Human Best Friend give the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (yet) another chance to act out of character

While it’s easy to find fault with this episode (there are many), it also has some redeeming moments and bears watching. Read on and find out why…

What is season 4 episode 3 Human Best Friend about

If you read last week’s review of The Griffin Incident, you will know this season is changing tone dramatically each episode. We also suggested there were too many stories where something weird happens to the crew, the cast all gets to be different but it doesn’t matter as everything comes out in the wash. If you think that sentence is cliché ridden, it’s nothing to this episode.

We start off seeing how the crew is tense and needs downtime, particularly alpha shift (our heroes — are beta and gamma shifts having their own adventures in parallel?). The exemplar is Engineer Scotty (Martin Quinn) and Helmsman Erica Ortega (Melissa Navia) pictured above. There’s a “plot” where the Enterprise has two weeks before Pike is holding peace talks and there’s a pleasure planet en route. The planet has a special atmosphere which puts most people into an exuberant party mood.

Now some spoilers

Piecing together a story, Ortega and Scotty row about the shuttle, both go to repair it while intoxicated and find a bomb. Being in a party mood, they piece together an elaborate way round this then forget they’ve done it. The come too with a few clues and have to deliver a note to the Captain — the conference has been pulled forward, they must leave in an hour. There’s a whistle stop tour round the various activities of the rest of the crew (more later) and a still intoxicated crew get to Enterprise, welcome the delegates, a shuttle explodes and it all ends happily.

Of course the plot is just a Macguffin to get Ortega and Scotty to open up to each other, find each resents the other’s success at what they do “I wanted to be an engineer” “I wanted to be a helmsman“. In Star Trek tradition they now become friends.

But, there are problems

The core story doesn’t fill an episode on its own. The cast need something to do and here the writing is very uneven. Let’s take the title. Spock has a lot of the episode to share his inner thoughts with what he believes to be a Kirk hallucination, hence the title Human Best Friend. Sadly, the episode should have a title connected to the central arc of Ortega and Scotty.

Then there’s everyone else. Pike sits grinning and getting tattooed all over his face and arms. Uhura is having a party in her room, Doctor M’Benga is now a mixologist (and that works as a scene) and the increasingly marginalised Nurse Chapel is playing bingo with some Ferengi. All a bit tame.

What does save it are La’an playing up her increasing worries about her genetic heritage and turning into a mad (in a nice way) ninja warrior crime lord (for a few minutes) and, best of all, Number One Rebecca Romjin) singing the Klingon classic Total Eclipse of the Heart in Klingon! With the recent passing of Bonny Tyler, this felt particularly poignant.

The rest of the episode may be forgettable, but if nothing else watch this part. We’ll be back next week — perhaps Chapel will get something to do.