His Girls Chapel and T’Pring: the Screwball Rom-com of Spock on ‘New Worlds’
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Hijinks, and screwball romantic comedy are the last thing Star Trek fans probably ever expected in regards to Spock. But if Strange New Worlds is proving that anything is possible and we will enjoy it immensely.
Hijinks are defined as boisterous or rambunctious carryings-on” or “carefree antics or horseplay,” and if it sounds a bit old-fashioned, that’s because it is.
“Spock Amok,” Strange New Worlds tries its hand at comedy, and while the hour isn’t a terribly substantial one in terms of larger forward narrative progress, it’s an utterly delightful time.
The set-up is broad enough to give most of the main cast something to do and, perhaps more importantly, it’s honestly just fun to watch. And while I love this franchise, let’s be honest, outside of, say, Star Trek: Lower Decks, there hasn’t been much focus on comedy—or even just simple fun—in Star Trek in recent years. Are there elements of this episode that are deeply silly? Absolutely. Playing Nurse Chapel’s chaotic dating life for laughs is going to get real old, real quick, and we probably could have done with a bit less of Una and La’an’s attempts to prove they too are people who can actually enjoy themselves outside of work.
But these are exactly the sort of slice of life stories I love, precisely because they let us get to know these characters as people, outside of the missions they serve. (Una and La’an’s friendship is adorable, and their good cop bad cop routine is flawless.) There’s nothing wrong with episodes that have low stakes and straightforward problems to solve, like an awkward diplomatic meeting with some rude aliens, or a relationship misunderstanding.
Strange New Worlds deserves a lot of credit for the deft way it turns Spock and T’Pring’s romance—a relationship that we all already know is canonically doomed according to Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Amok Time”—into something that’s genuinely interesting and emotionally compelling. I like the two of them together, dangit. (More fodder for our throwing canon to the winds conspiracy theories? Perhaps.)
Star Trek: Discovery season 2 spent a lot of time wrestling with Spock’s various childhood traumas vis a vis his relationships with Michael and Sarek, so the fact that “Spock Amok” manages to make revisiting many of those same issues here feel both fresh and necessary is a relief. (Perhaps it’s because making peace with the two sides of himself is essentially Spock’s life’s work, and this story feels like nothing so much as just one piece in what is naturally a very long road.) Given that he is one of the two Strange New Worlds characters we came into this story already having something of a preexisting relationship with, this episode could have gone a lot of different ways. But thankfully it manages to find a solid balance between respecting the story that Discovery introduced and forging its own path.
“Spock Amok” also comes the closest this series has yet managed to defining a larger mission statement for the Pike era of Star Trek: Radical empathy, or the idea that what all anyone wants, regardless of their species, is the opportunity to be heard.
The only thing wrong with Strange New Worlds is that TOS isn’t a good enough sequel for it.
— Be Brilliant. (@StarTravCommand) June 18, 2022
There’s a bit of fun Betty and Veronica energy about the two women.
