What’s up my know-it-alls!? It’s time for another Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and if you’re wondering where I am, I’m on location at a video production shoot. Those of you who’ve been following the channel for a bit know I got a job. I’m a video production guy, I oversee different projects, and like I’ve told you in the past, I’ve worked on three TV pilots, I’ve written scripts, and I produce commercial videos. It’s pretty exciting to be working again. But I wasn’t going to miss this review.

This is Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 5, “Charades.”

The people who got screeners of this season have already been casting aspersions on this episode, and I like to take these things as they come. One of my friends reviews every episode against everything else that’s ever been called Star Trek. I take each episode as its own thing. I try my best, especially with this kind of TV, because it’s episodic. I try not to make things fit inside “well, this whole season is blah blah” when it’s just this episode.

And this is a very interesting episode. It does put canon a little bit on its head.

Canon Is a Rope

Most people see canon as a steel bar. Anything that goes against it is chipping away at the integrity of that bar, or it’s rust, and eventually the thing gets brittle and breaks.

I don’t see it that way. I see canon as a very thick rope. It’s flexible. As you add things, you write in between the lines and you weave things together, and pretty soon you twist the thing, and what you get is a very strong yet still malleable connective tissue.

Hopefully that makes some sense about where I’m coming from for this episode.

Two People on Very Different Paths

The episode’s pretty straightforward. It starts with Chapel and Spock on very different paths. Chapel’s feeling somewhat neglected, like he’s purposely avoiding her. Meanwhile Spock is hyper focused on work and other things, because he’s got a thing coming up.

A couple of episodes back, Chapel talked about the fact that she may be looking to leave Enterprise, even briefly, for a Vulcan fellowship. It would give her some space to work some things out. It’s a very rigorous process, and the only person she’s not practicing with for it is Spock.

You later find out Spock himself is going through some stuff. His soon-to-be mother-in-law, T’Pril, is insisting that they have the V’Shal, which is the Vulcan engagement dinner. And come to find out, when it comes to T’Pring and Spock, her mother is the person who’s the most against the relationship. Her father has experience with Sarek. He’s a former colleague of Sarek’s, and that connection is why he agreed to the bonding. So it’s a family dynamic, and they’ve got to do something to bring those two sides together.

The Aliens With a Phone Number

First, Spock has to go on another mission. They’re investigating the Kerkhovians, a species that apparently up and disappeared. You later find out they ascended, sort of, into extra-dimensional beings. It’s so funny, because the way they’re portrayed, they’re extra-dimensional beings who, very similar to normal dimensional beings, have phone numbers and protocols and things.

So they’re on their way to Vulcan, Spock is going to fly this scanning science mission, and Chapel is going to be a passenger on the shuttle. And they find a gravitational anomaly in space. It’s Star Trek. Why wouldn’t you find a gravitational anomaly in space, am I right? He calls it turning into the skid, trying to help their situation, and ultimately they careen into the thing and there’s seemingly some sort of accident.

Right before the intro, it’s exactly the scene they put out at the end of last week. Spock wakes up in sickbay, everyone’s looking down at him, and he’s fully human. It’s crazy.

As a fully human man, he begins to experience genuinely human emotions. They do this really interesting comparison where they explain that human emotions and Vulcan emotions are very different. It’s one of the most interesting looks at Vulcan and human culture I think probably since Enterprise, and this is a guy speaking who wasn’t a big fan of the Enterprise series, but I remember some things very clearly. They also do a callback to the fact that humans smell, Vulcans can smell them, and apparently Spock uses nasal suppressants because of it.

Uhura is working on the whole thing, going through the readings from the shuttle, and she finds the equivalent of a phone number. They call it. The creature who answers identifies as Kerkhovian, looks like an energy ball, and describes themselves as Yellow. Yellow is very much: remediation has been made, according to our guidelines you were injured, I fixed you.

And then you find out the truth of what happened. There were two beings on the shuttle, Chapel and Spock. One being had instructions, the other had mixed instructions, so they resolved to make them match. There was enough of his human side to say, oh, you’re a match to that, there’s something wrong, I’ll fix you this way. Whatever made him half Vulcan must have just been goofy, something that got screwed up.

