Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 4 Recap/Review – “A Case of Chiaroscuro”

chiaroscuro (N): pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color (M-W.com)

It was a dark and stormy Stardate 2122.4. The rain came down hard on Mat’aar 12, the kind of rain that soaked you from the tip of your hat to the toes of your shoes.

Listen, kid, “A Case of Chiaroscuro” ain’t no “Dixon Hill” tale; this is a hard-boiled Trek Noir episode. Think Casablanca in space without the love triangle. Number One / Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) leads her first away mission as a Commander, Dr. Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) confronts demons from his past, and Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose-Gooding) learns what it’s like to work undercover in a hostile territory. Back on the Enterprise, Chief Security Officer Lieutenant La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) has a mystery of her own to solve, but Science Officer Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) is being less than helpful with her investigation.

Prologue

The Enterprise is sent to the Mat’aar system to retrieve a wayward probe, Angelo-1, that’s wandered off course. Nothing in Star Trek is ever simple, though; it’s drifted into Klingon space near a Klingon-occupied planet, Mat’aar 12. It’s too far from the demarcation line for the tractor beam, so Una, M’Benga, and Uhura take a shuttle to retrieve it.

The Klingon War may be over on paper, but there’s still a cold war between the Klingons and the Federation, and tensions are high. The Klingons consider Mat’aar 12 a strategically important colony, and if they see the Federation retrieving a surveillance drone, it may spark another conflict.

Speaking of sight, Uhura needs to get used to the lack of color. No, you don’t need to adjust the settings on your streaming device; this episode is in black and white. According to M’Benga, this is due to the Infrared Blackbody Spectrum from the Mat’aar sun. It filters out all color, leaving only light and shadow (black and white) visible.

While Uhura gets her bearings, Una and M’Benga make small talk to ease some of the tension. M’Benga points out this is her first mission as a newly promoted Commander. She’s been doing the job for years, but now she has the actual rank, and responsibility, that goes with it. She also has the added pressure of being the only Illyrian in Starfleet, so she feels the eyes on her career. Still, Una relies on her Starfleet Handbook in times of trouble, because, as she puts it, “I love rules. I love books about rules.” “Where Fun Goes to Die” indeed! Una changes the subject and asks M’Benga if he’d like to visit some “old friends” on the Klingon-occupied planet. M’Benga appreciates the offer, but he’s just fine where he is.

Uhura has adapted to the conditions, and she’s able to access the drone and send it back to Federation space for the Enterprise to beam aboard. That wasn’t so bad, right? The away team is just about to breathe a sigh of relief when a Klingon D7 battle cruiser shows up in orbit around Mat’aar 12. They haven’t spotted the shuttle yet, but if the shuttle goes back to the Enterprise, they definitely will. Una contacts the Enterprise for instructions. Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) orders them to land on the planet and try to blend in with the native population until the D7 leaves. In other words, hide in plain sight.

Landing on Mat’aar 12 isn’t exactly easy. The planet is constantly bombarded with electrical storms, meaning it’s always storming. Mat’aar 12 is literally a dark and stormy planet with zeppelins and art deco skyscrapers piercing the sky.

On their way to the surface, the shuttle passes through a planet-wide security net that M’Benga observes has had an upgrade since the Klingon War. When Una asks if that means they were detected, Uhura lets her know that the net was only able to record that something passed through it but couldn’t specify what. As long as they can pass with the rest of the Mat’aarans, they should be fine. Good thing Mat’aarans happen to look exactly like humans.

Act One

Checkpoint Charlie X

Una, M’Benga, and Uhura make their way toward town dressed in native garb, which is naturally designed to keep the rain off. A hologram of a very menacing Klingon soldier reminds everyone to have their identification on them at all times, or suffer the consequences. They realize this is a big problem as they reach a guarded checkpoint with no credentials.

The trio is about to fall back and regroup when a Mat’aaran named Roman (Andy McQueen, Revival) approaches Una, calls her “Nivette,” and asks where she’s been. He hasn’t heard from her for two days and was beginning to think she was dead. She dismisses his concerns and asks what he wants; he’s been sent from Headquarters to retrieve her. They have a “situation.”

When Roman asks Una/Nivette who her companions are, “Nivette” tells him they’re her new recruits; he can speak freely. Roman tells her about the unidentified shuttle that came through the security net, and they’ve been tasked with finding it. Before they can do that, however, there’s something back at HQ that needs to be handled. Roman escorts the three through the checkpoint, and they head to Headquarters.

