Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x08 - "Four-And-A-Half Vulcans"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
You need to watch after the credits.
Oh my GOD I think I wet myself at the very end.
The default setting of any Vulcan should be Romulan. Vulcans go through years of training to be Vulcan.
La'An was being true to the original Vulcan nature. Ever since ENT, I always suspected Vulcans knew the truth about the Romulans but kept it hidden from outsiders. La'An and Pike little conversation just proves it.
La'An was being true to the original Vulcan nature. Ever since ENT, I always suspected Vulcans knew the truth about the Romulans but kept it hidden from outsiders. La'An and Pike little conversation just proves it.
Last edited:
Thank you for telling me this . . . it was definitely worth the watch
Yes. Spock's discipline was transferred because the serum was based on his psyche or something.
No it doesn’t. Pike knows because of his little time travel trip in the Season 1 finale.
La’An knowing is a continuity error, seems the writers forgot the Romulan she met in Season 2 was disguised as a human.
Very entertaining; didn't make a lot of sense.
Welp, that was certainly an episode of Strange New Worlds.
It felt like the episode just completely jettisoned a full act’s-worth of story. We don’t see how Doug connects with anyone’s katra. It just all happens off screen. And Doug also just kinda disappears after his introduction until the end bit.
It also felt very strange to end it on that beat between Kirk and Scotty when they weren’t the focus of the episode. It was like Akiva once again pandering to the audience about Year One, and it landed like a lead balloon.
The majority of the comedy was on the mediocre to okay scale.
I felt I wasn’t gonna dig this one going in and… I was right on the money there.
It felt like the episode just completely jettisoned a full act’s-worth of story. We don’t see how Doug connects with anyone’s katra. It just all happens off screen. And Doug also just kinda disappears after his introduction until the end bit.
It also felt very strange to end it on that beat between Kirk and Scotty when they weren’t the focus of the episode. It was like Akiva once again pandering to the audience about Year One, and it landed like a lead balloon.
The majority of the comedy was on the mediocre to okay scale.
I felt I wasn’t gonna dig this one going in and… I was right on the money there.
They explained that in the episode, though it was a poor excuse. Their personalities were shaped by Spock’s perception of full Vulcans, because of the Kharkovins or something
The writers have a real problem with pacing and structure this season. I was actually digging this for the first twenty minutes or so, until it started dragging on with the same Vulcans-are-rude comedy beat over and over. They could easily have cut 10 minutes from all the funny stuff and spent that time developing Doug's role, as well as fleshing out La'an's part; her reaction to the change was the most interesting of the four.
While it was fun, it felt kind of stupid, which is ok.
One thing that bothered me was that they all continued to wear the Vulcan outfits. I guess they're trying to say Vulcans don't logically see a reason for changing clothes, and I get that their "logic" is based on your average Vulcan's faulty logic, but it was still annoying.
Batel came kind of close, but I really wish someone would occasionally point out that logic is relative to your goals.
One thing that bothered me was that they all continued to wear the Vulcan outfits. I guess they're trying to say Vulcans don't logically see a reason for changing clothes, and I get that their "logic" is based on your average Vulcan's faulty logic, but it was still annoying.
Batel came kind of close, but I really wish someone would occasionally point out that logic is relative to your goals.
Honestly, this should’ve been a La’an-focused episode, since she had the strongest potential for a story. Uhura’s ended up being nothing. At least Pike and Chapel’s stories had some substance.
Now that I think about it, this episode had one Vulcan too many. They should’ve followed the advice Darryl Zanuck gave Joseph L. Mankiewicz when he was wrangling a huge script called A Letter to Four Wives and just “cut out one of the wives.”
Pike has another major reason to stay a Vulcan--avoid the wheelchair. Yet it's not ever brought up, not even by the people who know about it like Una.
Presumably someone mindmelded with Vulcan Uhura to convince her to change back. It's possible that this mind meld can provide an offscreen explanation on how her memories are restored after Nomad's attack in TOS, something that has never been given an explanation.
Romulan La'an mentions her plans to attack the Gorn to Kirk, who clearly knows what the Gorn Hegemony is, meaning that any wiggle room on him not recognizing the Gorn in TOS and calling his opponent "a creature apparently called a Gorn" has been steamrolled.
Presumably someone mindmelded with Vulcan Uhura to convince her to change back. It's possible that this mind meld can provide an offscreen explanation on how her memories are restored after Nomad's attack in TOS, something that has never been given an explanation.
Romulan La'an mentions her plans to attack the Gorn to Kirk, who clearly knows what the Gorn Hegemony is, meaning that any wiggle room on him not recognizing the Gorn in TOS and calling his opponent "a creature apparently called a Gorn" has been steamrolled.
