I’ve always been drawn to aftermath stories. I’m much more interested in how you recover from the big crisis than in the big crisis itself. It’s probably why “Family”—the followup to “The Best of Both Worlds”—is one of my favorite TNG episodes, why “Home” is an Enterprise episode I’m particularly fond of, and why two of my favorite works of Trek fiction that I’ve written are Breakdowns (one of the stories in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series written in the aftermath of David Mack’s Wildfire, in which half the crew was killed) and A Singular Destiny (which showed the galactic consequences of the Borg invasion chronicled in Mack’s Destiny trilogy).
So for that, and many other reasons, I enjoyed the hell out of “Spock Amok,” which sees the crew taking downtime while the Enterprise is repaired following the battle against the Gorn last week.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way, which is Yet Another Potential Discontinuity. First, let’s be clear: despite what some fulminating fangoobers online might say, there’s only one true discontinuity here, and it involves the character of Christine Chapel and her response to seeing T’Pring on the viewscreen in the original series’ “Amok Time,” which is the same shock and surprise that everyone else on the bridge of the Enterprise had when Spock identified the woman on the viewer as his wife.
And yet, in “Spock Amok,” taking place ten years earlier, Chapel knows all about T’Pring, indeed gives Spock advice on how to repair his relationship with her. This discontinuity is of a piece with Jess Bush’s far more free-wheeling portrayal of Chapel than Majel Barrett gave us five decades ago. The Chapel of the original series was a borderline pathetic figure, longing constantly for Spock. (McCoy even takes a somewhat-mean-spirited dig at her in “Amok Time” on the subject when she’s trying to bring him plomeek soup.)
Some might see another discontinuity involving Chapel, but I’m not convinced that it is one yet. She gets together with someone who’s obviously a fuck-buddy, but drops him when he asks her for a more serious relationship. The notion of a single Chapel who is footloose and fancy-free would seem to contradict what was established in the original series’ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” that Chapel was searching for her long-missing fiancé Dr. Roger Korby. But toward the end of the episode, she’s talking to Ortegas about it, and saying how she doesn’t want a relationship to get serious. She starts to say something, stops, says it’s nothing, and that’s the end of it. I really think that Chapel is sticking with meaningless hookups rather than a real relationship precisely because she’s holding out hope that Korby is still out there. Or maybe she at this point thinks that Korby’s dead and won’t get any notion that he’s still alive until later. Remember, this show takes place ten years prior to the original series, and a lot can happen in a decade…
Again, Chapel’s response to T’Pring in the 1967 episode is the only true discontinuity here. There’s nothing in “Amok Time” (which I rewatched before writing this review just to be sure) that precludes Spock and T’Pring making an attempt at a relationship ten years prior to the episode in question. Again, a lot can happen in ten years, and it’ll be fascinating to watch how it develops. Especially since I fully expected this episode to sow the seeds of T’Pring’s dissatisfaction with being affianced to Spock, but it’s apparently going to be more complicated than that—T’Pring actually comes to a better understanding of Spock, and he of her.
That’s accomplished through one of the hoariest science-fiction clichés in the book: the body-swap episode!
And yes, I groaned when I realized that Spock and T’Pring’s attempt at an intense mind-meld to better understand each other resulted in their katras switching bodies. But I also enjoyed the thing that body-swap episodes are really there for: to give the actors a chance to play. Ethan Peck and Gia Sandhu both did wonderful jobs of impersonating each other, from the body language to the conversational style. It was beautifully done. Peck and Sandhu already established their letter-perfect chemistry in “Strange New Worlds,” and it continues magnificently here.
Getting there is a challenge for both T’Pring and Spock. The episode opens with a dream sequence where Spock finds himself in the wedding arena that we first saw in “Amok Time,” preparing to wed T’Pring, but what seems like a rehash of “Amok Time” instead turns into a rehash of Superman III, as Spock suddenly becomes human, and T’Pring invokes kal-if-fee. She chooses the Vulcan Spock as her champion, and so human Spock fights Vulcan Spock with lirpas. First of all, they do an amazing job re-creating the set from 1967, and then, bless her pointy little head, Nami Melumad also re-created the iconic fight music from the episode for the score, and it is glorious. (Da-da da da da da da da-da DA DA!)
Spock is concerned that T’Pring will find him too human, plus there’s her already-stated concern that he will put Starfleet ahead of their relationship, which she expressed displeasure with in “Strange New Worlds.”
Because this is a comedy episode, both Spock and T’Pring have to do the other one’s job. And yes, for the first time in five decades, we find out what T’Pring actually does, since she was created in 1967 when women’s only function was to be a wife. In her case, she is the person they send to find Vulcans who have been deemed V’tosh ka’tur, Vulcans who have strayed from logic, and convince them to come back to the fold, as it were. (This is the first time the term V’tosh ka’tur has been used onscreen since the concept was introduced in Enterprise’s “Fusion.”)
T’Pring’s assistant had been tasked with tracking down their current V’tosh ka’tur, but he says that he will only talk to T’Pring. Spock-in-T’Pring’s-body tries his best to do her job, but it doesn’t really work out, and he winds up slugging him. Mind you, he’s totally obnoxious, Vulcan snottiness matched with human emotion, and you can’t really blame Spock for socking him in the jaw. In fact, T’Pring doesn’t blame him when he tells her later…
As for T’Pring, she has to pretend to be Spock in a negotiation with an alien species that occupies space that is proximate to the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. An alliance with them would make the Federation’s life much easier, while them allying with the Klingons or Romulans would be disastrous for the Federation.
What’s interesting about these aliens is that their negotiating strategies seem to keep changing. It’s Pike who finally figures it out in the end. When they first talked to a Tellarite diplomat, they argued. When they first talked to Pike, they were pleasant and friendly. When they talked to Spock (and later to T’Pring-in-Spock’s-body) they were coldly rational and logical. Pike theorizes that they take the other person’s viewpoint, and what they want is someone who will take theirs—so he comes to them and looks at the alliance possibilities from their POV, including a frank declaration that it may not be the best thing for them.
April is aghast and thinks Pike may have scotched the alliance, but it does work, and the Federation has a new ally. In a lovely touch, they signal their new alliance by deploying a solar-sail ship flying the flag of their new ally. The sight of a big-ass sailing ship flying the Federation flag is simply magnificent.
Those are only two of the storylines going on, as the whole crew is on leave. Well, except for Number One and La’An, who stay on board and do more work, because that’s how they have their fun.
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Number One gets some less-than-salubrious revelations here. The first is that the crew refers to her as where fun goes to die, a nickname that M’Benga accidentally lets slip in the transporter room. Una gets cranky about that, and worries that being first officer means she’s too distant from the crew. La’An reassures her that it’s not because she’s first officer, it’s because she terrifies everyone—which La’An, of course, thinks is totally cool.
The pair of them try to see if they can remember what it’s like to be a junior officer thanks to two ensigns who are playing “Enterprise Bingo.” Mentioned by Ortegas in “Children of the Comet,” we see a couple of ensigns—the communications officer and a Bolian—taking an unauthorized EVA walk.
Now the scene where they’re interrogated had me laughing my ass off, because it so beautifully showed the differences between Una and La’An. Number One is friendly with the Bolian, while La’An does everything she can to intimidate the communications officer. Both tactics work, mind you, but I think Number One’s is better for morale. (And while it’s played for laughs, that La’An would resort to such scare tactics with a crewmate is rather disturbing…)
Having confiscated a list of Enterprise Bingo, they decide to try some of it, and while they do enjoy parts of it, it doesn’t entirely make them feel like they know the lower-decks crew better.
But it does provide a lovely moment at the very end, as the last item on the list is to sign the scorch. The oldest part of the Enterprise hull is a piece that has a scorch mark on it, and it’s been kept as part of the hull for sentimental reasons. Several crewmembers have already signed it, and La’An and Una add their names. (The story of how that scorch got there, presumably while April was in command, is one I’d like to see told some day…) And while they’re standing on the saucer doing that, the solar-sailing ship does its flyby…
I like how this episode defied several of my expectations, particularly that T’Pring would come out of it on the road to becoming the T’Pring we saw played by Arlene Martel, but it’s going to be more complicated than that, which I approve of. I also approve of making T’Pring a more well-rounded character. Most appearances by the character in tie-in fiction has her as at best an unpleasant person and at worst an out-and-out villain. I like this more nuanced portrayal more, and I’m curious to see how it’s going to get to where she is in “Amok Time.” Of course, Spock isn’t really Spock yet—the person Kirk called the best first officer in the fleet is a lowly lieutenant at this point, and not the legend that T’Pring was concerned about marrying in “Amok Time.”
