Captain’s Log: I got bored of this season and started rewatching DS9 again. Directed by For All Mankind and Shadow and Bone director, Dan Liu has been around these parts before with Picard’s one good season and three previous episodes of Strange New Worlds. Writing, this time, won’t lead me to swear so much, as Bill Wolkoff returns following “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” and five other episodes. Wolkoff is probably best known for his work on Tron: Uprising, Star Wars: Rebels, as well as Once Upon a Time and developing Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. He was also a consultant on Moneyball.

Indeed, Alexa, I’m tryin’tae talk tae ye hen! Finally, an episode that is taking itself a bit more seriously, doing something with it, and is written somewhat competently. Alpha Shift are prepping the handover to the Betas mid-warp travel; meanwhile, there are a couple of discussions about the future of the crew as it stands. M’Benga has requested a new Doctor onboard in preparation for his eventual departure, something that causes contention with Christine, as she has never really been committed to the Enterprise but only now commits to leaving if M’Benga goes.

As they have an argument over this in sickbay, Pike is handing the bridge over to Lt. Rahda as Scotty is handing Engineering over to Lt. Early. As the handover is being done and Una, Spock, and La’An are drinking in the bar, Rahda notices the ship is drifting gently to the left while at Warp. As Scotty and Early notice something else wrong with propulsion too. Cue the ship dropping out of Warp too quickly, spinning uncontrollably, and the crew has been flung around like a tin of canned peas before you open it. Put simply in my normal Scots way, “the ship is gubbed, Captain!”

“Off-Hour” is an episode with more Dutch angles than a student film that is metaphorically referencing the director’s creepy uncle. Though, unlike Discovery, the ship itself is “on the wonk,” so there may be a proper reason for the camera being “skew-whiff.” My editor is going to kill me for not using Americanized English, but there is a bit of “Off-Hour” that I saw before even publishing our first review because everyone apparently likes Burnistoun now. What’s it next week, “She’s turned the Klingons against us?” Maybe some Ronald Viliers, “gonnae no dae that?” or a bit of the young patter.

We’ll get to that in a minute. The ship has been sucked off course by a slipstream wormhole, as Spock calls it, and as a result puts the ship in a lot of danger when it has already been beaten half to death. Now with a crew hardly recovering, a captain that intentionally put himself in harm’s way to give Erica the chair, and M’Benga pushing Chapel out the way only to be cut in half by a big medical storage table, everything is going fine otherwise.

Now with only 35 minutes left on the episode’s countdown, it leaves us with a conundrum: How do we fix the ship and save the crew? This is what I mean by taken more seriously: Doing something and it is more competently written. “Off-Hour” uses the sci-fi setting, puts the characters in danger, and uses their character to solve some of the problems: proper Star Trek. This is something we didn’t have last time out for an episode of “it was all a dream!” No, it has been two weeks since I watched that episode and I am still angry about it.

To try and appease my editor a bit, as the ship is thrown out of normal Warp into this slipstream wormhole, Scotty was in one of the turbolifts. Like the bridge and everything else, it is a bit broken. “Gubbed,” if you will. Scotty tries getting in contact with the bridge, or literally anyone, and can’t. In fact, the ship’s computer won’t respond to him at all. A bit like that time voice recognition tech was installed in a lift (“elevator” for Americans) in Scotland and apparently two men “couldn’t speak clearly enough” for the tech developed in Silicon Valley. You know, like everything else.

Basically, it is a sketch comedy bit that plays on the fact that for Siri, Alexa, and other listening device nonsense, my accent and the accent of many people in Scotland doesn’t work. Is it a fine comedy bit? Sure, is it a fine reference? Absolutely. Did I need every third short-form video I saw online that week the episode was released to point it out? N-aw! It is a much better episode than a single comedic moment that references something generally bland.

Yes, there is a lot of technobabble. Yes, there is a bit too much of Pelia doing the “aren’t I just so wacky because I am old and will tell you about it every chance I get,” and there is a bit of tension predicated on the idea you think certain established characters will die. Yet, despite that, and despite everything you can complain about with it. Especially the non-diegetic timer on screen counting down to the impending doom. “Off-Hour” is one thing most of all; it is Star Trek.

