Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has introduced its fair share of characters over the course of its run, including both original team members and familiar faces from elsewhere in the franchise. We’ve met multiple younger versions of those who will go on to play key roles in Star Trek: The Original Series, those with recognizable names from Starfleet history, new crew members, and the occasional visiting loved one. Mostly, this sprawling approach to storytelling has worked, and Strange New Worlds boasts one of the most likable and appealing ensembles on television at the moment. But attempting to serve so many narrative masters can often mean that some of the show’s most interesting characters end up sidelined (or worse!) as a result.
During Season 3, Uhura had no arc to speak of outside of a flirtation with Ortegas’s brother Beto, Spock’s story was also largely restricted to his romantic life, and even Captain Pike himself was essentially treated as an afterthought, right up until the finale that required his girlfriend (whom we also barely knew) to sacrifice herself to save the galaxy. But while these are all frustrating examples of moments when Strange New Worlds has let its characters down in various ways, the show’s worst recent sin has to be the way it’s never actually allowed its most interesting new supporting character a chance to shine in the first place. Because while the addition of Commander Pelia (and legendary actress Carol Kane) to the series’ canvas has been generally delightful, Strange New Worlds hasn’t really figured out what to do with the character yet, and that’s something that absolutely needs to change in season 4.
Initially introduced as the Enterprise’s new chief engineer, Pelia is a former Starfleet Academy instructor who came aboard with a preexisting connection to her (deceased) predecessor, Hemmer, and a background the show had never explored before. Though she appears to be human, she’s actually a Lanthanite, a new and exceptionally long-lived (really, practically immortal) species whose lifespan encompasses thousands of years. (Pelia, bless her, is old old.) A whip-smart and deeply chaotic oddball who defies conventional wisdom about what sort of people excel in the role(s) she occupies, she apparently chose rather than was assigned to the Enterprise crew, possibly out of simple boredom at being stuck with Starfleet’s more sedentary Operational Support Services. She was apparently great friends with Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, has done a bunch of recreational drugs across many centuries, and magpies her quarters full of 1980s Earth artifacts, Hoarders-style.
Yet, for whatever reason, the character has had little to do beyond providing comic relief. Obviously this is an understandable move since she is, after all, played by Carol Kane. But Pelia is such an intriguing figure in her own right that it seems almost criminal that we don’t know more about her and have seen so little of her relationships with the rest of the Enterprise crew. Let’s not forget, someone in charge decided it was more important to dedicate an entire episode to Beto’s (legitimately terrible) Starfleet documentary than to further flesh out a character who had an actual, defined place on the canvas. (Though, to be fair, most of us would have taken almost anything other than what we got in “What Is Starfleet?”)