Peck also beautifully sells Spock’s admission to T’Pring of why he has devoted himself to Starfleet: as established in the original series episode “Journey to Babel,” the animated episode “Yesteryear,” and the 2009 movie, Spock was tormented as a child for being a halfbreed. In Starfleet, he’s not half-human or half-Vulcan, he’s just Spock.
What I thought would just be a light episode that showed the crew having fun turned out to be a much more moving one. We get some welcome depth to an old character (T’Pring), a lovely portrayal of an even older one (Spock), and the captain getting to be awesome once again (and doing so while wearing the alternate green tunic that Kirk also wore in “The Enemy Within” and in several second-season episodes, which was fun to see).
Finally, as a public service, here is the entirety of Enterprise Bingo. The rules are that you must complete ten of the eleven tasks, and you can’t get caught.
- Use transporter to re-flavor gum. (Which apparently works. Go fig’.)
- Phaser stun club.
- Turbolift two-floor shout challenge. (This was my absolute favorite thing on the list, and watching Number One consistently beat La’An at it was hilarious.)
- Set the Universal Translator to Andorian.
- Gravity boot hang challenge. (I’m real curious about this one, especially since it’s boot, singular.)
- Medical tricorder challenge: Vulcan marupal. (This might be a typo for “marsupial.”)
- Food replicator challenge: durian fruit.
- Sneak a tribble into the transporter buffer.
- Sit in the captain’s chair.
- EV suit challenge: unsanctioned space walk. (This is the one the two ensigns were caught doing by Number One and La’An. They were so close!)
- Sign the scorch.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to support the Kickstarter for Phenomenons: Season of Darkness, the second volume in the shared-world superhero anthology series published by Crazy 8 Press. The anthology features stories by Keith and fellow Trek prose stylists Michael Jan Friedman (who also created and is the editor of the series), Peter David, Geoffrey Thorne, Ilsa J. Bick, Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, Aaron Rosenberg, and Glenn Hauman, as well as screenwriter Dan Hernandez and novelists Mary Fan, Michael A. Burstein, Marie Vibbert, Russ Colchamiro, Hildy Silverman, and Alex Segura. Please consider supporting the anthology on Kickstarter!
I also really enjoyed this episode, especially as there seemed to be a consistent theme between the storylines: better understanding of another and their better understanding of oneself. As to the Enterprise bingo and Number One beating La’an at the turbolift challenge: I’m convinced that if the turbolift receives simultaneous competing requests, it is programmed to act on the one from the person with the higher rank and that’s how Una kept winning.
“Food replicator challenge: durian fruit.”
Yikes. I feel like this would be grounds to get kicked out of Starfleet.
@krad Can I assume you liked it (as seems to be implied)?
If so (likely) that makes five for five, at this point, good/slash above the mean Trek Show level episode. Since you started your various rewatches/watches has any series managed a five episode win streak? If so, what’s the record?
(FWIW, I feel like SNW is THE Trek Show we’ve all been waiting for…)
I feel like Spock and T’Pring have a good thing going (despite its challenges), until his Starfleet duties eventually keep him so busy that T’Pring just has to call it. And I’m betting Stonn ends up being a coworker at the El-Keshtanktil, which would be perfect (for T’Pring) since they’d see each other a lot more often.
Rdclark53217: it wasn’t “implied” that I liked it, I said so right there in the second paragraph of the review………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
BTW, I misread “durian fruit” as “duran fruit” — an artifact of the font they used — and my first thought was that you would only eat that fruit if you were hungry like the wolf. It was my wife, Wrenn Simms, who patiently pointed out that it was durian fruit, thus ruining my joke, but also making it much more fitting for Enterprise Bingo (durian fruit smells nasty…..).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I enjoyed the episode. I expected it to be a bit light-hearted, and it was… just enough to be perfect without being farcical. A whole lotta tiny bits thrown in that I loved, some you mentioned, some you didn’t. The perfect recreation of the Vulcan fight scene with lirpas and music, the green tunic, some ceremonial dialog between Spock/T’Pring lifted verbatim from “Amok Time,” the Vulcan accent when speaking in Vulcan (“Spahgggk”)… and Chapel’s hair in the bar scene was gorgeous!
My only complaint—and I’m really beginning to believe it’s me, not the show—is not correctly hearing some of the dialog… last week, it was M’Benga; this week, it’s La’an. Even with my volume turned up high, I’m missing key words here and there. In all seriousness, I might need to go have my hearing checked.
I really enjoyed this episode. That’s 5 for 5 now! Something lighter was needed after the prior four “heavy” episodes and that was delivered here. It was never hilarious but had me grinning pretty much throughout. Great acting by the Spock and T’Pring actors playing each other’s characters. I liked seeing the budding friendship/infatuation between Spock and Chapel. Interesting new alien species. I also liked the pairing of Una and La’an who are already friends but seeing that friendship at play. And the visual of the solar sail ship in motion was quite beautiful. Pike also gets to show off his intuition and diplomacy chops.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about continuity in the Spock and T’Pring relationship. This episode didn’t work for me, for the most part, because it seemed like Skippy the intern accidentally mixed in a Lower Decks script with SNW. Sorry, but watching the stern first officer and the sterner security officer suddenly acting like teens on spring break ain’t what I’m tuning in for. I mean, there could be subtler ways to show them loosening up.
Having said that, I did enjoy Spock’s nightmare and the scene with him and Chapel in the bar. The new aliens were kinda cool, too.
I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’t love the new captain’s wrap. The color’s fine, but the leather patches make it look less comfortable and it doesn’t make sense for Pike to still wear his badge when there’s one on the “belt.” And let’s be honest, Anson Mount doesn’t quite fill it out as well as Shatner in his prime did.
But hey, if that’s the most negative thing I can say about this episode, then they are doing a phenomenal job. I love this show.
I’m confused. Are we sure SNW is ten years before TOS? Because I thought SNW was set in 2259 and TOS was set in 2266.
Body switch! That was fun! At first, I thought it was the first time Trek did something quite like this, but then someone reminded me of Turnabout Intruder. (which I also liked)
Spock/T’Pring is interesting. In the first episode, they appeared to be setting the stage for T’Pring to be dissatisfied, but here they had the pair get close again. So, maybe the estrangement (for lack of better term) is a gradual thing–with them periodically getting closer, and then drifting apart again. I find T’Pring’s profession very interesting because I remember the character in Spock’s World. So, her commitment to logic will ultimately will derail her and she’ll become the type of person she is currently sent to apprehend.
Chapel’s carefree attitude towards relationships doesn’t quite gibe with the reserved woman we saw in TOS, who pined for Spock. But I do have a theory about that. I still think her change of personality in the future is tied to the loss of Roger Korby.
Enterprise Bingo! Now that’s different! I love the idea of lower deckers participating in a silly game like this. Plus, I can imagine the reactions of technicians are when ships have to stop for repairs and they take off a piece of the hull that’s signed.
Pike’s awesomeness continues to impress me.
And so glad we saw April again!!
Keith, Roger Korby disappeared 5 years before “Little Girls,” which is 2261, two years in this show’s future. So evidently Chapel hasn’t met Korby yet. It seemed clear to me that her hesitation at the end with Ortegas was about Spock. Their interaction here was clearly setting up Chapel falling in love with Spock. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ignored the whole Korby thing altogether.
“Now the scene where they’re interrogated had me laughing my ass off, because it so beautifully showed the differences between Una and La’An. Number One is friendly with the Bolian, while La’An does everything she can to intimidate the communications officer.”
You apparently missed the bit before the interrogation where La’an called “Bad cop!” and Una looked disappointed that La’an beat her to it. If Una had been a half-second quicker on the draw (as she was in the turbolift), their tactics would’ve been the other way around. I would’ve liked to see La’an trying to be the good cop.