Play It Again, SAM

Headquarters on Klingon-occupied Mat’aar 12 is a nightclub reminiscent of Sam’s Cafe. The first thing they see when they walk in the door is a standup piano that’s been intricately altered to play mechanically. As they walk through the club, M’Benga points out the armband everyone is wearing, clearly indicating they’re collaborators with the Klingon occupying force.

Although he seems to know a lot about Klingon occupations, when Una asks how many Klingon-occupied planets he’s been on, he answers, “Zero.” This could be a technicality, since he was on the moon of J’Gal (“Under the Cloak of War”), or it could be a reference to his Starfleet black ops career (“What Is Starfleet?”). Either way, we know it’s a non-zero number.

The “something” Una/Nivette is expected to handle is an interrogation of a suspected traitor. Uhura starts to panic when she realizes just how bad this could get for them. By some amazing cosmic fluke, they landed on a planet where Una happened to have a Doppelganger. What if she and M’Benga run into theirs? How do they pretend to be someone they’re not?

Una reminds them both that she’s no stranger to hiding her truth and walks off to start her interrogation.

This isn’t M’Benga’s first undercover opp in a hostile territory. He starts to calm Uhura’s nerves by mentoring her on picking an identity. Keep it simple – your real first name and a loved one’s surname (family friend). Stay as close to the truth as possible so you don’t confuse yourself. When Uhura laments that she can’t take notes, M’Benga suggests she take notes with her eyes – notice the people noticing you.

The Wayward Drone

Back on Enterprise, La’an and Spock begin to examine Angelo-1, the probe that started this whole kerfuffle. At first glance, nothing looks unusual, but La’an wonders if it could just be a Trojan Horse. On the other hand, she may be overthinking it. La’an has been seeing Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) for counseling to try to find a balance between vigilance and paranoia. She does not want to end up like the Griffin‘s Chief Security Officer, Lieutenant Rose Harper (Sorika Wolf) (“The Griffin Incident”), and she’s been feeling “off” ever since she punched a dinosaur.

She decides to take a closer look at the probe and finds one of its data chips, 32-B8, has been knocked askew. There’s nothing to indicate foul play (maybe it was just knocked loose), but there’s nothing to indicate there wasn’t foul play, either.

La’an and Spock take their findings to Captain Pike, who reminds them that there is a very strict chain of custody when it comes to these data chips. Spock, however, is uncharacteristically willing to blow this off as a random event and isn’t convinced this is anything to worry about. Pike disagrees; If La’an’s gut tells her something is off, he thinks she should go with it.

Resist This

Things just got a lot worse on the planet. The head of the Klingon occupation force just walked into the bar, and he has a very familiar name: Commander Kor (Demore Barnes). The future Military Governor of Organia is the current Military Governor of Mat’aar 12, and he’s got his Mind Scanner with him. Further, according to M’Benga, Kor is descended from Kahless himself, which makes him Klingon royalty.

Una sits down at a dining table to start her interrogation. Across from her is her subject, a Mat’aaran local who’s been identified as a traitor (Ewa Kasp). Of course, she protests her innocence, but something doesn’t feel right. The traitor starts whispering to Una that she’s passed her test and hasn’t given up any intel. She then gives her a frequency, 34.6 MHz, and tells Una it’s up to her now. Before Una can ask her what she means, the traitor starts foaming at the mouth and collapses. M’Benga diagnoses it as poison from the borgia plant and declares her dead.

Eager to use his Mind Scanner, Kor is disappointed Una/Nivette allowed the traitor to die. Quick on her feet, Una/Nivette reminds Kor that traitors don’t deserve an honorable death, and she got what she deserved. This seems to placate the Klingon; he obviously trusts Una/Nivette.

Outside the bar, M’Benga and Uhura aren’t doing well. They’ve run into a new checkpoint and still don’t have identification. Unlike before, they can’t just turn around and walk away; there are too many eyes on them this time. Uhura claims she knows 600 words for “bad,” and none of them could describe their current predicament. Just then, a Mat’aaran is stopped and asked for his papers, but he doesn’t have them. He tries to run, exclaiming, “May Mat’aar never waiver,” as he’s gunned down in the street.

Uhura runs to help the Mat’aaran, but she’s quickly stopped as well. Compassion is unacceptable on Mat’aar 12. Since she also doesn’t have ID, she’s arrested and taken away.

Before M’Benga can go after her, he’s stopped by a Mat’aaran named Jelem (Albert Chung), whom he recognizes as the night club’s bartender. M’Benga introduces himself as Joseph Ruick, one of Una/Nivette’s new recruits. Jelem explains he’s a member of the Mat’aaran Resistance movement, and Nivette is their leader (and, clearly, a double agent). Finally, the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together.

