Stardate: 2122.4
Original Air Date: August 13, 2026
Writer: Skylar Ojeda & Dana Horgan
Director: Meera Menon
“There will be nowhere safely to hide. Captain’s orders are to stay invisible.”
The Federation probe, the Angelo-1, has overheated and shut down. Now it has drifted across the demarcation line into Klingon territory. Starfleet has ordered the Enterprise to recover the probe without restarting a hot war with the Klingons. Pike has tasked Una with recovering the probe in a shuttle (she is joined by Dr. M’Benga and Uhura). Sneaking behind enemy lines in a shuttle, they recover the probe near in the Mat’Aar System, near the planet Mat’Aar 12, but a D7 Klingon battlecruiser suddenly shows up and blocks the shuttle from returning to the Enterprise. To avoid detection, the shuttle decides to land on Mat’Aar 12 and stay out of sight. But the planet has an electromagnetic detection barrier that quickly alerts of intruders. We quickly learn that Mat-Aat is a fully occupied Klingon planet with heavy security measures a la Nazi-occupied France.
From here, “A Case of Chiaroscuro” becomes a noir-filled, Casablanca homage episode as the characters don trenchcoats and fedora hats to blend in on Mat’Aar 12, plus the nearby Mat’Aaran star causes things to be seen in black and white due to infrared light (the radiation only affects how humans see color) so this is a black and white episode, as well. Una, Uhura, and M’Benga are quickly wrapped up in an underground “resistance” movement against the police state by the Klingons led by Commander Kor, a regarded member of the Imperial family and a direct descendant of Kahless the Unforgettable (played by Demore Barnes).
Una is recognized on the street as the “boss” by a man named Roman (played by Andy McQueen). Apparently, she is known as Nevette, a powerful woman who is trusted by Commander Kor while secretly leading the underground resistance. Dr. M’Benga calls himself “Joseph Ruik” in this charade. The trio are led to a woman who has been tortured and who claims to have passed Nevette’s test (she then utters the words “36.4 megahertz” and bites down on an alkaloid toxin from the Borgia plant and dies).
Meanwhile, in the episode’s B-plot, Spock and La’an take apart the recovered probe that has been returned to the Enterprise and discover that the data chip 32-B8 has been dislodged and compromised with the data wiped clean. Was it jostled and dislodged in transition? Or was the probe tampered with? Is there a Klingon spy aboard the Enterprise? As the ship’s security officer, La’an leads an investigation (plus Scotty explains there is an added complication in that the star’s radiation is making the D7 cruiser disappear in and out of radar detection).
At the same time, back on the planet’s surface Uhura is captured and tortured by Commander Kor using the fearsome Klingon mind scanner while Una and M’Benga meet more members of the resistance, such as a bartender called Ja’lem (played by Albert Chung). They learn about a recent attempt to breach a Neodymiun plant and Una and M’Benga find the real Nevette frozen and dead inside a cryo chamber in her secret office. And during her interrogation, Uhura overhears Commander Kor speaking to his Klingon associates in a rare T’Gal dialect in which he says the Klingons are planning a full military takeover of the planet in 24 hours. Thus, Una feels obligated to help the resistance by detonating a device that will eliminate the forcefield using the ‘36.4 megahertz” frequency learned from the fallen woman earlier. However, she is double-crossed by Roman, so Una double-crosses him back. When Roman goes running to report her to the Klingons he realizes she has slipped the detonator in his pocket and it goes off inside the Klingon barrier, shutting down the entire planet’s forcefield and eliminating 80% of functionality for nearby ships like the D7 Klingon cruiser in orbit. This allows for Una, Uhura, and M’Benga to successfully escape from Mat’Aar 12, but Una continues to wonder if she made the right decision.
“Do not confuse yourself with the person you are pretending to be.”
And back aboard the Enterprise, in La’an’s investigation of the tampered probe, it turns out Nurse Chapel was the one who mangled the probe. Why? Apparently another ship, the USS Yang, crossed into Klingon territory earlier this month responding to a distress call, a highly dangerous and illegal mission. And this information would have been captured by the probe. Chapel tampered with the probe’s data chip to protect the crew of the Yang from either Klingon or Starfleet retribution (Chapel says she used to serve with the commanding officer of the Yang).
“Irony notwithstanding, few things in life are black and white.”
My Thoughts on “A Case of Chiaroscuro”
A rain-drenched, fedora-capped, Bogey-esque noir mystery in the vein of Casablanca or perhaps even Sin City, “A Case of Chiaroscuro” is another style over substance episode in the SNW catalogue. But I still quite enjoyed this one at least more than some of the other gimmicky episodes like “A Space Adventure Hour.” In this one, we get to see what a Klingon occupied planet actually looks like and it is unsurprisingly horrid (akin to Nazi-occupied France during World War II).
But the most ridiculous gaping plotpoint in this episode is that Una somehow has a perfect doppelgänger and she just so happens to be Nevette, leader of the resistance on Mat’Aar 12? How does this make any sense at all? Dr. M’Benga coyly handwaves it away as little more than a silly coincidence, acknowledging that we likely have many doppelgängers out there in the universe and it’s a miracle we don’t run into them more often. Chock this up to another contrivance in service of the story.
The B-plot is a bit forgettable as Nurse Chapel is once again attempting to secretly bend the rules of Starfleet, and suddenly Scotty and Ortegas seem a bit too chummy (I only hope this is not going to develop into another head-shaking romance in this show). All this considered this was an good enough episode; not terrible, but not great either. Would I watch it again? Probably not.
Star Trek Trivia:
- Apparently, the title for this episode “Chiaroscuro” is a reference to an Italian art term meaning “light-dark,” used to describe the contrast between light and shadow on a flat surface, which is a technique artists use to make flat objects (like a painting) look three-dimensional and create the illusion of volume and depth.
- This is the first mission for Una since being promoted to commander (as depicted in the immediately preceding episode). Her next promotion will be to captain.
- Uhura says “of all the gin joints…” a quotation from Casablanca (1942). There are other allusions to Casablanca in this episode, most notably a nod to the “Le Marseille” scene in the bar wherein Klingons are singing the song from the DS9 episode “The Way of the Warrior” (and elsewhere throughout Star Trek) before they are interrupted by a spontaneous song by the resistance movement on Mat’Aar 12. And unlike in Casablanca, the piano at the bar in this episode is a self-playing “player piano.”
- Dr. M’Benga says the substance that a resistance woman likely used to kill herself was an alkaloid toxin from the Borgia plant (which was first mentioned in the early TOS episode “The Man Trap“).
- “May Mat’Aar Never Waver!” is the cry of the resistance on Mat’Aar 12.
- Dr. M’Benga makes note of a tactic called “sonic vigilance” which he also once used on J’Gal.
- Commander Kor and his Klingons speak a rare T’Gal regional dialect.
- Dr. M’Benga describes his first post with Starfleet: He was stationed on the planet Ulget. They had recently overthrown a despot and joined the Federation. The leader let Ulget fall into disease, and there was a Loyalist uprising which forced M’Benga to kill them all.
- The character Commander Kor first appeared in the classic TOS episode “Errand of Mercy.” He later appeared in TAS and DS9 episodes, as well.