This was the first episode that I found merely okay. It was entertaining, but it was a bit too contrived the way it made every one of its subplots about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. I also felt it shouldn’t have been so easy for Spock and T’Pring to swap bodies, something that “Turnabout Intruder” portrayed as unprecedented. Although it would help explain why Spock was willing to believe Kirk was in Lester’s body — because he’d had the same experience once.
I also find it odd that “Enterprise bingo” seems to be defined here in a way that contradicts how it was defined in “Children of the Comet.” There, Ortegas gave the impression that it referred to things that happened to a crew member, like being tricked into wearing a dress uniform to the captain’s table. Here, it’s depicted instead as a sort of scavenger hunt that crew members seek to complete.
I wish the digital rendition of the marriage arena had matched the version from TOS Remastered, where it was on a high crag in the mountains rather than surrounded by lava. The lava was an unnecessary touch that would make it rather uninhabitable (I have the same issue with the Plains of Gol matte painting in the TMP theatrical edition). On the other hand, I like how Spock & T’Pring’s Vulcan dialogue used the same phonetics heard in TMP & TWOK.
Is this the first Star Trek episode to play a song over its end titles instead of the usual theme? It’s certainly the first one named in honor of a Warner Bros. cartoon. It’s quite a feat to reference both “Amok Time” and Duck Amuck in the same title.
Speaking of titles, it only just sank in for me that they don’t show the episode titles onscreen here. I don’t think any of the current live-action Trek shows do, though both of the animated ones do. That’s a shame. I always liked it that the Berman-era Trek shows kept up the tradition of onscreen episode titles even in an era when that had become uncommon.
The modern-day equivalent of replicating a durian fruit is probably reheating fish in a microwave (although the durian sounds worse). I’m now offering 1.0001-1 odds that “Lower Decks” is going to have some form of “Cerritos Bingo” at some point.
KRAD — Any thoughts about reviewing The Orville, the other Star Trek show that started today? I ask in jest, primarily because the show draws so many comparisons to Trek. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts about the series, but it’s not necessary.
Back to “Spock Amok,” I largely enjoyed the episode especially after it started with the music cue from “Amok Time.” It seemed odd that they took what sounded like a one-liner from a previous episode and turned it into a C-storyline, but it was amusing especially with the payoff.
There have been some grumblings online to how “Strange New Worlds” is limiting its potential by playing on storylines set by the original series. However, this is just a show and people should probably just relax. Diehard fans can twist themselves in knots trying to reconcile everything (like with the Gorn and the situation with Chapel), and it sometimes raises my hackles when something doesn’t appear right. Also, it’s a little like “Doctor Who” where it’s impossible to demand that fans be aware of 50+ years of episodes (and many people have not or will not watch the older shows).
I can ultimately be content if the stories are worthwhile and live up to the larger ideals of what Star Trek has come to mean. SNW has delivered thus far.
@7/ERIC: “some ceremonial dialog between Spock/T’Pring lifted verbatim from “Amok Time,” “
I forgot to mention that that bit annoyed me. It made no sense for T’Pring to say “We meet at the appointed place,” because that refers to the marriage arena, not just any old meeting any old place.
@9/DenholmVest: You know, I also thought the “bingo” subplot had a Lower Decks feel, but I hardly mind that. It’s nice that this show is committing to a continuing supporting cast of people like Kyle and Christina, fleshing them out along with the main cast. Hopefully we’ll get to see them interact with Cadet Uhura more, since they’re all junior officers.
Christopher: Yeah, but T’Pring said, “We meet at the appointed place” in “Amok Time” when she was on Vulcan (presumably in her house) and Spock was in orbit on the bridge of the Enterprise.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think I would’ve preferred if the bubbly Uhura or the snarky Chapel had been swapped with Spock instead. Body swaps are more fun if the two people have very different personalities, and T’Pring is really just a slightly snootier version of Spock. Meh.
@12/Chris: re: music over the end titles: I’m not sure about non-Trek music, but I can point to “The Inner Light,” where Picard’s flute-playing over the end credits, which was awesome.
@14/Chris: I take your point, but because it’s *ceremonial*, I can overlook it.
Regarding the lava on Vulcan, I thought the same about the flaming troughs high in the air. Why would a planet already hot and arid have flaming troughs high in the air?
And… I’ve been complaining about the absence of onscreen episode titles since the premiere of DISCOVERY. PICARD followed suit and now SNW is (not) doing it, too. I *really* think they need to be onscreen, partly due to tradition and partly due to their practicality.
I don’t really mind breaks from continuity so long as whatever they replace it with is at least as interesting conceptually or dramatically. Thus far, all of the continuity snarls on Strange New Worlds have met this criterion for me.
(Incidentally, I thought that the Bolians were established as having been only recently encountered on TNG, though I may be misremembering).
My main issue with this one is that everyone seems to have an awfully glib attitude about letting complete amateurs (Spock and T’Pring) tackle important jobs that respectively). But that just goes with the territory of the “body swap” episode.
Also, I notice that the Starbase that they visit in this one is the same one that had the infamous astronomically ridiculous visual associated with it in “The War Without, The War Within.” I wish that they had found some way to handwave that; say that they’ve terraformed a trans-Neptunian body with a parabolic reflector dish or something like that.
The human Spock vs. Vulcan Spock dream sequence also instantly reminded me of the similar sequence in Superman III which to me was by far the best part of that movie. Although there, good Supes triumphed but here, good Spock is killed, or at least seriously hurt. It was also cool just to see a human looking Spock, or basically, Ethan Peck’s natural form. I have to say I don’t care for the Vulcan ear prosthetics. They look too smooth and rubbery, like they’re actually prosthetics and not natural body parts.
@7/Eric L Watts: It’s not you, it’s the show. I often find that I have trouble making out the dialogue, especially when the characters talk in hushed tones, or the characters that have especially strong accents. The closed captions feature is a wonderful thing. It seems more and more people just watch their TV or streaming programs with the captions set on so they never miss any dialogue.
@7, @19 May I ask what you are using to stream Paramount+? I’ve found that the sound is much cleaner if I use the Xbox app over the one on my Samsung TV, for example.
I loved this episode. And two of the things that stuck out for me might seem inconsequential, but I thought it was interesting to watch them dial the power down on their phasers as low as it would go before trying to stun one another. I guess it makes sense that there’s a ‘will only slightly sting most adult humanoids for a brief sec’ setting. I really loved getting to watch them sign the hull. Seeing their signatures was awesome. And I loved Chris’s leather wraparound. This was great, and it felt good.
@15/krad: “Yeah, but T’Pring said, “We meet at the appointed place” in “Amok Time” when she was on Vulcan (presumably in her house) and Spock was in orbit”
But talking over a viewscreen doesn’t equal meeting. They didn’t actually meet until they were at the marriage arena. I take it that she’s using the present simple tense, which is used to refer to future events that are already decided or scheduled, like “The train leaves in an hour” or “I have jury duty next week” or “Robin Dies at Dawn!” Or she was reciting a standard formula that was established before video communication was invented.
In any case, I think Sturgeon (or whoever wrote that line in the final draft) intended the recitation to be for that specific purpose of the betrothed couple coming together for their “appointed” marriage, not just something the couple whips out every time they meet for lunch.
@16/DenholmVest: “Body swaps are more fun if the two people have very different personalities, and T’Pring is really just a slightly snootier version of Spock.”
The main difference I noted was that Peck used a softer, more “feminine” voice as T’Pring.
But I liked how they hung a lampshade on the similarity, when Spock-as-T’Pring said “Now that you know, you can surely see the clear differences in our mannerisms” and Pike was all “Oh, yeah, sure.”
@17/ERIC: “I can point to “The Inner Light,” where Picard’s flute-playing over the end credits”
Hunh. I’m not sure I ever knew they did that. I always muted the TV for the end credits.
“I *really* think [the titles] need to be onscreen, partly due to tradition and partly due to their practicality.”
Well, from a practical standpoint, the titles are technically onscreen on the streaming site’s menu where you select the episodes, and underneath the video window when it’s not fullscreen. So I’m not sure the titles really are needed for practicality. It’s more just tradition for me.
@18/jaimebabb: “I don’t really mind breaks from continuity so long as whatever they replace it with is at least as interesting conceptually or dramatically.”
That’s why I’m okay with Chapel being essentially a completely different character here, because she’s so much more fun and sexy than the TOS version.
