The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 1, "The Broken Circle," now streaming on Paramount+.
Strange New Worlds is acutely aware of Star Trek's past and seeks to honor it as often as it can. Indeed, the whole premise of the series lies in the notion that the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage" was nixed for ridiculous reasons, and the characters deserve a proper shot. That's helped it rapidly become a fan favorite as it enters its second season.
And naturally, the premiere -- Season 2, Episode 1, "The Broken Circle" -- finds a terrific way to set a specific franchise oversight to rights. The episode opens with the crew stealing the Enterprise in order to rescue their wayward security officer La'an. It's an obvious homage to the original crew's hijacking of the Enterprise in the movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. As brilliant as that sequence is, however, it leaves two key crew members out of the fun. They just so happen to be main characters on Strange New Worlds and get their own chance to take the ship for an unauthorized joyride.
Stealing the Enterprise Is a High Point of the Star Trek Movies
The theft of the Enterprise in Star Trek III remains one of the best scenes in the entire saga. Ordered to stay away from the Genesis planet, Mr. Spock's former crewmates hijack the Enterprise in hopes of finding their resurrected friend on the planet's surface. The sequence plays like a bank heist, as Kirk and Sulu liberate Dr. McCoy -- carrying Spock's soul in his brain -- and Scotty merrily sabotages the experimental USS Excelsior to prevent the Federation from giving chase. Uhura beams them over to the Enterprise bridge, and they zip away like a gang of cackling teenagers: reveling in their chance to break the rules.
In the process, however, two of the classic crew get left behind. The first is obviously Mr. Spock, whose resurrection is incomplete and who waits on Genesis for his friends to save him. The other is Uhura, who uses the transporter and then spends the rest of the movie cooling her heels with the dork in the broom closet. There's no apparent reason for it beyond prejudices of the era: Black women weren't allowed to play with the boys.
Strange New Worlds Gives the 'Lost' Crew Members Their Own Enterprise Heist
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That's exactly the kind of issue that Strange New Worlds tries to address, starting with the premise itself. Studio executives infamously nixed "The Cage" and asked for a second Star Trek pilot in part because they didn't like the idea of a woman being the Enterprise's Number One. The premise remained, but the show was recast with new characters: the classic crew under Captain Kirk. Strange New Worlds corrects that oversight, with Christopher Pike in command of a crew that might have been The Original Series gang had things turned out a little differently.
That involves Spock -- the only figure from "The Cage" to make the leap to The Original Series -- as well as a freshly minted Ensign Uhura who arrived on the Enterprise in Season 1. The two of them conspire with the rest of the crew after La'an sends them a distress call: faking an accident and using the opportunity to scoot off and lend her a hand. It's a clever tip of the cap to The Search for Spock, as well as introducing Carol Kane's new engineer Commander Pelia, who helps them get away after catching wind of their scheme. And it gives Spock what might be a new signature line as he uses his Star Trek captain's catchphrase for the first time.
Somewhere in there, the episode manages to right the wrong of The Search for Spock: letting the two players left on the sidelines (three if Nurse Chapel is included) a chance to get in the game. "Broken Circle" is dedicated to Nichelle Nichols, who famously broke racial and gender barriers as Uhura in The Original Series. It seems fitting that it would spend at least a little time setting some scales right for her as she joyfully participates in the starship heist that she missed out on in The Search for Spock. Her pointy-eared shipmate even comes along for the ride.
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stream every Thursday on Paramount+.