It seems like they only had Oswalt for a day or two since all his scenes were in the bar.
I guess this was basically a bottle episode? No new sets or AR Wall usage.
While I was happy that they kept developing the ongoing relationship storylines, the episode also felt off to me. I didn't feel like the episode showed anything interesting about the characters that transformed into Vulcans.
Okay, had to go through my problems with the script before my brain would let me go to sleep. I really don’t care for this episode at all the more I think about it. Apologies, there’s some repeated points from my earlier posts in what follows…
Leaving aside the biological essentialism angle with Spock that remains hugely problematic and a button this show can’t stop being fucking obsessed over smacking at every opportunity… this script is an unfocused and overpopulated mess!
The fatal flaw at its core is that the episode can’t decide who it wants to focus on. And in doing so, it ends up not doing much of anything.
First of all - this needed to be a La’an-focused story. Out of everyone, hers had the most story potential to explore. Everyone else was varying levels of diminishing returns. You refocus the episode around her, most of everything falls into place. As it stands, everything happens too fast.
Second of all - there were too many storylines this episode. Easily could have and SHOULD have cut it down to three Vulcans. Uhura’s plot line leads to nothing, and that’s the easiest cut. It leaves a bad taste after the bullshit manipulative shit Beto did to her in What is Starfleet.
Hell, you could probably cut Chapel’s subplot because it doesn’t explore much else that we haven’t already seen earlier this season and prior. In cutting this and Uhura’s subplots, you might actually have time to make another critical and underbaked plot point work, which is…
The Doug storyline… it doesn’t come to very much, either. And also - he just disappears after his introduction until the very end? We never see how he connects with everyone’s katra and saves the day? Like… that’s an entire act’s worth of story that we needed to see, cut for a lot of mediocre comedy that fell as flat as a lead balloon? Doug’s THE most critical character here, and he’s treated like an afterthought.
And finally - ending the episode on Kirk and Scotty with that unsubtle wink about making a good team? Really, Akiva? I know you want Year One to be a thing, but holy shit, that was just bad. And besides, Kirk and Scotty weren’t remotely the episode’s focus - that’s bad structure to end on a fucking footnote.
I’ve honestly read fanfic with better structure than this.
Leaving aside the biological essentialism angle with Spock that remains hugely problematic and a button this show can’t stop being fucking obsessed over smacking at every opportunity… this script is an unfocused and overpopulated mess!
The fatal flaw at its core is that the episode can’t decide who it wants to focus on. And in doing so, it ends up not doing much of anything.
First of all - this needed to be a La’an-focused story. Out of everyone, hers had the most story potential to explore. Everyone else was varying levels of diminishing returns. You refocus the episode around her, most of everything falls into place. As it stands, everything happens too fast.
Second of all - there were too many storylines this episode. Easily could have and SHOULD have cut it down to three Vulcans. Uhura’s plot line leads to nothing, and that’s the easiest cut. It leaves a bad taste after the bullshit manipulative shit Beto did to her in What is Starfleet.
Hell, you could probably cut Chapel’s subplot because it doesn’t explore much else that we haven’t already seen earlier this season and prior. In cutting this and Uhura’s subplots, you might actually have time to make another critical and underbaked plot point work, which is…
The Doug storyline… it doesn’t come to very much, either. And also - he just disappears after his introduction until the very end? We never see how he connects with everyone’s katra and saves the day? Like… that’s an entire act’s worth of story that we needed to see, cut for a lot of mediocre comedy that fell as flat as a lead balloon? Doug’s THE most critical character here, and he’s treated like an afterthought.
And finally - ending the episode on Kirk and Scotty with that unsubtle wink about making a good team? Really, Akiva? I know you want Year One to be a thing, but holy shit, that was just bad. And besides, Kirk and Scotty weren’t remotely the episode’s focus - that’s bad structure to end on a fucking footnote.
I’ve honestly read fanfic with better structure than this.
I thought this one was a lot of fun. I had to look up the actor who played Doug. I knew he was familiar, but I didn’t place him immediately. It was interesting that the real Vulcans, Doug, Pasalk, and Spock, were all less stereotypical and jerky than the four artificial Vulcans. The serum and physical changes basically changed them into the most extreme versions of themselves rather than true Vulcans: Chapel obsessed with her career and science experiments, Pike obsessed with physical appearance and culinary pursuits and worry over Batel, Uhura over communication and loss, La’An over destroying the Gorn and using any means possible to stay safe. As a comedy and exploration of the characters, I really enjoyed it.
Last edited:
Similar threads
- Poll
- Poll
- Poll
- Poll