“(Incidentally, I thought that the Bolians were established as having been only recently encountered on TNG, though I may be misremembering).”
Nope, that was never suggested as far as I can recall. Although their only previous appearance in the 23rd century was a brief glimpse of a Bolian casualty on the Hiawatha in DSC: “Brother.”
@20/Chase: Roku.
@22/Chris: If you haven’t watched the final scene of “The Inner Light” through the end credits, it’s worth a watch. But only if you watch the entire ep leading up to it; much like watching *just* Spock’s death scene clipped from TWOK, it doesn’t really grab your heartstrings unless you’ve watched the entire ep/film up to that moment.
Re: onscreen titles: Yes, I know they’re in the streaming menu, of course. And they belong there, of course. But I imagine a day when I and others will have these eps on DVD or downloaded or on whatever new media comes along in the future, and they may not be there. Besides… TRADITION! *harrumph!*
Maybe I’m missing something, but why would someone who has body-swapped agree to help negotiate a deal of that magnitude that they are clearly not qualified to do? Vulcans are supposed to have some integrity and someone whose job is to hunt down Vulcans who have strayed from the path should have more integrity than any 10 Vulcans. (and exactly why is her job even a thing? is it illegal to be a Vulcan with emotions?)
@24 I thought it was made pretty clear that the security of the Federation was at stake. Besides, at this point it’s not like Spock was an accomplished diplomat; it seemed like they just wanted to talk to him because he was a Vulcan.
And T’Pring’s target was described more than once as a “criminal,” so he must have done some bad acts that were attributed to his rejection of logic.
I like what they’re doing with T’Pring, but it raises a question. In “Amok Time”, I always took it that forcing Spock and Kirk into combat was the only way T’Pring could escape being pushed into an arrange marriage (and, horrifyingly, “becoming the property of the victor”). If that’s the case, her actions obviously make sense, as she takes what is seemingly the only legal way for her to protect herself and escape an outrageously unjust situation.
But with forced marriage and people becoming “property” obviously not being a thing in this new take on the setting – and thank god for that – what’s T’Pring’s motive meant to be in “Amok Time”?
Long before this episode, I have the impression that T’Pring was also suffering Pon’Farr and it pretty much induces psychosis in both men and women. Hence the seriousness of which all Vulcans treat the whole thing. It’s also why Spock doesn’t seem to hold any grudge against her.
Women go nuts too.
There’s some textual evidence of this in VOY too as we see how Belenna is also affected.
@26/Descent: I always took the “property” thing to be specific to the rules of the mating challenge, not the normal marriage practice. But I’m happy to disregard it, along with a lot of the other sexist stuff from TOS that the modern franchise is rightfully ignoring. I’m reminding myself a lot these days that Roddenberry himself reportedly considered TOS an imperfect rough draft of the universe that he tried to improve on in TMP and TNG, without feeling beholden to its exact details. In his view, it was a dramatization of Kirk’s logs rather than a literal depiction; it happened in broad strokes, but it had some adaptational errors that can be chalked up to the mentality of the adaptors in the 1960s rather than reflecting the reality of the 2260s.
Anyway, T’Pring made her motivation clear: She didn’t want to be married to a legend, to a Starfleet officer who was never there for her. As for why the kal-if-fee was the only way to get out of it, I figure that was just the rule, binding on both partners. Sure, Spock was able to release her with a word at the end, but maybe that option was only available to the winner of the combat, or something.
My impression was also that Chapel has not met Corby yet, let alone gotten engaged to him, and that her pensive look at the end concerned Spock . . . . .
Continuity Check:
The last time Chapel’s fiance had been in contact with the Federation was five years prior to TOS. So, four years in the future of SNW.
Maybe Chapel was shocked in TOS because she hadn’t seen T’Pring in years…I dunno.
Anyway, I’m with CLB. This was merely okay as an episode. I didn’t really buy the whole Enterprise Bingo bit as being something Number One and La’an would actually do, especially since, as senior officers, there would be no real challenge to accomplishing most of the tasks. I also thought Gia Sandhu was way better at playing Spock than Ethan Peck was at playing T’Pring.
Whenever there’s a continuity error, I just go, “A Q did it.”
I think we might as well forget continuity. I know I’m a stickler on that point but if the story is good enough even I will let it pass. This sounds pretty good.
So, basically T’Pring is an inquisitor? And Krad, a whole lot of women had careers in the sixties, many of them worked for Trek. In a fanfic I made T’Pring a lawyer, an expert in ancient ritual law
Okay, so, how exactly can a transporter restore the flavor of chewing gum? Gum loses its flavor because the sugar dissolves in the mouth and gets swallowed. You’d have to re-infuse it with sugar somehow. If that’s what the transporter’s doing, you don’t have to dematerialize the whole person; just do a pinpoint beam like what Kyle did to gene-jigger Spock’s iris in the first episode.
@30/C.T. Phipps: “The last time Chapel’s fiance had been in contact with the Federation was five years prior to TOS. So, four years in the future of SNW.”
Two years. This is 2259 (a year after the end of DSC season 2); “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” is 2266, so Korby was lost in 2261.
@33/roxana: I think the idea is that T’Pring tracks down criminals and offers them logic training as rehabilitation, not that they’re criminals because they reject logic. After all, logical discipline is how the Vulcans tamed their violent nature that almost destroyed their civilization, so it stands to reason that it’s a good system for helping criminals find a more peaceful and constructive way to live. I got the sense that her job is to convince them to give it a try, not to force it on them. The V’tosh ka’tur guy here arranged to meet voluntarily and hear T’Pring’s case. Punching him out was definitely not the conventional method.
And yes, women in real life had careers in the ’60s, but works of fiction about women nonetheless commonly depicted them as nothing more than wives, mothers, or love interests.
@33 I stopped worrying about continuity when TNG decided to inject a nuclear holocaust into Earth’s history after TOS heavily implied that we had avoided that fate. Of course, you could say that this was not a direct contradiction, since they never went right out and said there wasn’t a nuclear war. But anyway ever since then I’ve just sort of gone with the flow.
@35 TOS did mention a Third World War at least once
When Kirk in Return to Tomorrow says, referring to nuclear weapons, “We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves,” I suppose what he should have said was “We tried really hard to destroy ourselves with nukes, but we didn’t quite pull it off, so here we are.”
But like I said, I roll with the punches.
While it shouldn’t be something worth commenting on, I do really appreciate the handling of Nurse Chapel and sexuality in this episode that still doesn’t get enough attention in the 21st century. Specifically, that she is someone who can and does pursue completely physical relationships that she doesn’t to complicate with romance. She’s also causally revealed to be bi.
Too often women who are sexually active and not interested in relationships are shown to be damaged even when protagonists like Dex from Stumptown or just waiting for the right guy. Here, it seems to be shown with the same light touch a male character would be upon finding out their relationship is too clingy.
Interesting that both the Orville season 3 premiere today and this episode started with rather tiresome and obvious dream sequences.
@38- agree- Chapel is becoming a favorite of mine. Like Reno and Tilly (at first) on Discovery and Jurati (before they turned her into a killer) on Picard, she provides some sardonic wit and irreverence. But she’s also an everywoman, Refreshingly free of the forced quirkiness of those other characters. Besides, she reminds me of my older daughter. She ain’t got time for that. She calls her girlfriends u-haul lesbians. 2 dates and they want to move in.
Perhaps a bit too woke of me but in light of current events, from school shootings to the Alec Baldwin incident, I’m not a fan of their “game” of phasering each other. Anything that trivializes the danger of weapons hits me the wrong way, pun intended.
Sea urchin paste! Uni! I’d be scraping that off my skull and devouring it.
@37/David Pirtle: “When Kirk in Return to Tomorrow says, referring to nuclear weapons, “We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves,” I suppose what he should have said was “We tried really hard to destroy ourselves with nukes, but we didn’t quite pull it off, so here we are.””
At the peak of the Cold War, there were enough nuclear weapons on Earth to exterminate every trace of life on the planet multiple times over — hell, enough to melt the entire crust of the planet. If there had been a total nuclear war, everything would have died. The version of WWIII that Trek portrays, in which civilization was merely damaged rather than exterminated and it took no more than 50 years to recover, must necessarily have been a very limited nuclear conflict compared to what an all-out war would have been. Which suggests that people stopped themselves before it escalated to the point of total destruction.
