HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
I have very much loved what Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has done with legacy characters, including and perhaps especially T’Pring. SNW gives her a voice and a personality that we didn’t see in TOS, and she exercises it in the second season’s fifth episode “Charades,” in such a way that the series leaves itself open for developments between Nurse Chapel and Spock. Even more interesting, the series chooses to do this in an episode whose tone trends strongly toward the light-heartedly fun before turning devastatingly serious. Generally, I’d say the show nailed the transition, but I am left troubled about what this bodes for the future.
Plot Ahoy!
The Enterprise has been dispatched to Vulcan space in order to investigate anomalous energy readings on Kerkhov, which used to host a civilization more advanced than the Federation’s current level of technology. Captain Pike has ordered the ship to travel at low speeds in order to give the crew some much-needed downtime in order to pursue their own interests and activities. For Chapel, that involves preparing for the interview for a fellowship in archaeological medicine she wishes to pursue. She drills with everyone but Spock, who seems to be avoiding her after her brush with death. Pike foils that effort at avoidance by assigning both Chapel and Spock to the exploratory mission to Kerkhov.
They pass some awkward time in transit before they discover that the anomalous readings are caused by some sort of column of energy, but the shuttle gets too close. Spock has no choice but to prep the shuttle for a crash. He wakes up later in Sickbay only to discover that the Kerkhovians have repaired him using Chapel’s DNA as a blueprint. They removed all the parts of him that were Vulcan, leaving him fully human. Spock attempts to adjust, and just as he seems to achieve some equilibrium, he receives word that T’Pring’s family is insisting that he participate in the V’Shal dinner in order to solidify their engagement.
Spock panics and insists on pretending that he is fully Vulcan, but his mother arrives aboard the Enterprise and spots the poorly executed deception immediately. She proceeds to teach him not only how to lie but also how to conceal his suffering, which is a skill that as a human living on Vulcan, she has perfected. That realization does not sit well with Spock.
Meanwhile, Nurse Chapel is wrestling with deep-seated guilt over what happened to Spock. She feels responsible for what the Kerkhovians have done, believing that they used her DNA as a blueprint. Chapel attempts everything she can think of and then plumbs the depths of M’Benga’s “special library,” but nothing she does yields stable results. Chapel does attend her interview for the fellowship, however, but the interview is very short and Vulcan. She decides to enlist Uhura and Ortegas to take her to the Kerkhovian energy tunnel in order to try and convince the Kerkhovians to teach her how to repair the damage to Spock. The Kerkhovians, who have left normal space for interdimensional space, are at first reticent, but Chapel makes an impassioned plea for their aid. Once she admits her feelings for Spock, proving her right to make a complaint, the Kerkhovians provide her aid.
Aboard the Enterprise, Spock and Amanda have done everything they can to prepare for the V’shal dinner, even going so far as to have Pike cook. The only portion of the V’shal dinner that still stymies human Spock is the one involving a mindmeld with his mother. Without much option, Spock forges ahead with T’Pril and Sevet, T’Pring’s parents. T’Pring’s mother is an extremely unpleasant person with an almost racist bias against humans. That comes out strongest when T’Pril explains that she finds him unfit as a companion for her daughter both because he is half human and because he chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy.
Chapel returns from Kerkhov and synthesizes a treatment, which she administers to Spock just before he must mindmeld with his mother. Amanda shares a memory with Spock of going to school with him. T’Pril allows as how the V’shal dinner has been performed adequately and allows the engagement to stand. Spock informs her icily that the entire event had been performed by a human, and that his mother is one of the best people he knows. T’Pril’s distaste for her is therefore a problem with T’Pril, not Amanda.
Chapel also gets a dose of Vulcan superiority when her interviewer calls her back to tell her that they were not offering her a fellowship because her written work was subpar. Chapel stares him down and informs him that she had just negotiated with a species no one had contacted in centuries and synthesized a cure for Spock from their technology. Visibly interested, the Vulcan scientist asks her for more information, and she tells him to look for her paper on the subject, which she will publish later that year.
