A race-swapping serum turns four crewmembers into Vulcans, but when the solution won’t change them back, the remaining Enterprise crew must deal with having “Four And A Half Vulcans.” Plus, when Ortegas gets stranded on a desolate moon, she must survive with the help of an injured Gorn. But what are those strange flashing lights in the distance? Is she in some kind of “Terrarium”? Stark Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 8 written by Dana Horgan & Henry Alonso Myers, directed by Jordan Canning. Episode 9 written by Alan B. McElroy, directed by Andrew Coutts.
Mark Turetsky: Well, Matt, I had to do some last-minute traveling which has put my writing schedule all out of whack. Let’s get this done with the help of this magical science serum which will make us both powerful and logical all at once!
Matt Lazorwitz: That would be most… logical.
So Many Vulcans
Mark: When they released five minutes of this episode last year, including most of the setup for the episode, I’ll admit, I had some qualms. Yes, immediately upon receiving the serum, Pike and La’an complain about how their emotions have become overwhelming, but then everyone pops up and starts acting like cool and logical Vulcans, it gave me pause. We all know that Vulcans adopted logic as a coping mechanism to tamp down their otherwise overwhelming passions, leading to an era of peace and prosperity (and the schism with their more warlike Romulan brethren). But that’s a cultural shift, a product of discipline, not an inherent inborn trait.
Matt: That absolutely jumped out at me too. I would have expected Spock to have to work with them to master the overwhelming emotions, or some other Vulcan (I wonder how many Vulcans are in Starfleet at this point. I’m surprised that Spock is the only one on a ship the scale of the Enterprise). That would probably not have been the most exciting television, and belied the urgency of the matter, but Star Trek is a franchise that obviously has a strong, loyal fanbase who don’t let things like this slide.
Mark: But you know, what, Matt? They put in a throwaway line about how since it was based on Spock, somehow his logical discipline filtered through to the rest of them, and even though that’s a load of Lamarckian nonsense, I bought it. Because this isn’t an episode that particularly wants us to think in those terms. This is an episode that seems perfect for the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 mantra, “repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax’,” and you know what? I enjoyed this episode. I’ve been the first to say when comedy episodes of SNW haven’t worked for me (and let’s be honest, that’s been most of them), but this one did.
Matt: I enjoyed about 70% of it. There were some jokes here that really fell flat for me, but Pike (and his hair!), the scheming La’an, and Chapel shutting everyone out of her life for pure efficiency were all quite funny, and worked. I personally don’t like mind control as a gag, so the Uhura stuff made me a bit uncomfortable, and I am back and forth in my head about Patton Oswalt’s whole bit, but that’s mostly because aside from a couple episodes, Una tends to just be Pike’s redoubtable aid, and the gag with her felt a little reductive when we get so little time with her. The stuff between Oswalt’s Doug and Spock was pretty much gold, especially if you stuck around through the credits.
Mark: Yeah, I got excited when I saw (or heard) that this episode had Una’s log voice overs, when she didn’t actually end up having much to do in the episode. The gag about her finding Doug the Vulcan irresistible just seems like a joke at the expense of Patton Oswalt’s appearance. But it’s the first time we’ve caught a glimmer of Una’s “freaky” side that she alludes to in the pre-SNW Short Trek entitled “Q&A,” which was the first time we got to see her as her own character. It doesn’t hurt that it was written by Michael Chabon.
Matt: I need to go and rewatch those Short Treks. It’s been a long time.
Mark: As for Doug the Vulcan himself, Oswalt is brilliant. Unlike certain other comedy guest-stars this season who seemed a bit lost, Oswalt knew the assignment. And yes, that stinger of Spock teaching him Earth-stuff (and that I assume was largely improvised between Peck and Oswalt) was the best Trek comedy outside of Lower Decks (RIP). Even the joke that he has a sister named Susan and a cousin named Pete, those are two names that if you kind of squint, might pass as Vulcan. Brilliant.
Now, I’ve seen some criticism here and there online that this episode is essentialist, that, transposed into the real world, it would seem to perpetuate racial stereotypes, that the characters in this show take on (non-physical) traits inherent to a different race of people, and that the implication that cultural traits are somehow encoded is, well, racist. That’s not quite my read on the episode, though. The thing that messes up our four Vulcan crewmembers isn’t that they’ve become Vulcan, it’s that they’ve each bought into the belief that they use logic to justify their own desires. They each approach “being Vulcan” from different perspectives and come to very different conclusions. Pike uses brutal honesty to be an utter asshole to his girlfriend. Chapel uses her Vulcan-ness to rationalize her work addiction and cut everyone else out of her life. La’an, well, I think she becomes a Romulan, to be honest. And Uhura… yeah, that’s pretty problematic. But if this episode has a message, and I have some doubts that it’s trying to, it’s that people can, and often do, reason their way into doing whatever the hell they wanted to in the first place.