@38/C.T. “[Chapel]’s also causally revealed to be bi.”
Oh yeah, I was going to remark on that. I’d been wondering if anyone would be, since all the relationships we’ve seen on SNW so far have been hetero. It’s a bit cursory, but it’s a start.
@40
I wonder if Chapel was referring to Spock or Ortegas that she’s thought of something more serious.
The post atomic horror depicted in the TNG pilot didn’t really gel in my mind with a civilization at in any significant way actually showed wisdom regarding nuclear war. But as I said, the only point I was trying to make is that I’ve long since stopped worrying about the series contradicting itself. I just want the stories to be good.
The only discontinuity that bothers me is the mention of tribbles in E bingo. Of course, I couldn’t read it on screen so it hardly bothered me. I can buy that some have heard of them, but not that they are commonly available. Maybe “tribbles” is a generic word like “gremlins” that can refer to a lot of things, or to a mythic little creature that causes engineering problems, and that bingo square is an engineering prank. The word got applied to the troublesome furballs but can mean other things. That’s my headcanon.
This episode was a delight. This entire series has been so good.
Trek is supposed to alternate between great and terrible episodes — this consistent quality is violating tradition!!! *shakes fist*
who played the delegates?
i’m comfortable saying neither one was jeffrey coombs, but they still looked familiar
Technically, we only have one reaction shot of Chapel (just checked it again) when Spock says T’Pring is his wife – and she glances over at Spock. The look on her face could be interpreted any number of ways: as “Oh, T’Pring’s here – I wonder how Spock’s feeling about that,” or “Wait, wife? When did *that* happen? I thought they were only engaged!”
The only one we see not recognizing T’Pring is Uhura, who in this episode the production team cleverly kept occupied so the two never met, so they’re well aware of possible discontinuity.
@42/David: “The post atomic horror depicted in the TNG pilot didn’t really gel in my mind with a civilization at in any significant way actually showed wisdom regarding nuclear war.”
Earth has much more than one civilization. We only saw one part of the world in “Encounter at Farpoint.” It doesn’t prove anything about what was going on elsewhere in the world. There have always been parts of the world that are more chaotic and oppressive than others. It stands to reason that the areas hardest hit by the war would have ended up kind of Mad Max-ish for a while, but humanity as a whole restrained itself from complete annihilation, came to its senses, and spent the next 50 years finally getting its act together. That’s the part that shows wisdom. It’s the wisdom of an addict almost dying and seeing it as a wake-up call to get into rehab, as opposed to staying on the same self-destructive path until it kills them.
@44/ole049: Ron Kennell played Captain Vasso and Carlisle J. Williams played Brax.
Four episodes in (I haven’t seen this week’s episode yet because why would I make myself have to wait a whole week for the next episode?) and SNW so far is perhaps the only TV show – ever – for which my wildly high expectations have been wildly exceeded. As much as I loved TNG and enjoy watching most of the new Trek shows, I’ve truly been waiting for this for over fifty years. Having only recently bid farewell to (imo) the best TV science fiction show of all time, replacing it with a return to glorious form of my favorite (US) TV science fiction show of all time is just perfect timing. (I can tell I’m still missing the show that recently ended because I sometimes think of one of the SNW characters as being called Camina; you know exactly who I mean if you’ve watched both shows).
Looking forward to watching this episode and though I haven’t read Keith’s review yet, of course, I’m happy to see a pic of Christine Chapel prominent in the post. She and Uhura were probably my favorite characters outside of the big 3 when I was a kid and they’ve both been outstanding in SNW so far.
Also, I really enjoyed the negotiations with a race of therapists. Empathy isn’t always cuddly.
It made a nice plot puzzle, but was not too serious, in keeping with the light tone of the episode. I don’t mind if the themes are obvious, if they are pulled off well and make sense.
I didn’t care much for this one. I don’t love body swaps. As someone else mentioned, for the first time Spock’s ears stood out as really fake looking. There were a couple instances of imprecision of language that didn’t ring true for Spock. It was disappointing that they turned Enterprise Bingo into an actual game. And does Good Cop/Bad Cop mean anything when you’re separately interviewing two different people?
I was delighted to see the solar sailer design, though, and there’s always room in my heart for a terrible hat. Though I do always feel weird about people in a progressive sci-fi future still killing animals recreationally.
Overall, for a hijinks episode it just didn’t have much fun or funny for me. Looking forward to getting back to the good stuff next week.
I had a friend who was a real backwoods type and a man who incredibly in touch with nature to the point that you might as well think he had Ranger levels in real life. He was also a Trekkie and HATED the episode where Archer said humanity no longer hunted. He felt it was a betrayal of the idea that nature would be free and respected in the future versus something completely controlled and gardened since hunting was important to the balance for numerous animals.
Humans divorcing themselves from the ecosystem like that meant they were reducing life to something utterly controlled and a theme park version of itself. For him, animals killed animals and humans killed animals as part of his own personal moral view.
It’s not my thing but I could tell his perspective was different. On my end, I couldn’t help but think Archer’s grandpa probably killed racoons for food in the Fallout-esque wastelands of WW3.
My grandfather was a fisherman and he never killed the fish. Catch and release was his motto.
Me, on the other hand, where’s that tartar sauce…?
Sure, body swaps are cliche, but it was so enjoyable it didn’t matter. What a breath of fresh air this series is for the franchise. Just when I was about to accept that classic Trek wouldn’t ever be successfully translated into a current series again, well here we are. And then, while I was fine with the writers rehashing the general beats of stories from previous series, and I didn’t expect to see something that felt fresh, well here we are at episode 5. It felt like a new voice just entered into the Trek universe. Long live SNW! Bravo!
I loved this episode. Fun hijinks and it feels like we got to know a lot of the crew better doing low stakes stuff. I don’t care about the continuity stuff, I’m just watching the show as if it’s its own thing. I hope T’Pring and Spock stay together. That’s a retcon I wouldn’t mind.
One of the main takeaways from watching this show is that Star Trek is finally back!!
Lurker gay lady just chiming in to say that Nurse Chapel gave this gay lady some major gay lady feelings.
Also, SNW is really really good.
Back to lurking.
I hadn’t noticed before but La’an says “Em-Benga” while everyone else says “Mah-Benga” – which is odd…
Babs Olusanmokun also says mm-benga, and he should know. I’d just chalk that up to most of the cast much t knowing what prenasalized stops are.
With respect to World War III and the use of nukes (and whether or not they were used), there is a difference between tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons, the latter being the monsters we put on ICBMs.
Tactical nukes were possibly used.in the conflicts in question. Perhaps it was seeing the effects woke everybody up to just how potent a destructive force they were playing with, and sobered the surviving powers that be up in time.
(Nobody alive by then would have remembered Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
By the way Little Boy and Fat Man would be considered tactical nukes by today’s standards, based on their yields. There are tactical nukes way more powerful. Scary.
Another great episode in what’s turning out to be a consistently enjoyable series. I found it interesting, in terms of Spock’s identity issues, that he described his dream as “I had to fight my human side,” despite the fact that it was clearly presented as him being human and having to fight his Vulcan side.
Although previous episodes have emphasized La’an and Una’s friendship under more dire circumstances, it was nice to see them here just hanging out and being dumb together.
Not to rain on the parade of people appreciating Chapel being portrayed as bi, but it did strike me that when she was talking with Ortegas in the end about the possibility of her entering a serious relationship, she said “It would have to be for the right guy.” I mean, maybe it’s supposed to be a hint that she’s thinking of a specific guy, namely Spock; but it gives the unpleasant impression that she would entertain casual relationships with women but for a serious relationship only a man would do.
@55 and 56, I had a student several years ago from Kenya and he pronounced his name m-bwake. The ‘m’ doesn’t get a vowel sound in front of it, so its difficult for English speakers to get a handle on. Its a lot like the ng in Vietnamese in that as English speakers we want to add something on the front to make it sound “right”.
@58/kurokuzin: “it gives the unpleasant impression that she would entertain casual relationships with women but for a serious relationship only a man would do.”
How is that unpleasant? There’s no “right” way to be bi. Some people favor one gender but are still open to both. It doesn’t have to be exactly 50/50.