Since Kor wasn’t able to use his Mind Scanner on the traitor Una/Nivette was interrogating, he uses it on Uhura. This is exactly what Uhura was afraid of — being alone and having to think on her feet. When asked her name, she remembers M’Benga’s advice and tells Kor her name is “Nyota Nukuru.”

Back at the bar, Jelem explains to Una/Nivette and M’Benga/Ruick that the Klingons have significantly stepped up security, and they need to get their identification soon. Una/Nivette learns she left hers in her office, but M’Benga/Ruick and Uhura/Nukuru are going to need totally new ones, and that’s not going to be easy.

Jelem also explains that the player piano is also an early-warning system for them he refers to as Tactical Sonic Vigilance. When Klingons enter, it transmits a series of tones at a frequency Klingons can’t hear but Mat’aarans can. He’s also run a connection to some speakers in Una/Nivette’s office, so she’ll be warned when her boss walks in the door.

Act Two

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

La’an is continuing her investigation into the suspicious data chip, which leads her to Cadet A’Sha (Bianca Nugara). We haven’t seen the Vulcan cadet since “Valles Marineris,” where she was less than impressed with Uhura’s Vulcan dialect and the Enterprise crew as a whole. She even threw a little shade at Spock’s half-human side. Now, La’an needs to enlist her help while her assignment rotation has her at Uhura’s Communications console. Cadet A’Sha may think she’s better than the rest of the crew, but La’an knows exactly how to play her and easily manipulates her into helping.

To her surprise, Cadet A’Sha actually finds something — a simple relay-response signal bouncing off the Angelo-1 drone to the Enterprise. When Cadet A’Sha traces the signal to its source on the ship, it leads La’an to…

Scortegas. La’an finds Engineer Lieutenant Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) and Enterprise Pilot Lieutenant Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) working together to use the drone as a makeshift navigation buoy to keep track of the D7. The same radiation making everything look black and white is also wreaking havoc on their sensors, so the new BFFs came up with a way to monitor the Klingon ship, so they can get their people off the planet.

La’an seemed skeptical of the pair suddenly getting along so well, but Scotty assured her everything was above-board with a prophetic, “Cross my heart and hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer.” Be careful what you wish for, Scotty. They’re also having Cuban sandwiches for lunch together, which La’an wasn’t expecting, but it’s certainly not a conspiracy.

That potential lead came up cold. Or maybe tepid? Scotty finds a hidden signal beneath their relay ping they didn’t put there.

What Do You See?

Kor has a well-earned reputation for being a ruthless interrogator (“Errand of Mercy”). Not satisfied with Uhura/Nukuru’s answers, he turns his Mind Scanner on her to get to the truth.

What’s her name? Nyota Nukuru. Zap.

Where is she from? A small village in Kenya. Zap.

What color are the trees in your village? Green.

Whoops.

Uhura/Nukuru quickly catches herself and starts telling Kor about how she’s heard of the color green and how beautiful it is, and how she hopes to see it someday when she can get off Mat’aar 12. Zap.

He’s also been showing her his version of a Rorschach Test. As a form of silent protest, Uhura/Nukuru’s only answer when asked what she sees is “tree” (her version of the four lights). Even when Kor shows her an inkblot that looks suspiciously like a Starfleet Delta, Uhura/Nukuru still answers, “Tree.” She won’t break.

Kor’s interrogation is interrupted when one of his aides walks in and starts speaking Klingon. Kor responds in kind, while Uhura/Nukuru listens in on their conversation and gathers what sounds like critical intel.

Step Into My Office

While Jelem is downstairs at the bar working on “Joseph Ruick’s” and “Nyota Nukuru’s” identification credentials, Una/Nivette and M’Benga/Ruick step up to her office to retrieve hers. After finding what she needs, the two decide to poke around to try to find out what they’ve gotten themselves into.

They find Nivette’s tablet, which contains the Resistance’s entire database. Nivette was in the process of carrying out a daring plan when she disappeared. They discover that the Resistance was planning to infiltrate the local Neodymium Plant, which powers the planetary security net keeping the Mat’aarans from escaping, and set off an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to disable it and allow the Mat’aarans to leave. The frequency the Mat’aaran Traitor gave her (34.6 MHz) was the frequency to set it off.

The pair also find a before-and-after set of photos illustrating the Resistance’s plan. They also show what Mat’aar 12 looked like before the Klingons arrived and destroyed everything. Among the photos, M’Benga finds a group photo of Nivette’s Resistance cell, which included Jelem with his young daughter. M’Benga was immediately reminded of Rukiya and felt a connection with the Mat’aaran freedom fighter.