Matt: I like that reading a lot, both what the message could be and the fact that I don’t think there really is one. As you said, that one line handwaves away a lot of the essentialism, and we as fans know Vulcans don’t have that logic inherent in them. What this does is take something inherent in them and makes it bigger: Chapel’s drive, Pike’s honesty, La’an’s aggression and… yeah, I still don’t know what is going on with Uhura.
Mark: Charitably, I think it’s that she has a new love interest, and there are just a few things she wishes were different about him, and so she takes it to an extreme.
Matt: I also think, if there had been time or inclination, they could have associated the altered genetics in La’an’s family tree to explain why the altered genetics made her far more Romulan than Vulcan, if you look at them as truly distinct on a genetic level and not just a cultural one. Or the fact that her knowledge of the Romulan origins, and her attempting to be separate from people, made her associate more strongly with them than the Vulcans.
Speaking of La’an, I just need to call out two aspects of her plot. The interactions between Kirk and Scotty with the altered La’an were some of my favorite comedy bits in the episode outside Doug, and the final dance between her and Spock was beautifully choreographed.
Mark: We got to see Cetacean Ops! Speaking of the “knowledge of Romulan origins” scene, I get that Pike knows about it from “A Quality of Mercy,” but I don’t see how La’an would know about Romulans’ relation to Vulcans from “Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow.” Sera the Romulan is surgically altered to appear human and completely disintegrates into dust upon her death. I suppose she might have learned about it from alt-Kirk, but it’s not something that we ever saw. It seemed like that episode went out of its way to keep the Romulan secret from La’an, but I guess not?
Matt: I think that one might be the gimme we have to give the episode to make it work. It’s a pretty small one for all the weirdness going on, and I usually give an episode this broad at least one.
Mark: Oh wait, this magical serum they sold me wasn’t Vulcan juice, it was just cocaine! No wonder my ideas have been great and the work has been flying by!
Ortegas, When The Walls Fell
Matt: Ortegas in the shuttle. Ortegas through the Wormhole. Ortages and the Gorn on the moon. How’s my Tamarian, Mark?
Mark: Enemy Mine, remade. “Arena” alluded to. La’an when she shot the gorn.
Matt: This is an old Star Trek standard revisited: a member if Starfleet trapped with a possible enemy and they reach understanding. You called out Enemy Mine, which is a great non-Trek pull, and the “Arena” parallels are clear even before the big reveal at the ending, but Star Trek has never done a better version of this than “Darmok.” Although I also love Mariner and Ma’ah in “The Inner Fight.”
We have observed repeatedly that Ortegas has been the member of the main crew who hasn’t gotten a spotlight episode yet, and so here we are, finally getting it. And while I enjoyed the episode overall quite a bit, I wish if we were going to spotlight Ortegas after nearly three full seasons, there could have been more time spent with her just being Ortegas to round out what is going on with her as a character throughout the season and not just almost immediately thrust her into peril.
Mark: I would also call out TNG’s “The Enemy,” where Geordi’s VISOR isn’t working and he’s stranded in a hole with a Romulan who needs to be his eyes in order for them to work together. But “Darmok” might just be the better comparison, because it, too, was a contrived situation, but more on that later, I suspect.
As for The Ortegas Factor, I’ve gotta disagree with you a bit and say that plunging her into danger is a great way to really delve into what makes her character tick. We’ve seen a lot of Ortegas hanging around, Ortegas doing her job, Ortegas being friends, now it’s time to see resourceful, adaptive Ortegas. I’ve gotta say, Melissa Navia does a great job, where she’s got to carry a lot of one-sided dialogue. If this were a movie, we probably wouldn’t have had quite so much of her storytelling being, “I’m going to talk about what I’m going to do as I do it,” because that kind of information could be told visually. But on a TV budget and schedule, I’m willing to forgive it.
Matt: That is a fair point. I probably should watch the “previously on” segments to determine how much they’re giving there. I absolutely got what was going on, but for me it felt like, if you were going into this episode cold, there wasn’t enough help for new viewers, which is where my initial statement came from.
You’re also right about Navia’s performance. She absolutely knocks this one out of the park. Not just the one sided conversation, which is excellent, but the charming moments of her playing Gorn Chess and bonding with the Gorn and the final moments as La’an opens up on her Gorn ally, the scream, the pain in it. Those kind of screams can easily enter meme territory (see Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith), but Navia completely sold me on her agony.
Mark: And I’m sure it helped that the Gorn seemed to be played by a costumed actor instead of pure CGI. And the moon she was on was some great use of the Volume (or whatever competitor that Star Trek uses instead). You bring up that Star Wars prequel, and it’s worth noting that physical things are generally better for actors to work off of than blue screens.
What did you make of Uhura’s dilemma in this episode?
