‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ season 3 finale blurs the line between sci-fi and fantasy… and that’s OK

“Star Wars” has always been a fantasy series draped in sci-fi cosplay. For all the spaceships, robots, and planet-smashing laser beams, George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away is as much about magic and the people who wield it as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter”. Even a cynic like Han Solo eventually had to concede that Obi-Wan Kenobi’s “mumbo jumbo” about the Force was true. The inner workings of the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive were never quite so important.

Star Trek is different; the resolutely sci-fi voyages of James T Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, and their successors on the final frontier are much more likely to be underpinned by science or, at least, the franchise’s version of it. The technology — to paraphrase Arthur C Clarke — may be so advanced that it’s more or less indistinguishable from magic, but faster-than-light travel, teleportation, and even Greek deities have all been given explanations that wouldn’t seem out of place in a 23rd-century physics textbook.

Things get weird, however, when the lines between science fiction and fantasy start to blur. Using micro-organisms to justify the Force would have felt entirely appropriate in the Enterprise-D’s Ready Room, but the notion of Midi-chlorians jars in “Star Wars”, a setting where science rarely gets a look in.

On the flip side, the themes of destiny, telepathy, and ancient battles between good and evil explored in “Strange New Worlds” season 3 finale “New Life and New Civilizations” are straight out of Luke Skywalker’s wheelhouse. So is “Star Trek” now as much a fantasy franchise as a sci-fi one?

This is an excellent episode on many levels. Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) had been living on borrowed time ever since she became an unwitting host for Gorn embryos in “Hegemony“. This finale completes her arc in a much more satisfying way than heading up Starfleet Legal ever could have.

Instead, we learn that — thanks to cause and effect being out of whack on Vadia IX — protecting the galaxy from the deeply unpleasant Vezda aliens has always been her calling. In a wonderful “life in five minutes” sequence (reminiscent of classic “The Next Generation” episode “The Inner Light”), she even gets to show boyfriend Christopher Pike the future they could have had if their lives had turned out differently. It’s “Star Trek” at its most heartbreaking.

But the big themes here are all lifted from the fantasy playbook. The creature that possessed the unfortunate Ensign Gamble finds a way back from its permanent transporter buffer exile, and is able to exert a malign influence on a whole new generation of followers. Creepy new wrong ‘uns, the Vezda — given a spectacular introduction a few weeks ago — are subsequently set up as the backstory for every myth about evil in the Alpha Quadrant.

Meanwhile, Batel’s journey towards becoming the Beholder (the mystical statue living a double life as the Vezda’s prison guard) is implied to be a fait accompli; her encounter with the Gorn and subsequent DNA-altering treatments (Illyrian blood, Chimera blossom) all part of the universe’s grand plan.

And up in orbit, the Enterprise also embraces the fantasy vibe, deploying a Vulcan mind-meld to get Spock and Kirk piloting the Enterprise and Farragut, respectively, in telepathic unison. If you can think of a better way to get two starships firing their phasers in perfect synchronicity next time you need to open a portal to Vadia IX, we’d like to hear it.

That’s this episode — and arguably “Star Trek” — in a nutshell. “Trek” has rarely been scared to venture into fantasy territory when it’s needed (or wanted) to; it’s just been very good at dressing things up in tachyon pulses (magic spells?) and non-corporeal lifeforms (ghosts?) when it does.

In most other franchises, for example, Vulcan “mysticism” (mind melds, katras, and the like) or Betazoid telepathy would be described as sorcery. The Klingon time crystal that gave Pike a premonition of his tragic fate could happily sit on a mantelpiece at Hogwarts. And the Borg would be easy to dismiss as Sauron-style pure evil if you didn’t first stop to consider their “assimilate this” ideology.

As for gods, the “Star Trek” galaxy is crawling with them, whether it’s Q finger-snapping his way through Picard’s past, present, and future, or “Deep Space Nine”‘s wormhole aliens using their non-linear perception of time to deliver on-the-money (albeit cryptic) prophecies. “The Next Generation” even provided “Trek”‘s own version of a creation myth, when “The Chase” revealed that humans, Cardassians, Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons all look alike because they were spawned by a single Progenitor species — a theme revisited in the fifth and final season of “Discovery”. Whether they — and the Vezda — are deities or simply very, very, very old aliens is a matter of semantics.

As is that line between sci-fi and fantasy. Because just as “Doctor Who”‘s sonic screwdriver is effectively a magic wand masquerading under a different name, “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” aren’t quite as far apart as appearances would suggest — it’s just that Starfleet officers are slightly better at showing off their sci-fi credentials than the Jedi.

Every episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 3 is now available on Paramount+.