Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - S2 E6 - "Lost in Translation"
July 20, 2023
'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: Uhura Gets a Message From the Beyond
Uhura is seeing ghosts in this week's episode of 'Strange New Worlds' Season 2.
By Samantha Coley
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 is chasing last week's comedic episode with one of the most emotional episodes of the series thus far. "Lost in Translation," written by Onitra Johnson and David Reed, centers around Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) as she begins hearing strange noises and seeing ghosts from her past. Director Dan Li strikes a fantastic balance between horror and action/adventure with this episode, as Uhura races against the clock to understand what's happening to her and who exactly might be trying to send her a message.
This episode also honors star Melissa Navia's late partner Brian Bannon by naming the nebula after him — a birthplace for new stars and the home of a new alien species. "Lost in Translation" also gives Uhura a chance to grieve the loss of Hemmer (Bruce Horak), the Enterprise's Season 1 engineer who gave his life to save the rest of the crew. Strange New Worlds' episodic nature can make exploring long-term narratives like grief difficult, so it's satisfying to see the series return to this moment and explore Uhura's emotions in a way that inspires hope for the future.
Carol Kane also returns as Pelia in this episode as she squares off with Una (Rebecca Romijn) for the first time. Pelia remains one of the most delightful new aspects of Season 2, bringing unparalleled levity to every scene she's in and Kane bounces off of each of her scene partners with ease. Finally, "Lost in Translation" delivers the first-ever meeting (for their Prime timeline selves, at least) between Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Spock (Ethan Peck). While the moment is brief, the weight of it is not to be understated, as fate starts to fall into place for Star Trek's most iconic soul mates.
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I thought this was a pretty good episode, but why oh why couldn't Uhura pronounce deuterium correctly? That was driving me crazy, lol. I think she got it right once, but the rest of the time it sounded like she was saying deu tur ium. You'd think they would have lined that out at the table read before they even started shooting.
Did anyone notice Pike's Fleet Captain insignia for this episode? It's the black circle around the Starfleet delta, with two "laurel leaf" deltas at the bottom. I thought that was a nice bit of detail.
Una called Pelia a "space hippie," haha — fun callback to TOS. Later we learned that Pelia taught Una at the Academy, and gave her a C in Starship Maintenance 307.
Ramon got vented into space and died when he blew that hole in the nacelle. I guess someone forgot that just a few episodes ago they were able to save M'Benga and Chapel from the vacuum of space after a similar venting. But aside from that, why the heck didn't Kirk bother to include him in the emergency beam out just before the explosion?
La'an seemed to be having trouble forgetting about the Kirk from the other timeline, slipping on protocol and calling Kirk "James."
Kirk mentioned a "matter synthesizer" when talking about food. What's that supposed to be? I didn't think they had food replicators in this time.
Was blowing up the deuterium refinery station really the best thing to do? Seems like a HUGE waste.
And it was pretty low-key, but did everyone catch the first ever meeting between Kirk and Spock?
It sounded to me more like she was pronouncing it with a short "e". "Deu tair ium." Maybe it's an accent thing? Or maybe my ears deceive me.
Whatever it was, I found it distracting and annoying. At first I kept backing it up to see if I misheard or something. I mean, deuterium is cake compared to some of the technobabble she might encounter along the way, lol.
I thought George Kirk senior died when Jim Kirk was a newborn. Seems to me the Star Trek shows are not being careful.
This story was okay, but it is more drama than I prefer. I like to see starship technology action. This extremely indirect alien lifeform interaction is less appealing. Plus, how is Pike going to explain blowing up the refinery without any evidence (other than Uhura's interpretations of her visions)?
This episode was a bit difficult for me to suspend disbelief.
I think that might have just been in the JJ-verse alternate timeline. I looked him up on Memory Alpha and he supposedly lived into his late 50s at least, when a ship he was on, the Bonaventure, disappeared. There doesn't seem to be a very concise history for him, but it looks like he was around long enough in the prime timeline for James and George to grow up knowing him.
I do too. Hopefully we'll get more of that. We did get to see the Bussard collectors being used in this one. Not really action, but starship technology at least.
I know. Especially after everyone thought Uhura had just been hallucinating because of "deuterium poisoning." That was really a stretch.
This one isn't going to make my list of favorites. It seems like Uhura is our new (or original?) Deanna Troi, the only crew member getting unclear messages from aliens we can't otherwise communicate with, having to interpret those messages to save the ship. Also, Starfleet seems to have a habit of harming or destroying aliens while replenishing their supplies. It's too similar to Night Terrors and whatever Voyager episode had "there's coffee in that nebula". It's been done too many times.
Also, I don't think it was done well. Uhura goes from nervous newbie to ordering around a superior officer she's just met after punching him. Not very believable. And Ramon's death - the special effects looked badly done.
I did appreciate the humor. Una's wry "I was afraid I'd missed the speech" gave me a chuckle. So did Uhura shooting down what she thought was Kirk hitting on her with a punch to the nose, spurred on by her hallucinations.
You're right, it has. Going all the way back to TOS with "Devil in the Dark," the one with the silicon creatures in the mines.
But I suppose it's also realistic. The writers probably like those kinds of stories because they relate to real world problems with resource allocation and the ecological degradation that often comes along with it. One of those 'moral of the story' things. Who knows, though. Maybe they just find it easier to rehash old plots.
Or maybe the writers aren't as familiar with Star Trek as they should be, and don't realize they're doing it. I've sometimes wondered that about the new "franchise developer" himself, Alex Kurtzman, who seems stuck in the TOS movie era, even though most of Star Trek has come after.
Oops. Extraction, not allocation.
I hadn't noticed the similarity until you mentioned it, but yes. One of my favorite TOS episodes.