Watch: Pike Gets Devastating News In Clip From ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 2 Finale

The musical episode (“Subspace Rhapsody”) is still humming in our heads but today also brings a clip from the season 2 finale.

Pike faces the Gorn again

The latest episode of The Ready Room, the official Star Trek aftershow, focuses on today’s episode but also includes a clip from the season finale, titled “Hegemony,” which indicates the return of the Gorn. The following clip picks up on a hint from the final minutes of “Subsapce Rhapsody” when Captain Batel and the USS Cayuga are called away for a priority one mission. (The clip starts at 30:10.)

[INTERNATIONAL VERSION]

Finale bits in trailers

If you look closely at the two trailers ahead of the season, you can now easily spot moments from the season finale, including Captain Batel facing off with a Gorn and Captain Batel seeing a huge ship arrive above a planet.

 

The second season comes to a conclusion on Thursday, August 10 on Paramount+.  


Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

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I can’t believe the season is already almost over. The last eight weeks have gone by WAY too quickly.

Yep.

Yep, and likely no more SNW’s until 2025 now. At the earliest…..

Yeah :( 2025 is optimistic the way things r going imho

Yeah, it has gone by too quickly. I wish they would add more episodes per season. Maybe 5 more?

YES!

Since the musical episode gave hints of some characters’ fates, I wonder if there will be departures after the season finale.

Batel is a goner.

Called it. Batel’s a goner.

Unfortunate, but when writers run out of ideas the first thing they do is kill-off a character.

We knew she wouldn’t be able to stick around forever since we see Pike as emotionally available/receptive to Vina when he returns to Talos IV in 2267 in TOS: “The Menagerie”. Granted, they definitely could have kept her around longer given the eight-ish years he has left before then.

I don’t have an issue with a show killing off characters, that there’s actual peril can drive a story. Further, Trek has kept most of it’s bloodletting off screen. DS9 (mostly) and Picard S3 ignored it. There’s more laziness to writing if they can’t confront tragedy, or relegate to background noise in fear of offending the fan base that demands utopian happy endings.

It’s not always necessary to actually show it happen, of course. NuTrek has been a little gleeful about how it handles violence – Georgiou and Icheb would attest to that if they could. Shinzon pulling himself onto the sword to face Picard also felt jarring.

Jadzia’s death was ridiculously handled in the actual episode, but at least its impact was well-explored for months afterwards. K’Heyler’s and David’s deaths are still the pinnacle to me of how to handle something so shocking onscreen and the aftermath. Spock too, although the narrative hoops taken to undo it were semi-extreme. Not Culber extreme, but still a little silly.

Claiming writers have “run out of ideas” is such a cliche. Unfortunate, but when commenters run out of ideas the first thing they do is fire off a cliche.

You do have a point. But what’s a cliché if not an often repeated trope, and if it’s often repeated doesn’t it lend credence to it?

And I just have less confidence in writers than I used to.

How’s claiming that ‘writers often seem to have no way of executing their ideas competently, and thus squander them’ — does that work better for you? Cause it is more true now than ever.

I didn’t want to be that direct, but… yes.

Keep in mind that by the time of “The Menagerie,” which isn’t too far into the future, he’s going to choose to be with Vina. So killing off Batel is in no way an example of running out of ideas. It’s explaining why he’s single at the time of his accident.

But they don’t have to kill her (if they do choose to do so).

The very latest episode is something never done before in 900+ hours of Star Trek, and you come with “when writers run out of ideas”? Really?

If you can’t see how the quality of writing has gone down drastically in the last years, in movies, shows, not only Trek, well that’s on you. I call it like I see it.

Goner or not, I don’t think most fans will care. It’s just very odd, she pops in at random moments for a scene or two, talk about their relationship and then vanishes again. I like the character but she is literally just the girlfriend at this point minus episode 2 this season.

At least Captain Batel might have some ideas of how to get herself out of a jam. Unless it involves a recipe, Pike is a useless wimp.

Let’s hope she does! We have seen her as a love interest and a prosecutor but not really as the Captain of a starship. As for Pike being a wimp….that’s in the eye of the beholder. Although I do think he could have been better written in the episode “Under the Cloak of War.”

