Stardate: 2491.5
Original Air Date: July 23, 2026
Writer: Akiva Goldsman & Henry Alonso Myers (Teleplay), Henry Alonso Myers & Alan B. McElroy (Story)
Director: Chris Fisher
“Interstellar storms are like space-time gone wild, the very stuff of the universe. Don’t you think a glimpse is worth a little risk?”
The Enterprise is at the end of a routine medical mission on Tulaxar, a dusty planet filled with floating rock formations. This is the fifteenth such mission in a row. Captain Pike is still recovering from the loss of his partner Captain Batel at the end of the third season, but he is enjoying the opportunity to ride a horse again alongside Dr. M’Benga and La’an Noonien Singh (all three are dressed as cowboys). When they return to the Enterprise, we are reminded that Spock and La’an are still in an ill-defined romantic relationship (unfortunately), and Una approaches Captain Pike with her wish to join in the next landing party mission.
Meanwhile, Admiral April pays a visit to Pike. He offers Pike a promotion to the rank of Commodore but requests an answer from Pike after the Enterprise’s next mission, which promises to be “a fun one.” The crew is tasked with observing a category ten interstellar squall, something rarely seen in the Alpha Quadrant. This particular storm has materialized around the star Ithaxus. While this is intended to be a scientific mission, Spock notes that if the ship gets too close to the storm it could get torn into small particles of subspace.
Meanwhile, there are several B-plots in this episode, one of which is Uhura’s struggle to train a new Vulcan recruit from the Academy (for some reason, this Vulcan is incredibly thoughtless and unkind toward Uhura). There is also a subtle bit of ribbing throughout the episode between Ortegas and Scotty (hopefully this is not a sign of yet another new budding romance in this show).
At any rate, while the crew observes the impressive squall, Uhura receives an erratic mayday signal of a ship trapped inside the interstellar storm. The signal is emanating from a starship distress buoy. While attempting an emergency rescue mission, the Enterprise is entirely swallowed by the fiery maelstrom. Somehow the ship is pulled into a warp field with only impulse power, no weapons functionality, and only basic life support systems. The ship’s iridium stock has been depleted. The Enterprise has been thrown to a mysterious solar system with three M-Class planets, one of which has iridium. Thus, La’an, Ortegas, and Una form a landing party in a still-functional shuttlecraft and they head down to retrieve the iridium. On the planet’s surface, they find volcanoes and very large creatures. At one point, La’an punches a raptor and feels guilty about it (apparently, her augmented “warrior genes” are affecting her, causing her not to feel pain despite breaking her hand).
Meanwhile, the Enterprise is suddenly captured by a hostile race of aliens who intend to confiscate the ship for parts. They are at war with an arachnid species called the Dol’drm. However, as Spock soon discovers, the Enterprise has actually traveled backward in time –65 million years to the “Sol” system! The hostile race or aliens are Martians under the leadership of Battle Commander Cassell (played by Saffron Burrows) and the landing party has actually landed on Earth! The large creatures they encountered are dinosaurs. Una, La’an, and Ortegas find the iridium inside an ancient crashed colony ship filled with cryo beds, and containing an iridium fuel pod (presumably, this crashed ship is from the Dol’drm species).
Pike desperately attempts to negotiate with Basel and the Martians, but they are firm in their decision to save their species and destroy the Dol’drm. Basel says, “there is only one thing that has ever worked: force.” The Martians easily confiscate the Enterprise’s primary antimatter fuel cell (they have a method of teleportation called “phasing” which allows them to walk through walls and disappear as they teleport back to their ship). The Martians use the antimatter fuel cell to crash directly into the fifth planet from the sun in the solar system (which is actually not Jupiter), thereby destroying their enemies, the arachnid Dol’drm once and for all. At the last minute, Pike orders the Enterprise crew not to intervening after apparently realizing what is happening.
However, the fifth planet is not Jupiter. But rather another mystery planet that once existed. The blast from the planetary destruction destroys the Martian ship, shifts the whole planetary orbit of Mars, and an asteroid fragment becomes the catalyst for the extinction of dinosaurs on Earth which leads to an era of planetary cooling that allows for the evolution of humanity. But the Enterprise doesn’t stay long. Pike makes the ludicrous decision to head toward the antimatter explosion which apparently returns the Enterprise to its own time (somehow?). Once returned, the crew wonders if Cassell accomplished anything, at which point it becomes clear that Martian DNA is present in innumerable species throughout the galaxy. Cassell didn’t survive the blast but her people did. Robert April says the official story will simply be that Starfleet lost contact with the Enterprise briefly in the storm and there will be no mention of the Enterprise inadvertently causing the birth of humanity.
In the end, Pike declines his Starfleet promotion from April, but he suggests Una “Number One” would be a good choice for a promotion. She is then promoted to the rank of Commander, which is one step closer to becoming captain of her own ship.
“We’ve seen a lot of strange new worlds, but we’ll never see something like this again.”
My Thoughts on “Valles Marineris”
Apparently, the entirety of human evolution on earth is the result of the Enterprise accidentally traveling backward in time and failing to stop a warring race from destroying a fifth planet in the solar system? I have to admit this is a completely ludicrous premise, as is the time travel scenario in this episode. Additionally, the ending to this episode left me wondering about Pike’s decision to allow a complete planetary genocide to occur, albeit unbeknownst to him, though by doing so, he would allow for the eventual rise of all human life on Earth. But mercifully this is not another gimmicky song-and-dance episode, the likes of which were rampant throughout Season 3 of SNW. So that’s something.
There are some interesting time-travel ethical questions explored in this episode, like the kinds of questions examined in Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” and the “Butterfly Effect,” but ultimately “Valles Marineris” is just a touch too far-fetched for me to believe that the Enterprise could travel backward and forward in time this easily. Or that the antimatter fuel cell could easily destroy an entire planet? Or that ensuing blast radius from the destruction would lead to both the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the future evolution of human beings. It’s a bold idea and a fairly entertaining start to the new season, but ultimately I’m left hoping for more depth going forward.
Star Trek Trivia:
- This episode is titled “Valles Marineris” which is a reference to a system of canyons that runs along the surface of Mars (it is the largest canyon system in the solar system). The name comes from Latin, meaning “Mariner Valleys.” It was named after the Mariner 9 orbiter which first discovered the canyon in 1971.
- This episode opens with a brief new intro that depicts various different Star Trek ships. It then features the longest cold open of any Star Trek episode to date (the credits don’t appear until 14 minutes 26 seconds into the episode).
- Uhura briefly speaks Vulcan in this episode (she has been learning the language from Spock).
- Category ten interstellar squalls are rarely seen in the Alpha Quadrant.
- Captain Pike mentions that his father loved Edgar Rice Burroughs’s science fiction class A Princess of Mars, a book which Pike now finds ironic considering his encounter with Cassell.
- Pelia makes a couple winking Doctor Who references in this episode.
- The shuttlecraft “Curie” is featured in this episode, which is named after Marie Curie.
- The Vulcan Cadet references both the K’thonia disaster and the FFakisha conflict in this episode.
- The Vulcan Academy Cadet is never named explicitly in this episode but her name is apparently A’Sha.
- A Tellurite can briefly be seen working in sickbay in this episode, a demonstration to the Martians of the diverse species that are united together under the Federation.