Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Drops The Perfect Twilight Zone Reference

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" to follow.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" sure loves to put Spock (Ethan Peck) in comedic situations. In season 1's "Spock Amok," he accidentally exchanged bodies with his fiancee T'Pring (Gia Sandhu) during a mind meld gone wrong. Then, in season 2's "Charades" (which /Film named the funniest "Star Trek" episode ever), Spock was transformed into a full-blooded human and had to relearn how to be a Vulcan.

Now, "Strange New Worlds" season 3 has unveiled its own comedic Spock adventure as part of its two-episode premiere. To do so, it's also brought back one of the campiest yet most powerful villains from "Star Trek: The Original Series."

In "Wedding Bell Blues" (helmed by "Charades" director Jordan Canning), Spock and Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) are getting married! Except, they previously broke up ... and Christine has just arrived on the Enterprise with her new boyfriend, Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O'Sullivan). Korby is the only one who remembers the truth, though, and he soon snaps Spock to reality.

But they don't have much success making anyone else remember. Spock and Christine's wedding planner is the reality-warping Trelane (Rhys Darby), a character who appeared in the original "Star Trek" series episode "The Squire of Gothos" (where he was played by William Campbell). Trelane, you see, is jealous of the oh-so-handsome and perfect Dr. Korby and wants to humiliate him by forcing him to watch his girlfriend marry her ex.

In "The Squire of Gothos," Trelane's puckish trouble-making foreshadowed the denouement twist that, by his species' standards, he's a child. His clash with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) ends with his parents showing up to scold him.

When the wedding actually comes in "Wedding Bell Blues," Korby is forced to be Christine's man of honor and wear a flower wreath, lest Trelane send him to a cornfield. That word choice is pointed, because it comes from the classic "Twilight Zone" episode "It's A Good Life," which is also about a spoiled kid with the world at his fingertips.

"Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone" invite comparison. They're both early science-fiction television that are still classics today. They didn't actually air at the same time ("The Twilight Zone" ran five seasons between 1959-1964, while "Star Trek" aired three seasons between 1966 to 1969) but retrospectively, they feel like products of the same TV era. Both programs also reflected the social consciences of their creators, Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry respectively, by using sci-fi stories mostly as allegory.

But while "Star Trek" can be occasionally scary, "The Twilight Zone" was often a full-on horror show. One of the scariest episodes is "It's A Good Life." (The episode, scripted by Serling himself, was based on a short story of the same name by Jerome Bixby.) The episode's monster is Anthony Fremont (Bill Mumy), a little boy but not an ordinary one. Anthony is a god in corporeal form, one who has all the maturity and wisdom you'd expect a six-year-old to have. He's walled his hometown Peaksville off from the rest of the world, controlling the townspeople's lives, entertainment, food supply, etc. They don't even have freedom in their own heads because Anthony can read minds. If anyone so much as thinks a bad thought, then Anthony sends them to the Cornfield. What is that? It's probably for the best we don't know.

"It's A Good Life" holds up as one of the most famous "Twilight Zone" episodes. It's also one of the many "Twilight Zone" episodes that have been turned into "Treehouse of Horror" segments on "The Simpsons," specifically "The Bart Zone" in "Treehouse of Horror II." (Bart, naturally, is Anthony.)

The 2002 "Twilight Zone" revival also included a sequel to "It's A Good Life," titled "It's A Still Good Life." Written by Ira Steven Behr (a name Trekkies might recognize from his work writing on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"), the episode followed a grown-up Anthony. Mumy, who was now almost 50 and still a working actor, reprised his role, as did Cloris Leachman as Anthony's mother. (Anthony's father, played by the then-retired John Larch, had since been sent to the Cornfield.)

Because Anthony was never challenged, he never had to grow up. He's still as self-centered and vindictive as a little child often is. Worse, he also has a daughter named Audrey (Mumy's real daughter Liliana), who has inherited his powers. 

"It's A Good Life" is such a famous "Twilight Zone" episode that "Strange New Worlds" can say the word "cornfield" and still trust its viewers will pick up its meaning. Unlike Anthony, Trelane at least has parents who are able to put him in his place.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" streams on Paramount+, and new season 3 episodes premiere on Thursdays.