Podcast: All Access Star Trek Goes Amok With Spock And T’Pring On ‘Strange New Worlds’

Thanks for today’s conversation! I’d like to offer a few somewhat random comments about a terrific and enjoyable episode in response:

1. I think we need to distinguish Vulcans’ ordinary sex lives from the pon farr. Spock in “Amok Time” can be understood to feel humiliated and embarrassed about the total loss of logic and control that Vulcans (at least males) experience when the biological imperative to mate kicks in. It’s not having sex but losing “Vulcanness” that is shameful and super-personal, perhaps especially for Spock with his identity challenges.
2. It seems to me that the reason Uhura is kept involved in the discussions with the aliens is precisely to prevent her from meeting T’Pring and thus directly contradict her line in “Amok Time” when she asks, “She is beautiful. Who is she?” In this way canon continuity is maintained since Uhura indeed doesn’t have any reason to recognize her a decade or so later.
3. Chapel, on the other hand, would now have to recognize T’Pring when she appears on the Enterprise viewscreen in “Amok Time,” but in fact she doesn’t reply to Uhura, “oh, that’s T’Pring. Don’t you remember her?” She says nothing but looks crestfallen, I guess. To me, canon continuity is shaken but not really broken. Chapel is indeed a different character, though necessarily so. She was so clingy and sappy in TOS as to be intolerable today.
4. Anson Mount was (unsurprisingly) particularly terrific in the scene where T’Pring is pretending to be Spock in the negotiation with the aliens. He’s the only one in the room who knows what’s really going on with the Vulcan expressing discomfort about Starfleet. The way the many emotions of the situation play across his face is superb.

Thanks, again!

Hello,

I liked this episode. It wasn’t knee slapping funny, but I did laugh.

Once again we ask, “did this episode violate canon?”
Verdict: It does not violate canon, but it does re-invent how we see Spock and Chapel.

I re-watched Amok Time. I understand that the writers are using glances and expressions to tell a prequel story without kicking canon to the side. I watched Amok time through the lens of Chapel and Spock’s relationship in Spock Amok. When Chapel and Spock were alone, I interpreted an unspoken friendship between the two based on how they looked at each other and how they talk to each other. Now, perhaps, we can argue she was not aware of pon farr and was totally taken by surprise. Now, if Chapel knows about pon farr later in the series, then, yes, it is a canon violation. For right now, for me, it fits. It is a stretch though.

I do think we will see Spock and Chapel become more like their TOS selves as the show goes on.

I am sad that once again, Una gets sidelined. I feel the writers are spending too much time with La’an.

I did like the ontological message at the end of the episode. I am neither vulcan nor human, I am simply Spock.

And yes, more Ortega. She is fascinating.

As a teacher, I am definitely using “where fun goes to die.”

LLAP