Number one to beam up. Image: Paramount
Three weeks later, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has already settled into a satisfying groove: part riff on a formula Star Trek loves, part focus on a unique character, part classic moral tale. This week, you get bang for your buck with not one, but two formula riffs—and much more in a fascinating look at Rebecca Romijn’s Una Chin-Riley, better known as Number One.
Number One is somehow known for being an unknown – after all, she existed in Trek’s first pilot and then disappeared from screens for generations until Discovery revived the character for its second season. But it’s not as if Star Trek’s apocryphal material hasn’t attempted to illuminate Number One throughout its many off-screen generations, and now Romijn’s take on the character – headstrong, confident and supportive of Pike and the crew – gets the hang of it them around – it’s a chance to bridge the gap between the Trek universes that have coexisted on screen and in books for years. And crucially, you don’t have to be a die-hard Trek for it to resonate because it layers it into a much more universal morality metaphor along the way. Also: very cool jackets are included.
Image: Outstanding
But before all that, what is Ghost of Illyria’s two-for-one bundle deal for Star Trek scenarios? Well, we have the fan-favorite stranded Away team members as Pike and Spock investigate a seemingly vanished colony of Illyrians – a small but important Trek race that only appeared on screen once in Enterprise, but has a new life developed Trek novels as a race of bioengineered humanoids whom the Federation look down on for genetic augmentation – after a dangerous ion storm cut them off from transport with the rest of the away team. As the duo investigate what may have happened to the Illyrians on Hetmet IX, the officers who make it back to the Enterprise suddenly find themselves with a bizarre illness: a photophobia caused by a vitamin D deficiency viral effect that lowers an infected person’s inhibitions to the point of craving for light, no matter how ruthless.
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Of course, it doesn’t take long for the virus to spread throughout the Enterprise, and things get a bit “macrocosmic” with a dash of “The Naked Time,” as a seemingly untouched Number One finds himself as one of the only people on the remain ship that can function. But there’s more to it than that, as Strange New Worlds layers lots of little side threads into the episode’s central mystery as things get worse on the ship. On the ground, Pike and Spock encounter mysterious energy spirits attempting to attack the one safe place they have taken refuge from the storm. On the ship, Number One realizes she’s not the only one hiding secrets about keeping herself safe from the disease when it becomes clear there is something private about Dr. M’Benga, which may have played a role in causing the infection to spread through the ship. Add in the occasional attempts by a inhibited Chief Engineer Hemmer and Chief of Security La’an to nearly destroy the ship by attempting to open incredibly dangerous light sources (an irradiated segment of the planet’s mantle and a warp core breach, respectively). and it almost seems like there’s a little too much going on.
Image: Outstanding
It all starts to fall into place quite elegantly, however, with the big twist: Una has been stricken by the Light Virus, but her body has naturally created antibodies against it because she herself is an Illyrin – a canon acknowledgment of explorations made in novels like Vulcan’s became Glory” and “Child of Two Worlds” decades ago, which fleshed out Number One’s unseen backstory. When Pike and Spock find out that the colonists on Hetmet IX accidentally succumbed to the disease while trying to undo their Illyrian augmentation to join the Federation – which bans genetic augmentation, of course thanks to a little fella named Khan Noonien-Singh – undertakes Number One took steps to reveal herself as an Illyrin as well after lying about her origins in order to join Starfleet. From there, Ghosts of Illyria becomes even more of a classic morality tale, reminding us that even a flagship like the Enterprise is manned by imperfect beings, human or otherwise.
Each person on board the ship has sacrificed or tampered with rules to compensate for past trauma and prejudice because of something important to them or someone they love. When La’an, who herself comes from a bullying background due to her family heritage with Khan, yells at Una — inhibited by the virus or otherwise — that she’s a monster, and then lashes out with her friend at Una’s cover-up about her In the past we see the two briefly confronted with the prejudices imposed on them by the Federation, which drove both to desperate measures. When it’s revealed why Hetmet’s virus got onto the ship because M’Benga didn’t update his medical transporter – because he keeps hiding his terminally ill daughter in his pattern buffer – you can see the heartbreak on his face as he asks Una , why There’s nothing as simple as saving his daughter’s life for him, the chief medical officer aboard Starfleet’s most advanced ship. And even, perhaps most somber and intriguing of all, when Una resigns her position after violating several Federation rules, and Pike refuses to accept it, she privately ponders if her captain and friend would still do it if they don’t “one of them would be the good guys” when it comes to their distrusted species.
Image: Outstanding
It’s a fascinating acknowledgment of an idea Star Trek loves. And it’s one that perhaps loves its modern iteration the most – particularly Discovery, where it’s been something of an obsession lately. It’s the idea that not only are the elite beings of utopias like the Federation not all perfect, they better not try to maintain that illusion of enlightened perfection. If they could just sit down and talk to each other, they could find acceptance and humility in that openness. If M’Benga had been honest with his daughter, the Enterprise crew could have helped him and avoided a virus crisis in the first place. If Una were open about her Illyrian heritage, then perhaps the Federation and Starfleet’s prejudices against her people due to the traumas of humanity’s past would slowly be corrected, to the point where she wouldn’t have to worry anymore if only gets a pass is that she has stood the test of her peers.
The bliss and curse of Strange New Worlds’ love for the classic episode format Star Trek it’s built on means there’s no telling how much of it will be revisited or not. Could we see a conspiracy to allow Illyrians into the Federation despite their rules against genetic modification? How much of M’Benga’s daughter is in the future of the show, or even Una’s ongoing doubts about the privilege of being the “accepted” member of her species? These are intriguing ideas and thoughts that Strange New Worlds is throwing up at the moment, but it would be a shame if they go untouched as the show goes on to hunt down new riffs and other ideas. But the fact that she’s willing to dive into them so immediately is at least a promising sign that should the series one day start to develop its episodic storytelling further, she already has some intriguing threads to pursue with these characters.
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