Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Those Old Scientists Season 2 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Those Old Scientists Season 2 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

“Those Old Scientists” is now available to stream now via Paramount+ after an advance screening at San Diego Comic Con.

First, it’s probably worth taking a moment to appreciate the level of difficulty at work in this episode. That Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome bear more than a passing resemblance to their Star Trek: Lower Decks characters certainly helps make their transition from animation to live-action believable. But Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds are shows with extremely different tones and performance styles. The difference should be so jarring to make any merging of universes impossible.

The solution: “Those Old Scientists” leans into the clash. That Boimler (Quaid) and Mariner (Newsome) don’t fit in on the Enterprise is the gag that undergirds the entire episode. They talk too loud. They make, as Una points out, weirdly specific references to Star Trek lore. Quaid runs like a cartoon character. Newsome even keeps Mariner’s mischievous grin as her character’s default facial expression in this new environment. It’s undoubtedly hard to make all the pieces fit together, but “Those Old Scientists” makes it look pretty effortless.

Anyone who doesn’t know what’s coming might at first think they’ve tuned into the wrong show. The episode’s animated opening is set on the USS Cerritos, the underachieving California-class starship the Lower Decks characters call home. It also opens in familiar Lower Decks fashion, with Boimler nerding out over a mundane assignment for reasons tied to Federation history, and Mariner making fun of him for it as Tendi (Noël Wells) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) get excited over the mission’s scientific potential. And, also in Lower Decks tradition, things quickly start to spin out of control. After Boimler and Tendi disagree as to whether the portal was discovered by the Enterprise or Orion scientists (“They weren’t all pirates,” you know, Tendi reminds him) and Boimler expresses a desire to live in the past, the portal activates and grants his wish.

This, naturally, comes as a surprise to the (long-ago, from Boimler’s perspective) members of the Enterprise who greet him on the other side. Though they quickly figure out Boimler’s a harmless (and wildly enthusiastic to be among his heroes) traveler from the future, his presence is a real problem. Like any visitor from another time, he could screw up history. And as a student of Federation history with a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge about the Enterprise and its crew, he could screw it up in one specific way: by letting them know what’s coming. To prevent this from happening, he’s handed over to La’an, who briefs him on “temporal protocols,” including an admonition not to form any attachments. It’s La’an’s own addition and one she understands all too well.

Then again, history isn’t always right. Mariner knows Uhura for her ability to enjoy life and not be on duty all the time. That doesn’t quite square with the Uhura we know from TOS or the movies (who can relax, but not to the point where it’s her defining trait), and it really doesn’t square with the Ensign Uhura of Strange New Worlds who works all the time, to the point it worries those around her. Boimler discovers this firsthand when he meets her for himself and gets a brush-off that suggests she’s too busy for his nonsense.

But it’s Boimler’s encounter with Spock that really weirds him out. Returning to the portal with Spock and M’Benga, Boimler makes Spock laugh, then barely has time to process this moment before an Orion ship shows up (though it will haunt him later). Are they pirates? Pike assumes they are before Boimler tips him off that this Orion vessel might be peaceful. But the line between science and piracy gets a little blurry when they steal the portal and take off, seemingly stranding Boimler in the past forever.

At least he’s making friends. After some ribbing from Chapel and Ortegas, he gets an invitation to join them for movie night, then accidentally lets slip that (a) Pike’s birthday is coming up, and (b) it’s a holiday in his era. A party strikes Chapel and Ortegas as a good idea, even if Boimler worries it could change the future. Then he really puts his foot in it. Following Chapel to the turbolift, he expresses his concern that his joke may have broken Spock, whom he knows as an unsmiling, joke-averse historical hero. He goes on to tell her he’s read every book about Spock available to him, and they don’t mention this. And that, Chapel realizes, means they don’t mention her.

The note of melancholy La’an sounds when she warns Boimler about forming attachments sets the stage for other such moments to come. Pike has spent the entire series coping with the knowledge that he’ll meet his end in less than a decade, and nothing Boimler tells him suggests otherwise. But Boimler knows what awaits other characters too, just as we do. As fun as it is to watch their relationship and as much as they seem to be enjoying it, whatever’s going on between Spock and Chapel won’t last without some disruption of the continuity. “I never assumed that I would get to influence him forever,” Chapel says through tears. Sometimes it’s best not to know where you’re going.

