Star Trek's New Film Noir Episode Leaves Its Biggest Mystery Completely Unresolved

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 4, “A Case of Chiaroscuro.”Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 is really doubling down on the show’s aptitude for shuffling between genres on a weekly basis, and Episode 4, “A Case of Chiaroscuro,” is the latest example of the divisive decision to constantly reinvent the Original Series prequel. Personally, I don’t mind Strange New Worlds experimenting with different kinds of storytelling, but I will admit that Season 4 is maybe overdoing it a little. Regardless, Star Trek‘s recent film noir-inspired effort is very interesting, but it leaves a narrative loose end so drastically unexplained that it feels like a plot hole. At the very least, it comes across as overly convenient.

Set on a previously unvisited planet called Mat’aar 12 in Klingon space, “A Case of Chiaroscuro” is shot entirely in black-and-white. It isn’t just an aesthetic choice that enhances the tribute to the Hollywood flicks of yesteryear, though. The planet’s sun alters the perception of light so that everything actually looks that way to the characters in the story. That includes Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and those aboard the USS Enterprise. In other Star Trek episodes, everything appearing black-and-white would be treated as a mystery to be solved, and a very central one to the installment’s storyline. “A Case of Chiaroscuro” avoids this by explaining the phenomenon right out of the gate, but the installment expires without providing a satisfying explanation for one of its other enigmas.

I Don’t Buy Dr. M’Benga’s Theory About Una’s Doppelgänger

M'Benga talking to Uhura in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

“A Case of Chiaroscuro” relies very, very heavily on the fact that Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) looks visually indistinguishable from an off-screen resistance leader on Mat’aar 12. This is established shortly after Una and her two crewmates land on the planet and are forced to blend in to avoid detection. Una plays along with the revelation, which proves helpful in not giving themselves away as Federation citizens, as the Federation isn’t supposed to be present in that area of space. I kept expecting one of the locals to look at Una for just a little too long, or from the wrong angle, and figure out that she wasn’t who she had been mistaken for.

But…nothing. Una’s cover remains flawlessly intact until the second the body of the woman she’s impersonating is discovered. Before that reveal, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) makes her very understandable concerns about Una’s plan to stay hidden in plain sight known to Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun). The Enterprise’s Chief Medical Officer offers a paper-thin theory about why even those close to the woman Una is pretending to be can’t tell she’s been replaced: “In a universe as vast as ours, the real mystery is that we don’t stumble onto our doppelgängers more often.”

That’s it. That’s all the logic the episode ever even attempts to provide on the matter. I understand that the story’s very premise required immediate integration of the Starfleet officers and those on Mat’aar, but Una just happening to look exactly like a prominent figure at the heart of a resistance comes across as way too convenient. I was waiting for M’Benga’s sentiment to be proven as nonsense throughout the installment, with Star Trek dropping a signature sci-fi twist to account for why someone else on another world, with no relation at all to Una, had her face. Such a twist never arrived, and it turned out Dr. M’Benga wasn’t being totally ridiculous after all.

From a storytelling perspective, I completely understand giving Una a doppelgänger. The episode is very unsubtle when establishing a theme of Una pretending to be someone she’s not, which references her past of concealing her Illyrian background. By making the person she’s impersonating look just like Una, then the script poetically points out that the version of herself she was once hiding was just as much part of her as the parts she felt permitted to display. It makes sense, and to a certain degree, I like it. But I can’t help but feel like there was a better way to pull this off than building an entire episode around a flawless doppelgänger that’s never properly explained. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that a more solid resolution to this enigma will eventually make itself known.

Dr. M’Benga’s Simplistic Doppelgänger Theory Quietly Explains a Separate Star Trek Mystery From 31 Years Ago

Star Trek has a long history of casting actors in two (or more) roles, but they usually look so different each time they appear, that there’s no need to explain why those characters share an actor. Jeffrey Combs is a great example. He appeared several times in Star Trek‘s classic era as a variety of different characters, from a range of different species. No one assumed his Ferengi and Andorian characters were canonically related, for instance.

That being said, Robert Duncan McNeill famously guest starred as Nick Locarno in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then played Tom Paris throughout all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. Trekkies tried to prove for years that both characters were related, but the franchise never drew an in-universe connection between them. Even Star Trek: Lower Decks only playfully acknowledged their shared face. However, if we take Dr. M’Benga’s comment about doppelgängers in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and apply it to Locarno and Paris, then it makes Una a slightly less isolated case, which gives the theory a tiny little bit more merit.