Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4's Big Puppet Episode Has The Perfect Director

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The following article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4, Episode 5, "A Level 5 Transporter Accident."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 has been one high concept episode after another. In the season premiere, "Valles Marineris," the Enterprise crew traveled back in time and met dinosaurs. Since then, we've had a horror episode ("The Griffin Incident"), a stoner comedy episode ("Human Best Friend"), and a film noir episode ("A Case of Chiaroscuro"). "A Level 5 Transporter Accident" pushes the show onto the silliest edge of the final frontier yet, when the titular transporter accident turns the Enterprise crew — barring Spock (Ethan Peck) — into puppets.

The episode is directed by Jordan Canning, a TV director whose name Trekkies might recognize at this point. Canning has directed three prior episodes of "Strange New Worlds," and indeed has basically become the show's go-to director for the comedy episodes. Her "Strange New Worlds" directorial debut was Season 2's "Charades" (which /Film spoke with her about), where Spock is transformed into a full human.

In Season 3, she followed that up with the romantic comedy episode "Wedding Bell Blues" as well as "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans," a flip on "Charades" where several human main characters turned into Vulcans. However, it's not only Canning's "Star Trek" work that makes her perfect for this episode. Before "Strange New Worlds," she directed eight episodes of the 2022 "Fraggle Rock" reboot, "Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock" — so she has experience directing Muppets.

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While the Enterprise crew are never referred to as Muppets-with-an-M in "A Level 5 Transporter Accident" (the "Muppets" brand being trademarked and all), the puppets were designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. They thus bear the distinctive Muppet look. You could put the puppet Captain Pike (Anson Mount) right next to Kermit the Frog and he wouldn't look out of place.

"Fraggle Rock" was a later creation of Jim Henson's, debuting in 1983 and running for four seasons. Henson's intent with the show was to teach children the value of empathy and diversity — not far off from Gene Roddenberry's goals with "Star Trek," actually. The denizens of Fraggle Rock may not be quite as famous as the Muppets (then again, who is?) but the show maintains a strong legacy, hence that 2022 revival (which /Film personally interviewed the Fraggles about).

Jordan Canning's experience directing both the Fraggles and the Enterprise crew helps her merge those two styles in this episode. The action is driven not just by the puppet crisis, but by Orion pirates who show up to steal the Enterprise with the crew unable to resist. The Starfleet crew has to adapt their fighting style to their new fleece-and-rubber bodies. 

Pike can't push the Orion captain (Rachael Harris) out of his captain's chair, so he has Spock throw him in a fastball special, like a slow-motion, low-impact version of when the X-Men's Colossus throws Wolverine. Even the action of "A Level 5 Transporter Accident" underline the absurdity — there's no getting around the fact that the Starfleet officers fighting the Orions are all puppets. For that kind of scene, the only director "Strange New Worlds" could call was Jordan Canning.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+.