So now he’s going through the equivalent of adolescence, trying to explore all these emotions, and Chapel’s over here working night and day trying to find a cure.

Smiley, Happy Spock

Pike had to tell T’Pring and them something, so he says he’s been injured, and they postpone the dinner. That’s when Spock’s mom shows up. Oh my goodness, it’s so good seeing her again. She’s such a great actress.

She shows up in the transporter room and he’s in this very juvenile place. Other people who criticize the episode are asking why they’re making Spock so juvenile. You can call it juvenile, but again, we’re reading between the lines of the smiley, happy Spock we saw in “The Cage,” or “The Menagerie” if you prefer. What we’re seeing is a look into who he was prior. He hasn’t gone through all the stuff to purge his emotions yet. To say nothing of the fact that now he’s fully human.

In that context, Amanda says the V’Shal is happening here, tomorrow night. They’re coming, and they’re willing to be understanding of his illness or his injuries. Then she finds out the extent of it, which is that he’s human. I’m sure she’s captivated and utterly enamored by the idea, but the truth is it’s a very scary situation to be in. He could risk losing his entire engagement, because T’Pril will not hold back if something’s wrong.

So what does Amanda do? She teaches him to lie. Because that’s all you’re going to do in that scenario. When has that ever worked? ’80s sitcoms have already taught us this will never work. That’s okay, because the show is totally based on a ’60s show anyway.

What His Mother Went Through

This is a wonderful, if adjacent, look into Spock’s mother. One of the parts of the ceremony is that you have to serve tea a certain way. To Vulcans, the really hot teapot is just a really hot teapot. To humans, it burns. He’s human now. So he’s starting to realize more and more everything his mother’s gone through all her life.

I tell you what, I really enjoyed this insight into the human side of that relationship, into Spock’s mother and clearly what she went through. That through line goes through the whole thing. There’s an analogy at work here, and it’s not just between Spock and his mother.

Meanwhile, Chapel comes to the conclusion that if she doesn’t find a fix for him now, his cells are going to permanently stay this way and he’ll never be brought back to normal. She’s the most logical person, no pun intended, to work on this. If you remember back in season one, one of her hobbies is alien genetics and playing a little bit with that.

They realize they have to contact these aliens again, but the aliens have already cut them off. Literally: remediation’s been made, no further contact is necessary. As a far more advanced species, they see no value in trying to interact. They fixed the problem they thought was broken and that was it.

So the idea is that if they can get close to the anomaly again, maybe Uhura can make a connection. Ortegas, Uhura and Chapel all get in the shuttle and head back to the place they were studying. Sure enough, there’s the tunnel. The conclusion they come to is that if they go in, it might be like water in a storm, where underneath the surface it’s suddenly clear and much more calm. Ortegas says it never works that way. But don’t worry, trust her, because Ortegas flies the ship.

Tough Crowd

Back on Enterprise, they’re beginning the ceremony. They’re faking it. He’s got fake ears and he’s got to try to play it off. One of the very first things they do is this “I’m going to tell you about yourself” ceremony.

Amanda’s so kind in it. She’s telling them they should come visit more, their family misses them. And they tell her she’s being kind, stop doing that. This is supposedly the exercise that’s supposed to help everybody strengthen and encourage one another and be better because of it.

Then it’s Spock’s turn, and T’Pril starts out by telling him he’s a disappointment to his species. You’re like, oh my God. She just jumps right in. Even Pike, who’s hosting the thing, is like, all right, really tough crowd.

She’s really laying into him, and at the very end of it he says he has to go to the bathroom. That’s the bit you saw in the clips from the season, where he’s so angry he grabs a towel, puts it over his face and screams. I felt that one hardcore.

Girl, You Better Make It Simple

Chapel and them make contact with the one named Blue. Blue gets a hold of Yellow, and Chapel tells them, he’s my friend. And the answer is, well, you have no right to a complaint, and complaining outside of the complaint period is highly irregular. They have all kinds of rules we don’t know about. Extra-dimensional beings have their own rules. Starfleet does too, so hey, whatever.

