Written by: Dana Horgan & Henry Alonso Myers
Directed by: Jordan Canning
Great episode. Extremely cringe but it works for me.
God, the amount of bullying Spock must have put up with as a kid. It’s no wonder he joined Starfleet. We even see it in one of the movies where he kicked the shit out of another Vulcan kid.
And incase someone needs a reminder on how Pike and La’An knew what Romulans are. La’An ran in to one in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. And Pike runs into them in A Quality of Mercy. Both dealing with wacky time displacement nonsense and conanically Romulans aren’t revealed until TOS’s Balance of Terror (which A Quality of Mercy is a remake of).
La’An is a terrible Romulan. She should have kept her plotting closer to the chest. Also funny how Pike saw through her behavior but didn’t do anything about it. Does show Vulcan’s are inherently bias towards other Vulcans. Which we even saw brought up when Batel calls out Pasalk.
This was a very fun episode, and does show off the complete bullshit logical fallacies that make up Vulcan society without having to deal with Vulcan society.
Extremely cringe says it right. Why wouldn’t doctor m’benga challenge their decision to remain Vulcan without checking, testing, verifying their capacity? How the hell do they fix the nuclear systems in 10s? With no story? Off the rails & feeling like it was written by a 4th grader. Or a drunk pair of nimrods.
Had to fast forward through most of the episode. Shituational bad drama & procedure, non-comedy. With fancy dress! Fun & ridiculous (but fancy!) Patton Oswald appearance. Overdone, over the top terrible interactions between actors I highly respect.
Full throttle into idiocy land. With fancy dress! Look how much we can spend on costumes while our writers are drunk off their asses!
It’s been established as far back as TOS that M’Benga specializes in Vulcan medicine, so it’s surprising they didn’t even mention it in this episode
Why wouldn’t doctor m’benga challenge their decision to remain Vulcan without checking, testing, verifying their capacity?
I totally thought that too. Clearly, their judgement has been impaired and what they want is irrelevant. But you know…sometimes you just need stuff to happen to get the plot moving.
So La’An became Romulan; Spock said her case was different because of her augmented heritage. Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?
I guess why wouldn’t Romulans augment themselves? And they got the bad Khan Singh kind of augmentation, instead of the good Illyrian kind.
I love the swift eyebrow raises when La’An and Pike say the thing they cannot discuss together!
I’m too sleepy to stop this train of thought. Could Bashir have been augmented by an Illyrian doctor? Or a doctor whose work was informed by Illyrian methods?
At first I didn’t really like this episode because of how off as Vulcans they seemed. Like they were overacting pretending to be a Vulcan.
But then I started thinking “well it kinda makes sense - they aren’t “real” Vulcans but a blend” and thankfully the whole Katra thing basically said the same thing.
Basically hardware-wise they are Vulcan and software-wise they are still human and as a result the 2 “systems” have trouble working together.
I loved Patton as Doug - even if it didn’t really make sense to me with everything we know about Vulcans.
In the end though it’s just another episode that makes me sad this is a prequel and all the great character development will get thrown out.
I’m especially mad they keep developing Spock specifically. Ethan Peck has done such a great job portraying Spock working on understanding and accepting his 2 halves that this show ends up being a disservice to both him and Leonard Nimoy.
Since La’an doesn’t make it to TOS, my guess is she dies by the end of the show and the pain of losing her drives Spock to push his humanity aside. I was expecting that to happen with the Chapel break-up, but then they brought La’an into things, so I transferred the theory onto her instead 😂
“Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans” ready to beam up xD
the intro with the Pike monotonous/vulcan voice was fun also.
I was worried that a high five was relegated to habits of the ancient past when the Lanthanite was initiating with no reciprocation, but then the post credits scene with Spock teaching human mannerisms showed it’s still a thing.
When I noticed that this week’s intro was being done in a Vulcan manner, I was hoping they would take the opportunity to fix the infamous grammatical mistake1 and say “to go boldly” with an unsplit infinitive just this once.
Vulcan Pike’s hair reminds me of my old Dark Eldar figures.
I was wondering if the federation ban on advantageous genetic manipulation would have been implemented as a rule to stop the “four Vulcans” from choosing to remain Vulcan, but the episode didn’t go there.
I found the use of bacon/cheese/animal products a little un-Trek-like in this episode. Comments against veganism felt a little weird in an era of food synthesizers and the general vision of “we don’t enslave animals for food.” It’s not like vegan food is disgusting. Spock confirmed humans still eat inordinate amounts of cheese and meat with implications that it’s often to the point that it’s unhealthy. Is it still illogical to have some animal protein if it’s problems regarding ecological efficiency are a solved issue (beyond the saturated fat and caloric arguments)? IDK, something felt off.
I didn’t appreciate that despite the extra long (and extra long feeling) runtime of this one they had three of the Vulcans return to human off screen. I was kind of hoping for a Steven Universe type situation where they emotionally explore the core of these beloved characters and get reminded of who they are.
Overall, this episode was pretty cringe inducing. I’m kind of shocked to say I straight up did not like this episode. The secondhand embarrassment was too much for me to handle. Painfully unfunny scenes went for too long. The conflict resolution wasn’t to my liking, feeling like a missed opportunity to explore character instead going for cheap gags—dinner with the boss sitcom, overbearing girlfriend, lie holding up more lies until the lies implode, pretending to be married, “we want our jerk back”—stuff we’ve seen thousands of times. I wasn’t a big fan of the previous episode either so I’m just kind of put off that they’ve had two “duds” in a row where SNW usually had bangers in my opinion. Maybe I’ll be kinder to this one upon a rewatch.
I was worried that a high five was relegated to habits of the ancient past when the Lanthanite was initiating with no reciprocation, but then the post credits scene with Spock teaching human mannerisms showed it’s still a thing.
Wait. Post credits? There has been post credits in SNW and I didn’t noticed?
only this episode.
There was no restraint in this episode - I love it!
When Doug showed up I realized it had gone off the rails. Then cetacean ops made me reassess what “off the rails” means. But I had to retract a head shake when I realized that was a sort of dream sequence. Laughed my ass off the whole time.
This needs to be a new meme
What even is he eating? A taco?
I believe that is a piece of Star Fruit.
Why are there whales on Pike’s Enterprise? I was under the impression that cetacean ops was a ultimately a result the events of Star Trek IV, which haven’t happened yet.
Showing cetacean ops did seem like a lot. But OTOH, that scene isn’t actually on the Enterprise - it’s set inside La’An’s mind. So why not make it weird?
this episode was the most lower decks episode in the show, and I don’t say it as a compliment.
