Some Blundering About Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2×05: Charades

Charades or I am Curious (Yellow) or How I Meld Your Mother

See Also: Faces (VOY), Rascals (TNG), Stargate SG-1 “Divide and Conquer”, Doctor Who “Curse of the Black Spot”
Contains strange new world?: Yes!
Title is a florid but entirely literal reference to a big thing in this episode?: Peak SNW right here, baybee.

So the SAG-AFTRA strike is finally over which means I have to get off my ass and start writing about Star Trek again I guess. I was kind of enjoying not writing, to be frank, but I should probably try to do more creative stuff. Thinking about doing another Admiral Pike-verse fanfic.

The thing is, I don’t actually have all that much to say about the rest of the season of Strange New Worlds other than “It’s great. It’s really great.” This one provoked some mixed emotions from me.

I got to ask. I mean, probably not, right? But maybe? You’ve got aliens named Yellow and Blue and the resolution to the plot arc requires Christine to own up about whether or not her and Spock are fucking. Is this an easter egg referencing the 1967 Swedish erotic film series?

So the hijinks. I guess an SNW “thing” is “Vulcan Hijinks at the midpoint of the season”? They even played a riff on the TOS “shenanigans” leitmotif just before Spock drops an F-bomb. The basic outline is… Kind of shocking in that it feels like what would happen if Star Trek were a ’60s sitcom. It has strong I Love Lucy energy. Here’s what happens: Spock takes Nurse Chapel out to study a Weird Swirly Thing on a planet near Vulcan, and they get blown up. Fortunately, the swirly thing is owned by some godlike aliens, whose insurance covers the bill. Only when they found the shuttle full of two blown-up humanoids and 3/4 of the DNA they found was human, they figured the other quarter was a mistake, and put Spock back together a fully human. And they’ve only got a limited time to fix it before it becomes permanent for some reason! Okay, Good solid Star Trek plot so far. But incoming hijinks: Spock is scheduled to have the very important and awkward ritualistic dinner with his fiancee’s parents that very night! And T’Pring’s mom is a total bitch who already hates Spock for being a filthy half-breed and if she disapproves, the wedding will be off! And I mean, it would be terrible if Spock and T’Pring didn’t end up getting married! Also, Fred and Barney have their Water Buffalo meeting tonight! And Laura’s toe is stuck in the spigot! And Superintendent Chalmers will be here for dinner in 20 minutes!

So okay. There’s a lot going on here. It’s a funny plot. And it’s insightful too. One of the best things is that Spock doesn’t spend the episode being angry and feeling violated about having his DNA changed. It’s a nice change from the past few generations of Trek having people meet the weirdness of the universe first and foremost with annoyance. But more, the reason Spock isn’t upset is related to the reason he has such a hard time pretending to be Vulcan: it’s because his Vulcan upbringing has not prepared him for pretense. He knows how to act like a Vulcan, but not how to pretend to be a Vulcan. He doesn’t know how to be un-genuine (A skill he will, of course, learn as he grows older). He doesn’t keep trying to suppress his emotions when he’s a human, because suppressing emotions isn’t part of his understanding of humanity, so why would he?

I love that he blows up at Sam for being a slob. This is part of a cute little montage where they recreate scenes from the cold open, showing how Human Spock reacts differently, to the discomfort of his colleagues. Spock doesn’t know how to deal with his human emotions particularly in that he does not know with how to express emotions in a healthy way. He’s used to dealing with Vulcan emotions: big, rampaging, primal emotions that have to be tackled and suppressed. What he’s not used to are slipper human emotions that you need to embrace and direct rather than suppress. It’s kind of lovely. And Amanda’s there! Amanda is wonderful as always, and I love how easily she just rolls with everything – a human woman living on Vulcan has to learn to just roll with things. And what’s her reaction? She has to teach her son how to lie. For a Vulcan, suppressing your emotions and acting stoic is genuine. For a human, it’s an affectation, and Spock has to learn how to perform a different thing than his truth.