But as they’re sitting there trying to solve this problem, the alien says, hang on, is that why the other creature tried to protect you? And she’s like, wait, what? Come to find out, when this whole thing was going down, Spock diverted the shields to protect her. She can’t believe it.

So the alien says, I’m going to help you, but explain this to me. What is your connection to him? She says it’s complicated. And this is when Uhura and Ortegas are literally the girlfriends on the side going, girl, you better make it simple. If you want your man back to normal, you better hurry up and tell these people something.

Chapel has to come clean. I wish he was this, I wish he was that. You made him better at communicating, I understand that, but he’s not my Spock.

The Title Is Lazy

Part of the V’Shal is a mind meld with his mother, a shared memory. When they tried to fake it in the lessons about how to lie, both Una and Pike could tell Spock was faking and it wasn’t going well. So they know this is the moment they’ll screw up, if there’s going to be a screw-up.

So Amanda and Pike say, oh, well, there’s this human custom we have to abide by, because, you know, combination of cultures. And Pike’s custom is charades. You’ve got to play charades.

Look, guys. I love the fact that you gave this episode a clever name. But on the back of “Among the Lotus Eaters,” the name of last week’s episode, calling an episode “Charades” because of one comment in one sentence is lazy writing. Tighten up.

That’s when Chapel shows up at the door. She says she’s got his supplements for his injuries. They go off to the side, he’s trying to tell her what he’s been feeling, and she immediately injects him. Almost instantly he goes back to being, internally, very much a Vulcan. The physical stuff will show up a couple of hours afterwards.

He does the mind meld, and it’s apparently a really wonderful moment. What his mother shares is the first time he was invited to play with other Vulcans, and what that meant for her. You really get to see how much she’s gone through.

When the whole thing ends, T’Pril has to admit that everything has been done, all the agreements were acknowledged, and everything’s the way it is. That’s when Spock takes on the idea that a human could never do this. He pulls off the fake ears, they learn everything that’s been going on, and he tells them it isn’t fair, and that he understands what his mother’s gone through. It’s a very heartwarming moment.

Time Apart, and the Door

T’Pring is upset afterwards. She says they need to spend some time apart. I believe this is what they’ve been pointing at. If you remember, the last time we saw her in TOS was “Amok Time,” and they had been apart for a while. I firmly believe this is when that happened.

That leads to the goodbye, where Spock’s talking to his mother and she says the line: it’s very difficult being a human loving a Vulcan, but it’s worth it.

The parallel is right there. She is Chapel.

So Spock is sitting in his room, ruminating, and he realizes he wants to do something. He opens the door and she’s outside the door. He was going to see her. She was coming to see him. And he tells her he doesn’t want to fight these emotions anymore.

This is the part people have a lot of trouble with. Oh, it breaks canon, it’s this and that. We don’t know that. This is the rope tied around the holes in canon. We have no clue what the relationship is like later. I firmly believe there’s nothing wrong with this.

All I know is, in that moment, Spock and Chapel kiss. Finally. It’s very satisfying. I don’t know why, but it is.

The Verdict

Strange New Worlds “Charades” lands at a 7 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It’s not shooting for the stars, but it’s a very sound episode, an episode of quality, and I’m okay with that. Is it the greatest episode of Strange New Worlds? No, of course not. For my money, truthfully, “A Quality of Mercy” is still really, really high up there. But I firmly believe this is a very Star Trek episode.

So I’m going solid 7, and it’s a respectable 7. I’m not beating up the show. I loved everything this episode was doing. I love the insights. I’m not a canon freak, so to me it’s okay. Canon’s very malleable, and there aren’t a lot of leaps I’ve got to take to follow this story.

Thank you again for all the support. Working again, getting on this thing, I’m feeling really good. Plus this felt like the most Strange New Worlds looking background I’ve ever had, because the hotel I’m in has this arch thing. Maybe it’s my crew quarters aboard the USS Know-It-All.

NEVER FORGET, everyone loves a know-it-all!

Your turn. Does the Spock and Chapel kiss break canon for you, or is the rope holding? Drop your thoughts in the comments on the video above.