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Strange New Worlds Episode 6 'Off-Hour' spotlights Nurse Chapel

tvAug 27, 202634414

Directed by Dan Liu and written by Bill Wolkoff, Season 4 Episode 6 "Off-Hour" traps the USS Enterprise in a slipstream wormhole and centers Nurse Christine Chapel, played by Jess Bush, as she fights to save a mortally injured Dr. Joseph M'Benga, played by Babs Olusanmokun. A medical table nearly bisects M'Benga in Sickbay, so Chapel freezes him, rigs a way to capture abundant strong force neutrinos in the wormhole, and uses their unique properties both to "stitch" his severed body back together and to re-power the Enterprise's deuterium. Chapel loses a finger moving the frozen lab table, and Scotty, played by Martin Quinn, declares she effectively "rewrote the laws of physics" after her solution succeeds. The rescue required dangerous shipboard work: Lieutenant Spock, played by Ethan Peck, performed a radiation-exposing spacewalk to retrieve ion pod data, Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh, played by Christina Chong, followed to save him, and a Spock-La'an mind-meld provided the information Scotty needed. With systems restored, Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, played by Melissa Navia, piloted the Enterprise out of the slipstream; the ship and crew remained badly damaged and crew members such as Commander Una Chin-Riley, played by Rebecca Romijn, were seriously injured. The episode recalls M'Benga's season 1 research into saving Chapel's daughter Rukiya and establishes that Chapel has been on temporary duty aboard the Enterprise, explaining earlier tension about her future in Starfleet.

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