How Strange New Worlds built the next great Star Trek villain

polygon.com:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds rocks for a lot of reasons — though most will point to its return to the episodic formula that Star Trek was built on. It’s a throwback to the original series (almost literally, as it takes place a few years before Captain James T. Kirk helms the Enterprise), where most every storyline gets resolved by the time the credits roll.

“The Serene Squall” is different, though it starts like any Star Trek episode: A Dr. Aspen (Jesse James Keitel) summons the Enterprise to help with a humanitarian mission to resupply some colonists on the outskirts of Federation space. The crew (including Captain Christopher Pike) gets kidnapped by space pirates while on a mission, and it’s up to Spock and Dr. Aspen to rescue the ship and its crew.

[Ed. note: The rest of this post discusses “The Serene Squall” at length. Ye be warned.]

Only — twist! — Dr. Aspen isn’t Dr. Aspen at all, but Captain Angel of the titular Serene Squall, who’s concocted an elaborate ruse specifically to hold Spock captive, in order to trade him for a Vulcan prisoner (and ex-flame).

In an episode where Pike dons an apron over his tactical vest and helms the literal wheel of an enemy cruiser, it’s Keitel’s performance that really carries the vampy, zany energy of “The Serene Squall.” They (Angel’s pronouns; Keitel uses she/her) are not only clearly at ease and having fun in the captain’s chair, but the most indelible Trek villain in a long time. In both the buttoned-up provocativity of Dr. Aspen and the campy glee of Captain Angel, the character is just a lot of fun to watch.

“I got to be 50 shades of chaos,” Keitel says of the experience. “I knew they were a little bad — like, I knew they came in and kind of flipped the script a little