Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’s Puppet Episode Is the Height of Silly Trek

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 5.

The title of the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Level Five Transporter Accident,” brings to mind one of the most upsetting moments in franchise history. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a transporter accident results in two people merging into one, screaming in agony as they die a painful death. Yet, what actually happens in “Level Five Transporter Accident” doesn’t come anywhere near horror, despite the fact that Pelia gets sliced in half by Orion pirates.

Instead, “Level Five Transporter Accident” pushes Star Trek to its silliest limits, even by the standards of modern Trek. By turning everyone on the Enterprise into puppets—excluding Spock, but including his hijinks-avoidant sometimes fiancée T’Pring—the episode leans heavily into the goofiness of things going wrong in deep space. “Level Five Transporter Accident” illustrates everything great about a silly episode of Star Trek, while also showing that not every potential premise makes for a good story, even with a sprinkling of Trek themes.

“Level Five Transporter Accident” is hardly the only Trek episode to deal with the iconic technology going wrong. Some of the most famous incidents lead to more dramatic beats, such as the split of Kirk’s personalities in “The Enemy Within” from The Original Series, the creation of Thomas Riker in the Next Generation episode “Second Chances,” or the merging of Tuvok and Neelix in the infamous Voyager episode “Tuvix.”

But it’s just as often led to shenanigans, even in the era of classic Trek. One of the best examples occurs in the season six TNG episode “Rascals,” in which Picard, Keiko, Guinan, and Ro Laren get turned into 12-year-olds and must repel a Ferengi invasion of the Enterprise. “Rascals” often falls among fans’ least-favorite episodes of the show, thanks to its high concept and uneven performances from the young actors. Yet, there’s no denying that “Rascals” adheres to the standard Trek formula: the crew faces a problem brought on by their mission to explore space, and they must work together and draw on their expertise to overcome the issue.

The same is true of “Level Five Transporter Accident.” Here, Scotty’s attempts to push transporter technology result in some merging of the crew’s DNA with that of a puppet he keeps with him for motivation. After they realize that they’ve all become puppets, the bridge crew convenes in Pike’s ready room to come up with a solution. When Orions attack the ship, the crew finds that their standard forms of fighting back fail, and thus must work together to find a different way to repel the invaders.

The animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks built some of its best episodes out of this approach. Take, for example, season four’s “Twovix,” a sequel to the infamous Voyager episode. Once again, two unlikely shipmates combine, Dr. T’Ana and Chief Billups, creating a new form called T’Illups. Aware of what happened to Tuvix on Voyager, T’Illups fights back by creating more hybrids that combine two, three, and even more crew members into a single individual.

“Twovix” illustrates what Lower Decks did so well, telling a story that’s funny, self-referential, but ultimately very Trek. Even in the face of such absurd stakes, Captain Freeman (the best captain in all of Star Trek, don’t deny it) does her job, putting professionalism first, even if she does so without grandiosity. She orders all of the hybrids separated because that’s what the mission calls for, even in spite of the absurdity and high emotions.

Freeman’s exasperation with the hijinks on the Cerritos helped Lower Decks feel like Star Trek, even thought it was a comedy show made to be as wacky as possible. Conversely, Strange New Worlds features a ship under the command of Captain Pike, whom Anson Mount plays as a supportive big brother, not the put-upon bureaucrat who Dawnn Lewis voiced on Lower Decks. Pike gleefully plays along with wackiness on his ship, leaving only T’Pring to object, and even she gets into the nonsense by the end.

Perhaps that’s why “Level Five Transporter Accident” is destined to the same fate as Strange New Worlds‘s previous most audacious episode, “Subspace Rhapsody” a.k.a. “the Musical Episode.” That episode once again had a proper Trek premise (an anomaly forces the crew to sing their feelings) and requires the crew to apply logic and professionalism to deal with a threat, namely invading Klingons. For some, “Subspace Rhapsody” pushes Trek forward, using the premise to go boldly into new genres and story styles. For others, it’s tedious and an excuse to shove an extraneous genre into Star Trek.

“Level Five Transporter Accident” won’t work for everyone. From its puppet silliness to the broad voice acting by the main cast to the guest appearances by comedy veterans Rachael Harris and Joe Lo Truglio as Orions, the episode goes big not just when looking for laughs, but also when conveying the wonder of space exploration. But that fact simply puts it alongside “The Enemy Within,” “Rascals,” and “Tuvix,” episodes that often get quite unintentionally silly and don’t have too many defenders, but are still firmly within the franchise’s canon. “Level Five Transporter Accident” is a silly episode, and it may not be a great episode, but it is undeniably an episode of Star Trek.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.

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