Value SubtractedEpisode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans"
At long last, the episode people have been anticipating/dreading since the preview scene dropped a year ago.
I dunno, I thought it was fine. It signals right from the beginning that we shouldn’t take it too seriously, and it maintains that tone through to the end. The comparison that keeps popping into my head is “The Magnificent Ferengi” - transparently ridiculous, but enjoyable if you can get on its level.
The emotional core is the four “Vulcans” revealing their inner secrets because of their transformation. SNW has gone to that well before, but it works well enough. The dance fight was very nicely done.
Not a lot of meat on those bones, but there are worse ways to spend an hour.
khaosworksAnnotations for 3x08 up at: startrek.website/post/28229022
Annotations for *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds* 3x08: “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” - Star Trek Website
The “half” refers to Spock, who is only half-Vulcan. The Stardate is 3111.1, and Enterprise is headed for Purmantee III where the crew will take shore leave. Una says La’An, of all people would understand why she’s remaining on board, as she likes to do work when it’s quiet. Indeed, the two did that in SNW: “Spock Amok” when the crew was on shore leave in Starbase 1. This is the first mention of Greerian cocktails. Vice-Admiral Pasalk is a Vulcan who headed the JAG office in SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”. He also has an antagonistic relationship with Spock, although that is only apparent to people who can read Vulcan body language, like M’Benga. Batel was a JAG officer who was then promoted to command, being recalled to JAG duty for Una’s trial in that episode. Tezaar is an M-class planet (Minshara-class, as per ENT: “Strange New World”), capable of supporting humanoid life, but are not warp capable, hence protected by the Prime Directive. Spock explains that the Vulcans made contact with Tezaar before the founding of the Federation (in 2161), but we know that Vulcans had their own non-interference directives long before before official First Contact with Earth in 2063 (see ENT: “Carbon Creek”), as La’An points out. Spock was turned human and back again by the Kerkhovians in SNW: “Charades”. Pike being overwhelmed by emotions is an expected response, as Vulcans feel emotions much more intensely than humans, hence the necessity to practice arie’mnu (passion’s mastery) to control them. However, given this is a learned response, the sudden snap to “emotionless” Vulcans requires some explanation. The song is “Reckless Youth” by indie group The Home of Happy. Pike is carrying a lirpa, a traditional Vulcan weapon first seen in TOS: “Amok Time”. Ortegas mentioned she had fought with a lirpa in “Spock Amok”. The away team also carries cylindrical hardshell duffle bags, which were first seen in TNG. Music reminiscent of the Vulcan fight music of “Amok Time” can also be heard as part of the soundtrack. Pike’s opening narration for this episode is in a stilted manner, as a nod to his status as a Vulcan. Una’s explanation for why the away team is acting so coldly is because the serum was derived from Spock’s “perceived experiences”, leading them to assume the manners that Vulcans normally years to develop. That being said, how a serum can be based on “experiences” is not explained. Kirk’s mention of Sam reminds me that we haven’t seen him since SNW: “Wedding Bell Blues”. It is well established that Vulcans have an enhanced sense of smell compared to humans and that they find human odors unpleasant. As mentioned in ENT: “The Andorian Incident” and “Spock Amok”, Vulcans take nasal suppressants/numbing agents to help with this. La’An’s obsession towards martial matters and conquest is meant to seem Romulan in nature (as Kirk says, aggressive and manipulative) but as we find out later, it’s her Augment ancestry influencing her Vulcan state. It’s interesting that M’Benga and Spock are now talking openly about katras, when it was first presented as a deeply personal thing to Vulcans (Sarek says in ST III that Spock would not have spoken of it openly). But then again mind melds were also supposed to be things Vulcans didn’t talk about (TOS: “Dagger of the Mind”). Pike’s allusion to a mission he is not permitted to discuss is his knowledge of the Romulans gained on a trip into an alternate future (SNW: “A Quality of Mercy”). La’An learned about Romulans while also time traveling in SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics by filling in the gaps between shards with a metallic lacquer made from gold or sometimes silver. The philosophy behind the practice is to embrace imperfections and find beauty in it instead of keeping it hidden. 