After using some future tech to put the Enterprise on the trail of the Orions (with the ship’s crew looking the other way lest they learn something they shouldn’t), Boimler urges Pike (and his “really great hair”) to find a peaceful solution. They do, though it means giving up some grain badly needed by some hungry colonists. And with that, they gain the ability to send Boimler back to his own time. The end.

Or it would be if the attempt didn’t result in Mariner traveling through the portal and joining them. For Mariner, this is no problem at all (especially if she gets to meet Uhura). But for Pike and the others, it means their troubles have doubled. Pike decides to put the new arrivals to work, sending Boimler off with Spock and letting Mariner hang out with (and fan out over) Uhura. But Mariner’s admiration for Uhura and her future accomplishments only stresses Uhura out more. Mariner’s suggestion, perfectly in keeping in character, is to slack off. Joined by Ortegas, they kick back with some improvised Orion Hurricanes, and, in the process, they figure out how to decipher the symbols that surround the portal.

Meanwhile, Boimler discovers that Spock has figured out what’s troubling him, having spoken to an upset Chapel. Even though she didn’t go into details, Spock correctly deduces that it’s his displays of human emotion that trouble Boimler because these moments don’t match up to history. But logic also suggests to Spock that he just needs to roll with it. If he tries to be less human after speaking to Boimler, that itself will alter history. Whatever will end his relationship with Chapel, it’s not this.

One pep talk from Pelia later, Boimler joins Mariner on a shuttle with the intention of reclaiming the grain Pike previously traded away. It’s a short-lived plan, thanks to La’an discovering them before they can take off. Busted, they’re taken to Pike’s quarters, who’s mad but softens when he hears that Boimler once dressed as him for Halloween. (“He had to contour the hell out of the jawline,” Mariner notes.) But what’s really annoying him is the rumor that Boimler has encouraged the crew to throw him a birthday party, not so much because he doesn’t think he has many birthdays left but because this is the year when he outlives the father with whom he had a difficult relationship and, frankly, he’d planned to spend it drinking alone. But ticked off as he was when the conversation began, Pike comes around to Boimler’s way of thinking when the time traveler suggests that if his years are more limited than he’d like, Pike might want to spend some quality time with his friends.

With the mention of Captain Archer’s original Enterprise, Boimler hits on a plan that will allow them to reactivate the portal using the alloy they need to fire it up again, which can be found on a piece of the older ship encased in the new one. One “Live long and prosper”’ from Spock later, they’re on their way home. Or they would be if there weren’t Orions in the way. Fortunately, they arrive at a compromise by letting the Orion scientists take credit for the discovery. (Tendi was right after all! Sort of.) After stepping through the portal and back into Lower Decks’ animated world, they’ve left some of it behind on the Enterprise. Pike’s party is fueled by genuine Orion Hurricanes, which seem to have the ability to alter reality, temporarily rendering them two-dimensional (and weirding them out as the episode cuts to the credits).

This was a fun one, and fun in the same self-aware-but-not-too-self-aware style of Deep Space Nine’s “Trials and Tribble-ations.” And while it’s a lark of an episode, it also takes the ongoing story arcs of several characters quite seriously. Chapel’s moment in the turbolift is heartbreaking, made even more so by the way she steels herself after she absorbs the implications of what Boimler tells her. This is a character who has learned not to expect too much but who’d begun to believe that maybe she’d get what she wants anyway. But mostly it keeps it light, even more in the second half, which plays at times more like a Lower Decks episode than Strange New Worlds. Here’s hoping this becomes a tradition, no matter how tricky it is to pull off.

Hit It!

• The animated credits are a nice, unexpected touch.

• Memorable lines:
“But flipping it open’s the best part.”
“Funny captain. What’s happening?”
“I was thoroughly unprepared for how hot Young Spock was going to be.”

• The running, and developing, gag about Boimler’s reverence for Una and the poster he has pinned up (but which is not a pinup) was fun and touching, and having Ransom (voiced by Rebecca Romijn’s real-life husband, Jerry O’Connell) admire it was the perfect button for it in this self-referential episode.

• Pelia’s quote — “I always pretended to be someone I wanted to be until finally I became that someone, or he became me” — comes from none other than Cary Grant. Now there’s a potentially fun time-travel episode.

• “Thanks for going back to the TOS era.” It’s a clever title in a couple of ways, isn’t it?

• This episode was written by Kathryn Lyn, who has previously written for both Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, and Bill Wolkoff, who’s been with Strange New Worlds since its first season. In an additional behind-the-scenes crossover, it’s directed by Jonathan Frakes.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Recap