T’Pring is ready to get wedding plans back on the table, but of course that can only mean one thing: hijinks.
1. Vulcans Kinda…Suck?
Here’s a thought that has been toyed with for quite a long time in Trek canon. The Vulcans, for all of their positives, can be uppity jerks sometimes, and this episode goes out of its way to take some shots at these ‘green blooded hobgoblins’ from a handful of angles. From their assumed, and ok, probably correct, superior intellect to their need to look down at other species putting their needs, traditions, and pretty much everything else above others, to their constant xenophobic comments towards Humans, one of their closest allies! It can be downright frustrating, while still getting some laughs, that these ‘pointy eared bastards’ are always putting others down while we are meant to look up to them. One of pop cultures greatest heroes, Mr. Spock, is one of them. He is beloved, but being half human, even he is always on the outskirts of their society. And is this something that all of Star Trek insists on telling us? That we only like him because he is half human? Apart from certain storylines in which his emotions come out to play, or even the early days of Trek in which he openly shows some emotion, Spock looks and acts like any other Vulcan. His early uses of emotion has been made canon ever since the original 1979 film with Spock leaving Starfleet to live on Vulcan to perform Kolinahr, in which he (almost) purges all emotion for the sake of logic. We love him even when he’s frustrating, but almost every other Vulcan that gets any sort of substantial screen time is nearly insufferable. I’m starting to wonder why they wanted to help create the Federation with humans at all.
2. Being Human with Mom
So, the meat of the episode is that during a mission in the Vulcan system, Spock and Chapel are on a shuttle that crashes mid space flight. They are saved by, for lack of a better term, god-like alien entities known as the Kerkhovians. They use their power to save the shuttle and the lives of both Spock and Chapel. However due to their all-powerful, yet simplistic nature, they didn’t understand that Spock is both Vulcan and Human and they used his human DNA to fully repair his body. Thus, fully human Spock is born. It’s a notion that has been played around with not just in sci-fi, but other iterations of Trek over the years, most notably the episode “Faces” of Star Trek: Voyager in which half Human/half Klingon chief engineer B’Elanna is actually split into two separate beings. These stories have been used for self reflection and in the case of Spock, screwball humor, with just a touch of looking at one’s inner self. This kind of story carries some odd baggage though. It feels a little icky the more you think on it and while episodes like “Faces” try to tackle some deeper meaning and even take a look at self-hatred and racism towards one’s own race or species, it still comes off as somewhat taking the wrong side of the argument. It’s a tough call to make when writing a story like this, and maybe saying they shouldn’t be done is taking it a step too far, but some polishing absolutely needs to be done before we get another one.
All that said, this episode does have plenty of really funny moments and it is all thanks to Ethan Peck’s fantastic performance. He has been living in Spock’s skin for 3+ years at this point, including the brief stint on Star Trek: Discovery, and he knows this character extremely well. To have Spock dealing with all levels and shades of human emotion, desires, and needs – both mental and physical – was a real treat in many ways. So much of it is funny and heart-breaking and uncomfortable, the latter taking up the majority of these moments. The relationship between Spock and his human mother Amanda is one that fans have loved since 1967. The compassion she shows for a son who can’t openly show it back is truly something wonderful to see, and every bit as sad as you’d expect. Mia Kirshner’s portrayal of Amanda Grayson has all of the heart brought to it by originating actor Jane Wyatt and the short-lived Kelvin-Verse version with Winona Ryder. Kirshner has all of the smarts, charm, and underlying cleverness necessary to keep expanding this character as she tends to a son that needs her more than ever and navigates her way through life as a human living on Vulcan. Even one who has as high a standing as any human on Vulcan could probably have, she is always under a microscope and she knows it. Kirshner carries so many emotions in all of her scenes it is a wonder the character works as well as she does. But as the over-said phrase goes, “We contain multitudes.” You see the sense of relief she has being on the Enterprise, surrounded by other humans, and many other species besides Vulcans, but she still carries the weight of everything going on with their family and to top it all off finding out that her son has been made fully human by some weird aliens. She takes that with stride though. With hopes that M’Benga and Chapel can find a cure and revert his DNA makeup back to what it should be, Amanda sees this as her chance to really assist her son with learning more about and embracing his human half. This is some of the best material in the episode and I love seeing Kirshner and Peck as mother and son, especially as two characters that I hold so dear.
Continued below3. Hijinks…Again!
So with T’Pring and her family coming to the Enterprise for a pre-wedding dinner ceremony and Spock being not quite Vulcan anymore, we get another episode of screwball hijinks much like last season’s “Spock Amok.” Some of the best Star Trek in existence are the episodes and movies that embrace the cheese, embrace the campy, ridiculous side of things and let the cast have fun. While I wouldn’t count “Charades” as one of the best episodes of all time, it is a lot of fun. Unfortunately this episode feels all too similar to last season’s. Especially with body-changing humor and the stakes being important, but nothing that is going to endanger the galaxy. The entire cast is clearly having a blast and for the performances alone this episode is worth the watch. Also, T’Pring’s father, Sevet, is so goofy it almost feels like he’s the human pretending to be Vulcan rather than Spock. It’s a great, funny role of a man who loves his family, honors tradition, but isn’t a stick in the mud, other than blindly listening to his grumpy wife. I’d have to give Ethan Peck my MVP award for this episode, but my runner up is absolutely Michael Benyaer as Sevet. A truly fun performance that I could have spent more time with.
4. [Love Triangle Intensifies]
Man, this love triangle stuff usually doesn’t work for me, but I am kind of loving it here. In the original series there was a running gag of Nurse Chapel being attracted to Spock. It was cutesy, flirty 1960s humor. Nothing more, nothing less. But with Strange New Worlds we are getting a full-fledged unrequited romance. I don’t know if it’s that T’Pring is your classic boring as hell Vulcan or that I’m beyond smitten by Jess Bush as Chapel, but I want these two to rip each others’s uniforms off. I don’t even like my Trek all that sexy (just a little sexy) and I want them to fall in love and make babies. But alas, something (i.e. all canon post-SNW) tells me things won’t work out, even with T’Pring out of the picture. These are two characters who clearly respect each other and value their friendship above all else, but you would have to be completely blind to not see the desire and possible romance absolutely burning just beneath their skin. They want to be together or at least give it a shot, but Spock is engaged and Chapel is too nice to get in the way of that. Consent and respect is hot as hell and this episode trades in that opinion.
5. Vulcan Cuisine with Captain Pike!
I have never been one to want to try alien food found in any of my favorite sci-fi or fantasy shows/movies, but Pike put in the work and made some pretty looking Vulcan food in a pinch attempting to save this dinner for Spock and T’Pring. I can’t say it all looked mouth-watering delicious, but it sure as hell ranged from looking tasty to, at the very least, intriguing. I’d try it all and if Sevet’s reactions were any indication, I’d probably like it. More tasty looking alien food on Trek please! Also, I’ll never, ever get bored by a food scene with one Christopher Pike.