15 years puts the end of Una and Doug’s romance in 2244, a year before Enterprise was launched. My best guesses put Una at around 42 years of age (I’ll spare you the math) so she last broke up with Doug when she was 27. Batel says Pasalk used to call Pike “the human with inappropriate hair”, which is clearly a meta joke as Pike’s hair is a frequent topic of conversation among fans. Doug attributes Spock’s ability to lie to his human heritage and claims that as a full-blooded Vulcan he cannot lie, but full-blooded Vulcans have been known to lie (or at least obfuscate) before - especially T’Pol and Tuvok - on numerous occasions. Kirk says he’s served under Vulcans. The current CO of Farragut is V’Rel, a Vulcan female captain. Plomeek soup is a traditional Vulcan dish, which can be bland or spicy. Chapel made plomeek soup for Spock in “Amok Time”, although Spock, in the throes of pon farr, threw the bowl into the corridor. It appears that we meant to believe that it was Kirk who introduced Scotty to the pleasures of Scotch.
bgainorI thought this episode was a lot of fun. Haven’t really been feeling this season of SNW as much for some reason, but I think this is my favorite episode yet. Managed to fit some character development in around all the craziness, and the post-credits scene with Patton and Ethan was great.
Kabutor“Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans” ready to beam up xD
the intro with the Pike monotonous/vulcan voice was fun also.
veeeOh no, the intro already has me dying
I was hoping they’d “fix” the infamous grammatical error and say “to go boldly” for this one.
Michael GemarThis episode was appropriate.
andrybakIt was also satisfactory.
Great episode. Extremely cringe but it works for me.
God, the amount of bullying Spock must have put up with as a kid. It’s no wonder he joined Starfleet. We even see it in one of the movies where he kicked the shit out of another Vulcan kid.
And incase someone needs a reminder on how Pike and La’An knew what Romulans are. La’An ran in to one in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. And Pike runs into them in *A Quality of Mercy *. Both dealing with wacky time displacement nonsense and conanically Romulans aren’t revealed until TOS’s Balance of Terror (which A Quality of Mercy is a remake of).
La’An is a terrible Romulan. She should have kept her plotting closer to the chest. Also funny how Pike saw through her behavior but didn’t do anything about it. Does show Vulcan’s are inherently bias towards other Vulcans. Which we even saw brought up when Batel calls out Pasalk.
This was a very fun episode, and does show off the complete bullshit logical fallacies that make up Vulcan society without having to deal with Vulcan society.
hallettjSo La’An became Romulan; Spock said her case was different because of her augmented heritage. Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?
I guess why wouldn’t Romulans augment themselves? And they got the bad Khan Singh kind of augmentation, instead of the good Illyrian kind.
I love the swift eyebrow raises when La’An and Pike say the thing they cannot discuss together!
I’m too sleepy to stop this train of thought. Could Bashir have been augmented by an Illyrian doctor? Or a doctor whose work was informed by Illyrian methods?
Does that imply that Romulans augmented themselves? And that’s what distinguishes them physiologically from Vulcans, and is what makes them kinda evil?
I guess it makes some sense. They never got the teachings of Surak. So to control their emotions maybe they looked in to genetic augmentation, and it turns out, they turned evil. Which to be fair, a very common theme in Star Trek (exect when it’s not).
StillPaisleyCatLa’an didn’t become Romulan.
That was just the inference that she and Pike made as they both had awareness that Romulans existed.
In fact, it was a misdirection and further evidence that Vulcans can be blind in their prejudices.
The two of them locked onto the explanation that they knew and never considered that La’an’s heritage of altered DNA might lead to manipulative and territorially conquering behaviour like her ancestor Khan.