Of course, it would help if we had more characters in the show with diverse sexual/romantic preferences. It’s not good to have just one token character, because they get saddled with the expectation that they need to represent everyone in the category rather than just being an individual with their own quirks.
If anything, I’m surprised that we haven’t had more LGBTQ+ representation here, since showrunner Henry Alonso Myers was a producer on The Magicians and the showrunner in its last season, and that show’s characters had all sorts of diverse sexuality.
RE: Spock and Pon Farr
Some fans have been complaining about Spock and his sexual liaisons outside of mating season. I feel like people keep forgetting Spock was getting it on in TOS with that girl in the prehistoric cave, that girl on Cloud City, that girl when he was pollinated, and seducing the Romulan captain. I feel like people have collective amnesia too because Spock actually gets more romance than Kirk.
DC Fontana also had Spock have sex outside of Pon Farr in her novels and if that’s not the word of God (Gene), it’s the word of Saint Peter. This is also completely ignoring the Kelvin timeline but I know plenty of certain fans do that anyway.
Re: Chapel’s sexuality
I mean, the Kinsey scale outright had 5 rather than 3 slots.
@61/C.T. Phipps: Fontana only did one Trek novel (Vulcan’s Glory, the source of Number One’s Illyrian background), but otherwise, yes — there was plenty of Vulcan horniness in that book. If anything, her Vulcans there were a lot more emotional and humanlike than I felt they should have been. There were also oddly many of them in the Enterprise crew, given that Spock was always said in TOS to be the only Vulcan on the ship. Fontana didn’t explain where they all went by Kirk’s time.
(Fontana’s only other published novel, by the way, was the novelization of Roddenberry’s 1974 pilot The Questor Tapes. Oddly, that book touts another Fontana novel from the same publisher called The Winds of Space, but no such book was ever published. Apparently it was the title of a TV pilot that Fontana had in development around 1972-3. Perhaps there was a plan for her to novelize the pilot script, but it fell through.)
As for “Word of God,” TOS had a much more collaborative creative process than Roddenberry claimed later in life. Fontana had a much bigger part to play than just being “Saint Peter,” establishing a lot of the core ideas about Spock and Vulcans. Perhaps a polytheistic analogy would be better.
As always, Christopher, you remain the grandmaster of Trek lore to my mere black belt.
Christine has a perfect right to her sexuality, whatever it may be. If for her same sex relationships are friendly fun and only a man would be considered for life partnership well that’s how she swings and as long as she’s honest with her partners there’s no problem.
@50, CT Phipps, I agree. Mother nature is not soft and cuddly but red of tooth and claw. Humans joining in the predation that keeps the Circle of Life going should not be a problem.
If humans don’t continue to hunt, then by the 23rd century alligators will have completely taken over the southeast United States, which would make Star Trek’s future the most dystopic that I can imagine.
I think part of the reason La’an came down so hard was that, right before they entered, she and Una decided to do good cop/bad cop and she lost. Also, it was an unauthorized excursion into the deadliest environment known so putting the “fear of God” into them to keep them safe down the road from doing something that dumb again makes sense.
Everyone from Cornell, IC, or anyone within 100 miles of Trumansburg now happily knows:
The Rongovian Embassy is now canon!
Excellent episode. Gia Sandhu played T’Pring perfectly. Glad to see the non-serious side of La’an and Una.
@65. Not from the alligators’ perspective.
Hi,
Could someone please help me? Trying to figure out these challenges.
Set the Universal Translator to Andorian. I guess they are referring to the one on the bridge? Or maybe the dinning hall? Does everybody on Federation ships speak English? Not sure.
Medical tricorder challenge: Vulcan marsupial. Don’t know what this would entail.
Sneak a tribble into the transporter buffer. You would need one first, right? And then you do what M’Benga is doing with his daughter?
Thank you
I am so loving this show. Also, I love T’Pring as she is portrayed, and she is also faaaaaaaaaaaaabulous.
FYI – my military friends have stated that “Enterprise Bingo” is the most accurate thing to enlisted ranks as exists in Star Trek so far.
Mastadge @49:
That was my comment as well. The whole point of Good Cop/Bad Cop is to provide the suspect with a contrast, making them more likely to cooperate (or putting them off their guard) if they feel one of the cops is treating them more fairly than the other.
I have to admit, I totally missed the bit where La’An called bad cop. Mea culpa.
Having said that, Mastadge and bad_platypus are both correct: good cop/bad cop doesn’t work in separate interrogations except perhaps as an intellectual exercise. But as an actual interrogation tool, it only works with two interrogators and one subject.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yes, but Good Cop/Bad Cop is nothing compared to Physicist Cop.
Add me to the chorus of viewers loving this show. This week was another offering of precisely what I want Star Trek to be.
Loved the opening dream scene on Vulcan. They did an amazing job recreating the visuals and music, and even though it was completely derivative — the moment the duel started I knew Spock was getting slashed across the chest – it was nevertheless played out beautifully. I wish Star Trek spent more time with Vulcans; they tend to be one dimensional bit players.
I appreciate the continuity objections but they really don’t bother me for a variety of reasons. To begin with, there’s already a suspension of disbelief since none of the actors or sets are the same. If that’s not Leonard Nimoy or Majel Barrett then it’s already different. Second, lacking an encyclopedic knowledge of all things ST it just doesn’t bother me much.
But third, you can easily rationalize minor mistakes like a character making contradictory statements in episodes taking place years apart. It’s actually more “realistic” if they do that. People not only forget things all the time, their minds actually create false memories to synthesize more complex events, removing the trivial, rearranging the confusing, altering the emphasis, etc. I once stumbled across a box of old papers I’d written in high school — most of them might as well have been written by a stranger regarding subjects I knew nothing about.
And finally, on the larger continuity issues like Chapel meeting T’Pring — who’s to say what happens in the next few years? We’ve learned that T’Pring works to bring straying Vulcans back into the logic fold; maybe a few years hence she goes on some covert mission into Romulan territory, where it becomes mission critical to wipe from Chapel’s and other Starfleet officers’ minds any memory of T’Pring, thus giving new background to the “Amok Time” story a la learning why Picard was laughing at the blade sticking out of his chest?
Given all the crazy stuff that has happened to these SNW characters in just 5 episodes, all the physical and mental trauma, to say nothing of their backstories, I’m amazed they have any capability for rational, coherent thought at all.
About the date: In episode 2, Uhura gives the Federation designation of the comet as “C/2260 Quentin.” That sounds like a continuation of our modern system for designating comets, which would mean that comet was discovered in 2260, so it seems like it should be the year 2260 in the show. But then again, maybe it’s just one of those weird little things.
@67: So does anyone know which of the writers lived and/or attended school in upstate New York?
Regarding the Spock/T’Pring arranged marriage and the line of T’Pring becoming property, I always interpreted it as ceremonial, and going both ways. If Spock had invoked kali fee the same line would be said.
Recall, at the end when T’Pring was explaining her logic, she says if the plan didn’t work that Spock would soon be gone and she would have his name and property (and Stonn would still be there.) That suggests to me that both partners are the property of the other and both have equal access to their joint property.
Regarding the good cop/bad cop line I interpreted it as a phrase they had heard in an historical context and misinterpreted. (Yeah, that is a stretch, but its the only thing I can think off to explain it.)
What a delightful episode! The frequent reference to “hijinks” from two Vulcans made me giggle, as did T’Pring’s concession that she probably would have punched that guy out too. I wasn’t super clear on whether the non-logical Vulcan she was meeting with was some kind of fugitive, or what his crimes were beyond just not following logic (unless that’s somehow become illegal, which seems a bit regressive for Vulcan society).
“Medical tricorder challenge: Vulcan marsupial” is almost certainly a call-back to Voyager‘s “Life Line”, where Zimmerman reconfigures the EMH’s medical tricorder so that he’d read as a Vulcan marsupial.
Having revisited the episode, I liked it a little better. However, all that twee stuff with Una and La’an cutting loose just doesn’t work for me. At first I thought they were drunk or under the influence of whatever cosmic force caused the Vulcan body swap, but apparently not. They’re just goofballs in this episode for some reason.
