The hour additionally ends in Unusual New Worlds’ first actual cliffhanger, a selection that’s nearly assured to right away draw (probably unfavorable) comparisons between this episode and The Subsequent Era season 3 finale “The Better of Each Worlds.” In The Subsequent Era, Riker is pressured to make the choice to fireplace on his personal Borg-assimilated captain. In distinction, Pike should select whether or not to obey Starfleet’s orders to flee and go away a major chunk of the Enterprise and Cayuga crew members behind to what are presumably grisly deaths by the hands (claws?) of the Gorn. But, regardless of the plain on-paper stakes of the second, “Hegemony” lacks the acute rigidity of its predecessor. 

Don’t get me incorrect, certainly one of Unusual New Worlds’ greatest choices has been the best way the present has reinvented the Gorn, reimagining one of many Enterprise’s campiest Authentic Sequence antagonists as one thing straight out of a horror film, full with blood, gore, and a vicious killer intuition. These are aliens which might be genuinely terrifying and distinctly not cute or pleasant, so the considered them invading a suspiciously Earth-like planet on a mission to kill all its colonists feels just like the present lastly getting again to the potential Gorn battle the season 2 premiere hinted was coming. (And, not for nothing, however that the total grown Gorn that Spock and Chapel face off with is…one thing else.) 

However the consequence of Pike’s huge episode-ending selection appears extremely apparent. Sure, he’s a goody-two-shoes boy scout who’s a poster little one for Starfleet values and guidelines, however we’ve already seen that he’s keen to do something to save lots of these in his cost (whether or not they’re his present crew or the cadets whose deaths he is aware of he’ll in the future be liable for). His hesitation is completely in character. It’s a giant determination, in any case, and one which is able to danger his crew, the lady he cares for, and maybe launch that Gorn battle his superiors are so frightened about.

And Mount definitely does his greatest to promote Pike’s rising sense of shock and terror—he appears to be like like he’s about to throw up throughout his helmsmen, his face has actually contained multitudes this season—however there’s little query (in my thoughts, a minimum of) about what he’s going to do. In the event you ask me, his determination to danger bringing a Gorn spawn-infected Captain Batel onto the Enterprise is a good deal extra stunning and doubtlessly harmful, and one thing I want the present had spent a bit extra time on in context. I imply…what are the chances that containment area isn’t going to interrupt on the most inopportune second?

I’ve talked about this earlier than, however as wonderful as Wynonna Earp’s Melanie Scrofano is, one of many weakest points of Unusual New Worlds season 2 is how little depth they’ve given Batel as a personality in her personal proper. Regardless of being Pike’s romantic accomplice and technical equal in rank, she’s usually handled as an thought as a lot if no more than an precise three-dimensional individual—an emotional touchstone to floor Pike’s reminiscences in “Among the many Lotus Eaters”, an ungainly duet accomplice in “Subspace Rhapsody,” a hostage to be rescued right here on Parnassus Beta. Regardless of initially exhibiting us Batel on an away mission with Chapel, we by no means actually get to see a lot of her perspective on what occurred to her or her crew, which implies that the upcoming menace of her horrific dying issues extra when it comes to the way it may have an effect on Pike than her story. Do I significantly need her to sacrifice herself to save lots of her crewmates from the Gorn spawn she’s now carrying inside her? Probably not, however that might a minimum of really feel just like the kind of energetic company this character’s been largely denied.

And though there are definitely numerous lives in danger on the Gorn ship, we already know that the majority of the Enterprise workforce most likely isn’t at any actual danger. M’Benga and Sam Kirk have the security of future-proofed plot armor, and whereas it’s attainable the present may select to kill off La’an or Ortegas, it’s not tremendous probably. The present has barely scratched the floor of both character, and whereas that definitely wasn’t sufficient to save lots of Hemmer again in season 1, there’s simply no means this present is completed with both of those ladies simply but. Sorry to the array of anonymous Cayuga of us who’re inevitably about to get eaten, I assume!