Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

“Level-Five Transporter Accident”

Air date: 8/20/2026
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Dana Horgan
Directed by Jordan Canning

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

Review Text

Says the wise sage Erica Ortegas, "Absurdity's kind of baked into the premise." They may as well have named her Lisa Lampshade. Yes, when you have an episode about the crew (except Spock, who was off the ship) turning into puppets because of a massive transporter mishap, you have to accept the absurdity of it all. But here's the thing: That alone doesn't make the jokes work. The jokes actually have to put in some sort of effort in order to work. The whole attitude of "Level-Five Transporter Accident" is that there are puppets and this is all so very, very silly; ergo, this is inherently funny and entertaining. But it's not. It's tedious and cringe-inducing.

I hate to be a churl, but I get the sense the writers thought the sheer novelty of this premise would get them through the episode. The problem is, the novelty was already spent a whole year ago when they released the photos of the puppetized crew while the episode was still in production. There's no surprise here. We knew we'd be getting "a puppet episode." Now it has arrived. The question is, what can they do with it? It didn't take long for me to realize the answer was "very little," and not much longer to be done with the whole enterprise. This is what happens when you do gimmick episodes all the time. They stop being special and instead become tiresome and boring.

Look, I wasn't expecting a puppetry comedy as creative and mind-bending as, say, Being John Malkovich, but this episode does literally nothing with the concept beyond the most obvious low-hanging fruit and slapstick. The crew members get transformed into puppets and then are confronted by Orion pirates who attack, board, and take over the ship. (They are able to do this despite being Dumb Villains because our puppet crew is mostly helpless. Even still, the crew comes across as incompetent.) Hijinks ensue. But there's nothing thematic. Nothing metaphysical. No contemplation of what life as a puppet might be or feel like. I had questions, like: How do they see with their puppet eyes? Are they actual eyes? How can they feel anything with their puppet hands? Do they have a nervous system? Do they have blood flowing through their veins, and would entrails spill out if they were cut open? Do they need to breathe?

Actually, those last few questions are answered. At various points, the puppets are cut in half, or have their arms fall off, and inside there's stuffing and they can be sewn back together, good as new. And at one point, the Orions airlock Pike into space as one of those standard hostage-drama We Mean Business maneuvers, but it doesn't kill him, because he's a puppet and puppets don't require oxygen. There's no logic or rulebook to any of this, because it's arbitrary and essentially dream logic. But the dream logic is not played as a dream, but rather as Saturday-morning-cartoon slapstick goofiness on the approximate plane of Scooby-Doo, very little of which lands.

By the end, the episode goes full-on Three Stooges, with puppets attacking Orions in the crew's effort to retake the bridge. It's ... what's the word? Idiotic. Is it okay because the idiocy is on purpose? It's self-aware enough to include a Stooges two-finger eye-poke, which, by the time it happens, I was sincerely predicting that it would, and would've been disappointed if they hadn't obliged. It's that kind of episode. But I can't think of any clever moments or lines that actually made me laugh. Hell, even "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" had a few laughs.

Strangely, the episode is actually improved by its lame "it was all a dream" cliché ending, where Spock wakes up and realizes the entire puppet adventure didn't happen. It at least papers over all the fantastical questions of puppet life and allows all the bad science to be dismissed. In terms of an outing for Spock, it shows his frustration in being the only person aboard the ship able to perform basic functions, since everyone else's puppet hands can't operate any piece of equipment.

In an early scene before the puppet mayhem, La'an breaks up with Spock, saying their relationship has run its course. Okay, sure. It's bad timing, because Spock needs someone to help him traverse the challenge of overcoming the mental hauntings of "The Griffin Incident." Enter T'Pring, who comes aboard the ship and is puppetized, but only after Spock assures her there will be "no hijinks." Boy, was he wrong. Well, I guess not, since all the hijinks were in his dream. But why is T'Pring a part of any of this? Something about Spock trying to work through something, something, Vulcan-human-whatever. Hell if I know. Why not?

I have no doubt I will be attacked for having no sense of humor. Whatever. (To answer that charge, I invite you to see the list of comedies in my movie collection.) Comedy is subjective, so your mileage may vary. But I just want my comedy to put in some sort of effort or be based in some sort of wit, observation, truth, character trait, humor, or jokes. This is just stupid silliness for silliness' sake, and while that's not a terrible thing by definition, that does not make any of this funny.

And it's long past time for this series to tell some actual stories instead of these shaggy-dog flights of fancy.

Previous episode: A Case of Chiaroscuro
Next episode: Off-Hour

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164 comments on this post

Christopher Perkins

Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 3:05am (UTC -5)

Delightfully silly. Ethan Peck is marvelous.