Star Trek Just Fixed A Canon Mystery In The Weirdest Way Possible

The sixth episode of Strange New Worlds Season 4 sees the crew of the USS Enterprise transformed into puppets. From a technical standpoint, in real life, this was achieved through a collaboration with the world-famous Jim Henson Creature Workshop, but in the sci-fi storytelling of the actual episode, the transformation is caused by a the titular “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” meaning, like many Treks before it, this episode uses the Final Frontier’s most useful conveyance — beaming — and turns it into a sci-fi plot device for reality-alterting events. From early TOS episodes like “The Enemy Within” (split into two people) to TNG’s “Rascals” (transporter turns you into a little kid) and on and on. “Level-Five Transporter Accident” is perhaps the most visually ambitious of these episode types, but on paper, probably not the craziest thing Star Trek has ever done with the transporter.

And when you put aside the visual gimmick, “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” intentionally or not, is making commentary on the distance limitations of transporters, and it might have just fixed a weird canon problem with the Kelvin Timeline along the way.

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 6, “Level-Five Transporter Accident.”

Strange New Worlds Puppet episode seems to explain a 2009 Star Trek mystery

What are the distance limitations on beaming in general? When you consider the concept of a teleportation device on a starship, the fact that Scotty (or Chief O’Brien) can beam a crew member pretty much anywhere on any given planet from orbit is nothing short of miraculous. And the notion of pushing the boundaries of the transporter is at the center of why everything happens in this episode at all. As Spock’s voiceover personal log tells us at the start of “Level-Five Transporter Accident,” Scotty is “eager to see ships are needed for transportation at all.”

Here, we learn Scotty has a rivalry with a guy named Deckland, who, at this time, holds the record for the most distance traversed in a long-distance transport. Scotty attempting to break that record creates the whole problem, and, for reasons better hand-waved away, the entire crew (sans Spock) are transformed into puppets.

The notion of long-distance transport is probably best remembered from the 2009 film, the Star Trek reboot, which technically had an alternate universe version of Scotty, as played by Simon Pegg. In that film, Spock from the future (and the prime reality) told Kelvin Scotty that at some point, regular Scotty developed a formula for transwarp beaming, and that long-distance matter transportation is totally possible at some point in Scotty’s future.

So if we acknowledge that Spock’s knowledge of Scotty’s long-distance beaming formula comes from the Prime Timeline, then it stands to reason that SNW is showing us some early version of Scotty’s tinkering with these ideas. And, more relevantly, the fact that Scotty’s long-distance beaming antics created a total catastrophe in “Level-Five Transporter Accident” could explain why we never really heard about his long-distance beaming formula until Old Spock brought it up. Maybe turning the entire crew into puppets made him back off on that research?

Scotty’s long history with transporter problems

In addition to accidentally splitting Kirk into a good Kirk and a bad Kirk, and also getting stuck in an alternate evil universe, Scotty’s ultimate fate in The Next Generation is also tied to transporters. In the TNG episode “Relics,” the crew of the Enterprise-D discovers an older Scotty, who put himself into the transporter buffer for decades in order to survive. SNW has made a reference to this eventual fate in Season 4, Episode 4, when Scotty says: “Cross my heart, and hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer.”

When incumbent Scotty actor Martin Quinn spoke to Inverse about Scotty’s connection to transporter mishaps, he joked: “It’s nice to know that transporter difficulties just follow Scotty around for his whole life.”

Clearly, for Star Trek’s resident miracle worker, the miracle tech of beaming is a blessing, and a curse.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+.