I absolutely loved this one!
Great humor, great character beats, great emotional scenes, great scifi concept with the aliens... this had it all.
The entire cast has great comedic chops, but Anson Mount was phenomenally funny. Excellent sense of comic timing.
This is sort of an inverse of VGR's "FACES" or TOS' "THE ENEMY WITHIN", particularly in tone... and it works wonderfully.
Ethan Peck has done an outstanding job with his take on the Spock character. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is his discovery of bacon. No, I'm lying... one of my favorite scenes in the franchise is his discovery of bacon! How can anyone not be more endeared to the Spock character after he finds out how wonderful, satisfying, delicious, mesmerizing, delightful, and GLORIOUS bacon is? BECAUSE LOVING BACON IS LOGICAL, BABY!!!!
I must also give praise to Spock's defense of his mom. That was so very, very well done. And this episode gave some real highlight and depth to Amanda, and it gives her conversation with Spock in "JOURNEY TO BABEL" about his duty to his father even more layers.
T'Pril... honestly, she is a bitch. Not only does she come across as supremely racist, but a terrible mother, too. And given how she was treating Sevet, I'm not holding out any hope of her being much of a decent wife, either. I know Vulcans can be jerks (something that's been true since the very beginning of the franchise), but T'Pril was just a higher level of jerkdom. She's a toxic person.
T'Pring... I think this was the final straw that made her take whatever steps she did to make sure "AMOK TIME" happens like it did. It's interesting that she 'accepted' Spock fully, human side and all, but damned him for making the human decision to not burden her with his condition before the ceremony started. The sad part is that Spock probably would have lost her even if he told her what was going on... T'Pring probably wouldn't be able to help with the ruse, and T'Pril would have made sure the arranged marriage ended right there. I can't say I'm really against T'Pring telling Spock they are taking a break because I have always felt that trust is part of the trinity of any relationship (the other two parts being honesty and respect), and if any one of that trinity is missing or broken, it's damn near impossible to fix. This applies to romantic relationships, friendships, business, co-workers... all forms of relationships. And to T'Pring, Spock did not trust her enough with the knowledge of the accident... which is rather consistent with previous situations in their relationship. So that was something that was broken already.
About the ending with Spock and Chapel... I'm not sure how I feel about that. I keep reading about a FRIENDS character in a similar situation (I asked my wife about it, as I have never seen an episode of that show), and while there might be a surface parallel, we have to keep in mind that Vulcans might not have the same hangups about having a fling while 'on a break' that humans do. I'm not sure I like the idea myself, but T'Pring was the one who called it off for now. I don't think Spock is fully in any kind of wrong here.
I gave this one a 10! Outstanding. Just outstanding!
