Carol Kane is like Kris Kringle, if you don’t love or believe in her, you are on the naughty list. This episode has the exact same creative team as “A Quality of Mercy,” though with a little help from Onitra Johnson from “The Elysian Kingdom” acting as a staff writer. That of course means we’re with Chris Fisher who (like last time) knows to point the camera straight and frame a shot well enough, for the most part. There isn’t really much to say beyond recaps of last season and what we’re facing today. Una was arrested, here is the fallout.

Pike is off in search of a specialist lawyer for Una next episode and gets out of the way so we can hear me complain about Spock for another 1000 words. No, come back! I actually don’t mind him too much in “The Broken Circle.” Here he is being a little bit more human and a little less lawyer-y, acting more on a captain’s gut than a science officer’s understanding of probability and logic. He also sneaks the Enterprise out of Spacedock with a Lanthanite inspector on board. Though why we didn’t get Peck doing a special “These are the voyages…” over the titles is beyond me.

With Pike away, the Vulcan gets to play. Under scheduled maintenance at Starbase 1, Pike thinks the ship will be there where he left it, but La’an who’s been away since “All Those Who Wander” has other plans. La’an sent a distress signal about urgent assistance needed on Cajitar IV, a dilithium mining planet that is shared by the Klingon Empire and Starfleet on a monthly basis following the divorce settlement after the war. As it turns out, when you have a fun-seeking Lanthanite with a background in engineering on board, it is easy to steal the fleet’s premier ship.

As it turns out, La’an found Ariana’s parents on the planet and just so happened to uncover something that is happening on the hush-hush. People are turning up with ion burns from the dilithium mining, which are more common in turning that dilithium into weapons munitions like what is found in the torpedoes Star Fleet uses. While M’Benga and Chapel find this out and discover why, La’an is trying to sell phasers for information. What would Klingons need with Star Fleet phaser pistols? As it turns out, if Quark could start a war he’d have been making a great profit: Benefactors of the war would rather see profit than peace.

I’ve skipped quite a bit to give the set-up and make sure we’re all on the same page here. What I mostly skipped is Spock’s “Thing.” See, I like how Picard ended with Seven being cut off, that gives us the suspense of her show and finally getting to hear it. This is genuinely one of my only gripes with “The Broken Circle” and Spock, but it was very peak Marvel to make a drawn-out character bit (“joke”) of him fermenting on the idea of his captain’s thing. It is ultimately played as a joke that lands about as well as post-Thanos Marvel. I get it on a conceptual level, but it thinks of itself as hilarious.

In fact, I’d say Myers, Goldsman, Johnson, and Fisher’s “The Broken Circle” is a very Marvel episode of Star Trek, and I mean somewhere in that Captain America mystery/action sense. Trying to be a clandestine thriller, you have La’an’s secret meetings, Spock and Uhura standing around the corner listening to the meeting, Chapel and M’Benga doing the infiltration by accident, and you have Spock pining for Chapel when she’s in danger.

I don’t hate “The Broken Circle” and want to skip it on rewatches like I do with Captain America, but it has a similar vein of storytelling. Also, unlike last season (thus far) it was a very dimly lit episode. Most of the brighter or more colorful shots came from the Enterprise itself while Cajitar IV is dim, the caves are dark, the fake ship is near inky black, and Starbase 1 is nearly unilluminated too. I understand the cave and planet as that’s under total Klingon control, and historically they’ve had darker tones. However, you’d think as a change of pace the ship would have had some more light and color, right?

Fighting in dark spaces with lots of cutting, lots of close-ups, and generally made-for-TV action is also something I need to bring up, again. This is also a Marvel trope to hide an actor’s inability to make it look good both in the first place and in the wide. I said it back when La’an and Una were fighting in “Ghosts of Illyria,” and though M’Benga and Chapel’s fight scene doesn’t feel as “catty,” it is something that falls to the director and actors to tackle. It wasn’t a bad fight segment, but it was certainly noticeable how it covers up someone’s otherwise inability to do something.

Some might say something similar about Carol Kane’s accent and general acting, but that’s because they are heartless monsters from the deep beyond. I’m deadly serious, there is a levity in her accent that has no direct origin. It is a mix of Eastern European, Russian-accented English (a brave choice), and something else that neither Uhura nor I can directly place. I don’t think anyone else could have pulled a role like that off much better or even slightly, the characterization alone is brilliant. Basically: “I’m an old alien that is practically immortal; I’m bored of this Inspector Gadget nonsense, let’s steal the Enterprise and fight the Klingons.”

There is a lot of fun characterization and too many elements of “I’m away for a bit” in the episode for me. Ortegas’ flight controls being inverted is great as it’s very video game-y, Pelia’s little smiles, nods, and winks are fun, and there are little bits that make it seem like Spock is trying to endear himself to the crew. I’ve said time and time again that I don’t like the character, but I think Peck is truly making that his own while remaining within some guidelines of the original. That said, we do get it all as a result of Una and Pike being away, thus the children got to play.

With two (and a bit) leads from the last episode out of the uniform and episode, it almost feels like a finale to wrap us up for the season instead of something just coming back. It is a strange choice of pacing to return with. Again, not something I hate, but certainly something noticeably different in a strange way. It almost feels like an entirely different ship. Kyle is swapped out for Chief Jay, Lieutenant Mitchell has stepped up a little more to take up some screen time, and somehow it feels like Spock is consulting the bridge crew more for his weird plans where Pike or other captains are straight into the decisions.

A very strange but enjoyable episode of Strange New Worlds, “The Broken Circle” feels both like it is trying to set up for a season of woes while also like it has just come out of them and is ready to go on hiatus again. Something about Protocol 12 (John Wick juice) feels like the action needed better service, though given it is for TV it makes sense it isn’t that very thing, John Wick. Unlike last season where I knew where we were going, I’m in the dark on the Broken Circle’s end goal and how we’re heading into a war with the Gorn.

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SNW "The Broken Circle"

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• A fun thriller-lite episode.
• A return of the PROPER Klingons.
• Pelia!

Cons

• A little bit of Marvel-like "humor."
• A good portion of that action is done as such because of the actors and director.