Warning: SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Lost in Translation” are ahead!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1’s penultimate episode, “All Those Who Wander,” showed Bruce Horak’s Hemmer, the Enterprise’s chief engineer, sacrificing himself on Valeo Beta V so that Gorn eggs his body had been infected with would never hatch. His death hit Celia Rose Gooding’s Nyota Uhura hard, as during their short time together, Hemmer had become a mentor to her. Well, Season 2 delivered a reunion between Uhura and Hemmer that was intense and frankly frightening for most of “Lost in Translation,” but in real life, Gooding told CinemaBlend that getting to share more screen time with Horak “felt like homecoming.”
The latest Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode saw Uhura experiencing horrific visions while she, the rest of the Enterprise crew and fellow Federation ship Farragut were visiting a nebula to set up an outpost that mines deuterium, a.k.a. starship fuel. A zombified and aggressive Hemmer was among the things only Uhura could see during this adventure, but even before that, the late Starfleet officer had been on her mind because she’d watched a video he’d recorded to teach her how to recalibrate the Enterprise’s communication array. During my interview with Gooding prior to “Lost in Translation” airing, and ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike, I asked what it was like for her getting to reunite with Horak in this unorthodox way, and they answered:
It was so lovely. Bruce Horak, I’m such a fan of. When we were shooting Season 1, that was my first major TV experience, and a lot of the work that I did just happened to be with Bruce. So he really became a mentor for me, a real shepherd for me, somebody I could look to in times of uncertainty and know that I have somebody supporting me in any decision I make. So to reunite with him was so lovely. I feel very at home working with Bruce just because that’s the person who instilled my character with a lot of the confidence that they now have. So to reunite with him, even in this incredibly unorthodox and intense and scary way… the character, it was really petrifying, but as an actor, it felt like homecoming. It was wonderful. I missed him very much.
While it’s nice to hear that Celia Rose Gooding and Bruce Horak acting opposite one another again was a delightful experience, Uhura witnessing Hemmer’s corpse amidst all those other unsettling sights was far from enjoyable. Fortunately, thanks to help from Paul Wesley’s James T. Kirk, who made his first appearance in this series’ main timeline as the Farragut’s First Officer, she figured out that she wasn’t losing her mind. Instead, this was the work of extra dimensional lifeforms that were using visuals from her memories to communicate to her that the outpost’s mining of deuterium was killing them. Uhura and James Kirk successfully convinced Ansoun Mount’s Christopher Pike to destroy the outpost after it couldn’t be shut down. That did the trick, as evidenced by Uhura seeing one last vision of Hemmer, but now looking normal and smiling at her.
During my conversation with Celia Rose Gooding, I also pointed out that because Hemmer died in Strange New Worlds Season 1’s second-to-last episode, there wasn’t really any time to explore Nyota Uhura coping with his death. As such, I was curious if it was important for the actor that this series eventually show the character coming to a place of acceptance with Hemmer not being around anymore, which “Lost in Translation” delivered. Here’s what Gooding had to say:
Yeah, it was really important to me to have audiences see that moment for Uhura just because I feel like it’s… not a theme in Trek, but it’s a pattern that sometimes when we lose incredibly important characters, it only takes a couple episodes and everybody’s ok again. I don’t think that’s an entirely honest reflection of what grief and mounting looks like in a person. So it was really important for me to show the full arc of that for this character, specifically because she’s so iconic and beloved for so many things. It was important for me to showcase all of her human experience. I think even at the end of 2x06, it isn’t a final resting place of peace with it, but it is a moment of peace, and I think that that is more honest. She’s not gonna be 100% ok, always, all the time. There are gonna be hard days and there are gonna be easy days, and there are gonna be days where she doesn’t think about it and there’ll be days where that’s the only thing she can think about. And I think as she continues to grow throughout the series, we’ll see more moments of her, but I think to end at a place of contentment and security was very, very important for me to show, and I’m glad she got to have it.
Along with those Hemmer visions, Uhura also re-experienced the trauma of losing her parents and brother at a young age, which was her first brush with death. As a Starfleet officer, those brushes have only increased, and as Gooding detailed, she’s never going to completely get used to death while on the job. But as far as Hemmer in particular is concerned, she seems to be in a better place mentally and emotionally with him no longer being around following her experience with these aliens. And hey, just because Hemmer in this incarnation is no longer around doesn’t mean that Bruce Horak couldn’t somehow reprise the role again on Strange New Worlds again, whether it be through other weird visions, flashbacks, an alternate universe counterpart, etc. Should that happen, obviously we’ll let you know about it.
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds drop Thursdays to Paramount+ subscribers. The series has already been renewed for Season 3, and there are plenty of other upcoming Star Trek shows on the way. Our 2023 TV schedule is also available to scan through if you’re looking for something else to watch.
