Paramount+The nature of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is, from a continuity perspective, a bit tricky. While not every episode features a potentially fatal dilemma, many episodes do present a sufficient amount of danger to make you wonder if every single crew member will make it out alive. In The Original Series, “red shirt” crewmembers often perished to let the audience know the danger was real. In Strange New Worlds, two red-shirted regulars, La’an (Christina Chong) and Ortegas (Melissa Navia), are in a unique position. Neither are legacy characters, meaning they’re not protected by their future canon status.“When Season 3 came along, I didn't realize there was so much concern about Ortegas’ fate,” Melissa Navia tells Inverse. “I mean, I should have realized that, right? Some fans were going to revolt if Ortegas didn’t make it.”Ortegas (Melissa Navia) finally gets her solo episode. | Paramount+In “Hegemony Part II,” the opening of SNW Season 3, Ortegas was stabbed by a Gorn, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to become the latest victim of a sad Star Trek tradition. It would make meta-textual sense; in Season 1, Hemmer (Bruce Horak) was taken out by the Gorn, and like Ortegas, he wasn’t a legacy character. In Season 3, Ortegas, La’an, and Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) are all, in theory, in danger, because not being a legacy character has created something of a mark of doom. Are any of these folks safe?Well, after the events of Season 3 Episode 9, “Terrarium,” Ortegas is more than safe for now. In fact, Season 3 has given her a much bigger story than Seasons 1 and 2, with “Terrarium” serving as a solo episode for the character in which Navia was without her co-stars for much of the filming.“There was a week where everybody went on vacation, and I was so happy for them. I really was,” Navia says. “But it was one of the coolest and the hardest things I've ever done.” The episode focuses on Ortegas after she crash-lands on a small planetoid outside of a wormhole. What starts as a survival story quickly turns into an episode about an unlikely alliance, as Ortegas and a Gorn have to team up to beat the odds.Ortegas and the Gorn, buddies for life. | Paramount+“Our stuntman, Warren Scherer, was there with me, as the Gorn,” Navia says. “And he was our Gorn in the first episode of the season, and was later sneaking up behind me when I was using the punching bags in the second episode. So, it was good to have him on set with me for these scenes. But a lot of times, for the close-ups, it was me acting opposite the assistant director. Or just the Gorn head.”Navia went from not having an episode specifically focused on Ortegas to an episode that was so focused on Ortegas that she did some of the hardest acting of her career. The episode channeled classic Trek of the past, like Next Gen’s “The Enemy” and, of course, the Original Series classic “Arena.” It also had touches of the 1985 cult classic sci-fi film Enemy Mine, about a similar survival scenario.In the end, Ortegas lives to fight and fly another day. But does this mean we should expect similar episodes in Seasons 4 and 5? Navia points out that although she’s touched that fans are thrilled with her story this season, and the fact that “Terrarium” is her episode, she wasn’t focused on how much screen time she’s had.One big, happy crew. | Paramount+“When I finished shooting Season 1, it never dawned on me that Ortegas got less screen time than the other characters,” Navia says. “And with only 10 episodes, it's incredibly difficult. And I don't know how our writers and our showrunners do it, but they're able to tackle all the storylines, or at least tackle as many storylines as possible in a way that feels organic and real and in a way that fans can feel like they know these characters really well. To me, it’s always been an ensemble show, and we are an ensemble crew.”Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+.Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the WorldAmazon -