Strange New Worlds’ latest episode parallels Stargate’s ancient aliens
The fifth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, released on Paramount Plus on Aug. 7, has archaeological medicine pioneer Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) enlisting the Enterprise crew for a mission to learn about an ancient species that achieved immortality. Their excursion to explore a subterranean temple does not go smoothly, as the crew faces threats that combine pulp adventure and outright horror.
“Through the Lens of Time” is one of season 3’s stronger episodes, with a tense plot broken up by some great humor. It’s also a reminder of just how well the idea of alien archaeology works as a plot device. The specific secrets that the Enterprise crew encounter in this episodes are reminiscent of a franchise that was once one of Star Trek’s major rivals: Stargate.
Roland Emmerich’s 1994 film Stargate imagined that aliens conquered ancient Egypt and used a wormhole-generating device to transport human slaves to another planet. The device is discovered during a dig at the Egyptian city of Giza, and brought to a classified underground U.S. Air Force base. U.S. Air Force Special Operations officer Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell) recruits Egyptologist and linguist Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) to get the stargate working, and they travel through the wormhole, encountering Ra (The Crying Game star Jaye Davidson,) an alien parasite who uses human hosts to extend his life.
Three years later, the film was turned into the TV show Stargate SG-1 with a new cast: MacGyver star Richard Dean Anderson taking on the role of O’Neill. Showrunners Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner expanded the film’s ideas into a rich mythology, making Ra part of a species called the Goa’uld, which take over human hosts’ bodies and minds and dominate the galaxy with superior technology. Their parasitic nature makes them particularly horrifying for Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks), who watches his wife Sha’re (Vaitiare Bandera) become possessed by a Goa’uld queen. Some of these same plot points are echoed in Strange New Worlds’ “Through the Lens of Time.”
[Ed. note: The rest of this article contains major spoilers for “Through the Lens of Time,” and the ways it connects to the Stargate franchise.]
In “Through the Lens of Time,” Korby and the Enterprise’s away team discover that the underground temple they’re investigating is a prison for a malevolent species called the Vezda that are also capable of possessing people. In a particularly brutal twist on the redshirt trope, Strange New Worlds spends the first half of season 3 building up the character of medical Ensign Dana Gamble (Chris Myers) and establishing a bond between him and Enterprise doctor Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun,) only to have Gamble be possessed by a Vezda after touching an alien artifact on the mission. The Vezda uses Gamble’s memories and appearance to psychologically torment M’Benga as it threatens and hurts other members of the crew in an attempt to free more of its kind.
While Gamble doesn’t succeed, the Vezda have the potential to be just as big a threat as the Gorn have posed throughout the series. Stargate: SG-1 demonstrated how scary ancient parasitic aliens could be as the SG-1 military team spent eight seasons fighting the Goa’uld. Along the way, they meet many other ancient alien species who’d had their own dealings with the Goa’uld empire, and try to form alliances. In the pilot episode, they successfully recruit the help of Teal’c (Christopher Judge,) a member of a species called Jaffa, used as incubators and soldiers by the Goa’uld. But from the symbiotic Tok’ra to the Asgard, who inspired Norse mythology, most of the species SG-1 encounters are reluctant to deal too much with humans, viewing them as too primitive or unreliable to be trusted with advanced technology.
Seeing the way other aliens relate to each other outside the scope of their dealings with humans made the world of Stargate feel richer, and that dynamic has the same effect in Strange New Worlds. “Through the Lens of Time” offers a glimpse of ancient alien rivalries in the dramatic reaction Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) has to encountering Gamble after he’s possessed. Spock (Ethan Peck) had previously encountered a psychic presence from the Gorn young inside Batel, and that presence seems to have gotten more powerful since Batel was fused with Gorn DNA so she could survive the infestation. Whatever’s inside her takes the wheel when she sees Gamble, as she starts speaking an alien language, then attacks him with incredible strength and ferocity until she’s sedated.
Strange New Worlds is a highly episodic show, so it might take a while to pay off on the blinking control panel at the end of “Through the Lens of Time” that hints the Vezda might still be a threat to the Enterprise. Viewers will have to wait and see when the show will provide more explanation about what is going on with Batel, and how the Gorn and the Vezda relate. The Gorn almost overwhelmed Federation territory in the season 3 premiere, so if they view the Vezda as enemies, it’s further evidence of just how dangerous this new threat can be. That conflict also plays up another strong point of Stargate: the way humans often felt like underdogs trying to figure out their place in a big, mysterious universe.
Stargate SG-1 was being released at the same time as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, but its modern-day setting offered a more grounded alternative for science fiction fans. Some fans criticized DS9 for being more militaristic than previous Star Trek shows, but SG-1 had more freedom to really grapple with how a modern U.S. government might deal with learning about a powerful alien threat.
Even as the Stargate program was fighting the Goa’uld, it also had to contend with intelligence agencies and rival governments trying to get their hands on alien technology. The show didn’t have Star Trek’s utopianism, but it did represent the tight camaraderie of a Starfleet crew with a unit of specialists who are the best at what they do, and fully committed to the mission and each other.
Like Strange New Worlds, SG-1 followed a fairly episodic structure, while basing those episodes around recurring threats. It also padded its long run with the type of silly devices Strange New Worlds loves, like a time-loop episode and a body-swap episode. SG-1 didn’t have nearly as much romance as Strange New Worlds, but the tension between O’Neal and the brilliant and brave Captain Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) kept fans hooked in a way reminiscent of The X-Files’ Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Strange New Worlds shows how well SG-1’s premise could still work today, but further than that, it shows how the whole series could be updated at a time when audiences seem eager to watch throwback shows.
Stargate SG-1 was a big enough ratings success that it earned multiple spinoffs. Stargate Atlantis, which ran from 2004 to 2009, traced the sunken city back to ancient aliens and their war with the immortal, life-draining Wraith. Stargate Universe, which ran from 2009 to 2011, was more akin to Voyager, in that it followed a team stranded on a spaceship far from home and trying to find a way back, while having adventures in an unexplored area of the universe.
There was a brief hint of a revival in 2018, with the animated prequel miniseries Stargate Origins, but the Stargate franchise has been fallow since then. Amazon MGM Studios owns the rights, and a new Stargate show could be a great way to bolster Prime Video’s science fiction offerings like Fallout and Upload. Star Trek will continue to explore new frontiers in 2026 with Starfleet Academy, set in the franchise’s far future, which probably won’t leave much room for space archaeology. But “Through the Lens of Time” is a reminder of just how weird and exciting that concept can be.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is available to stream on Paramount Plus. Further episodes will be released weekly on Thursday. The full Stargate franchise is available to stream on Prime Video.