They didn’t have to worry about Una running into her Doppelganger; she and M’Benga found Nivette frozen in a cryo-tube, dead. M’Benga does a little medical forensics and concludes that Nivette was poisoned and climbed into the cryo-tube to try to survive. This wasn’t suicide like the Mat’aaran Traitor at the bar; this was murder, and whoever killed Nivette was coming for Una next.

With a Warning

Uhura/Nukuru is still defying Kor’s interrogation techniques, including his Mind Scanner, when her identification finally arrives. Kor begrudgingly accepts it as truth and lets her off with a warning… this time.

Uhura quickly rejoins Una and M’Benga at the bar and lets them know what she’s heard. The Klingons have stepped up security so much because they are planning a total military takeover of Mat’aar 12 within the next 24 hours. The D7 in orbit is there with troops and supplies to make it happen.

If the Klingons are successful, the Mat’aaran population will be trapped with no way to leave the planet. The upgraded security net will vaporize any ship that tries to leave. That’s why the Resistance is trying to take it down. All for its strategic location near the Federation border.

As an aside, M’Benga checks on Uhura to see how she’s faring after her interrogation. She lets him know she put his advice to good use; “Nukuru” is the name of a dear friend’s home in Kenya. He lets her know she did well and takes a moment to honor her friend from Nukuru.

The Mat’aaran Tactical Sonic Vigilance device goes off, and in walks Commander Kor with his entourage boldly singing the Klingon Drinking Song, ‘ej HumtaH ‘ej DechtaH ‘Iw. Their revelry is soon drowned out by the Mat’aarans, who have started pounding their tables to the Tactical Sonic Device’s rhythm. The Klingons may not be able to hear it, but they can clearly see the defiance on the Mat’aarans’ faces.

Kor silences the room with a loud Klingon roar.

Una can’t let the Mat’aarans live under Klingon subjugation. Her conscience can’t let her look away, but that’s exactly what the Starfleet Handbook tells her to do. When M’Benga reminds Una that she isn’t Nivette, and this isn’t her fight, Una admits that Starfleet isn’t right about everything. Pretending to be Nivette brought back some old memories of having to pretend not to be Illyrian. While it may be uncomfortable, pretending to be something she isn’t is something Una is very familiar with and good at.

Gaslight

La’an’s investigation into the tampered data chip in the Angelo-1 drone has come up empty. She turns to Spock to compare notes and possibly get some support from her situationship.

She gets his notes but not his support. Spock says he doesn’t see anything to indicate foul play. The evidence La’an found was a dead end. She’s just being paranoid.

Spock usually doesn’t give up so easily, so La’an didn’t understand why he was so willing to sweep everything under the rug. Maybe he was right; maybe she was just being paranoid.

Right?

Act Three

Drink with Me

Una/Nivette has her first real test when Kor invites her to have some blood wine with him. She was able to fool him before when they were in a crowd, but this was one-on-one.

Kor tests Una/Nivette’s loyalty by toasting to the Klingon Empire. Una/Nivette passes his test by wishing the Empire a prosperous and expansive future.

Kor is impressed, but he quickly reminds her that she’s his subordinate. His speech is full of not-so-subtle reminders that he was the Klingon Empire, and he was in charge here.

When Kor tries to brief Una/Nivette on the military takeover, she reveals she’s already aware of his plans and glances toward Uhura/Nukuru. That’s why Una/Nivette “recruited” her in the first place – she speaks Klingon.

Kor finally admits that everything up to that point has been an elaborate test of Una/Nivette’s loyalty, which she’s passed with flying colors. Kor even comments that he regrets she wasn’t born a Klingon. She’s established her cover.

Let Me Blow Ya Mind

Now that they know the plan, Una/Nivette needs to carry it out. She still needs one more crucial piece, though – the detonator. M’Benga/Ruick and Uhura/Nukuru stay behind in the bar with Nivette’s database to guide Una/Nivette as she looks for it.

She soon finds the detonator and is quick to realize how it works. It’s triggered to go off as soon as it passes through one of the Klingon checkpoints. Whoever carried out the mission would be instantly caught and likely killed. It was a suicide mission Nivette never had the chance to carry out. She was going to sacrifice herself for her people.

Her revelation is short-lived. Roman appears from around the corner and begins to explain the whole thing. He knew she was an imposter from the moment he saw her; he killed the real Nivette. He felt that Nivette never respected him or his contributions to the Resistance, so he decided to switch sides and take his chances with the Klingons. He figured by exposing the entire Resistance, he would gain favor with Kor and be rewarded, likely with Una/Nivette’s job.

