Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. It's been a crazy week, which is why I haven't posted anything on the blog since last week's Strange New Worlds episode review. Which I'm back to do once again, because it's Friday and a new episode came out yesterday. This week I'm reviewing season 2, episode 5, which is called "Charades". I'm giving you a quick spoiler warning because I got stuff to talk about with this episode and it's much easier to do so if I don't have to avoid spoilers. Let's get into it.
"Charades" is very similar to season 1, episode 5, "Spock Amok" in that it's a major Spock/T'Pring episode, and the Enterprise is on half duty rotation, which isn't complete automation, but also isn't all hands on deck either. We've actually seen Voyager do this a few times, most notably in the season five premiere, "Night". The difference is that Spock is turned completely human after him and Nurse Chapel get into a shuttle accident, involving beings from another dimension, who take a very customer service style approach to life. Which is completely insane, but works for this episode.
One of the weirdest parts of this episode is when the human crew teaches Spock how to pretend to be Vulcan because T'Pring's parents have decided that it's time for her and Spock to have their engagement dinner since the Enterprise is going to be in orbit of Vulcan and Spock's duties aren't preventing him from doing so. It's weird because Spock's friends were able to teach him how to be a Vulcan, better than a Vulcan could.
I also loved the montage of Spock being human, where it showed him spending time with his friends, learning how to cook, eating bacon for the first time, and ready to kick Sam Kirk's ass for leaving a mess on the briefing room table. Yes, that did happen, and it was great. One of the things that SNW does that TOS just couldn't do within the restrictions of 1960s television, is focusing on Spock's human side. So much of the Spock centric episodes from TOS focused on him being Vulcan unless he's under the influence of some alien lifeform or spores or whatever the case may be. And while early episodes depicted Spock as being more emotional, as he smiles in "The Cage", and smirks in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the series as a whole did very little to explore his human side. To the point where it was hard to remember that Spock is half-Human and half-Vulcan, not a full Vulcan.
Speaking of full Vulcans, I swear they're super jerks these days. This trend actually started all the way back in "Broken Bow", which is the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, in 2001, but it's really become a thing in the modern era of Star Trek. Particularly in Strange New Worlds. I love it because it shows a side of Vulcan society that we never actually got to focus on in the '90s shows, even though Tuvok was a main character on Star Trek: Voyager, and we spent alot of time with him.
The relationships on this show never cease to amaze me. They're just much richer than they were on TOS in the '60s. As Wil Wheaton said to Jess Bush in this week's episode of The Ready Room, in the '60s, Christine Chapel was created in service of Spock, but on SNW Chapel is her own, independent, person with her own storyline and character development. Which I love. I think I said this in one of my season one reviews, but I think that Chapel was fine on TOS, but there wasn't much about her and by the time Star Trek II came around she had basically disappeared, aside from a quick cameo in Star Trek IV in 1986, most likely due to the fact that by that point Majel was Roddenberry's wife and he wasn't involved in the movies after Star Trek: The Motion Picture had come out in 1979. Here though they really fleshed Chapel out and given us one of my favourite Star Trek characters of all time.
Because of this, Spock and Chapel's relationship is one of my favourites in all of Star Trek. Of course, I think this is the fastest relationship in all of Star Trek, since it didn't take seven seasons and four movies to get them together, and we know neither of them are going to get killed off since they both need to be around for TOS. Instead it took a season and a half and him and T'Pring to decide to take some time apart for them to kiss. I know they kissed in season 1, episode 7, but that was a ruse to save the ship from Captain Angel. This time it was a full on, genuine, make out session. The start of one anyway, since that's where the episode ends. It makes TOS a bit weird because of how Chapel was portrayed on that show, but I don't care, because I love the chemistry between these two characters. I can't wait to see what the writers have in store for them next.
Overall this was a fun episode that was pretty comedic and extremely entertaining and emotional. Especially since it had storylines that I've been invested in since the first season. Now that we're at the halfway point in the season, I just want to say that I'm loving season 2 so far. While I wasn't as big of a fan of La'an and Kirk's time travel episode as other people were, there hasn't been a single bad episode all season so far. And that's because Henry Alonso Meyer and Akiva Goldsman are Star Trek fans, Trekkies if you will. And honestly, I think that really makes all the difference because they know what's come before with all the shows and movies that are set after SNW, and so they can pick and choose what to include, or what piece of background information that they need to update for modern day if the TOS version no longer fits. And I'm very glad that we have actual Star Trek fans in charge of the franchise now.
That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow to review A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin since I finished reading it this afternoon. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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