It was turning off the impact of the balancing unaltered human DNA and augmenting her brain function that let the Khan-like behaviour dominate.
I thought it was a fairly deft look at the risks of emphasizing different elements of brain function through intervention.
Extremely cringe says it right. Why wouldn’t doctor m’benga challenge their decision to remain Vulcan without checking, testing, verifying their capacity? How the hell do they fix the nuclear systems in 10s? With no story? Off the rails & feeling like it was written by a 4th grader. Or a drunk pair of nimrods.
Had to fast forward through most of the episode. Shituational bad drama & procedure, non-comedy. With fancy dress! Fun & ridiculous (but fancy!) Patton Oswald appearance. Overdone, over the top terrible interactions between actors I highly respect.
Full throttle into idiocy land. With fancy dress! Look how much we can spend on costumes while our writers are drunk off their asses!
Why wouldn’t doctor m’benga challenge their decision to remain Vulcan without checking, testing, verifying their capacity?
I totally thought that too. Clearly, their judgement has been impaired and what they want is irrelevant. But you know…sometimes you just need stuff to happen to get the plot moving.
It’s been established as far back as TOS that M’Benha specializes in Vulcan medicine, so it’s surprising they didn’t even mention it in this episode
observantTrapeziumI think they are not very good at doing funny by themselves, but can do it with outside help. For example, the crossover with Lower Decks was good. In this episode, the only saving grace was Patton Oswalt (Doug), he was just hilarious!
4/10. It was 30-35 minutes too long.
Pike was so stiff. no idea why
And loud. Stiff and loud.
What even is he eating? A taco?
When I first watched I thought it was just a sandwich, but on closer inspection it appears to be some sort of star-shaped burrito.
Perhaps an empanada?
I believe that is a piece of Star Fruit.
This needs to be a new meme
I was worried that a high five was relegated to habits of the ancient past when the Lanthanite was initiating with no reciprocation, but then the post credits scene with Spock teaching human mannerisms showed it’s still a thing.
When I noticed that this week’s intro was being done in a Vulcan manner, I was hoping they would take the opportunity to fix the infamous grammatical mistake^1^ and say “to go boldly” with an unsplit infinitive just this once.
Vulcan Pike’s hair reminds me of my old Dark Eldar figures.
I was wondering if the federation ban on advantageous genetic manipulation would have been implemented as a rule to stop the “four Vulcans” from choosing to remain Vulcan, but the episode didn’t go there.
I found the use of bacon/cheese/animal products a little un-Trek-like in this episode. Comments against veganism felt a little weird in an era of food synthesizers and the general vision of “we don’t enslave animals for food.” It’s not like vegan food is disgusting. Spock confirmed humans still eat inordinate amounts of cheese and meat with implications that it’s often to the point that it’s unhealthy. Is it still illogical to have some animal protein if it’s problems regarding ecological efficiency are a solved issue (beyond the saturated fat and caloric arguments)? IDK, something felt off.
I didn’t appreciate that despite the extra long (and extra long feeling) runtime of this one they had three of the Vulcans return to human off screen. I was kind of hoping for a Steven Universe type situation where they emotionally explore the core of these beloved characters and get reminded of who they are.
Overall, this episode was pretty cringe inducing. I’m kind of shocked to say I straight up did not like this episode. The secondhand embarrassment was too much for me to handle. Painfully unfunny scenes went for too long. The conflict resolution wasn’t to my liking, feeling like a missed opportunity to explore character instead going for cheap gags—dinner with the boss sitcom, overbearing girlfriend, lie holding up more lies until the lies implode, pretending to be married, “we want our jerk back”—stuff we’ve seen thousands of times. I wasn’t a big fan of the previous episode either so I’m just kind of put off that they’ve had two “duds” in a row where SNW usually had bangers in my opinion.
I think that’s fair. I think I enjoyed the jokes more than you, but it’s a pretty low-calorie episode.
I didn’t appreciate that despite the extra long (and extra long feeling) runtime of this one they had three of the Vulcans return to human off screen.
