Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 5 Recap: A Transporter Accident Turns the Enterprise Into Puppets

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 5, “Level Five Transporter Accident,” gives us one of the strangest Enterprise emergencies yet. Scotty tries to break a transporter record, nearly the entire crew gets turned into puppets, Spock is forced to keep the ship together, and somehow there is still time for relationship drama.

The episode opens with a nice tribute to Star Trek’s 60th anniversary before Spock reveals that the Enterprise is heading toward Vulcan. He had planned to spend time studying logic, but Orion pirate activity has Starfleet ordering the Enterprise to help keep Rizonian space safe. That delay turns out to be the least of Spock’s problems.

Scotty, Spock and Little Ricky

Scotty is determined to push the transporter beyond its previous limits. Simulations suggest they can successfully transport something 27,000 kilometers, but Scotty wants to reach nearly 30,000 kilometers and send something aboard the U.S.S. Witmere.

His motivation is slightly personal because engineer Declan Milder holds the transporter record and also beat Scotty for valedictorian at the Academy by one sixteenth of a point. Scotty decides the perfect test object is Little Ricky, a creepy stuffed puppet from his childhood that he wants to transport directly into Declan’s quarters. What could possibly go wrong?

La’An Ends Things With Spock

Before the puppet madness begins, Spock’s personal life takes a hit when La’An cancels another one of their dance sessions. Spock admits that dancing has helped him focus lately, especially after what happened during the Griffin mission, but La’An believes they have been moving in different directions.

She tells Spock that their romance has reached its end and encourages him to focus on himself. Spock tries to control his emotions as she walks away, but the breakup clearly affects him at a time when he is already struggling to quiet his mind.

Spock later turns to T’Pring and tells her about his experience aboard the Griffin. She points out that Spock wanted to explore his human side when their relationship ended, yet now his connection to Vulcan logic has weakened. T’Pring agrees to help him when she comes aboard the Enterprise, provided he can guarantee there will be no high jinks. That guarantee does not last long.

Captain Pike Really Loves His New Chair

Elsewhere, Captain Pike is ridiculously excited about his new captain’s chair. Designed by Pelia, the fully biometric chair allows Pike to control several parts of the Enterprise using his hands and voice commands, and he happily shows Number One everything his new favorite toy can do.

The scene is played for laughs, but the chair soon becomes unexpectedly important. When almost everyone aboard loses the ability to operate the Enterprise normally, Pike’s fancy new technology becomes one of the crew’s few advantages.

The Enterprise Becomes a Puppet Show

Spock takes a shuttle out to set up the final relay buoy for Scotty’s transporter experiment, and Scotty sends Little Ricky on his way. Something immediately goes wrong, alarms sound, and Spock watches the Enterprise briefly disappear before it reappears.

When Spock returns, he discovers that nearly everyone aboard has been transformed into a soft stuffed puppet. Pike is a puppet, the bridge crew is made up of puppets, and even T’Pring has fallen victim to the accident.

Scotty believes Little Ricky’s matter became cross wired inside the transporter buffer, causing the transporter energy to spread throughout the Enterprise. Spock classifies the accident as Level Five, while Scotty helpfully points out that at least it was not Level Six.

The transformation creates more than an appearance problem. M’Benga and Chapel do not know exactly how the accident has affected everyone medically, while La’An cannot operate the weapons and Uhura cannot properly use her communications console because the ship does not recognize their puppet fingers. Running the Enterprise without functional fingers turns out to be a problem Starfleet apparently never planned for.

Spock Has to Keep the Enterprise Running

Admiral April tells Pike that the nearest ship capable of helping them is two days away and orders the crew not to reveal their puppet situation. With Orion pirates already nearby, letting anyone know the Enterprise is being operated by stuffed animals would probably be a terrible tactical decision.

Because Spock was outside the Enterprise when the accident occurred, he remains normal and becomes essential to keeping the ship operational. Pike’s biometric chair allows Spock to control several systems while Scotty and the medical team work on reversing the transporter accident.

Unfortunately, Spock was already emotionally frazzled before any of this happened. Now he is trying to keep an Enterprise full of puppets alive while dealing with the Orion threat, and his usually reliable logic is being pushed to its limit.

The Puppets Fight Back

Things get worse when the Orions become a direct threat and Spock is eventually taken captive. With their one non-puppet crew member compromised, everyone else has to figure out how to fight back using the bodies they currently have.

T’Pring becomes one of the biggest surprises of the episode. After arriving on the Enterprise insisting there be no high jinks, she ultimately realizes that logic alone will not solve their problem and begins embracing the crew’s unpredictable approach.

The puppets regroup for a surprise attack, and the plan even involves a puppet-to-human mind meld. It sounds completely ridiculous, but that is exactly what makes the episode work.

The crew eventually saves the Enterprise and finds a way back to normal, with an unexpected twist helping restore logic after all the madness. The experience also leads to a past romance being rekindled, while Little Ricky gets one final laugh when the question of who ends up with the creepy puppet is finally answered.

Final Thoughts

“Level Five Transporter Accident” is one of the weirdest episodes Strange New Worlds has attempted, but there is more happening here than a funny puppet gimmick. Spock’s struggle with logic and emotion runs throughout the episode, beginning with his breakup with La’An and continuing through his interactions with T’Pring and the increasingly ridiculous crisis aboard the Enterprise.

The puppets still steal the show, though, and the episode gets plenty of laughs out of Pike’s new chair, Scotty’s rivalry, Little Ricky and a Starfleet crew discovering how difficult their jobs become without actual fingers. It is silly, surprisingly character driven and exactly the kind of swing Strange New Worlds can have a lot of fun taking.

Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars

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