The Jim Henson Creature Shop made Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' puppet crew adorable, but one cuddly USS Enterprise crew member stole the show. Directed by Jordan Canning and written by Henry Alonso Myers and Dana Horgan, "Level-Five Transporter Accident" lovingly melds the chaos of The Muppets with Star Trek.
A transporter accident turns the Starship Enterprise crew into puppets, and only Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) was spared in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 5. The beleaguered Vulcan Science Officer becomes the only person who can control the Enterprise's systems, and Spock can't stop Orion pirates led by Captain Ch'Rol (Rachael Harris) and Ejachi (Joe Lo Truglio) from hijacking the starship.
The climactic swerve of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' puppet episode is that it was all Spock's dream. While it's disappointing that the puppets didn't actually happen, it still doesn't undercut the irreverent and joyful fun of the Starship Enterprise crew turned into their pitch-perfect puppet counterparts by The Jim Henson Creature Shop. However, one Star Trek puppet in particular is a comedic masterpiece.
Pelia's Puppet Totally Stole Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Puppet Episode
As great as every puppet in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is, the Commander Pelia puppet is a cut above. While The Jim Henson Creature Shop endeavored to match every other puppet to their Strange New Worlds character, Pelia's counterpart played up the cartoonish aspects Carol Kane brings to her Chief Engineer, with hilarious results.
The diminutive Pelia puppet has spaghetti string blonde hair, garishly huge eyes, and is even hilariously cut in half, with no ill effects. Pelia was bisected by Captain Ch'Rol after the puppet engineer hurled her boots at the Orion leader. A quick sew job put the two halves of Pelia back together in a way that would make Darth Maul in Star Wars envious.
"I have a photo from the time of Carol looking at me with the puppet in the background after having been chopped in half, and she just has this delightful joy on her face," said co-writer Henry Alonso Myers. "[When] the Pelia puppet arrived, we just discovered that [perfect accuracy was] redundant: that Pelia and a puppet are the same things," chuckled executive producer Akiva Goldsman.
Jim Henson Company Creative Supervisor Jason Weber told TV Guide, "They decided, 'Pelia — she's outside the norm,' so we got to play with her. Her eyes were crazy big. Her hair was out of a synthetic fiber that we got to coil like curls. And they were game for it. So we have all of these portrait puppets — and Pelia."
Pelia as a puppet, who spent most of the episode barefoot, was another level entirely for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' most whimsical episode. The Pelia puppet was also an instant hit with the fans who adored "Level-Five Transporter Accident," and it's a perfect anthropomorphization of Strange New Worlds' most cartoonish character.
Every Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Puppet Was Perfect
The Jim Henson Creature Shop created 11 puppet counterparts of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' characters, including a red shirt and a perfectly Vulcanized puppet T'Pring (Gia Sandhu), plus other puppets for various Starship Enterprise crew members who hilariously panicked in crowd shots when the starship was attacked.
Like Pelia, La'an's puppet has her right arm severed in a transporter accident, but Spock easily sewed it back on, good as new.
Every adaptation of a Strange New Worlds character into a puppet was spot-on, starting with Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). Pike's puppet had Chris' peaky pompadour, while Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) and La'an Noonien-Singh's (Christina Chong) puppets captured their dark-haired feminine wiles, as did Christine Chapel's (Jess Bush) blonde puppet in white.
Fans often described Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) as a 'chaos Muppet,' and now that the time has come, the helmsman was brilliantly translated into puppet form. Meanwhile, Scotty (Martin Quinn) also looks fantastic as a puppet, complete with subtle dark circles under his eyes to show how stressed out the young engineer is to undo his transporter mistake.
Along with Pelia, however, Dr. Joseph M'Benga's (Babs Olusanmokun) puppet is another standout. M'Benga's bearded felt doppelgänger is adorable. Even better, when it came time for the former black ops assassin to attack the Orions (with knitting needles), puppet M'Benga's eyes darkened to amusingly scary effect.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' cast reportedly did not get to keep their puppets, which are the property of Paramount. However, fans are already clamoring for the puppets to become real toys they can purchase for the holiday season. Hopefully, Paramount sees the potential to monetize Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' puppets and make fans happy at the same time.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4's new episodes premiere Thursdays on Paramount+
Release Date
2022 - 2027-00-00
Network
Paramount+
Showrunner
Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman
Directors
Dan Liu, Amanda Row, Maja Vrvilo, Akiva Goldsman, Dermott Downs, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Jonathan Frakes, Jordan Canning, Leslie Hope, Valerie Weiss, Sydney Freeland, Christopher J. Byrne, Rachel Leiterman
Writers
Onitra Johnson
Image credit: Paramount+
English (US) ·