Of course, when she beams aboard and Spock puts on a little Starfleet beanie to hide his ears, I could not help but be disappointed that we had the literally perfect moment to canonize the Emco Star Trek “Spock” helmet and they just passed it up.

T’Pring’s dad is great too. I mean, sort of. It’s a little uncomfortable to have this very dated stereotype of the domineering mother-in-law and the henpecked father-in-law. But it’s still kind of funny to watch this dude very clearly make the logical decision that that it would be irrational to disrupt domestic harmony without exceptional provocation.

But I don’t think we can avoid addressing the elephant in the room.

Leonard Nimoy was Jewish. And his lived experience of being a Jewish actor in the middle of the 20th century in America was an experience of being a kind of permanent-partial-outsider; having to put up with people making jokes about hook noses and secret world-ruling conspiracies and funny diets and modified penises. Of being never quite accepted, not allowed to join the best country clubs, always being slightly suspect. Of perpetually being a “funny foreigner” whose culture and cuisine were viewed as “odd” in the best of times. Of having his loyalties challenged. And that lived experience is a huge part of what he brought to the role of Spock. The modern Spock, whether it’s Quinto or Peck playing him, leans into portraying Spock as neurodiverse, but the original Spock was very much – and here’s that notion we addressed recently with Pelia coming up again (She’s not even in this episode! You start off saying Amanda and Pelia are old friends, then you bring back Amanda and you contrive an excuse for Pelia to not be around?) – a “Space Jew”. So we have a bit of a problem when we launch into the “Spock’s a human now!” montage.

Frankly, even if Spock weren’t deliberately and consciously constructed as a metaphor for the Jewish experience, it would be a little problematic to make one of your choices for depicting the explicit markers of “humanity” be “loves bacon”. It’s particularly bad in this context, but even in any context, you’re absolutely lowkey asserting that “All True Humans Love Bacon”, in a way that implies that vegetarians, Jews and Muslims are somehow not-quite-real-true-humans. In context, it takes the extra step of sending the message that Spock has been, in a sense, cured of his Jewishness. Yuck. Ew. Gross. No. (To make matters worse, I’m pretty sure T’Prell’s “Overbearing Mother-in-law” stereotype is also Jewish-coded. Maybe not deliberately, but that’s the trouble with ethnic stereotypes; they’re ground into the culture so deeply that you can evoke them without even noticing you’re doing it. You sort of sense T’Prell wanting to point out that T’Pring could just as easily have had an arranged marriage to a nice doctor without a shiksa mother.)

I think that scene is symptomatic of a significant misfire in the episode’s design. They were clearly trying to do something clever here: rather than contriving a reason for Spock to have to “learn to be human”, or go around lamenting the loss of his True Self, or being confounded about how to deal with these new urges and impulses, they did something new and more interesting. Spock just completely naturally adapts to his situation, because the thing Spock is not used to is faking it. He is completely earnest about his new feelings and impulses, up to and including an uncomfortable moment with La’an when he notices that he’s horny.

One really cool implication here is a reversal of what the popular Spock Lore would tell you: Spock does not spend his life holding his “human side” in check: he, like all Vulcans, spends his life holding his Vulcan side in check – the powerful, savage emotions. The reason Spock struggles is not because his human emotions are interfering with his Vulcan logic, but because the level of restraint needed to control his Vulcan emotions is pathological to his human side.

But the misfire here is that, in a sense, Spock was human already. They’re all human. This is Star Trek. Aliens aren’t aliens; they’re metaphors for one part of the human experience or another with a funny forehead. And so, we’re left with Spock “turning human” in a way that equates “human” with being cis-white-hetero-male-American. And not a vegan one.

