‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Recap – ‘Hegemony’

Written by Shae Rufe

Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, and Anson Mount as Lieutenant Commander Una Chin-Riley, Lieutenant Spock, and Captain Christopher Pike in Episode 210 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ – ‘Hegemony’. (Photo Courtesy of Paramount+.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the Season Two Finale of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’. To revisit the previous episode, click here. Also, this piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
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​This week’s Strange New Worlds started the season two finale in a seemingly wholesome way, and that always gets immediately turned on its head in the Star Trek Universe. The main villain for this series has turned out to be the Gorn. While there has been tentative peace with the Klingons, the Gorn have been indiscriminately killing people left and right any chance they get.
 
This episode highlights another Gorn attack on a seemingly peaceful planet, that resembles the Midwest. Captain Marie Batel and her crew are on the planet at the time of the attack. There’s very little warning, but she manages to get a distress call out to the Enterprise. Pike is not one to just sit back and let helpless people die, so he’s ready to jump into danger. Starfleet has other things to say about that.
 
The Gorn have sent a message of where their boundaries with Federation space begins and ends, and the planet the Gorn are currently attacking, just so happens to be outside of Federation space. So, Pike and his crew are ordered to stay back. The thing is, you can’t be a Captain of the Enterprise if you follow the rules. It’s an unspoken law. It’s a good thing that Pike doesn’t listen, because he assembles a small crew and they head down to the planet, with Gorn fighting weapons and they find Marie and some civilians, and they also find one Montgomery Scott.

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Melanie Scrofano and Anson Mount as Captain Marie Batel and Captain Christopher Pike in Episode 210 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ – ‘Hegemony’. (Photo Courtesy of Paramount+.)

The second-best reveal in the season is seeing Scotty join the mix. He’s as brilliant as ever and has found a way to blend in and fight the Gorn using sound and makeshift force fields. The crew of the Enterprise aren’t slouches and they came up with a way to disable the signal blockers they discovered the Gorn were using, were able to rescue Scotty, Batel, and Pike. Christine is also rescued, after thought to be dead, she survived, and upon arrival to the ship is whisked away to help Batel. Batel, in standard zombie movie fashion, got infected with Gorn eggs and didn’t tell Pike until a day later.
 
All this while more Gorn ships arrive and start attacking the Enterprise while Starfleet orders them to retreat. The Gorn have taken the rest of the Enterprise landing crew and civilians onboard one of their ships, and it’s a no-win situation. It’s a brilliant episode that ends on a painful cliffhanger, leaving us with more questions and growing anxieties as we wait an entire year to have questions answered. Are Spock and Christine ever going to talk things out? Will Batel live so she can Pike can live as happy as they can until his unfortunate accident? Will the Gorn ever be defeated? Sam thinks they can be reasoned with and understood, but Pike thinks they’re just monsters. It’s all a toss-up at the moment.
 
Hopefully season three answers those questions without much more pain. The biggest question of all, though, is when will we get to see Bones?

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Martin Quinn as Lieutenant Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott in Episode 210 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ – ‘Hegemony’. (Photo Courtesy of Paramount+.)