In our era of heavily serialized programming, any good series knows how to deal with dramatic tone shifts. Some weeks you fight god, some weeks you try to break free, and so on and so forth have been part of Star Trek's 50-year history. Strange New Worlds is happy to prove that it is Star Trek.
The halfway point of the first season of Strange New Worlds is called "Spock Amok" and it is a wonderful mix of playing with classic Trek formats and diving into the lives of one of its main characters. The character this week is Mr. Spock, who finds himself having an awkward reunion with his fiancée when the crew leaves for repairs.
Spock becomes the conflicted, grounded heart of an episode that is as silly as you might expect from its title, one that starts with him and T'Pring. Girlbosses just wanna have fun, body swap humor, and just general tongue-in-cheek vibes when they watch Trek shows. The contrast just works here in Strange New Worlds, not just as a testament to how willing the show is to be broad in tone, but also because it roots everything in some really compelling character work.
This episode was all farce, all the time, even when it was serious, so let's begin with the sub-farce. Much of "Spock Amok" is devoted to getting to see the Enterprise's crew just try and relax after a few weeks of adventure. Adding a human layer to the main cast of Strange New Worlds is important to see these people be, instead of being idealized Trekkies. The brief insights into Chapel and Ortegas' lives as the former navigates relationship struggles, to La'an and Una trying to figure out how two comically serious people lighten up and have fun like other members of the crew, is a wonderful contrast to the moredramatic insights into their friendship
The most sincere character work of all time is saved for Spock and T'Pring in this episode. Trying to show his commitment to Vulcan tradition and to T'Pring herself, having run off to his tour of duty mid-romantic entanglement in the premiere, the two Vulcans decided to perform a soul sharing ceremony. This is a very silly episode of Star Trek, and so the soul-sharing is a little more real, when T'Pring and Spock accidentally swap bodies, without a way to reverse it.
Body swap episodes are always silly fun, but "Spock Amok" really sells its premise not just by embracing that fun, but also by capturing each other's little tics as they embody each other, and are clearly having an absurd amount of fun in the process Spock and T'Pring's shared out-of-body experience gives them the level of understanding they needed to help smooth out their relationship. T'Pring gets to see the value Starfleet brings to her husband to-be and the Federation in general when she helps him negotiate with a society of radical empaths, and Spock gets to see why T'Pring dedicates herself to her Vulcan tenets. Spock's internal conflict with his human and Vulcan heritage has been alleviated by being able to explore these different sides of each other. He is free to spend time with his wife-to-be, knowing that she accepts his totality: Human, Spock, and the rest of the crew.
Even if we know that Spock will face a lot of challenges in his life beyond Strange New Worlds, we will still get to see some of that resolution come not from a place of high drama. The fact that Strange New Worlds can deliver such wonderful character beats while having a laugh and a joke, as well as it can in the moments of pressure across the show so far, is proof that it really loves and understands what Star Trek is.
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