Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Silliest Episode Yet Is Ruined By Its Lousy Ending

Paramount

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

If you thought "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 riffing on "The Hangover" in Episode 3, "Human Best Friend" was as ridiculous as it could get, you guessed too soon. 

Scotty (Martin Quinn) is running an experiment on long-range transportation. Rather than use a living subject for something so dangerous, he sends a childhood toy of his — a puppet named "Little Ricky" — through the transporter. This backfires back on the Enterprise, turning everyone except Spock (Ethan Peck), who was flying a shuttle when the accident happened, into Jim Henson-esque puppets. Since the crew now doesn't have working hands, Spock has to singlehandedly maintain the ship. Then, things get even worse when some Orion pirates show up.

Fans have known that a Muppet episode of "Strange New Worlds" was coming for a while. Back in 2024, co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman told Variety that "Strange New Worlds" can do anything, from Muppets to black and white (which it did in the previous episode, "A Case of Chiaroscuro"), "as long as we're in storytelling that is cogent and sure handed." But at the very end of "A Level 5 Transporter Accident," the show reverses course.

The closing minutes reveal this great Muppet adventure was all just Spock's dream, his subconscious apparently trying to teach him to manage a situation completely devoid of logic. "All just a dream" is not just a cliche in and of itself; it's shorthand for an ending twist only a hack would write, something that always fatally undermines the story you just experienced. That holds true for "A Level 5 Transporter Accident," and it feels oddly cowardly since "Strange New Worlds" has been unafraid of silliness before.

Paramount

Let's look back at a time when "Strange New Worlds" critics often say the show got too silly for its own good: "Subspace Rhapsody," Season 2's musical episode. But the show committed to that premise, full bore. Even as the characters radiated embarrassment at breaking into song, it didn't feel like the show was ever hiding its head in shame for staging a musical episode. 

"Subspace Rhapsody" echoes "Once More, with Feeling," the musical episode of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." Like in "Once More, with Feeling," the stakes of the episode is that the compulsion to sing is making the characters admit things that they'd rather keep buried. Those consequences are the exact opposite of what the ending of "A Level 5 Transporter Accident" does by wiping away the whole adventure.

It's worth stressing the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" influence, because "A Level 5 Transporter Accident" is again pulling from that well. The episode is this show's own "Smile Time," an episode of the "Buffy" spin-off "Angel" where the villains are puppet demons running a children's show so as to drain young viewers' life force. Angel (David Boreanaz) himself is turned into a puppet; "Strange New Worlds" one-ups that by transforming everyone except the straight man into a puppet, but then pulls back with its "just kidding!" ending.

"Buffy" and its once unique blend of serious pathos with self-referential humor is the dominant model for genre storytelling these days. But for all the wisecracks, "Buffy" never chickened out from its silly bits. If the "Strange New Worlds" crew wasn't willing to go 100% in on turning the Enterprise crew into puppets, they shouldn't have made the episode at all.

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