Was Pike about to cry in that clip?

It’s not even a line the writers are crossing over anymore, it’s a whole retelling and political machinations in the back ground. And Pike looks like an ineffectual imbecile.

Hopefully, this episode is as funny as the rest of the season. They’ve really raised the bar on the level of comedy writing now that the franchise has gone full cartoon (NOT that there’s anything wrong with being a cartoon!)

Well, they do have a cartoon for that. And they’re pretty good at it there.

Yep. And they had an LD writer write episode 5, too. I think they see that the only thing people respond to now is making Trek funny and it’s clear the fandom fully embraces the approach! I’ve almost died laughing at every episode this season. When it hasn’t tried to be funny it’s been as serious as The Room.

I been saying since first season SNW really does lend itself to comedy in a way no other current show does except LDS of course. And I’m fine with that because I like comedy episodes (when they’re good ;)). But episode 8 was (no pun intended) deadly serious and IMO the darkest episode this show has ever done. So it proves it can go there when it has to, but I actually agree they probably seen how much people have responded to stuff like LDS and going that way a bit more often–hence hiring a LDS writer to work on the show and making the crossover episode. None of this is done by coincidence, they want the show to be a bit more loose.

And so far all the comedic episodes have been a big fan favorite, so it definitely goes to your theory more.

I think even the ‘serious’ episodes have actually been pretty funny. Casting adult Clint Howard in episode 8 was the tell in that one. The rest of it is just sitcom writing about what it’s like to have PTSD and how easy it is for Dr. M’Benga to get away with murder (his daughter last season, this obvious war criminal in this one). Last season they did a parody of Aliens and The Thing and it was all pretty silly. It helps that the cast doesn’t take anything seriously. They’re always quick with a wink and a smile and a “Well, THAT just happened.” It’s a comedy about Star Trek. Not quite 30 Rock in the quality of its jokes, but certainly in its meta commentary about the human condition of making television. I don’t think a show that always sells out its character and its reality for a joke is trying to be anything more than a comedy.

I don’t agree with that at all. There’s been plenty of drama in recent Trek’s I’ve enjoyed. It’s when they shoehorn snarky and wacky jokes into the drama, that’s usually when I lose my patience with this show. Again, they have a cartoon for that.

What’s the point in having a tonally and stylistically diverse set of series, if they’re not actually diverse?

That’s a good question to ask the production house charged with managing the IP. Strange New is a live action cartoon. Lower Decks is a cartoon cartoon. Cartoon fanatics have so badly wanted their to be no separation between live action Trek and animated Trek that now there isn’t, so, I don’t really see the issue. Star Trek is a comedy brand now. That’s why it’s been so successful of late. Nobody under 40 took the premise of the series very seriously and now they’re getting the version of the show they learned through pop culture. Every facet of it a big ol’ goof.

Well, cool for the kids. But you know… there are other age groups to try to attract. That’s just good business.

That’s what the library titles are for — and they give little head nods to “”””canon”””” as a little tease to old timers curious about the new stuff.

No, not really. Because they did a SNW episode last week about M’Benga that was adult. Picard also had its moments. So it’s not like they can’t do it. They simply lack the focus to make an entire series like that, for whatever reason.

On the other hand Prodigy is a “serious-adult-like” children cartoon series.

I totally agree. It’s a little weird how they flipped our expectations of tone like that. SNW, LD, and Prodigy are still *about* Star Trek, but Prodigy takes its premise of the kids on the ship a little more seriously. Discovery, improbably, seems like the only one less concerned with being about characters who are fans of Star Trek or learning how to be in Star Trek. They’re all comedies, though (with Prodigy coming closest to jumping out of this group), because all of them will put jokes ahead of character and story.

The Prodigy was the biggest and most pleasant suprise. Excellent and cohesive storytelling. I had zero expectations and it turned out to be a show which was the farthest away and the closest to 90s Star Trek at the same time. It was totally different and yet so familiar. Somehow THE “present time” of Star Trek but far away in the delta quadrant. Very cinematic. It’s hard to describe.

