to this longtime fan, a perfect season premiere. The visual effects are stunning, spearheaded by a selection of prehistoric beasties that look as though they could've stepped straight out of a Netflix documentary. To say I take my dinosaur representation rather seriously is a bit of an understatement and, while I would've loved to have seen even more of Star Trek's take on history's most lauded lizards, I'd say they've done a pretty fantastic job overall. While their screen time is brief, every one of these creatures feels believable and refreshingly animalistic, helping sell the illusion that the crew really has stumbled into Earth's distant past.
Add to that some genuinely fun moments of self-awareness, hilariously mounting tensions between Ortegas and Scotty (Martin Quinn) that had better be explored further as the season goes on, an intriguing time-travel revelation or two, and even a delightful "keep your ears open" Doctor Who nod courtesy of Carol Kane's Pelia, and you've got an episode that's—for lack of a better phrase—downright dino-mite.
More than anything, "Valles Marineris" continues to capture what makes Strange New Worlds such a joy to watch. It's adventurous without taking itself too seriously, willing to embrace wonderfully pulpy science fiction concepts while never losing sight of the characters at its heart. Whether it's debating the ethics of changing history, outrunning ravenous dinosaurs, or connecting the dots between real-world history and Star Trek mythology, the episode confidently reminds us why this soon-to-end series continues to be one of the strongest additions to Star Trek canon to date.
Buckle up, because Strange New Worlds is back—and it’s ready to roar!
