Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 5 Ending Explained: Puppets Take The Enterprise

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 5 - "Level-Five Transporter Accident"Puppets take the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 5, which lovingly transports the madcap mayhem of The Muppets to Star Trek, thanks to The Jim Henson Creature Shop. The result is a brilliantly cuddly, if flawed, episode that's nonetheless very Star Trek, and, surprisingly, all about Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck).

The singular dilemma of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 5, "Level-Five Transporter Accident," is that the crew of the USS Enterprise is transformed into puppets, except for Spock. Orion pirates led by guest stars Rachael Harris (Lucifer) and Joe Lo Truglio (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) then easily hijack the Enterprise, with Spock held captive by the green-skinned marauders.

When Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is ejected from the airlock by the Orions and realizes that puppets don't need oxygen, Chris has an epiphany of how to defeat the Orions by tapping into the crew's advantages as puppets. The puppet Starfleet officers take back the Enterprise and all is well, but there's a climactic twist that turns Star Trek's ingenious puppet episode on its ear.

Puppets Were Spock’s Dream All Along

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 5's endgame revelation is that the puppets were all Spock's dream. The Vulcan Science Officer awakens to find T'Pring (Gia Sandhu) at his bedside. Spock's ex-fiancée assures him that he was the only one affected by a transporter accident resulting from Scotty's (Martin Quinn) attempt to break the transporter distance record.

Spock's elaborate puppet dream logically resulted from his extreme distress following his ordeal on the USS Griffin ghost ship in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 2, "The Griffin Incident." Spock hoped to reinvest in logic on Vulcan, with guidance from T'Pring, to cope with his trauma.

Scotty's ugly puppet, Little Ricky, was the basis of Spock's dream, where the Enterprise's entire crew and T'Pring became puppets except for him. The 23rd-century Starship Enterprise lacks a ship's counselor, but logic suggests that Spock has deep-seated resentment about the constant "pandemonium" aboard the Enterprise, and the pressures he endures because of how much his crew relies on him.

Since everything was a dream, Spock's conversations with T'Pring and even his Orion captors are illuminating, telling a greater story about the over-stressed Spock perhaps wanting and needing a break from the Enterprise. Spock also realizes logic is his true anchor as his explorations into humanity have continually caused him pain and grief.

This further propels Spock towards his destiny of fully embracing logic and becoming Mr. Spock as portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Puppet Enterprise Crew Beating The Orions Was Very Star Trek

On the surface, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds doing a puppet episode is perhaps the most gimmicky of all gimmicks. To the credit of co-writers Henry Alonso Myers and Dana Horgan, director Jordan Canning, and The Jim Henson Creature Shop, and everyone involved, Strange New Worlds made their puppet episode very Star Trek.

A fascinating amount of thought and consideration went into the physiology, limits, and advantages of puppets, intelligently applying Star Trek-style problem-solving to this crisis. Played for laughs on the surface, the realities of being puppets became the Enterprise crew's weapon against the Orions. Captain Pike realized this when he survived ejection into deep space, while Commander Pelia (Carol Kane), who was cut in half, also deduced the good things about being puppets.

In the best tradition of The Muppets, Captain Pike led an attack on the Orions that used "chaos" and "absurdity" to the puppets' maximum advantage. The Orions were wholly unprepared for the ridiculous way puppets fight, and the pirates not taking the cuddly Starfleet officers seriously was to their detriment. Pike and his crew fought their way onto the bridge and bought time for Spock to join them.

Spock was held captive in the Port Galley, but T'Pring did her part to free him, allowing an Orion to set her hand on fire so that she could ignite and neutralize the pirate. Back on the bridge, T'Pring advised the panicking Spock to accept chaos as part of the plan. Spock was crucial, as only his hands could activate Captain Pike's new chair because its controls didn't recognize puppet fingers.

Paying off Pike's discovery that puppets don't need oxygen, Spock disabled life support on the bridge and held his breath until the Orions passed out. Comically, puppet Pike began monologuing, forgetting that Spock also couldn't breathe. When Spock was revived in Sickbay, however, he learned that the Orions were in the brig, and Scotty could reverse transport everyone back to their true forms.

Strange New Worlds Quietly Ends Spock & La’an’s Romance

Before Spock's dream of puppet madness in "Level-Five Transporter Accident" begins, Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) breaks up with Spock. La'an pointed out that they've been going their separate ways "for a while now," and their parting is amicable. La'an has always insisted her dalliance with Spock was "just fun times," and refused to label their relationship.

Nonetheless, this now marks the end of Spock's third romance in four seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Each breakup saw Spock dumped, first by T'Pring, and then by Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), both in Strange New Worlds season 2, and now by La'an. It's clear why Spock is so upset, even if he can't outwardly express it.

Spock's romantic failures no doubt contributed to his inner turmoil. Spock's arc in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was about exploring his human side, and even finding more virtue in his humanity than in Vulcan logic. However, Spock has now experienced heartbreak and disappointment in his relationships. Along with his trauma on the USS Griffin ghost ship, Spock has leaned on Vulcan logic for solace.

Meanwhile, La'an is facing her own demons in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, as she's terrified that her Augment DNA is no longer recessive and changing. Tellingly, in Spock's dream, La'an was the only Enterprise crew member who was relieved to be a puppet, since it meant she couldn't become the villain she fears she is.

Puppets Being Spock’s Dream All Along Was A Mistake

Despite the consternation some Star Trek fans felt, Strange New Worlds' puppet episode is warm, entertaining, and endearing, as well as a stunning technical achievement by the cast and crew working in tandem with The Jim Henson Creature Shop. Strange New Worlds' puppet hi-jinks had one flaw, however: that it was all Spock's dream.

Logically, the puppets didn't need to be a dream by the traumatized Vulcan. Strange New Worlds' rationale that Scotty could reverse transport everyone back to normal means hand-waving away things like the puppet bridge officer with a hole in his midsection, or Pelia cut in half. The transporters could restore everyone with no permanent physical damage.

Reducing the puppet episode to a dream feels like a cop-out, one perhaps based on fear of a negative audience reaction. By saying it was all a dream, it's an escape hatch to say, "Relax, it didn't count anyway. We were just having fun," rather than standing behind puppets as a thing that happened on the Enterprise, just like any number of insane things in the storied history of that ship of "pandemonium."

Spock waking from a dream also forces the audience to backtrack and reconcile how and why the Vulcan would have such an elaborate and uncharacteristic dream about puppets. In the end, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds backs off from perhaps its biggest swing ever and says the puppets never happened when the bolder choice would have been to own the puppet episode entirely.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4's new episodes premiere Thursdays on Paramount+