I watched a play through of that new Star Trek game (Resurgence?) they were advertising a sale of and like the feeling I had when I watched Prodigy – which I think I am sharing with you – there’s just a tone or gravity to it that felt more palpably “Star Trek.” The other shows are Trek, too, just other takes on the IP based on what other people like about it. Maybe it’s the kinda “chill” pacing of Prodigy? They tell really simple stories that get a chance to breathe, kinda-sorta how the TOS/TNG eras would. Along that line, I had no problem conceptually with Burnham riding a ship at warp in her Ironheart suit, but it definitely felt — despite the year 3000 tech being appropriate for Disco — like something that made *more sense* in Prodigy with Dao doing it and like something we’d see on *that* show. Oh well. I’m no longer the audience for Star Trek, and that’s okay. We’ve all gotta grow up some time.

I hate to say this, but I’m not really excited about the finale. For one I been split on using the Gorn since they showed up and two it already sounds like it’s just going to make canon an even bigger mess and just divide people more. Of course I hope its great but it’s odd I have no real interest in this episode. But it is shocking how fast the season flew by and we’re probably two years away until the next season sadly.

Yeah despite the look of the Gorn which I actually do love, I always thought it was a mistake to use the name “Gorn”. They could have had the exact same stories and just called the species something else. I know I’ve said that b4 but still lol

You’ve said this before and others have too but it’s worth repeating.

The show runner just wants to take advantage of the Gorn lore… which is BS.

Oh yeah in complete agreement. In fact, if you switched out the name and called them something else, I don’t think you would lose anything in the previous episodes. Nothing. La’An could still have the same tragic backstory and we can see this new species occupying more Federation space which could lead to a conflict which I’m guessing the finale is about.

And we don’t have to shut off brain trying to make it all fit either.

The SNW team has struggled with the show being too “small” at times. They seem to feel the need to rely on previously designed characters and aliens way more than they should. Some legacy characters and aliens are great. The problem arises when they pick ones that are too notable.

This reliance could be financially motivated. Using characters and aliens people already know could help to bring in viewers and in return that translates to subscriptions. As the show progress I hope that it can become less reliant on those kinds of things. Over this long break I hope they have the opportunity to really explore the idea of strange new worlds. When they are able to return to work, of course!

Yeah I agree fully. I generally liked this season but it’s immensely disappointing we didn’t get any NEW aliens. I know we were introduced to some in episode 5 and 7, but those were just used as plot devices. We didn’t really explore any new civilizations at all this season.

When you title your show Strange New Worlds and you have already ignored it completely in the second season, something is wrong.

The one thing I really miss about the Berman Trek era is that every show, EVERY one of them got at least one new adversarial villain to help define the show. TNG had many from the the Borg to the Cardassians. DS9 had the Dominion. VOY obviously had many from the Kazon to the Hirogen. ENT had the Suliban and Xindi. And you may not like all these personally but they at least tried to give each show it’s own identity and back story and just give us something new in the process.

Now, let’s look at all the modern shows. You have five of them, FIVE, now how many new or adversarial aliens have been introduced so far? One. That’s right, ONE new race, the Vau N’kat from Prodigy. That’s it! And now that’s cancelled. This is reason #47 why the show made for an 8 year old is my favorite out of the new stuff.

So sadly this is not a SNW issue alone. We have shows in the 23rd, 24th, 25th and the freaking 32nd century and yet only introduced a handful of new aliens in all of them. And I’m not saying they have to just be villains of course, but villains usually get developed and you learn about them more because they stick around.

I generally like NuTrek and I defend it more than I criticize it these days but this is another example where it can just do better and should. We don’t need to see the same dozen familiar aliens on every show. Get creative and design ONE new one that will have an impact for the next 20 years the way the Klingons, Romulans, Dominion, Borg or Cardassians did.

Canon needs to be shot out of a cannon.

No one loves TOS more than I, but after sixty years I think it’s time to jettison the straightjacket that canon has wrapped around SNW. James Bond movies don’t limit themselves to the world of 1962 anymore, so why should Star Trek?

Tell me a good story, and be entertaining about it. That’s all that i need.

