Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8: Pike's Hair and Spock's Smile

Well, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.8 served up the obligatory comedy of the season.  It wasn't as funny as TOS's "Trouble for Tribbles" (which got David Gerrold's career going), but it did have its moments.

[Spoilers ahead ... though it seems a bit off to warn about spoilers where laughs are involved ... ]

First, the set-up:  Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura are temporarily turned into Vulcans.  But the temporary takes much longer than expected, and hence this close-to-entire episode.

Here are some of my favorite results:

1. Pike's hair looks funnier than ever as a Vulcan.  They must've applied Brylcreem to Anson Mount's hair, but he deserve credit for some fine deadpan acting as Vulcan Pike.
2. La'an (Christina Chong), on the other hand, looked great as a Vulcan, and her dancing with Spock, likely about the closest we'll see of them making love, was fun to see.
3. Speaking of Spock, the title of this episode -- "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans" -- though not a result of the change into Vulcans (because it's a title), is so good it deserves a shout-out.  The half, of course, is Spock, who's half-human, so Pike, La-an, Chapel, and Uhura = 4 + Spock (1/2) = Four and a Half, and the title itself reflects Vulcan precision with language.

Also outside the theme of this episode -- but deserving mention -- though it could be seen as a reversal of the theme (and related to the theme as per Marshall McLuhan's tetrad)* -- is Doug (played by Patton Oswalt!), a Vulcan who is fascinated by humans, and may want to become one of us.  He and Spock have a coda scene, in which Spock tries to teach Doug how to use word contractions, etc, and all of that ends with Spock's smile, a rarity and always good to see.

*See Andrey Mir's Digital Reversal for more.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead ... 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business ... 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science ... 3.6: Chris and Jim ... 3.7: The Medium and The Message

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel ... 1.6: Two Stories ... 1.7: The Kiss ... 1.8: Ends of the Continuum ... 1.9: Momentous! ... 1.10: Everything!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business

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Well, "The Trouble with Tribbles," an episode from the original Star Trek series, written by David Gerrold, is generally aptly recognized as the funniest episode in all of Star Trek's iterations. I'd say that honor now has another contestant in Star Trek: Strange New World's episode 3.4 on Paramount Plus.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The serious part of the plot involves a holodeck that could end up killing its inhabitants.  Now, as far as we knew back in the 1960s, the holodeck wasn't around in TOS -- it was introduced in TNG in the 1980s.  And now we know the reason: the holodeck in this Strange New Worlds prequel to TOS can kill if you don't treat it right.  And, before that, it can lock you inside it if you don't solve the mystery you asked it to solve, that is, the reason you wanted to walk into the holodeck in the first place.

So that was one of the three serious parts of episode 3.4.   I'll tell you the second and third, after I go over the funny parts.  These all center around the cancellation of a faux TOS -- The Last Frontier -- after only one season.  The was a send-up of TOS in more ways than one, but fundamentally because TOS was cancelled after three seasons.* But unlike TOS, which was one of the best shows ever on television, and deserved to run at least 20 or more years, TLF was idiotic, and it was literally science fiction that it wasn't cancelled after the first few episodes.

But the clips we were treated to in episode 3.4 of SNW was first-class comedy in all kinds of ways.  Here are some of my favorite:

• "I'm an actor, not a doctor!" The actor (Ortegas) who plays a doctor on TLF says defensively, a nice nod to McCoy on TOS,
• "My lines and my skirts have been getting shorter and shorter with every episode," (Chapel) advises.
• "social commentary with rubber masks and buried mask -- you know, science fiction" (Uhura) skewers science fiction! 
• And the funniest:  I don't know, but to me, (Pike)'s character Bellows looks Al Franken. Would you agree?  

Now, as to the other serious parts: that would be learning that Spock is a descendant of Arthur Conan Doyle (through Spock's mother, obviously, which explains Spock's super logical mind as not just inherited from his Vulcan father), and the tango that La'an and Spock do at the end, and the kiss that followed.  Maybe it was a very good thing after all that Chapel disappointed Spock so deeply ...

*See my essay “How Star Trek Liberated Television” in Boarding the Enterprise, ed. David Gerrold & Robert J. Sawyer (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books), pp. 185-196, for more.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel ... 1.6: Two Stories ... 1.7: The Kiss ... 1.8: Ends of the Continuum ... 1.9: Momentous! ... 1.10: Everything!