T’Pring goes to Spock and demands to know why everyone but her knew about him being human. He explains that he did not want to burden her further, and she rightly points out that no matter how much they’d been through, Spock didn’t trust her with this. She then suggests that it would be wise for them to spend some time apart. After she leaves, Spock opens the door to his quarters to find Chapel outside. He confesses that he might have feelings for someone, and she launches herself at him for a kiss.
Analysis
“Charades” takes its title no doubt not just from Pike’s attempt to stall T’Pring’s parents on Spock’s behalf but also from Spock’s greater charade of being a human pretending to be a Vulcan. However, even deeper, he’s pretending to be in love with T’Pring while harboring feelings for Nurse Chapel. The chemistry between Jess Bush’s Nurse Chapel and Ethan Peck’s Spock is undeniable, but I do wonder at the choice to have them act on these feelings. Friends memes aside, this feels very much like a betrayal of the relationship that T’Pring and Spock have fought so hard to build.
Even though we know how the relationship between T’Pring and Spock ends, Strange New Worlds has done an absolutely excellent job of giving T’Pring an actual character, beyond what we see in “Amok Time.” We get to see her as an accomplished woman who has a fraught relationship with her difficult mother and one who has given so much of herself to this relationship with Spock. They’ve shared bodies, so it’s impossible to fault T’Pring for her disappointment with Spock here. He made the choice not to tell her something incredibly significant, and his excuse, that he didn’t want to add to her burdens, falls incredibly flat. While his heart may have been in the proverbial right place, Spock denies T’Pring the opportunity to be his partner. Even if T’Pring weren’t capable of handling her mother, which she demonstrates that she very much is, she deserved to make that choice. In taking that choice from her, Spock also denies her access to a part of himself that he’s willing to share with his crew and more significantly Nurse Chapel. T’Pring recognizes this denial for what it is, an indication that Spock neither trusts her to accept his humanity nor has faith in their partnership. Even though T’Pring only has a handful of lines here, she makes all of this abundantly clear, and watching that sequence play out is exceptionally brutal.
I also want to applaud Mia Kirshner’s return to Star Trek as Amanda. Having her do so maintains continuity across both Discovery and Strange New Worlds, which is fantastic. Even better is the nuanced portrayal of both Amanda’s core of strength and the sacrifices she has made to live on Vulcan. Experiencing the Vulcan ritual as a human gives Spock a chance to appreciate just how strong his mother really is that he’s never had before. He has no doubt observed Vulcans like T’Pril openly insulting his mother, but he never quite understood just how awful the experience really was until he walked in her shoes and in her memories. There’s something beautifully human about this; Spock understandably centers his own experience without really thinking about who else in his family might be experiencing Vulcan prejudice. We tend not to think of our parents as people in the same sense we are; there’s always a sense that that’s mom or dad. The moment when we start to comprehend our parents’ personhood represents a watershed moment in our development as adults, and I love that we get to watch Spock’s moment play out in real time. Doing it in an episode that originally seemed like it was going to be another example of fun hijinks in space just makes the moment hit that much harder.
Almost any character development of Nurse Chapel is more than we got in TOS, but this episode gives her a chance to show us a different side of her. We know she’s capable of extreme competence in battle. We know she’s an accomplished geneticist, but here, we see her grappling with the reality of her emotions, and Jess Bush does a great job with that. The episode even establishes that Chapel is secure enough in herself to shrug off the interviewing scientist’s condescension. It’s just a great episode for her and a good episode overall. Still, we know that this burgeoning relationship with Spock will go nowhere good. Roger Korby remains on the horizon. Spock returns to T’Pring for his pon farr. I just wonder how things are going to develop from this point.
Rating:
Four Time Crystals
Stray Thoughts From the Couch
- No, I don’t know why the Kerkhovians are hanging out in their transport tunnels either. Neither do I know why their names are colors. The interdimensional space visuals were pretty cool, though.
- Did Pike approve Chapel’s trip to Kerkhov? I have real questions.
- I’d say that having your in-laws discuss your flaws as part of the engagement ceremony is beyond the pale, but then again, many people experience it over years. Having the timer for it is Vulcan genius.
- I really wish we could have seen T’Pril’s response to Spock’s rant.
- I do hope Sevet eventually got a chance to eat.
- Sarek has once again demonstrated Good Parenting Choices.