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Spoilers for “Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds” to observe.
The primary characters of “Star Trek” are explorers above all else, and typically, exploration is about investigating the previous. That is precisely what occurs in “Unusual New Worlds” season 3, episode 5, “Via the Lens of Time.”
In an earlier season 3 episode, “Marriage ceremony Bell Blues,” we met Christine Chapel’s (Jess Bush) new boyfriend Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan). We all know from “Star Trek: The Authentic Sequence” — particularly the episode “What Are Little Women Made Of?” — that Chapel and Korby will get engaged, nevertheless it’ll fall by when he goes lacking on an archaeological dig.
“Via the Lens of Time” reveals Korby in motion as an archaeologist. He and a small away staff, together with Spock (Ethan Peck), La’an (Christina Chong), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Beto Ortegas (Mynor Luken), uncover what seems to be an historical temple from an extinct civilization. Once they’re locked inside, they study that the traditional guidelines of spacetime do not apply there.
The black metallic look of the temple, and the very premise of astronauts exploring a abandoned metropolis with darkish secrets and techniques, evokes Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus.” However “Prometheus” and, in flip, “Via the Lens of Time” additionally pull from an older science-fiction story: H.P. Lovecraft’s “On the Mountains of Insanity.”
In reality, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro gave up on a “Mountains of Insanity” film adaptation within the 2010s as a result of “Prometheus” was quickly to hit theaters. (Although del Toro later shared some computer-animated take a look at footage from “On the Mountains of Insanity” on-line, that is a far cry from the complete image.)
Revealed in 1936, “On the Mountains of Insanity” follows a college staff of scientists on an expedition to Antarctica. There, they uncover proof of a prehistoric civilization earlier than a number of of the researchers are brutally murdered. The story’s narrator, Dr. William Dyer, and his graduate scholar Danforth then uncover and discover an historical metropolis hidden behind imposing mountains. Billions of years in the past, this metropolis was residence to alien “Elder Issues.” The Elder Issues’ downfall was their very own creations: artificially-created shapeshifting servants referred to as shoggoths, which rose as much as destroy their masters. Among the shoggoths nonetheless stay they usually’re what destroyed the camp. In the long run, Dyer and Danforth barely escape the mountains with their lives, however Danforth doesn’t retain his sanity.
(And sure, contemplating Lovecraft’s notorious racism, the subtext of the shoggoths as revolting slaves destroying civilization and devolving into feral predators with out their masters to thoughts them is as horrific because the creatures themselves.)
“On the Mountains of Insanity” was one among Lovecraft’s final tales, and it stays amongst his most influential. The unique Dr. Korby “Star Trek” episode is even a pseudo adaptation of it.
