Maybe season 4 and 5 should just ditch romance and build on the spock and kirk bromance and give Spock his real emotion core he had in TOS which was with Kirk.
May I remind all that spock most emotional and heart breaking scene was with kirk when he died in WOK.
Those looking for a Spock-Kirk bromance should just watch TOS, the TOS movies and the Kelvin movies.
SNW is Spock and Pike's time.
Archer falling for T'Pol was pretty one sided (as so in appropriate given she was his first officer). Trip and T'Pol were mutually and a bit more even. The writers said that if they got season 5 then they would have kept their baby alive and develop their relationship. So I think that T'Pol only had one real relationship and a crush from Archer that she tried to shutdown. If they'd developed three relationships and moved her on each time after a season then I think there would have been outcry. She was oversexualised at the time but Trip and T'pol were very popular as I recall and I think people would have switched off. It was also a shocking choice to not develop T'Pol much beyond romance. She deserved better stories as well.
Three different relationships with the crew is certainly different from several different relationship-of-the-week stories.
The show getting cancelled cut off a lot of stories that could have developed the whole cast. Particularly around the Romulan War and the machinations surrounding the origins of the Federation
If he's giving into his emotions then some pain / grief and some reflection is even more relevant. Others have said that he's still stuck on Chapel. I hope so as it will be a more meaningful story if we return to that relationship along with T'Pring rather than move forward with no further thought. My interpretation is he's still heavily affected by her in the Naked Now (obviously interpretations of this vary) so I think we need to get back there to some extent next season.
Well, that would be a start. Pain, grief and reflection is not something we see much from SNW Spock. They tried with "Wedding Bell Blues" but it did not go far enough.
I'm wondering if we're going to see Korby again. The season could easily start with them engaged and we find out he's gone missing. I was hoping that he would go missing at the end of 3 so that we can move that relationship along. They haven't gotten much out of it and we have so few episodes left with the main cast that I don't want to waste more focusing on Korby.
There are always logs Korby leaves behind. But that's far different from his being physically present.
I can't image a sadder outcome for Chapel than turning to the TOS Chapel. I actually don't think that they'll do this. I'm sure we'll see her grieving a bit but I think that this is the way Chapel was always meant to be rather than them actually turning her into Majel's interpretation. Some creative license is being taken and I'm fine with that. Chapel's a wonderful character and I don't want to see her being restricted to sickbay with almost no connections to the crew. I would prefer to not see her linger in sadness either as her vivacity is one of the best things about her. It will be a very sad character arc if we see go from funny, vibrant and clever to eternally sad and only able to hand McCoy a tray. I think they're a bit stuck with Christine as I don't know where they can take her after Korby goes missing except to be sad and think about Spock. The final episode of Season 1 implied a bit that this was what they were thinking.
There are places to go with Chapel once Korby goes missing.
Maybe her career begins to plateau while she seeks her MD? Or maybe she gets passed over for CMO for Piper and then McCoy despite M’Benga’s recommendation, and that’s what inspires her to seek her MD in the first place, while also contributing to her sadness? That would re-contextualize her sadness in TOS as also being depressed about her career stalling out, which would be relatable to a lot of viewers.
It's also obvious that Chapel, M’Benga and Uhura were not on the Enterprise during WNMHGB. Maybe they all take a sabbatical while they look for Korby together.
But they would probably have to build up the Chapel-Uhura friendship more, since Chapel-M’Benga has received development.
An interesting way of thinking about it. It's been a long time but hadn't T'Pol already broken off her engagement by that point and she believed this to be permanent? I can't fully remember when this happened but I think it was Breaking the Ice in Season 1 or 2. If so then I think she was fully free from her perspective when she slept with Trip. I think she did know that Trip was hurt watching her get married. She become distressed talking about it with him, she apologised for it and then she kissed his check to indicate her feelings. She didn't plan on marrying Koss when she went to Vulcan, she got trapped.
In "Breaking the Ice", It was more about cultural obligations. Marrying Koss would have meant leaving the ship for a Vulcan year.
Though in the preceding episode, P'Jem was destroyed and T'Pol was not recalled over it. Not for several episodes at least. Koss just took advantage of that event disturbing the Vulcan High Command.
In Spock's defence, this is not just a him problem this season. Christine has no reflection whatsoever despite some quite unfeeling behaviour. She just moves forward with Korby and invites Spock to drinks. Jess was able to convey some sadness and worry in her face but Ethan was a bit more constricted. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people have disliked Christine as a result of this. I just find it more frustrating with Spock because he doesn't outwardly feel much about what's going which undermines their nice first two seasons of build up.
Christine might have reflected on the relationship during the three month break, it just was not shown. Even though it should have been.
Korby was introduced too fast. We never saw Christine have a rebound, like Spock seems to have with La'an.
