Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4's Best Episode Was Directly Inspired By A Rob Reiner Classic [Exclusive]
by Jeremy Mathai · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Shields up! This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4, Episode 8, "Orders of Magnitude."
Each episode of "Strange New Worlds" Season 4 has lived up to its title thus far, even more than the Paramount+ series already has in the past. Every subsequent week keeps bringing us somewhere new and unexpected — not just in terms of setting and locale, but even as part of its many genre-hopping adventures. A stoner comedy, a black-and-white noir, a puppet episode, and even a soap opera are only the most recent assortment of treats that co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Henry Alonso Myers have thrown at viewers. But Episode 8 brings things somewhat back down to earth ... in a manner of speaking, that is.
While set almost entirely on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, the A-plot of "Orders of Magnitude" is the latest attempt at that most classic of "Star Trek" tropes: the war drama. We've seen this basic setup many times before. Our hero is corralled into an extreme situation, questions the orders of a misguided commanding officer, and must make a series of impossible choices to do the right thing. Ordinarily, this premise is rife with tension and stakes. Add a certain James T. Kirk into the mix, however, and you can expect plenty of fireworks to follow.
This is Paul Wesley's power hour, putting him at the front and center of the action against the legendary Admiral Simon Reeger (Joe Morton). In a recent conversation over Zoom, I spoke with Wesley about perhaps his best performance to date as not-yet-Captain Kirk and the inspiration behind this particular episode. It should come as no surprise that director Sharon Lewis took her cues from a genre classic in Rob Reiner's "A Few Good Men."
Paul Wesley approached playing Kirk in Strange New Worlds Episode 8 as if it were a military drama set on Earth
As "Star Trek" proved during "The Original Series" with "Balance of Terror," there's something magical about taking this futuristic sci-fi property and grounding it in a genre much more accessible to us Earthlings. Episode 8 of "Strange New Worlds" Season 4 channels the famous "Trek" naval battle of wits, although this time focusing on an Starfleet's internal drama. Here, Admiral Simon Reeger is established as an imposing personality and mythic figure among our Enterprise crew — which only makes it that much more difficult for James Kirk to defy his bloodthirsty orders and save an entire planet of (potential) innocents.
For anyone even passingly familiar with the late Rob Reiner's "A Few Good Men," this undoubtedly evokes Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson squaring off in the 1992 masterclass. According to Paul Wesley, this was precisely the idea, as he and director Sharon Lewis discussed this on set:
"We talked a little about 'A Few Good Men.' It almost feels like this, you know, 'You can't handle the truth!' [Laughs] It evoked that a little bit [..] But I go back to, a lot of 'Trek' can be — some of it can be funny, some of it can be silly, some of it can be very fantastical, and there's all sorts of strange aliens, and this was very much like, 'Man, this could be on Earth.' It felt like a military drama, like a [character-focused] military drama. So I played it that way. I played it like it's not fantastical, [like] there was no special effects and CGI and VFX and all that. And I loved it."
New episodes of "Strange New Worlds" stream on Paramount+ every Thursday.