Una has to keep Roman from exposing her before she can carry out her plan, so she fights him. After quickly subduing him, she tries to convince him not to betray the Resistance; help them one more time instead. Roman is beyond redemption, though, and refuses. When Una doesn’t kill him and lets him go, Roman tells her, “Nivette would’ve killed me,” and runs off with his tail between his legs.

Paranoia, Big Destroyer

La’an stops by Sickbay for her next session with Chapel and tells her everything she’s been struggling with. She was so sure something was there when she examined the Angelo-1 drone, but everything she looked into came up empty. Maybe Spock was right; maybe she was just being paranoid.

Whether it was a guilty conscience over what she’d done, or she couldn’t keep letting her friend doubt herself, Chapel asked La’an if she’d checked the transporter forensics, then looked over La’an’s shoulder at the Medical Transporter.

It was her. Chapel had grabbed the drone mid-transport, quickly erased the chip, then put it back in place, hoping no one would be the wiser.

That’s why Spock wasn’t pushing the investigation. He was trying to keep La’an from finding out what Chapel had done.

Chapel’s old friend, the CO of the medical ship U.S.S. Yang, contacted Chapel needing a favor. Her ship answered a distress call near Mat’aaran space, and the Yang crossed the border to respond. If the drone transmitted that footage to Starfleet, her career would be over.

Chapel tried to avoid involving La’an, but now, she didn’t have a choice. She was asking her to be a friend and look the other way.

La’an had a choice to make.

Big Bada Boom

Roman had run off to the nearest Klingon checkpoint and demanded to be let through, telling them he had critical information about the Resistance. Una/Nivette wasn’t worried, however; that was exactly what she knew he would do.

So she slipped the detonator into his pocket during the fight.

As soon as Roman walked through the checkpoint, the detonator did exactly what it was designed to do. The EMP went off, the planet went dark, and the security net went down.

The Mat’aarans could leave.

A grateful Jelem turns to Una/Nivette and thanks her. Now, he can get his daughter, Emma, to safety. Not him, though; he’s staying to keep fighting the Klingons. Una/Nivette can’t think of anyone better to pass the leadership of the Resistance to. She knows the movement will continue to be successful against the Klingons under his leadership.

Bye, Bye, Bye

By a stroke of good luck, the D7 in orbit they had to hide from in the first place was close enough to the EMP to be effected as well, so the Enterprise away team were free to leave Mat’aar 12 as well. Pike eagerly called his away team to get them back to the ship.

La’an presents her findings, or lack thereof, to Captain Pike. She was wrong; there was no foul play with the drone, but Ortegas and Scotty are best friends now.

And that was all she found.

Epilogue: Homeward Bound

Back in their shuttle and heading home, Una, M’Benga, and Uhura see the evacuation already underway. Una takes time to reflect on two very big questions:

Did we do enough?
Did I do the right thing?

M’Benga can relate to the first question; he’s asked himself that very question more times than he can count. He tells her about his first mission as a Starfleet doctor. The planet where he was stationed was in a civil war, and Loyalists had captured the hospital where he was working and taken the patients as hostages. He told Una as a doctor, his first duty was to the patients under his care, so he defended them.

That was as far as he was willing to go with that story.

As far as whether or not Una did the right thing, it wasn’t for him to say. Irony notwithstanding, life was rarely black and white. Una had her own perspective; she knew what it was like to have to keep your head down not to be noticed and having to hide who you are to fit in.

Una looks at her reflection in the shuttle window and answers her own question. Whatever Starfleet has to say, she can live with what she did.

Final Report

When I first watched this episode, I was worried it would turn into something corny, even for Star Trek. I really do see the plot as Casablanca in space without the love triangle, but it goes much deeper than that. Una and M’Benga confront demons from their past, while La’an and Uhura struggle with what they feel they’re capable of.

Demore Barnes plays a wonderful Kor. He had all the swagger, arrogance, and air of Klingon superiority conveyed by John Colicos in Star Trek: The Original Series (“Errand of Mercy”).
This is the first we hear of Kor being directly descended from Kahless. That being the case, I now have two questions:
- Why didn’t he tell that to Worf when the went looking for the Sword of Kahless? If he had, Worf likely would have seen Kor as the rightful heir to it and just handed it to him. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “The Sword of Kahless”)
- Does he do voices? (Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Savage Curtain,” Star Trek: Lower Decks, “A Farewell to Farms”)
The visual effects lost nothing by being shown in black and white. The Enterprise consoles and displays still looked as intricate and impressive as they ever have, not to mention the costumes and makeup. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is visually stunning in color or monochrome.
If the borgia plant sounded familiar when Dr. M’Benga mentioned it, it was. The borgia plant made a brief appearance on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Man Trap.”