CBS/ParamountIn the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Lt. Commander Kirk (Paul Wesley) becomes the acting first officer of the USS Enterprise in a very tense and very sudden crisis. If fans have been craving an old-school sci-fi adventure episode of Trek, one in which people get to debate morality and the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, SNW Season 4, Episode 8, “Orders of Magnitude,” delivers. Written by Discovery and SNW stalwart Alan B. McElroy, “Orders of Magnitude” was the perfect new Trek episode for the franchise to air during the 60th anniversary week, as this one, quite easily, feels the most classic and most directly connected to The Original Series. But, beyond its rollicking, classic Trek story about a commanding officer going too far — as well as an excellent landing party in danger story — “Orders of Magnitude” also now serves as the canonical origin of a very important, and extremely volatile space drug called cordrazine. For those paying attention, this all-important drug was a crucial part of the plot of “Orders of Magnitude,” but it’s also the catalyst for one of the greatest Trek episodes of all time, 1967’s “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Here’s how SNW just cleverly retconned cordrazine and made Jim Kirk’s strong opinion of the substance a little clearer. Spoiler ahead.Kirk spiking Admiral Reeger’s coffee, explained Reeger and Kirk square off in “Orders of Magnitude.” | Paramount+Throughout “Orders of Magnitude,” we learn that Admiral Reeger’s (Joe Morton) obsession with taking out the stealth ship is connected to the loss of his own family. We also learn that Reeger threw Jim (Paul Wesley) and Sam Kirk’s (Dan Jeannotte) dad, George Kirk, under the bus during the Klingon War aboard the USS Constitution. (Of note, George Kirk was played by Chris Hemsworth in the reboot films, but we’ve never seen him in the current SNW timeline; he’s only mentioned in dialogue here.) So, Jim certainly has reasons to mistrust Reeger, something that Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) confirms by telling Jim to “proceed with caution.” (Another retcon here: M’Benga served with George Kirk!)The point is, Jim doesn’t want the Enterprise to murder a bunch of civilians on one planet, just because this rogue ship might have an alliance with said planet. Kirk is doing the correct, Star Trek-y thing: protect as many people as possible, because otherwise your victory isn’t worth it. This is also a low-key sequel to the excellent Season 3 episode, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” in which Kirk unknowingly caused thousands to die on an enemy craft in order to preserve the lives of the Enterprise and Farragut crews. In “Orders of Magnitude,” Kirk is clearly not going to let that many people die on his watch, ever again. But what’s interesting is that while Kirk and Reeger are at odds on an ethical level, Kirk can’t get Reeger relieved of command unless Reeger acts really nuts. And so, Kirk spikes Reeger’s coffee with a drug called cordrazine, which, earlier in the episode, M’Benga explained was fairly new. However, M’Benga also notes that in high doses, cordrazine can make people delusional and paranoid. Which leads us to the massive classic TOS Easter egg.Cordrazine sent Bones over the edge in “The City on the Edge of Forever”Bones and a hypospray filled with cordrazine in “The City on the Edge of Forever.” | CBS/ParamountBecause SNW is a prequel to TOS, in theory, “Orders of Magnitude” is the first time Kirk becomes aware of cordrazine at all. In “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Bones uses cordrazine to revive Sulu, but then, in a freak accident, injects himself with a huge dose, which turns him into a raving madman. Bones suddenly thinks everyone is out to murder him and flees the ship. He ends up jumping through a time portal and changing the course of history in 1930. At the start of “City,” Kirk warns Bones that cordrazine is “tricky stuff,” and the events of “Orders of Magnitude” show Kirk using that trickiness to his advantage in a desperate ploy to regain control of the Enterprise.Interestingly, the canonical existence of cordrazine only happened because of massive rewrites to Harlan Ellison’s original script for “The City on the Edge of Forever.” In his version, the drug that sent a crewman over the edge — a guy named Beckwith, not Bones — wasn’t a misused medical drug, but rather a straight-up narcotic called “The Jewels of Sound” in some drafts of the script. These are also referred to as a “dream narcotic,” meaning one's dreams could be impacted by the jewels. And if you’re interested in that version of the story, you can listen to the audio version from Skyboat Media or check out the 2014 IDW comic book version, which doesn’t have cordrazine in it at all.To put it another way, in some altered timeline, “Orders of Magnitude” would have had Kirk tricking Reeger into doing a trippy sound/dream drug that looked like a jewel, which would either have made this way weirder or 10 times more epic. Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+.Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the WorldAmazon -