Now, like I said, there’s a lot to enjoy here. I mean, when Chapel and company go back to meet the godlike aliens and are magically transported to a void with black tile floors and crinkly cellophane walls, that sort of thing is absolutely my bag. I love me a “magically transported to a black void surrounded by the title sequence from a ’60s British movie”. The Kerkovians are delightfully weird. Aloof, legalistic, and one gets the impression that the legalism is a kind of Karen-y kind: mostly an excuse to declare things not-their-problem. It’s a little much the way Chapel is still reluctant to admit her feelings even when it becomes clear that’s what Yellow needs to hear in order to give her standing to file a complaint. Boy it’s going to be uncomfortable if she immediately backtracks on this and becomes aloof and gives the impression that this is just a casual fling for her immediately.

Anyway, they sort everything, and there’s a cool bit where the Vulcans call up Christine to be dicks to her and she wistfully muses about having just traveled across dimensions to gain the medical knowledge of godlike aliens before telling the officious Vulcan to go fuck himself. Spock successfully mind-melds with his mother, because for some reason, part of this “Meet the in-laws” ceremony involves the mother-in-law watching the groom  mind meld with his mother. This bit I do not really understand. Now, the part of the ritual where you sit and listen to your in-laws complain about you, that makes perfect sense. Not sure why your mother-in-law needs to watch you mind meld with your mom though.

It’s wonderful development for Amanda, though, and the way they play the reveal is done well. First, Spock describes the memory they shared as just an ordinary scene from his childhood. Then, having finished the ceremony, T’Prell goes on to insult Spock’s mom. As you do. This might actually be the official origin story of “Talking smack about Spock’s momma is his berserk button.” We haven’t seen it happen earlier than this in his chronology. Only later do we get the reveal: the “ordinary” scene was the first time the other kids invited Spock to play. And through Amanda’s eyes, he realized that however bad he had it, his Vulcaninity being constantly challenged, Amanda had it worse. Spock was bullied, but there were times when he was accepted. He’s got a smokin’ hot girlfriend. He got accepted to the academy. He’s chief science officer on a flagship. But there’s never been any reward for Amanda. The other mothers never accepted him. And even Spock’s greatest accomplishments were colored with that, “It’s especially impressive given your shitty mom,” thing. It’s heartbreaking and wonderful. Sarek married Amanda, as we know, because he loved her. But no one’s ever really addressed why Amanda married Sarek, or what she gave up to do it.

Of course, Spock losing his cool, despite having been re-Vulcaned, and revealing the charade leads to T’Pring dumping his ass, and this is something I have some feelings about, at this stage in my own journey of self-discovery, and after what we saw back in Spock Amok last year. Because once again, they’re making me sympathetic to the lady who is gonna try to get out of an engagement by getting Spock to murder his boss.

Because, once again, it comes down to Spock’s insecurities. In his time of crisis, he basically got everyone on the ship working together to bail his ass out, but he was afraid to tell his girlfriend. And, I mean, he tried. But there was that anxious attachment, once again, that inner voice that told him that if he opened up to the person he cared about most about his insecurities, if he showed her weakness, she would reject him. She’s no T’Prell, but Spock still feels in his green heart that his relationship with her depends on maintaining a steadfast Vulcan appearance. And T’Pring is certainly not blameless here, but how in the world is a Vulcan woman – a woman who’s mother is T’Prell, no less – supposed to know how to make a man like Spock feel safe and secure in their relationship if he won’t open up to her?

…

Is what I would say, if the breakdown of Spock’s relationship with T’Pring were about the negative cycle stemming from Spock’s fearful-avoidant attachment style interfacing with T’Pring’s dismissive-avoidant attachment style. But at some level, where they’re really going with this is mostly just shuffling T’Pring out of the picture so that Spock and Christine can make out. Which, obviously, is step one in the path to her transition from the freewheeling mad scientist bisexual icon of Strange New Worlds to the flat character hopelessly pining for the unavailable Spock. Great. Cool. We’ll do that then.