33 Years Later, Star Trek Just Rebooted Its Most Heartbreaking Idea
The final frontier isn't in space.
With the finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, the franchise has lost a fan-favorite character and confirmed the sneaking suspicion that many fans have had since Discovery launched in 2017. Namely, stories set in the 23rd century, before Star Trek: The Original Series, carry a strange sort of double-sided curse in that legacy characters can’t perish, and new characters are very much in danger at all times. After strong hints that one character was marked for doom this entire season, Strange New Worlds Season 3 pulled a fast one and in “New Life and New Civilizations,” the shocking Season 3 finale episode, revealed another beloved character will likely never come back again.
But, in delivering this twist, Strange New Worlds also paid homage to one of the franchise’s greatest episodes of all time, the 1992 Next Generation classic, “The Inner Light.” Here’s how the departure of one character also was a tribute to Trek’s most heartbreaking and affecting concept.
Spoilers ahead.
Captain Batel’s fate, explained
Captain Pike and Captain Batel face the future...and the past.
After having Gorn eggs implanted in her body in the Season 2 finale, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) has had a rough time. And, just as things were starting to look up for her future, the finale reveals that her destiny has been connected with defeating the evil ancient alien species, known as the Vezda. The quick explanation for this is that because Batel had so many hybridized biological procedures throughout Season 3, she’s gained genetic memory on how to fight the ultimate embodiment of evil, which is the Vezda. And, in a timey-wimey twist, this also results in a pre-destination paradox in which Batel has already defeated evil, and is, in fact a kind of space god.
So, ironically, like Pike, Batel’s fate is sealed and, in order to defeat the Vezda, she has to become the savior she already was in the distant past. But, not before a little side trip.
Batel and Pike’s “Inner Light” happy ending
Batel and Pike be able to stay together in this life. But, in another timeline, they’ll be just fine.
Because Batel is imbued with time-bending powers, she creates an entire alternate lifetime in which she and Pike get married, have a child, and Pike somehow avoids his infamous accident from The Original Series episode “The Menagerie.” Pike says “the baffle plate never ruptured, there was no radiation leak, no explosion...”
This represents the second time Strange New Worlds has had as season finale in which Pike exists in an alternate universe and the “The Menagerie” future doesn’t take place. However, in this version, he’s not captain of the Enterprise anymore, so, presumably, the alternate, and horrific, “Balance of Terror” from Season 1’s “The Quality of Mercy” doesn’t occur. Instead, Pike grows old, Batel grows old, and they live an entire life within the blink of an eye.
Picard’s other life in “The Inner Light.”
That premise is exactly what happened to Captain Picard in the 1992 Next Generation episode “The Inner Light.” In that Hugo Award-winning story, written by Morgan Gendel, the Enterprise encounters a probe which uses a nucleonic beam to let Picard live an entire life on another planet, in the distant past. The touching episode has remained a fan-favorite for three decades, and tellingly, leading up to the premiere of Strange New Worlds Season 3, Anson Mount did mention his love for “The Inner Light” in specific, saying: “There’s not really another episode like that. It really stands out to me.”
In “New Life and New Civilizations,” Strange New Worlds remixes “The Inner Light” premise to give Marie Batel an entire lifetime, in which she lives to old age, seemingly, about to pass away in her sleep. And then, snaps back to the present to defeat the Vezda.
And just like Captain Picard in “The Inner Light,” it’s clear that Pike has retained these memories. Batel even managed to leave him a specific cooking apron, a nod to the alterante timeline, and the SNW version of Picard’s flute from “The Inner Light.” So, not only does Pike have have future knowledge of his own fate in just a few years time, he’ll now be forever changed by the memory of a completely separate life he lived with Marie Batel, to a healthy, older age.
Canonically, Pike’s final fate will be the gift of living in a world of pure illusion with Vina on Talos IV. And, after everything he’s gone through in Strange New Worlds, you can see why that future might turn out to be another kind of happy ending.
