This article contains FULL SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 6, "Off-Hour."
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 6, "Off-Hour," is an incredible return to form for the Paramount+ show. After three charming-but-underwhelming gimmick-heavy installments in a row, the tense chaos aboard the Enterprise as the ship's systems start to fail one by one is far more like what I was waiting for ahead of the Original Series prequel's return.
The episode is so densely packed with moments that enrich the franchise canon, like the first appearance of Dr. Boyce since 1966's "The Menagerie," that some of the more subtle moments are easy to miss. One such moment occurred on the bridge when Anson Mount's Captain Pike made a bold command decision while trying to keep the ship in one piece. Was it a brave move, though? Or was it actually very foolish?
Captain Pike's close call with death could have transformed the Star Trek timeline (again)
In the earliest stages of the quantum wormhole crisis, the crew of the Enterprise is flailing to find a way to regain control of the ship. While some of the primary systems are still available, the fact that all the control panels are electrified means touching them presents the very real possibility of death. When no one is capable of working up the courage to obey Pike's order to raise the shields, he takes matters into his own hands by transferring command to Lt. Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and doing it himself.
It's the decision of a top-tier Captain, and it's one of the biggest reasons the rest of the crew survives long enough to escape the wormhole altogether. Because we already know that Pike is in The Original Series, it's pretty obvious that he would survive the violent electrocution unharmed, but Pike himself had no way of knowing that. While he's aware of the profound injuries he'll one day need to suffer while saving a group of Starfleet cadets, his attempt to avoid that fate in Strange New Worlds' season 1 finale, "A Quality of Mercy," ultimately proved that a much worse future awaited Starfleet unless things progressed as planned. Namely, a war with the Romulans would take place.
Although there's no guarantee that the Romulan War would happen in a timeline where Pike died in "Off-Hour," it's safe to say that the alternate future would still replace what we see in The Original Series and beyond. The implication in "A Quality of Mercy" certainly seems to be that Captain Pike needs to suffer those injuries we see in "The Menagerie" in the exact same way in order for the Prime Timeline to experience its most favorable iteration. Even knowing that, Pike couldn't resist risking death in "Off-Hour" at a sooner point than necessary, because ordering someone to raise the shields in such a potentially lethal scenario just isn't the kind of leader he is.
All that being said, maybe a different train of thought was dominating Pike when he chose to accept electrocution while activating the shields. Although I choose to believe that he did it to save his crew without considering his own safety, it is possible that he was hyper-aware that dying there and then wasn't an option, and that unless someone raised the shields, he and the rest of the crew would have died in the wormhole anyway, resulting in a different future. It's a tricky thing to know for sure, but at least Star Trek: Strange New Worlds framed it as an unquestionably heroic moment.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 is streaming now on Paramount+.
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