When the crew of the Enterprise is captured by pirates, Spock in particular becomes the focus of their leader. He must navigate the friction between his human and Vulcan natures to find a way out of the situation.
This episode goes a bit broad at times, but it stays well away from cheesy on the strength of the cast. Even though this is only the seventh episode of Strange New Worlds, you can really see the dividends being paid by how well all the characters have been set up so far. Even though this very much a "Spock episode," with significant roles for Chapel and Pike, there's other great banter involving Number One, Ortegas, and M'Benga that makes them all feel like important spices in the meal. I feel the absence of Uhura and Hemmer from this episode, much more than when an older Trek series would give a character the week off, because I can already imagine how each character would behave in a given situation, and I want to see it!
Of course, Ethan Peck continues to excel in the role of Spock. Yes, he has the help of Leonard Nimoy (and Zachary Quinto) before him, but that's also casting a huge shadow that could easily make it hard for him to find the spotlight. Instead, Peck is really showing us the less self-assured version of Spock that the writers have been presenting in this series.
This episode gives Spock a great foil in the character of Angel. I was aware of a lot of press surrounding this episode that Angel was a non-binary character played by a non-binary actor, Jesse James Keitel. Within the episode, that aspect is barely acknowledged -- which I found to be something of a double-edged sword. In terms of representation, where a character simply is non-binary and this is unremarkable to anyone around them, it feels good. But also, there's enormous context in this particular character being non-binary that made me wish the script had emphasized the point more.
For starters, there are essentially two characters here: the supportive counselor "Aspen" and the scenery-chewing villain Angel. But it's not really a dichotomy, because all of "Aspen's" advice (manipulative though it is) is actually genuine and reflects real history with Vulcans and emotion. Angel is both of these things at once, and not defined by either. Moreover, Angel spends the entire episode telling Spock to not let himself be defined by his own binary, his Vulcan and human selves; the message to "find his own way" hits quite differently coming from someone who has comfortably defined their own identity. In any case, Angel escapes at the end of the episode, so we have the chance to see more of them in the future.
Speaking of comfortably defining an identity, it already feels to me like Anson Mount has been playing Captain Pike all his life. True, he was around for season two of Discovery, and has more "reps" playing the character than others in Strange New Worlds. But still, think about how some other past Trek captains felt after a comparable number of episodes. Near the end of season one of The Next Generation, Picard was still quite the stick in the mud. Near the end of season one of Deep Space Nine, Sisko hardly resembled the man he would be a few seasons later. Sure, Pike might evolve more in the future, but he really doesn't feel like a character who needs attention from the writers in the same way.
Instead, the writers have been giving attention to a particular character relationship inspired from the original series: the one between Spock and Nurse Chapel. I'm really impressed at how Strange New Worlds is deepening that relationship while not invalidating what came before (or after, in the chronology). Chapel was always played as hopelessly, wrongly smitten with Spock in the classic series, but Strange New Worlds is showing that she's not dumb for that, but going into it with eyes open.
But that's not the "greatest degree of difficulty" among all the dives the writers are performing in the episode. That goes to the decision to connect Spock's half-brother Sybok to the plot in the final moments. I would say Sybok comes from the worst Star Trek movie... except that I firmly believe that "boring" is worse than "bad," so Star Trek: The Motion Picture comes out lower in my estimation than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. In any case, you could have forgiven the writers for leaving alone the idea of the "laughing Vulcan who wants to meet God." But if anyone could spin that straw into gold, I'm believing it would be the writers of Strange New Worlds.
Another strong episode, I give "The Serene Squall" a B+
No comments:
Post a Comment