Trekkie Episode

 'Strange New Worlds'....the Star-Trek series....season four opened up and I watched episode one.  I sat and watched the episode ("Valles Marineris") yesterday.  One of the weirdest and thought-provoking episodes of all the series.

Brief description?  Pike and crew are ordered to observe some 'natural-event'.  They show up....get drawn into some vortex, and lickety-split....are 65-million years in the past.  Based on stars....in 30 seconds....they figure they are in the Earth/Mars region...oddly enough.  The engine is down....fuel used up....crappy mess.

So they send three ladies to gather up fuel noted on Earth.  The intention for the 'slant' of the story....they are three bad-ass ladies.  (I can buy into this....slightly).

Meanwhile....Pike and crew now encounter this highly advanced race of Martians.  Head?  Battle Commander Kassel....bad-ass-level 9 (out of ten).  

Apparently Mars is at war with a bug-people (don't ask).....there's not much told, except the bug-people have killed off millions of Martians, and Kassel is looking for a magnificent weapon to end the threat.  Pike keeps talking about peace, and 'talks'.  

At some point...Kassel realizes the Enterprise 'fuel-cell' is the perfect weapon (makes no sense)....then steals it.  

Pike's efforts to crank-up the Enterprise....go to full power....now wrapped up.

So by the rules of the Federation.....Pike needs to recover the fuel-cell, and halt the massive threat.  Well....it's too late....Kassel has launched the fuel-cell 'bomb'.....against the 5th planet.

Well...this gets to a half-reality/half-theory problem....yeah, there is a 5th planet out there....in reality....already destroyed. Pike has begun to realize the implications.

So with 30 seconds left to halt the fuel-cell-bomb....saving the bug-people....Pike says nothing and lets the bomb dissolve the bug-problem.  They use the explosion to rig up a path back to the right time, and the Federation leadership seem to want to limit the discussion of what happened.

My take....someone knew the timing of this and rigged up Pike and crew to deliver the fuel-cell-bomb.

All of this has brought up the 5th planet issue, and making folks wonder.....in reality, what really happened to it?

I have to admit....I'd kind like to see the Kassel character brought back