“Charades”
What They Say:
A shuttle accident leads to Spock’s Vulcan DNA being removed by aliens, making him fully human and completely unprepared to face T’Pring’s family during an important ceremonial dinner.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Strange New Worlds continues to try and find a balance in being something that gives us the old-school flavor of the episode of the week and the adventures there while also working the modern stuff that a lot of fans like myself want with the character material and general world/ship building. This episode is a small one in that it’s focused on just a few characters but it’s giving us the serialized storytelling of them that goes back to the earliest parts of Spock and his relationship with T’Pring but also touches upon his own childhood that was explored through Michael Burnham’s eyes initially in Discovery. These are some good payoff moments overall in showing us more of who Spock was while dealing with reconciling his two halves, especially since he had mostly managed it in full by the time of the original series timeline.
The catalyst point to this and piece that plays out in the background is the Enterprise doing a trip to a place where an ancient civilization passed on some time ago but there are new energy signatures. It ends up with Chapel and Spock going on the shuttle to check it out as it ties into her applying to a fellowship program on Vulcan about archeological medicine that she’s been working hard at making. For Spock, he’s getting ready for a key meeting between his and T’Pring’s family over the marriage that’s been hard to schedule because of his being in Starfleet, which is a sore point with T’Pring’s mother. It’s pretty standard stuff but the mission itself goes wrong when the shuttle crashes and both are injured. The mysterious otherdimensional beings send them back to the Enterprise but since Spock is human and Vulcan, the beings see that he’s different than Chapel and ‘fixes” him by removing the Vulcan side.
This gives us a lot of fun in seeing how Spock handles the whole emotional side because it’s a different kind of overwhelming blend of what he was and what the Vulcan side itself is. As has been said, Vulcan’s aren’t unemotional but rather the opposite, they just master them far better and as a code of living. Spock being just human means everything in how he handles it is out the window and he’s like a teenager with it all soaring in a big way. It’s something that lets Ethan Peck play with the character a lot and be more expressive but also just tousling the hair and having him struggle for control at times is endlessly amusing. But that’s built not just on his performance since Discovery but also decades of what Nimoy did. And Nimoy having done similar episodes during the original run means he’d have a delight in seeing this and would have loved this material himself.
Most of the episode is an exploration of this while Chapel tries to find a cure to get him back to who he is while also using her skills to deal with the entity that did it. Her role is a bit reduced but she has some good scenes because of the relationship that’s been forming between the two and it comes to an interesting culmination that you know can be resolved easily long before we get to the original series timelines. So I’m enjoying it because it’s been built well so far. Everyone else gets to have some fun interesting with human Spock for a while and some of it is a touch forced but it leans back into how Spock’s being distant and not as embracing of his human side before combined with the controls of his Vulcan side being gone pushes him into that teenager hormonal swing mode. And yes, teenagers can be just that all over the map.
I do like that it shows some of how he handled things prior to the change as well, such as dealing with Sam Kirk as an example, but the real meat of things comes down to dealing with his mother and his fiance. Mia Kirshner is always a delight in this role and her coming to try and fix things and discovering what her son has become leads to new understanding between them that goes both ways. And as they try to deal with T’Pring and her parents as they show up as well means we get more Vulcan rituals and trying to massage that. But really, it’s T’Pring that makes things the clearest in how she calls him out for not telling her the truth, even as she was Vulcan-panicking over her parents and mother specifically. She’s made clear that he can trust her with anything but with everyone else on the ship aware but her, it’s no surprise she puts a pause on everything even after securing an awkward win with her mother. Of course, that’s what lets this other fling fly that I’m really curious to watch play out.
In Summary:
While this does serve as kind of a standalone episode, it works a lot of important character points that go back a while and it highlights some additional aspects of the crew that I liked seeing, such as the fellowship and just the way people exist in-between the missions, such as Spock’s learning to cook. The friendships are the draw in a lot of ways and that’s been expanded well with this series and makes it thoroughly enjoyable. Watching how it tries to find a balance is fascinating and I don’t think they always get it but at the same time, it’s doing so many things I enjoy and very little that I don’t that I’m enjoying it not being like the other projects over the past sixty years. This was a good episode that made me laugh and enjoy it a lot.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Paramount+