Yeah, I was really hoping that the Good Cop/Bad Cop gambit would pay off when they got them together in the end, and we got to see one cadet (is that the term?) all reassured and the other one scared. It was kind of corrupt to never let them off the hook or resolve the gambit in any way. I wonder if it had been a longer scene but had to be cut.
I loved this episode though. Having recently rewatched a couple of TOS eps, this show is like the best of TOS, and then some. For every tiny nit I can pick, TOS was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cringier.
This and Obi Wan are both really impressing me with how much right can be gotten at this late stage of the game.
@80: I agree it could have been delivered better, but considering they are old friends during a weekend off, both tough but somewhat femme people who get each other like few do, it makes total sense to me that they act younger and more fun together. This is totally how people do. What was off to me was how #1 reacted to her nickname. (Which is, by the way, a long nickname. I question their use of the concept of nickname. Apparently it comes from the University of Chicago. It is weird. She could have been called a funny sounding Tolqkian word, which would have been amusing to hear repeated and we would be buying the mugs by now.)
She acts like kind of a blank slate. It would have seemed more real for her to have some kind of response like, laugh it off with a worried look, or get tight lipped because doubtless she has gotten that kind of push back over the years, or get her revenge by pulling rank like “Beam them down before I lock them in the brig” or something. It seemed to me like the show couldn’t decide how much fun those characters would have doing the bingo. They were neither amused nor not amused, and then complained that it was boring.
In my rewrite, I have the Good Cop/Bad Cop scene resolve with them telling the cadets they would take them along and do the rest of the bingo with them. That could be hoary and cheesy, but it also could be pretty fun, with the conflict between “two older superiors and two younger people in trouble” but also “four mortal people who are just doing the best they can” – there’s a lot to explore there, and I feel like it’s relevant to the human condition, especially these days.
Maybe I should get up from the back seat armchair and write a spec script sometime. Sigh.
#hijinks
@81/jofesh: “It seemed to me like the show couldn’t decide how much fun those characters would have doing the bingo. They were neither amused nor not amused, and then complained that it was boring.”
I think the show knew exactly what it was doing there. I think what was going on was that they enjoyed each other’s company more than they enjoyed the bingo per se. They enjoyed it that they get each other, even if other people don’t get them or vice-versa.
Which means that doing it along with the lower deckers wouldn’t have worked. It wasn’t a story about Una and La’an learning to relate to the rest of the crew, but a story about them realizing they don’t need to conform to other people’s sense of fun or likeability, because they have each other and that’s enough. As an introvert, I totally get that.
As an introvert, I didn’t get that. Because if this is a celebration of introverts having their own sense of fun, then they could’ve had them helping each other doing the nerdy chores they talked about in the beginning rather than simply use a game the extroverts made. But, like with Picard sitting quietly and reading a book or Scotty reading tech manuals, that probably wouldn’t make for the most exciting television.
@83/DenholmVest: It’s not a “celebration,” it’s a story. A story isn’t just about showing characters being themselves, it’s about putting them in a situation that challenges them in some way or contrasts them against someone else. Story comes from taking characters out of their comfort zone, not leaving them in it. That’s why The Hobbit isn’t just Bilbo puttering about the Shire for the whole book.
My point was that their ambivalence about whether they were having fun was not a symptom of the writers’ indecision but was an intentional contrast — they didn’t enjoy the bingo, but they enjoyed doing it together. It’s not about what they did, it’s about who they did it with.
Been wanting to say this for weeks, but for me the biggest continuity issue is just how BIG the Enterprise is. Last week I think they mentioned something about deck 20. On TOS, isn’t it only 11 decks? (I remember that from the Mack Reynolds book Mission to Horatius, my first real introduction to Trek even before I saw the series itself). What, did the ship get hit with a shrink ray right before Kirk took command?
Not a real complaint. It sort of throws me out of the show, but the stories and actors drag me right back in.
You know…the differences between Jess Bush’s Chapel and Majel Barrett’s Chapel as so dramatic and…cataclysmic, that it occurs to me that her Strange New World arc is that a tragedy, and they’re working the suspense and tension on the audience to see how she transforms.
(Also, in a lot of ways, this Chapel seems a character from a rom com in her perkiness and breezy attitude)….
@86. Yeah, you helped me put a finger on it – she’s a manic pixie. Which is fine, because I love (and have styled myself as a bit of) a manic pixie. But it’s not very Nurse Chapel. I’m okay with that, but it’s an adjustment. One thing I miss about OG Nurse Chapel is that she’s “regulation”. Good at her job, seriously dedicated, knows the rules, rarely breaks any. It feels like the characters on SNW are more ready to let loose and break the rules than the 60s-90s iterations, overall, but I mean, I am still really enoying the show. (On Lower Decks our characters often hardly observe the presence of the rules at all, so I mean.)
She’s particularly the manic pixie here because she’s breezily helping someone else’s love life and she winds up alone at episode’s end. And we expect tragedy to come change her. I’m into it though. I appreciate that they let her be imperfect, even having some shots of her look gorgeous and some look really mortal and human.
@82. I can imagine that being a part of their experience with the other two. I mean, if I were to write it, they would start off all four together, get kind of tired of it, then say “that’ll be enough” to the others, and seem dissatisfied, then decide to finish the Bingo with each other anyway. To me, there was something missing about their journey, and about the trauma of the bad cop experience. (Not that that wasn’t realistic. Plenty of good people go overboard at their job, and she’s got a paranoid enough PTS mind that this could come up later as an actual problem. I won’t hold my breath, but it could.)
I wonder if having a four-person sequence was floated and they kept it this way partly for covid time planning scheduling nightmare reasons. Which reminds me to think once again: Good job on everyone making good TV right now. Like it wasn’t a lot to juggle before.
@85/JohnC: “On TOS, isn’t it only 11 decks? (I remember that from the Mack Reynolds book Mission to Horatius, my first real introduction to Trek even before I saw the series itself).”
No way — more like 24 decks, give or take a couple, depending on the source. The saucer alone is 11 decks thick. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Constitution_class_decks
And Mission to Horatius was extremely inaccurate, given how early it was written.
@87/jofesh: I don’t think Chapel’s a “manic pixie.” She’s just an upbeat character who jokes around and has fun. If that’s a manic pixie, then Pike is one too. Chapel’s more laid-back than manic. And the “pixie” part implies someone childlike and wide-eyed, while Chapel is played here as very much an adult woman with unapologetic adult appetites.
“She’s particularly the manic pixie here because she’s breezily helping someone else’s love life”
The intent of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope is that it’s a female character who brightens a male character’s life through her fresh, whimsical perspective. I don’t think that’s what happened here. The advice she gave Spock was very mature and sensible: keep your promises to your committed partner, show her you understand her point of view. She was advising how she felt a committed relationship should work even though she didn’t seek to be in one herself.
@88/jofesh: It would never have worked for Una and La’an to do the bingo thing with the junior officers, because it’s officially disapproved of. It’s breaking the rules, and their job is to enforce the rules. So they would never, ever say to their subordinates “Okay, show us how the rules are broken.” That would undermine their job and the discipline of the crew. They would do exactly what they did, which was enforce discipline, then do the forbidden thing in secret by themselves.
Also, remember the bit where they both acted like they fully understood what Enterprise bingo and “signing the scorch” were, then once the ensigns were gone, they turned to each other and asked “What the hell is Enterprise bingo?” They would never have let the junior officers know they were unaware of it, because that would’ve undermined their authority as first officer and security chief.
Yes, a manic pixie dream girl is someone who gets with the Spock character.
Nurse Chapel is dramatically avoiding commitments.
@87 All I’ll say is that even in her human shots, she looks utterly gorgeous.(I think her personality pushes my buttons, so I’m not entirely objective here, but still….)
@87 Nurse Chapel isn’t actually Starfleet yet. She was introduced as a civilian consultant. And like most of us, she’s probably more impulsive than she will be in 10 years.
And I would certainly hope that female characters today are written very differently than they were in the 1960s, where women all too often worked only until they married.
@89: CLB: Thanks, good to know, especially about the Reynolds book. I imprinted on it because I read it so young. The ship as a whole still looks huge to me—cabins, conference rooms, etc. But as they say, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Peace.
Having just seen this episode, I love it unreservedly, and I’m so glad I did a full TOS re-watch last year to prep for SNW, because the details of “Amok Time” were fresh in my mind.
