Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x05 - "Spock Amok"

Yeah, I was thinking it was a really cool guest appearance or cameo that the producers had managed to keep secret until the day the episode dropped.

 

Stupid thing to nitpick, but, I'm in my 40s, and barely hit the end of Gen X..... you are less than 10 years older than me; wouldn't that make you firmly a part of Generation X? with the Boomers being the generation before you? Like I said, dumb thing to nitpick, but ...

 

I'm more than 10 years older than you, I'm 59.

 

We Gen-X'ers get to laugh at both Millennials and the Boomers while we sit square in the middle of both and avoid most of the blame.

 

Your post said you were 50, my mistake.

Wasn't trying to start a whole tangent. I just know I am closer to 50 than I want to be, and I am so barely considered Gen X (actually, they want to label me an even smaller subset called an "X-enniel") that I couldn't imagine someone only 6 years older than me claiming Boomer. 15 years makes more sense in that regard.

 

Doh! Guess I did a typo I didn't catch when I made that post. (Hey, the 0 key is close to the 9 key, and I'm old... )

 

Please mail spare glasses to...

 

Spock amok? he really is running amok. This Side of Paradise: Leila Kalomi knew Spock "6 years ago, on Earth", and apparently was in love with him. Could the SNW Enterprise be on Earth at some point to explore that story?

 

I loved this episode because it was equally as comedic as it was romantic. Even in TOS, Spock was sought after by quite a few ladies, not to mention Christine Chapel's obvious crush on him (Something I'm so glad they are including in SNW). Exploring Spock and T'Pring's relationship was such an excellent idea for this series and they way they played it out in this episode was genius. So, I would definitely say that Spock is more of a ladies man than either Kirk or Pike, even if he doesn't think he is or doesn't want to be. XD

 

Fascinating.

A lot going on in this episode. La'an and Una, well, not exactly "taking a spacewalk in their underwear," but close. Spock and T'Pring demonstrating that Vulcans really do "give mind." M'Benga going fly-fishing.

Loved the Gerald Fried quotations in the score. But aren't nightmares illogical?

"Turnabout Intruder" was always a weak episode (given the premise of one of Kirk's old flames being a complete nutjob who [in-universe] sees sexist conspiracies where all that's really there is the very real need to keep loose cannons out of positions of authority [too bad nobody did that with Trump!]) but with the present episode added to canon, we end up with two Enterprise crew members (Spock and Chapel) having prior experience with a body-swap (that didn't involve a super-being), and thus having no reason to be skeptical of what Kirk (in Janice Lester's body) says happened.

Likewise, it's rather a long way from T'Pring and Spock having a rendezvous in SNW, to T'Pring deciding she doesn't wish to be "the consort of a legend," much less to (going outside canon) T'Pring becoming a ringleader in an anti-Federation conspiracy in Diane Duane's Spock's World (Not spoiler-tagged because if there's anybody here who hasn't read that book, one of the true classics of TrekLit, they probably never will.)

 

Well, good as Duane's book is it'll never really be relevant to canon unless and until someone writes reference to it into a Trek show.

I was mildly bemused by the way the writers of this one handwaved away the quite miraculous exchange of consciousness between two people ("Well, we have a ritual" - "No problem, I have some ground sea urchin!") but overall I enjoyed the hell out of the episode. It moved Spock and Chapel's friendship-or-whatever-it-is forward, and I love those two together.

There are a lot of specifics in TOS that will be unreconcilable with this show as time goes on. But hell, there are at least two versions of the creation myth in the first book of the Bible, alone, owing to the stories being compiled over a long period of time. And most of us never notice.

It's parallel to the fact that many aspects of Vulcan that were treated as revelations to the humans in TOS are treated as common knowledge in later versions of Trek. I watched "Memento Mori" the other evening and it contains yet another example of Spock mind-melding - well, not casually, but without the mystery and significance that was built up around the practice in the first year of Star Trek.

Turns out that human beings have known about mind melds for at least a century - some in Starfleet knew quite a bit - and Spock used it on La'an years before Van Gelder showed up.

 

Wasn't there some TrekLit reference to their being abandoned because of some harmful side effect showing up?

 

There was an episode of Enterprise where it turned out that Vulcans could give each other mind cooties or something by melding.*

* I mean, I'm sure that was the analogy they were going for. What?

 

Yeah. They used to fail which is why they stopped using them. I think one of the Temporal Investigations books mentioned it.

 

This is a fun episode but more serious than the publicity would have you believe. Sure they get mileage out of the body switching joke, but there's some good relationship material here with T'Pring and Spock. Also a foreboding of what's to come.

The subplots were numerous and successful, we got to know more about the crew including Chapel, Enterprise bingo, and we had a moment of wonder as diplomacy worked and a solar sailer took off.

I gave it an 8 out of 10

 

Honestly, Can we make a rule here that inserting off topic political opinions is banned?

 

Why? That was a mild and brief general aside.

 

A name got dropped once and didn't derail the comment in question. If I were a Mod or Admin I'd permit that kind of content.