“New Life and New Civilizations”… 60 Years and Counting!

I just completed a rewatch of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ third season, which proved fortuitous timing, since I had just finished catching up on the latest fourth season episodes, up to “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” which unexpectedly ends in a callback to “New Life and New Civilizations,” which itself concludes a story thread winding through the third season, and the series itself, Pike’s relationship with Captain Batel, in the most emotional way possible, evoking Next Generation’s classic “The Inner Light” by imagining a whole alternate life they get to lead…

Because Batel dies at the end of “New Civilizations.”

Christopher Pike has taken an extraordinary path to solidifying his rank as an icon of the franchise. Featured as the captain in the first, rejected pilot (“The Cage”) of the original series, he ended up in the two-part “The Menagerie” in which the first pilot was repurposed…and Pike’s legacy repositioned as tragedy, his career dramatically cut short in a crippling accident that leaves him immobile and speechless, with the only escape possible the fantasy he experienced in “The Cage”…(Talk about metaphor!)

And that was the end of Pike…Until 2009, when the character returns in Star Trek, and then Discovery, almost a decade later, when we meet the current incarnation, who becomes aware of his horrible fate and struggles to accept it…

But Strange New Worlds was originally posited, and embraced, as the unlikely return of the traditional episodic format of the franchise. This current season has been increasingly ridiculed by how it’s chosen to further pursue it (the puppet episode will likely endure as the latest “worst episode ever,” joining the likes of “Spock’s Brain,” “Profit and Lace,” “Threshold,” “These Are the Voyages…”), but it seems more likely, to me anyway, that the fourth season is a direct expression of the unexpected longevity of the series, and the idea of it reaching beyond what it thought it was going to get to do.

Pike’s fate already loomed over the series. Then it started introducing more familiar characters, starting with Kirk, and it became clear that the series was headed in two directions: Pike’s fate and Kirk assuming command of the Enterprise.

But then someone figured out at least a third arc: Pike’s romance with Batel.

(There are plenty of other arcs that’ve played out, including exploring Spock’s relationship with Chapel, M’Benga’s surprisingly complex backstory, everything about who Number One turned out to be, and the best of the original characters, La’An.)

They must’ve figured out they couldn’t let Pike end up with two tragedies, so “New Civilizations” ends the Batel arc in the best way possible.

It takes a second visit from Trelane (whom the series also codified as a Q) to revisit it, the kind of storytelling that had become increasingly difficult to feature in the increasingly serialized shows that defined the modern era. 

And it’s absolutely worth it.

I don’t think any of this was intended to make a franchise statement, let alone for the 60th anniversary, but I can think of no better way, an overlooked giant moment or two, the unexpected further legacy of Christopher Pike continuing to pay dividends.

Happy birthday, Star Trek.