Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season four opens back in time… and goes back even further.

“Valles Marineris” opens with Pike (Anson Mount), La’An (Christina Chong), and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) riding horses in a spacey, yet still Wild West-type area. When they are beamed back to the Enterprise, Spock (Ethan Peck) is waiting for them. He offers to take Pike’s saddle from him, but it is just a sly excuse to get a glimpse at La’An in her riding gear. She invites him back to her room instead. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Admiral April (Adrian Holmes) is on the Enterprise to see Pike. He offers Pike a promotion to Commodore, but he has some time to think about it—his answer is required when he gets back from his next mission.

For their next mission, the crew is to face a Category 10 interstellar squall. The key element is that there is no one they have to protect, as there are no inhabited planets nearby. They are just there to observe. Spock is concerned about being torn into “small particles of subspace.” Pelia (Carol Kane), however, is all about the “theater” of the show.

The crew is watching the solar storm from their ship when Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) gets a mayday message from inside the storm. So, naturally, the Enterprise flies into the storm, determined to save whoever sent out the mayday signal. The ship swirls and spins dangerously. When things finally stop, the ship is essentially shut down: no shields, no weapons, no warp drive. Just life support. The iridium drives are down, and they need new ones if they want to go home. The stellar storm pulled them into a warp field, as far as they can tell. 

Number One (Rebecca Romijn), La’An, and Ortegas (Melissa C. Navia) take a shuttle to a nearby planet that gives off readings of iridium. They land and find that the iridium they need is beside a volcano. Because nothing is as easy as it sounds, La’An gets readings of a creature between them and the iridium. A BIG creature. But if they want the iridium, they have to make it past the beast. La’An decides the best way forward is to fire on it—just a stun shot, that’s all. It has no effect.

We go back to the Enterprise, where most of the rest of the episode takes place. Something has grabbed the ship. It’s unclear where it came from, but it’s some kind of “energy tendrils.” They look like digital bolts of lightning that are surrounding the Enterprise. To me, it doesn’t even look like a “something” that is clinging to the ship. It looks like it is getting zapped by lightning, maybe in the middle of the Discs of Tron video game. Anyway, these energy tendrils are towing them away, and they don’t know what it is.

Pike calls the ship that sent out the mayday and—delicately—says that they seem to have “accidentally” taken hold of their ship. The person in charge of the other ship is Battle Commander Cassell (Saffron Burrows). She saw the Enterprise as wreckage, and seized them as scrap for their war. Cassell is not familiar with the Federation. She tells the Enterprise that if they are not in league with the Dol’Drms, their enemies, then they will allow them to live. Pike invites them aboard. Cassell doesn’t think it will help, but will come aboard to view their weapons. That isn’t a good sign.

While they are waiting for Commander Cassell, Spock figures out where they are… or when they are.They went back 65 million years, and the planet they are getting dragged towards is… Mars. Which means that the planet that Number One, La’An, and Ortegas landed on is Earth. Earth 65 million years in the past. Which, of course, means that the beast they have to get past is a dinosaur.

I don’t care how dumb it is that they got sucked back 65 million years. I don’t care how likely—or unlikely—that situation is; how possible or impossible it may be. I’m just excited that they brought in dinosaurs.

But, unfortunately, we have some stuff to work through on the Enterprise first. Commander Cassell and two guardians show up; they phased through the ship’s walls. Cassell insists she is there as a captor, and is there to view their weapons. Dr. M’Benga wants to scan them first and make sure they don’t have any pathogens or other dangerous things in their bodies. Cassell is wary, but she agrees, mainly because she is trained in medicine and wants to check out their tech.

Pike tries to explain their alliance between other worlds, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Cassell proclaims that anything alien to her is an enemy. However, Cassell believes that Pike and his crew are not enemies. She still wants to see their weapons, though.

Back on the bridge, Cassell inquires about the ship, and how the science is used to further their relationships with other communities. The crew pulls up Mars on the video screen while Cassell explains. The video shows where the Dol’Drms left a crater in Mars, and then Cassell’s crew had to tear them out. They lost two million people in that attack. “They are insects. They do not speak or reason. They simply feed and move forward,” she says. Force is the only thing that worked against them. Pike suggests, rather weakly, that they can talk to the Dol’Drms and try to stop the war. 

But Cassell doesn’t like that idea. In fact, she escapes and starts phasing through the ship, taking things as she goes.Most importantly, she grabs an antimatter container. When Pike finally catches up with her, she explains that she is upset because he didn’t explain when they are from. Pike explains that where they are from, they don’t exist yet. Cassell can’t accept that, but she says that their ship has given them what they need to win their war. She phases out of the ship.

But let’s get back to the dinosaurs! Number One says she will stun from a much closer distance, then they run. The Tyrannosaurus rex comes around and gets really, really close, but is distracted by some pterodactyls, who fly around, protecting the women from being eaten. Number One stuns the T-Rex, it works this time (she focused on the soft palate, rather than trying to get through their tough skin), and they run past. Apparently the pterodactyls don’t like scrawny humans, because they have flown away. 

Number One, La’An, and Ortegas are now looking for iridium. While searching, they discover a colony ship, where all the occupants must have died on impact. Number One isn’t too concerned about the corpses; she has found the one undamaged iridium fuel pod. But then a smaller dinosaur (well, smaller than the T-Rex; this one is about velociraptor-sized) jumps out at them. La’An doesn’t hold back. She punches it hard, right in the face. The dinosaur, rightly, runs. 

The expedition team returns to the Enterprise, where La’An gets her fist looked at. She broke her hand, but feels no pain. It’s like her body feels more attuned. Dr. M’Benga and Nurse Chapel calm her fears about her recessive DNA.

Pike calls Cassell to apologize for not telling her when they came from. He worries that if they use Starfleet’s antimatter, millions of lives may be lost. But Cassell suggests that one million might be saved. “Isn’t that what a captain does?” she asks, before shutting off her comms.

The Martians plan to use the antimatter to blow up the Dol’Drm planet, which happens to be the fifth planet in our solar system. Well, it used to be the fifth planet. Pike initially plans to stop them from using the antimatter, but at the last second, Pike calls it off. The antimatter strikes the Dol’Drm planet and blows it to pieces. The Martian ship is also torn apart. Spock wants the Enterprise to be taken by the wave, as it is the only way to get home. But it could destroy the Enterprise.

Naturally, the ship goes through the storm and they go back home. Once they are there, the crew sits to discuss what happened. A chunk of the Dol’Drm planet was the asteroid that landed on Earth and caused the dinosaur extinction. It also caused all the conditions to allow for the evolution of humanity. “We only exist because of what we did —or didn’t do.” Everyone is thoroughly confused, and Pike suggests they take the night off. Before Dr. M’Benga leaves, he offers Pike some words that he hopes will calm him. Apparently Martian DNA was found throughout the living population. So while Commander Cassell didn’t survive, some escaped. Had the Dol’Drm planet remained, it would have changed everything.

Pike meets with April, who wants to keep this mission a secret. Pike says they will tell the truth. He turns down the promotion… but gives it to Number One, who is ecstatic.

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds arrive on Thursdays on Paramount+.

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