Star Trek: Strange new worlds finally brings Sybok back

Three seasons after teasing him in a single silent shot, Strange New Worlds has finally given Sybok a real storyline. Episode 7, "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass", reunites Spock's estranged half-brother with the crew, except the version who shows up isn't quite the real thing.

This episode puts the Enterprise in the middle of an outright soap opera pastiche, thanks to the returning trickster, Trelane (Rhys Darby), complete with haze filters and exaggerated pauses.

Captain Pike wakes up with memory loss, Uhura learns that her mother was someone else, and Spock is on his deathbed because he needs a heart transplant. The episode is a soap opera, but it has been planned.

To cure Spock, La'an breaks into a prison cell and releases Sybok, who is played by Ethan Peck. Sybok plays Spock and takes up this new character. Sybok sports a long wig and open shirt while playing this soap villain to the fullest. He lies to La'an and attempts to seduce her before being discovered.

Later on, Spock will tell La'an that he and Sybok are not actually twins, implying that the entire soap opera scenario was fabricated based on the memories of Spock and the imagination of La'an.

This is one way of casting Peck in this role that has been talked about since the early episodes of the first season, especially in "The Serene Squall", where Sybok appears briefly from behind a prison window in Vulcan.

Sybok has only appeared once in Star Trek canon before this episode, played by Laurence Luckinbill in 1989's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and the franchise largely dropped the character afterward.

Strange New Worlds has now teased him twice without delivering the real reunion between Sarek's two sons, leaving the door open, deliberately or not, for a future episode to finish what "The Serene Squall" started.