Matt: That was a doozy. As I was watching it, all I could think of was Wrath of Khan and the good of the many vs. the good of the one. We’ve seen that more than once this season, with Pike doing everything he can to save Captain Batel on a couple of occasions. And Uhura has multiple reasons to do what she does. Not only is Ortegas her best friend, but she is dating Ortegas’s brother, who we saw just a couple episodes ago is terrified of losing his sister. And up until the moment she doctors the data, I’m completely with her. Even then, it’s a bunch of unknown people vs. someone we know and love. But that is certainly un-Starfleet like behavior. It is, however, very… human.
Mark: Yeah, I don’t think the Uhura we know from Star Trek would do this (but then again, she never got much development as a character), but also, she hadn’t gone through this yet. I think it’s somewhat lessened by Pike’s knowing that she lied to him and proceeding anyway, because that’s what he was going to do regardless. And sometimes, “you’ve disappointed me” is all the discipline that’s necessary for an eager-to-please junior officer like Uhura.
And that brings us to the big twist, the reveal of the episode: this was all a scheme concocted by the Metrons (of “Arena” fame) to see how a human would react to a situation where they would need to team up with a Gorn to survive. For me… it’s unnecessary. You could just call the episode “Terrarium” and have it be in conversation with “Arena” without it needing to be a direct prequel to it.
Matt: Absolutely. It felt like it was there both as a wink and a nod to “Arena” and for that one line that was there to explain why the Gorn look different in later appearances. That is almost as bad as the Augment Virus explaining away Klingon differences, but this one feels completely like a hand wave, rather than really trying to be a plot point. We would all be better off settling for the, as you said, MST3K mantra, since we know the reason is that it’s been 50+ years and real world technology is just better now.
Mark: Wait, which line explains the change in their appearance?
Matt: The Metron says, “we may need to reset your perception of the Gorn, as well.” Since they don’t reset Oretgas’ perception to make her feel as she did before, I took that as them talking about resetting humanity’s perception of the Gorn. I might have been reading too much into it, but I have seen similar theories online as well.
Mark: Oh, see, I thought it was hand-waving why Kirk acts like nobody’s ever seen or heard of The Gorn before. And while alien-induced-amnesia is just straight-up bad storytelling, it seems like the Metrons would just need to alter the memories of Kirk and the Enterprise crew, and not all of humanity. But still, bad storytelling.
Also, it turns out that the moon that Ortegas is on is the same planet from “Arena.” While I don’t like the Metron reveal at all, it does serve as a nice link and cool demonstration of their godlike powers. They tell Kirk, “We have prepared a planet with a suitable atmosphere. You will be taken there, as will the Captain of the Gorn ship which you have been pursuing. There you will settle your dispute.”
But with the erasure of Ortegas’ memory of meeting a Metron, what plot purpose do they serve?
Matt: Other than resolving one plot hole or another (and I like your answer more than mine, now that I’ve read it)? None whatsoever.
Mark: It’s just there for fans to see a link to a nearly-60-year-old episode. Pure fan service that doesn’t move the story along.
Stray New Words
- Even though she appears very little, Carol Kane’s Pelia remains a comedy all star in “Four and a Half Vulcans.” Her delivery is second to none.
- This is the second time Strange New Worlds has used the “important person coming for dinner that can’t go wrong” sitcom trope in a comedy episode.
- Why does Pike need a Lirpa on a mission to repair a nuclear power facility?
- Great musical allusion to Gerald Fried’s “The Ritual / Ancient Battle / 2nd Kroykah” from “Amok Time” in the Spock/La’an fight.
- Do we really need an origin story for how Chapel makes bad plomeek soup?
- Captain Mrs. McMurry is off to lead the Starfleet judicial branch. I hope that Gorn DNA doesn’t make her want to eat opposing council.
- Since I know she doesn’t read this, I can mention this to an appreciative audience and not ruin the surprise: my wife’s birthday is coming up, and when we rewatched “Subspace Rhapsody” she mentioned how much she liked the music, so I bought her the soundtrack on vinyl. Looking forward to hearing it that way.
- Pike’s “Vulcan” delivery of the “Space, the final frontier” monologue was strange and choppy. It sounded less like a Vulcan than like a bad imitation of Shatner.
- There’s a Kickstarter campaign active right now for molds to make your own gummy D20s and D&D monsters. Can Paramount contact the company and make molds of Gorn chess so we can eat the pieces when we win?
- Speaking of Gorn chess, the timeline on the Enterprise seems to mark this episode as lasting a few hours. Teaching chess and learning its alien equivalent feels like something you’d do after a few weeks stranded together, right?
- Archimedes is a good name for a shuttle exploring shifts in gravity fields (he’s the guy who came up with measuring volume through water displacement in his bath).
- Is Division 12 Starfleet’s X-Files division?
- While the wormhole here looked great with modern VFX, it still can’t hold a candle to DS9’s Bajoran Wormhole.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana. Follow him @markturetsky.com on Bluesky.
