Am I a Captain or am I a muppet? Directed by series regular and established Schitt’s Creek Director, Jordan Canning. This is the fourth of Canning’s five episodes on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. If only we could end it there, but I’m left having to talk about the episode and who wrote it. This week we have a duo, with a return from last week’s “A Case of Chiaroscuro” with Dana Horgan. Not immediately turned off by that. My editor is by the next name: Henry Alonso Myers, returning after season 4 opener, “Valles Marineris.”

Let’s see if I can speed run this breakdown of the episode: Scotty is trying to best an old classmate by getting Jimmy Krankie through a transporter and over a previous record distance while Spock is coming to terms with his Vulcan side again because La’an said: “It wasn’t you, it was me.” Dealing with the aftereffects of “The Griffin Incident,” Spock is a bit out of it. He’s not feeling human but not feeling fully Vulcan either, like he is torn between who he is as a matter of fact and who he believes he is from a philosophical standpoint.

Of course it is Alonso Myers, so we’re on our knees pleasuring a Vulcan. Or I guess in this case, someone in a skin-tight green suit had their hand up the back of a puppet version of our characters while the focus of the episode is on a Vulcan for the pleasure of a weird and desperately underqualified writer. I know he wasn’t the only writer, but he does have seniority and a higher position within production; I just wish someone would take his typewriter out back and shoot it like Old Yeller. Or Kurt Cobain.

Saggy, soulless, shallow, and shambolic, “Level-Five Transporter Accident” is somehow one of the worst episodes of TV written. Not because it is poor writing, though it is poor writing, and not because it is underserved by otherwise good actors, which it is, but simply because it is possibly one of the worst ideas committed to 50 minutes of television in history. Not only is it poor from a production standpoint, but it also isn’t what the title of the show is. Worse still, it is a sad little man’s corrupted idea of what many people (myself included) hold in high esteem.

Plain and simple, Scotty wants to best someone he went to school with, who set the record distance for the transporters. However, something happens and all of a sudden the entire crew are puppets; the only real boy is Spock. You can be the biggest Vulcansexual all you want; no one will ever say that Ethan Peck – best known for not being the worst actor in 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – is up there with Michael Caine and Tim Curry. You are already looking to be compared unfavorably when you write an episode like this.

That’s not all! As it turns out, as a way to try and center himself following the breakup with La’An and the fact he’s just a creepy little weirdo that weird men have a fetish for, he’s called his ex and asked her to help him spiritually. Or whatever Vulcan’s call it, at this point I am seeing red, and it has been a week. Not only is the crew affected by Scotty’s mishap, but so is T’Pring. To paraphrase Pauline Collins’ Queen Victoria from “Tooth and Claw,” one is not best amused.

Let me take an aside here for a second, mostly to break down my thoughts. When this was announced, when it was revealed that we’d get a (lowercase) muppet episode and that’s what it is, I thought it would be the one comedy episode of the season. Which, in theory, I would have been fine with. Part of me was hoping it would be a bit of relief from heavier topics and written by someone who could write for The Muppets if given the chance, and in theory, it would use the (again, lowercase) muppet characters to great effect.

I wouldn’t trust this creative team to write a children’s TV show about shapes and colors. Don’t think Onitra Johnson is getting away scot-free either. You don’t get to be the story editor on this and pretend it was everyone else’s problem. Someone should have been the adult and stepped up to say, “What is this awful pile of tripe?”

Ok, cutting through my anger and distaste for Alonso Myers’ hard-on for anything Vulcan, the fact we’re doing a Vulcan Muppet’s Treasure Island is bad enough, but it is ponderous. With the crew of the Enterprise more or less incapacitated from their duties, the pointy-eared charisma vacuum is the star of the show. That isn’t to say that Ethan Peck isn’t good; it is that Vulcans are inherently void of a personality to grasp on to, in that he’s a pretty good actor. Being the only one with… skin, Spock is the only one who can operate the ship.

Indeed, such “hilarity” of having Ethan Peck run from pillar to post on the bridge could have worked for a minute or two long skit for a fundraiser special, Children in Need or Stand Up To Cancer, but it is not. It is a 50-minute episode about one person running a massive ship while having an identity crisis. Which, spoiler alert (though, come on now), is handled in the worst possible way. I’ll actually say the ending in a minute because that was the swirl and chocolate droppings on this turd of an episode, thus sort of needs to be spoken about.

Back to the summary of the plot: Spock is doing comms; his name is Spock; he flies the ship, he is also the security officer that he’s also shagging, and the engineer. That’s until the Enterprise comes across a ship nearby: An Orion pirate ship. No Cary Elwes here, though, just Rachael Harris and Joe Lo Truglio painted green and told to act like they are back in The Hangover and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, respectively. Though the former did actually appear in Voyager, a fate I’d wish on no one.