Which is why for six years now (and counting) I and others have been saying they should just reboot the show entirely and then the canon issue disappears completely. So we completely agree! :)

And I guess thanks to episode three of this season it’s now suggests SNW is in alternate timeline from TOS and the other shows thanks to the Temporal War. But even that will probably just depend on the specific person watching until someone just comes out and directly says SNW is operating in a different timeline.

But I think that would be the best situation for the show because it really doesn’t make a lot of sense canon wise at least.

BTW, speaking of no new Trek for a while after the finale, I think Paramount+ feels our pain. I have seen no less than 3 different Star Trek collage clips ranging from TOS to the TOS movies to the TNG era to the DISCO era proclaiming Star Trek on Paramount +! I think they really want you to remember during the strike there is plenty to Trek to still watch.

There is plenty of Trek to watch. I have discs of SNW, Picard season 3, TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT and the movies. I am going to buy Lower Decks and Prodigy. Did I miss anything? Pretty sure I didn’t miss anything.

Oh I know there is, but the Trek commercials are flying in at warp speed now show casing every iteration like never before and they are longer than ever before and I am seeing them more often than ever before. That was my only point.

Lower Decks Season 4 and then Discovery Season 5 are in the can, so they’re coming unless Paramount decides to delay them.

True too but I was more speaking of the idea that they know we know the end is near.

Yep and which is why it’s ridiculously short sighted they cancelled Prodigy when they had 20 episodes in the can to keep people around. And I bet you the views would’ve been stronger next season too because fans know there is no other Star Trek coming for a long time after that. Those subscriptions will drop hard once Discovery is done and they know it.

Yup, I would not be surprised to see P+ reverse course on their Prodigy decision. Especially since after Discovery S5, there will be no live action Star Trek for the foreseeable future.

I don’t need to watch the clip to predict what happens…I mean the end of this week’s episode practically telegraphs it.

Pike has not been well-served in this season at all. Gotta be one of the least consequential uses of the series lead in the franchise’s history.

He’s been a great character for average people to project themselves onto, though. Doesn’t have to solve problems and everybody likes him!

So? It works just fine for this series.

It doesn’t. There have been good episodes in spite of it, but that is not the same thing.

Nah, it’s working just fine. This series just tells great stories, week after week.

I heard Pike is getting an Exo-6 figure. I hope it comes with an apron, kitchen utensils, cookbook, and an easy bake oven. Nothing defines Pike more than his chef hat and his teddy bear nature with the junior officers.

Lol! I don’t mind seeing Pike cooking but it’s feeling overdone at this point (no pun intended).

I rewatched some episode of Disco Season 2 and liked Pike’s parts more.
IMO Disco Season 2 served as a pilot to SNW. I wonder if this season of SNW serves as a transition to the TOS-crew. IMO this season doesn’t really work as prequel to TOS. There were hinted some moments in S1 which weren’t picked up like the appearance of Sybok.
Enterprise did a better job.

Season 2 would’ve worked better if it actually stuck to canon. ;)

And yeah what happened to Sybok??? I was hoping we see him this season. We could’ve had one (or two) less appearances of Kirk had him show up. I guess there is still the finale.

Well, to me he was best written on Discovery where he exuded trust, competence and benevolence, and it seemed to me that the character was remade a little in SNW, maybe to make him appear a bit more into a Kirk-like daring adventurer type? What I mean is, they gave him a camera shot of a naked woman in his bed literally 30 seconds into season one episode 1, a bold quiff, he gets to do comic relief more often, also buffed up his frame. I’s perfectly explainable in universe like building strength to ward himself against the truth of his future, but I sometimes I feel the fact that I can’t quite reconcile Discovery and SNW Pikes in my mind is not only to do with what he went through in-story.
He did have an important role in Una’s trial, but yes, in the latest episodes SNW was more like an ensemble piece where other characters got their episode spotlight, with Pike more like a supporting actor.

Maybe they can bring back Prime Lorca in a way if Pike isn’t available that much.

Let the Gorn whining begin

Noooooo! Don’t let it end

So they can’t scan, transport or communicate with the wreckage to search for survivors…

Tractor beam.