In fact, let’s talk about the timer for a second. Before we know what the episode is doing, before it even knows what it is doing, we get this Chris Chibnall-esque timer counting down to something, with the words over it saying “Shipboard Chronometer.” The trouble is that a chronometer isn’t a countdown. It is just a watch, and the reason we say that an accurate watch is Swiss is because of the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres; the official institute certifying the accuracy of Swiss watches (translates to “time measurer”). More or less, it is a cheap, TV way of using a proper ship time and having characters define that.

It isn’t the biggest concern for the episode, and definitely not the most egregious use of something unnecessary (“Hey you, dinosaur!”), but it is one of those things that could have been done better. Just as at the start of the episode, when Scotty is in the turbolift, Lt. Early closes the doors to engineering as people are crawling out. Sure, there is danger at this point, but the danger could have been explained a bit more clearly and louder to make me care for the red shirts that are locked in engineering once the door closes. Maybe that one is just me.

Of course, the big concern is, in fact, M’Benga with a big, heavy table that requires magnets to keep it locked in place being pressed against him and pushing him against the large pillars the med-beds are attached to. In what I am sure the internet would call irony, the only thing keeping M’Benga alive is actually the table that is killing him. Remove it, and he’s dead, but keep him there and keep feeding him oxygen, he’ll die around the same time as everyone else on the ship. Including the “new” transfer, or retransferred back to Enterprise, Dr Philip Boyce.

For those of us younger than the dust under your granddad’s fingernails, that just made 65-year-old men very happy. Don’t worry, it doesn’t really impact the episode to know the character from TOS, but it does feel a bit like we’re doing fan service for the sake of it rather than doing anything proper here. He is supposed to be M’Benga’s replacement when he decides to leave, which is what he and Chapel were talking about before a table and wormhole rudely interrupted.

Effectively, you could say that Chapel and M’Benga’s storyline here is the A-plot, or at least the plot with the biggest emotional stakes that takes up a good portion of the time. The thing here is, I don’t know that we’re doing a more traditional A-plot/B-plot thing this week; it is all so thematically cohesive and well done that it feels like one thing going on that is pulling in the same direction. Chapel tries to keep M’Benga alive, Erica is trying to keep the ship flying, Scotty is trying to get back to fix the ship, and Spock, Una, and La’an in the Port Galley are doing their bit.

Indeed, the Starship Troopers bit, while Pike, for the most part, is doing the Tim Robinson I Think You Should Leave side of that meme too. It does mean we’ve got a focus on our other characters in what has become the Spock and Pike Show, but I think we’re beyond saving it with bits like this. I’m not complaining; it is finally a second good episode of Strange New Worlds in season 4, but it is also not a strange new world notably. Really, “Off-Hour” is a peculiar one; it has some of the normal problems, but I think most people would enjoy it.

That’s such a strange feeling to have right now – actually enjoying an episode of Star Trek without feeling like you have to justify to yourself why you liked a bit of it. It is action-packed without feeling like something else; it has emotion for characters without feeling like it has come out of nowhere (Marie), and as I say, it is using the puzzle pieces on the board. More importantly, I think it is a bit more focused than trying to inject comedy where it isn’t needed. The Burnistoun bit can fly over your head, and you can still completely enjoy the jab it is making.

Ultimately, “Off-Hour” is anything but an hour where you can just turn your brain off and laugh at the pointy-eared people punching dinosaurs, and it is not hard sci-fi, despite what certain fans think Star Trek is. It is an hour of character, most importantly, going through an action-heavy bit of sci-fi problem-solving and doing so mostly while acting like adults. What I have been begging for to be consistent for years now. It has bits (Pelia) that are annoying or what feels like interjected characters (Bianca Nugara’s Cadet A’sha), but nothing too bad.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

SNW "Off-Hour"

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• At least I had some fun with the Scottish reference.
• A focused episode on a Star Trek-based problem.
• Using the skills of characters to tell a story.
• Handheld camera work showing the anxiety.

Cons

• A good editor would have killed Pelia by now.