As you would expect, our crew establishes comms with the Orion ship. Voice only, it goes ok. Uhura goes to press a button to end the space phone call, presses the wrong button, and all of a sudden, like that time during the pandemic when you answered a work call in your underpants eating cereal out of a saucepan at 10:47 AM, you’ve been caught. Or in this case, you’ve been caught with your undercrackers round your ankles, having a tommy tank. So a ship run by one person and a bunch of Dollar General muppets is about to be boarded by pirates.

Sadly, there are another 25+ minutes of nothing going on after that. “Oh, but the drama of muppet Pike being sucked out of the airlock…” Do you think I am as stupid as Henry Alonso Myers thinks you are? Have you not seen The Muppets before? Have I been left on a planet with morons who can be entertained with jangling keys and vague theming? The drama of “Level-Five Transporter Accident” is built on this idea that you have never seen The Muppets before. Otherwise, the premise falls to bits and is just an insult to your intelligence.

The soul, the character of the fuzzy characters we love, and everything they do is brought to life simply because they know what they are and play into that. You aren’t watching Eric Jacobson’s hand in some felt; you are watching Fozzie Bear. The point is, when you are watching The Muppets, they are what they are and use that to be comedic, to be heartfelt, to be wonderful and magical. Here, in “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” we’re watching poorly written characters realize they are muppets to culminate in an awful three-minute action bit that itself is two minutes and fifty-nine seconds too long.

I’m going to get messages about this, or someone is going to turn off when I say this, but this sort of episode would have worked for The Orville much better than it does for Star Trek. Why? Because Ed has a Kermit the Frog right there on his desk: We wouldn’t have spent between minute 8 and minute 35 figuring out that our crew could be like muppets; it would have taken two scenes. Then we’d have had 35-40 minutes of character-based muppet antics. Here? It is treated like a word-for-word reenactment of Watership Down using your dead pets as puppets.

The point I am trying to make is that the episode is treated as high drama. Spock is kidnapped, Pike is shot out into space, Pelia is cut in half, and we’re subjected to Rachael Harris “acting.” If you can call sitting in a chair looking disinterested while painted green acting. It might come off as harsh, but I’d rather Strange New Worlds was canceled if this is the creative team Paramount is putting together. Stop giving control of franchises like this to awful writers; I am begging you.

“It can’t be that bad?” 52 episodes, seven series, and Chris Barrie running a Leisure Centre in Aldershot as Gordan Brittas, The Brittas Empire is conceptually a great bit of sitcom brilliance. However, it was spaffed up the wall (someone else having a tommy-tank) when the final episode revealed that the last 51 episodes were a waste of time because, and say it with me, kids… it was all a dream! What relevance does that have to “Level-Five Transporter Accident?” Spock passed out when Scotty engaged the transporter, and the whole muppet charade was a dream.

Saggy, soulless, shallow, and shambolic, these are the words I used to describe “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” and I don’t think anyone with two functioning brain cells will disagree. Instead of playing up the main part of the episode like a dream and instead playing it like a harrowing drama, this is how we’re spending the limited time we have left with Captain Pike? This is how we’re telling the story of the Captain and his crew before James T. Kirk shags his way across the galaxy? The urine, indeed, doth be taken.

As I say, I was willing to give “Level-Five Transporter Accident” a shot; I wasn’t instantly dismissive when it was announced. Watching it, however, I wish I hadn’t even started watching the show. All of this for Spock to learn how to face his anxieties? I’m not an expert in psychotropic drugs, but I think in an age when phaser burns and being shot can be fixed with medical power tools, Dr M’Benga could give Spock some SSRIs. Better yet, give me a shotgun, and I’ll solve the problem.

Trying not to be angry for a moment, this concept could have worked if it was a Short Trek that no one cared about. It could have worked if it wasn’t so dependent on telling you just how little the Orions care when the muppets are up to their antics, a Rick and Morty style of “comedy” about telling you how little fecal matter a character cares so it can overexplain just how little fecal matter it cares. The episode’s one joke is that it’s telling you how little it cares.

Once again, it is a storyline that is trying to be something other than Star Trek to capture a mythical audience that itself doesn’t give crap about it. If you’re looking for a stoner comedy, if you’re looking for a cheap muppets knock-off, if you’re looking for any manner of these variations on what Star Trek really isn’t, then it is out there. There are reasons we have descriptors for them. For a show called Star Trek and a show called Strange New Worlds, we’ve seen very little of either thus far this season or last.

Ultimately, “Level-Five Transporter Accident” makes me want to climb in a bin to get away from the horrible people who thought this was a good idea. It isn’t a Star Trek problem, it isn’t Star Trek writing, and it isn’t even fun. Arguably, that last one is the worst of them all, because at its core, The Muppets should be fun and make you smile, even if they are knock-offs of real people in characters for a show written by people who have forgotten the name of the show. Please let at least one of the next five episodes be worth watching!

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"Level-Five Transporter Accident"

3

Score

3.0/10

Pros

• It does end... eventually.

Cons

• Henry Alonso Myers.
• Rachael Harris and Joe Lo Truglio's characters, or lack thereof.
• Brittas Empire ending.