Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds has launched its justifiable share of characters over the course of its run, together with each authentic group members and acquainted faces from elsewhere within the franchise. We’ve met a number of youthful variations of those that will go on to play key roles in Star Trek: The Authentic Sequence, these with recognizable names from Starfleet historical past, new crew members, and the occasional visiting liked one. Largely, this sprawling method to storytelling has labored, and Unusual New Worlds boasts some of the likable and interesting ensembles on tv in the intervening time. However trying to serve so many narrative masters can usually imply that among the present’s most attention-grabbing characters find yourself sidelined (or worse!) in consequence.
Throughout Season 3, Uhura had no arc to talk of out of doors of a flirtation with Ortegas’s brother Beto, Spock’s story was additionally largely restricted to his romantic life, and even Captain Pike himself was primarily handled as an afterthought, proper up till the finale that required his girlfriend (whom we additionally barely knew) to sacrifice herself to save lots of the galaxy. However whereas these are all irritating examples of moments when Unusual New Worlds has let its characters down in varied methods, the present’s worst latest sin must be the way in which it’s by no means really allowed its most attention-grabbing new supporting character an opportunity to shine within the first place. As a result of whereas the addition of Commander Pelia (and legendary actress Carol Kane) to the sequence’ canvas has been typically pleasant, Unusual New Worlds hasn’t actually discovered what to do with the character but, and that’s one thing that completely wants to vary in season 4.
Initially launched because the Enterprise’s new chief engineer, Pelia is a former Starfleet Academy teacher who got here aboard with a preexisting connection to her (deceased) predecessor, Hemmer, and a background the present had by no means explored earlier than. Although she seems to be human, she’s really a Lanthanite, a brand new and exceptionally long-lived (actually, virtually immortal) species whose lifespan encompasses 1000’s of years. (Pelia, bless her, is previous previous.) A whip-smart and deeply chaotic oddball who defies typical knowledge about what kind of folks excel within the position(s) she occupies, she apparently selected reasonably than was assigned to the Enterprise crew, probably out of easy boredom at being caught with Starfleet’s extra sedentary Operational Assist Companies. She was apparently nice associates with Spock’s mom, Amanda Grayson, has performed a bunch of leisure medication throughout many centuries, and magpies her quarters filled with Nineteen Eighties Earth artifacts, Hoarders-style.
But, for no matter motive, the character has had little to do past offering comedian reduction. Clearly that is an comprehensible transfer since she is, in any case, performed by Carol Kane. However Pelia is such an intriguing determine in her personal proper that it appears nearly felony that we don’t know extra about her and have seen so little of her relationships with the remainder of the Enterprise crew. Let’s not neglect, somebody in cost determined it was extra vital to dedicate a whole episode to Beto’s (legitimately horrible) Starfleet documentary than to additional flesh out a personality who had an precise, outlined place on the canvas. (Although, to be truthful, most of us would have taken nearly something aside from what we bought in “What Is Starfleet?”)
