‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’: Rebecca Romijn & Babs Olusanmokun on Una and M’Benga’s Secrets
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Where No One Has Gone Before
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Episode 3 “Ghosts of Illyria.”]
Both Number One, Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) must confront secrets they’ve been keeping in the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Following a mission at an abandoned Illyrian colony, the Enterprise crew becomes infected with a mysterious contagion that draws the infected to light, eventually incapacitating everyone on board — Pike (Anson Mount) and Spock (Ethan Peck) are stuck on the planet, in their own trouble — except for Una, whose immune system does what it was bioengineered to do and cured her. She tells M’Benga and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) she’s an Illyrian, but unfortunately, they can’t use her blood to synthesize a cure because her immune system burnt out the infection immediately. Una later tells Pike the truth and is ready to resign her commission, but he won’t let her. She’s an example to all of them, and he’ll worry about Starfleet when they find out. (Genetically modification is forbidden by the Federation.)
So would Una have told anyone if she didn’t have to? “Maybe Pike eventually,” Romijn tells TV Insider. “But it’s obviously the thing that she’s most shameful of that she has been hiding and I think it’s why she’s so good at what she does. I think she hides behind work and being meticulous and being fastidious and it’s something that’s deeply shameful. So she keeps her distance from people a little bit to cover it up.”
The situation with the crew also alerts Una to the fact that M’Benga’s medical transporter hasn’t been updated because the doctor is keeping something in the pattern buffer. His daughter is in there, he confesses. A year ago, she was diagnosed with cygnokemia, a “brutal disease” and given a 12-week prognosis. In the pattern buffer, she doesn’t age and her disease can’t progress. He’s hoping to find the cure he needs somewhere, but he knows he can’t endanger the crew for one life. Though he’s willing to say goodbye to his daughter and turn himself in, instead, Una says they’ll just make sure it’s not a problem again.
But if it came down to it, could he say goodbye or choose Starfleet over his daughter? “I think if he has to,” Olusanmokun says. “I think his sense of duty would force him to let her go, not because he would choose work over her, but because in this way, he’s already broken the trust of work. He’s already broken the trust of Starfleet and Pike having him on the ship. So to have broken that trust, I think he’s the type of man that would pay unfortunately the ultimate price.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Thursdays, Paramount+