Whenever I read your recaps, I’ve noticed that Mr. Bennett usually says something about the music in the comments, and it’s always something I missed because I’m not that musically inclined. But I recognized the “Amok Time” music straight off, and I dared hope Mr. Bennett might be a little proud of me.
I freaking love this show. Nothing much else to say that wouldn’t largely repeat what’s been discussed.
The different materials used for Pike’s tunic seemed a very odd combination of (a) leather(-ish fabric) and cloth; I’m with Chase @10 re the duplicate badge/insignia being visually incongruous too.
Speaking of uniforms, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the new, TOS-style outfits worn by the Enterprise crew on Discovery have been tweaked, given how often we get redesigns anymore, but I’m unhappy about the black undershirts peeking out from the V-necks as opposed to solid black collars. The shirts just look wrong to me. Were the costumers going for a variation on what’s seen in TOS’s pilots, I’d understand, despite this show postdating the Discovery episodes, but there are those black undershirts and of course we see red outfits in addition to gold and blue. I also find the metallic rank stripes matching department colors, rather than all being gold, a neat idea that fails in execution. From the promo shot of Paul Wesley as Kirk, I don’t expect we’re getting TOS-style collars back anytime soon.
This was so much fun, which is funny for an episode centered on two Vulcans! Kudos, SNW; you’re batting 1,000! (Is that the correct expression? I don’t know anything about baseball. Thankfully, Benjamin Sisko won’t be reading this).
Discontinuity, shmiscontinuity. I don’t give a damn, just give me a good story. I could not spend time and energy trying to reconcile everything that was said and done on a show produced over fifty years ago.
Like you, krad, I love aftermath stories more than the event; this is where we get that good character work. I love slice-of-life, character-driven stories like this. And Ethan Peck and Gia Sandhu deserve tremendous credit for making two Vulcan characters, basically, a comedy duo, and making them complex and compelling and hilarious. Body-swap may be a trope, but I always love to see different actors impersonate each other; rarely is that not fun to watch. Pike’s reaction to the body-swapped Spock and T’Pring was priceless.
Oh, and this is weird to say, but Christine Chapel is hot.
@96- You used the phrase correctly, and don’t worry about Sisko. After watching him in that holideck episode, it’s clear he’s not nearly the baseball guru he thinks he is.
@96 Oh, it’s not just me, then. Yeah, Chapel is hot….
@58. kurozukin: it gives the unpleasant impression that she would entertain casual relationships with women but for a serious relationship only a man would do
That describes someone I know. Her relationship preferences, not the “unpleasant” part. While one of my best friends is pretty much the exact reverse.
@96. DanteHopkins: I don’t know anything about baseball.
While you’re right to say “batting a thousand,” you should technically either spell out the word or write it “1.000” rather than “1,000” because we’re really talking about the whole number one rather than one thousand — folks say a player is “batting two-fifty” meaning “batting .250”; i.e., safely hitting in a quarter of their at-bats.
You’re also right about Chapel but La’an is next level. That accent, those severe braids, and that demeanor? Bingo.
@40/ChristopherLBennett
Doubtful. The current global nuclear arsenal is about 1,460 megatons. Even if there were five times as many nuclear weapons during the Cold War than today, that’d still be less than 7,500 megatons.
For comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tōhoku earthquakes liberated on the order of 9,32 teratons each. That’s three orders of magnitude bigger, and the crust is still here. (Ok, it moved quite a bit, but still.)
Perhaps it would have exterminated every trace of life on planet Earth, though I still doubt it. The K-Pg impactor event killed a lot of life on Earth, but not all, and the energy release of the impact is estimated to have been in the order of 100 teratons.
Speaking of uniforms, was that Kirk’s green wrap over tunic on Pike?
@101/roxana: Yeah, the design was based on Kirk’s wraparound, but with more leather, and with two insignias (the usual place as well as the “belt” part) instead of one. Photos here:
https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1532395300299718657
I have a different interpretation of Chapel. The “right guy” is implied to be Spock, but what if she had already met Dr. Roger Korby and he was the one that got away. It would explain why she isn’t taking other relationships seriously, and it would also make a sudden engagement more plausible.
Ortegas was overly interested in her lovelife and clearly pining for Chapel.
My daughter and I watched this episode and “Amok Time” back to back. I have to say, it gives an interesting twist to the way Chapel and Spock interact in “Amok Time” to note that she’s already discussed his relationship with T’Pring with her at an earlier point. There’s nothing in “Spock Amok” that overtly violates the canon that I saw.
I will say that it’s quite a stretch from “Spock Amok” to “Amok Time” for T’Pring in that her preferred outcome seemed to be one in which Spock was dead – or had murdered someone else ..
This T’Pring is a lot nicer, and seems to actually like Spock. TOS T’Pring is icily furious with Spock for getting between her and Stonn. She wants Stonn bad and isn’t willing to risk losing him if she can avoid it – and is perfectly happy to see Spock dead. That’s a heck of a shift in attitude!
@105/roxana: The impression I got from “Amok Time” is that Spock and T’Pring had barely interacted since their betrothal at age 7, and had gone about their own divergent lives while the arranged marriage hung over their heads, with neither of them actually wanting it, any more than Deanna and Wyatt wanted theirs in TNG: “Haven.” (Spock even said he hoped he’d be spared from having to go through pon farr, by his hybrid biology, I presume.) Making them an actual romantic couple looking forward to their marriage is quite revisionist, and it would require something to go dramatically wrong with the relationship to estrange them.
For a good while, I pondered over the inconsistency of Chapel knowing in advance about Spock and T’Pring. It’s a noticeable one. But thankfully the episode provides enough nuance and mystery to this incarnation of Christine Chapel that she could still be believably blindsided years later when we get to that TOS episode (I’m very curious if Korty is going be a factor on this show down the line – because that character also needs an extreme makeover).
There’s a lot more wiggle room in the Spock/T’Pring relationship than I previously thought. Alonso Myers did a commendable job bringing a LOT of depth to a legacy Vulcan character we barely knew. This is how you update 1960s sensibilities to the 2020s. And somehow crafting a surprisingly clever and funny body swapping story out of it – both actors living up to the challenge in a big way.
That’s the fifth solid SNW outing in a row for me. They are really killing it. The first four episodes set the pattern for episodic adventures, while this one was a solid multiplot rest leave character outing (reminds me not only of TNG‘s Family, but also to a lesser extent both 11001001 and Coming of Age).
I was caught surprised by the ending sequence of the Una/La’an plot. Walking the hull and finding the piece signed by the others was a nice nod to Lower Decks (the hull stripping sequence) and it provides some wonderful visuals. My cousin would have thrown a hissy fit over the sequence. He still holds a decades long grudge against Generations for the scene where Scotty, Harriman and Chekov look at the ENT-B’s gaping hull breach out into space – “too unrealistic”, he said.
And that Christopher Pike speech to the aliens was one of the most honest down-to-earth captain speeches I’ve heard on Trek. The only other captain who could sound that convincing would be Picard.
I wonder when/if we will see Stonn show up on SNW. It seems logical that if we’re going to tell the story of T’Pring and Spock’s failed romance, he needs to make some kind of appearance. It’s also plain that Spock knows him by name as he refers to him as such prior to T’Pring giving her explanation of why she chose the challenge in “Amok Time.”
My daughter (who hadn’t seen “Amok Time”) would disagree with princessroxana about whether T’Pring actually likes Spock in that she noted a few instances in which she was rather petty about Spock having to work rather than spend time with her.
Both of us also wondered what T’Pring’s plan would have been had Spock not brought Kirk and McCoy down to Vulcan in “Amok Time.” Would she have allowed Stonn to fight Spock? Would she have brought in someone else? Or would she have simply gone through with the marriage to Spock and kept seeing Stonn on the side? It is fascinating to note that there is apparently no other means of severing her and Spock’s relationship at that point, which only slightly mitigates the fact that she still chooses a solution in which – barring McCoy’s last minute shenanigans – someone was going to wind up dead
I like the fact the aliens weren’t testing the Federation’s arguments, which were pre-prepared and designed to favor themselves.
They were testing if the Federation was LISTENING.
Which is much more important because it establishes whether the other party is receptive to actual communication and negotiation ahead of time.