During the recent press rounds for Apple TV’s Ryan Reynolds/Kenneth Branagh vehicle “Mayday”, writer/director duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley talked about their plans for the next “Star Trek” movie. As well as confirming their story will feature an all-new crew, they mentioned that the in-development project will be inspired by a pair of hit films from the ’90s and ’00s, both of which — coincidentally — feature Denzel Washington operating at very different ends of the moral spectrum.
“Training Day” is a gritty police drama, where Ethan Hawke’s rookie finds himself under the ethically dubious wing of the Oscar-winning Washington’s corrupt cop Alonzo Harris. “Crimson Tide”, meanwhile, is a tense submarine thriller in which Washington’s executive officer argues with Gene Hackman’s captain about whether to launch some nuclear weapons. The stakes? Only kicking off the Third World War.
The latter feels particularly suited to a Starfleet bridge. The greatest “Star Trek” movie of all, “The Wrath of Khan”, also borrowed heavily from submarine movies, with the USS Enterprise given a naval makeover and space battles that played out like games of underwater cat-and-mouse. And while “Crimson Tide” doesn’t necessarily fit with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a conflict-free professional environment, it’s easy to picture a seasoned starship captain locking horns with an idealistic first officer about the right course of action.
In fact, if Paramount executives are having doubts about the premise, they should check out the latest episode of “Strange New Worlds“, which has just given the premise a dry run. Because to all intents and purposes, “Orders of Magnitude” is “‘Crimson Tide’ in space” — and it’s every bit as thrilling as that sounds.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH “ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE” SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.
The chances of Captain Christopher Pike and first officer Una “Number One” Chin-Riley coming to blows on the bridge are slim, especially as Michael Burnham’s mutiny on the USS Shenzhou (in the opening episode of “Star Trek: Discovery”) will still be fresh in Starfleet minds. Writer Alan B McElroy instead makes the smart move of marooning Pike and Chin-Riley on an alien planet, forcibly detained by a group of Andorian mercenaries.
So when self-proclaimed “wily old war dog” Admiral Simon Reeger (guest star Joe Morton) comes on board to commandeer the Enterprise for the top-secret pursuit of a cloaked enemy vessel, it’s ranking officer James T Kirk — making one of his implausibly frequent visits to his future home — who steps up to become the ship’s temporary number one.
Reeger initially seems like the ideal commanding officer, friendly and considerate enough to learn his subordinates’ names before he arrives. But — as happened with Captain Ramsey and Lt Commander Hunter in “Crimson Tide” — it quickly becomes clear that this working relationship with Kirk is going to be a fraught one.
He scolds his new first officer for questioning his decision to leave Pike and the away team behind, and not being on the bridge quickly enough when red alert is sounded. This is a man who doesn’t appreciate being undermined in public, for whom — as Dr M’Benga, who served under Reeger on the USS Constitution, puts it — the “mission is everything”.
The story also hinges on a very “Crimson Tide”-like dilemma. In director Tony Scott’s movie, the USS Alabama receives incomplete firing orders — Captain Ramsey believes this means they should launch nuclear weapons at the proposed target, but Hunter advises caution, insisting they should pause until the orders are verified.
In “Orders of Magnitude”, meanwhile, Reeger surmises that the ship the Enterprise is pursuing — believed to be responsible for the deaths of five million people in the Vaardan Massacre — is hiding on the surface of Argus II. Concerned the cloaked vessel might escape, he orders the destruction of everything on the planet’s surface — but with thousands of innocent lives on the line, it’s an order that Kirk cannot, in good conscience, execute.
What follows is right out of the “Crimson Tide” playbook, as chains of command are stretched past breaking point, the “math of command” is questioned, and the bridge crew throw increasingly awkward glances between themselves. Kirk risks putting himself on the fast track to a court-martial, receiving radiation burns to sabotage the phasers, and drugging Reeger so M’Benga can declare him unfit for duty — an act M’Benga ultimately takes the rap for.
It also puts Kirk at odds with La’an (who’s resolutely sticking to the admiral’s orders), and forces him to ask big, potentially career-ending favors of big brother Sam.
“Orders of Magnitude” also makes things personal in a way “Crimson Tide” never did. Reeger lost his family on Vaardan and is out for revenge, but — perhaps more pivotally — he served with the Kirks’ dad, George, on the Constitution.
Reeger became a hero after taking out several Klingon cruisers at the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, but he was actually incapacitated at the time and took the credit for George’s heroic actions, stalling Kirk Sr’s career in the process.
In the episode’s climactic bridge showdown, the tone shifts to another ’90s classic, as Jim Kirk goads Reeger into a confession about the Constitution scandal. The admiral’s “You’re damn right!” is pretty much a direct lift of Jack Nicholson’s “You’re goddamn right I did!” in the famous final act of timeless legal drama “A Few Good Men”. And yes, Kirk can handle the truth — even if he doesn’t want to.
It’s unclear whether “Strange New Worlds” showrunners had any idea a “Star Trek” movie inspired by “Crimson Tide” was on the cards — or if Goldstein and Daley knew this brilliant episode was on the way. But if their movie does become “Trek”‘s first big-screen outing since 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond“, they could do worse than taking a few notes from “Orders of Magnitude”.
New episodes of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.