I feel like Pike and Uhura already had external character growth on screen to explain why it wouldn’t take much convincing for them to go back. I kind of wish they showed what convinced Chapel.
But I think it makes sense to also emphasis La’an because they’re trying ti build up the relationship with Spock, so they do kind of need more screen time.
I was worried that a high five was relegated to habits of the ancient past when the Lanthanite was initiating with no reciprocation, but then the post credits scene with Spock teaching human mannerisms showed it’s still a thing.
Wait. Post credits? There has been post credits in SNW and I didn’t noticed?
cartoon meme dogonly this episode.
divergingWhy are there whales on Pike's Enterprise? I was under the impression that cetacean ops was a ultimately a result the events of Star Trek IV, which haven't happened yet.
I don’t think that’s ever been established - in fact, I don’t think we’ve ever seen humpback whales in Cetacean Ops…
We have seen a humpback in cetacean ops: Gillian from Prodigy
Gillian
Gillian was a humpback whale living in the late 24th century and serving in Starfleet Cetacean Ops aboard the USS Voyager-A. (PRO: "Into the Breach, Part II", et al.) Gillian proved to be the only one capable of understanding Murf and helped to translate what Murf was trying to tell his friends. (PRO: "Observer's Paradox") Gillian later played a vital role in sending the USS Protostar back to the past, using the Echelon Formation to guide Voyager through the swarm of Loom and into the...
Y’know, as I typed it I thought, “I should probably fact-check this…”
Showing cetacean ops did seem like a lot. But OTOH, that scene isn’t actually on the Enterprise - it’s set inside La’An’s mind. So why not make it weird?
Holograms. Or just screens. Can make them in to anything that’ll make you calm (or whatever you want to feel).
There were references to whales before that in beta-canon diagrams.
The idea that they are a response to Star Trek IV is also beta canon or even widespread head canon.
There was no restraint in this episode - I love it!
When Doug showed up I realized it had gone off the rails. Then cetacean ops made me reassess what “off the rails” means. But I had to retract a head shake when I realized that was a sort of dream sequence. Laughed my ass off the whole time.
Another comedy episode? You know what, if that’s what SNW is, a comedy series, maybe it doesn’t bother me. If I lower my expectations and just lean right into it, the fact that we have a slightly lower rate of “serious” episodes is fine. Maybe if I keep repeating that to myself I’ll start to believe it.
The whole episode was fun, taken as a series of “what if” vignettes, and I did enjoy it, but it is lacking that spark that makes Star Trek great.
The plot setup is totally contrived, and I am a bit miffed that we missed out on a “how can we avoid breaking the prime directive” episode. And it does seem a bit like a rehash of the episode we already had with spock. As fun as it was to see the other actors do the whole “I’m a different person for an episode” episode. I have no idea why their hairstyles changed so suddenly but I love it anyway. Especially Pike’s JoJo’s-Bizarre-Adventure hair.
This is purely my personal preference - I really am not a fan of montage scenes set to songs in TV episodes in general. So the marching scene at the start just felt awkward to me. Not very trek. I don’t mind this kind of thing so much in films, or in “musical” episodes, but it didn’t really click for me here. It does fit a bit better when I realised this was going to be a comedy episode.
Patton oswalt was great here. For a moment I wondered if the storyline they were going to go for was that Una had been mind-melded into falling for Doug, as a b-plot to mirror what happened with Uhura/Beto. It seems very easy to basically date-rape-drug humans for a vulcan to take advantage of them. I feel like this story idea merits deeper exploration. As it is, we never really get an explanation other than “they’re really into each other”, which is fine I suppose.
All of the new vulcans being mean to spock contrasting with what must be the only vulcan there, Doug, who is envious was an interesting choice but never goes anywhere. Doug never gets a chance to chastise them on their bullying, and I am sure he would have been able to derive a punishingly logical reason why bullying is bad.
The writing completely skipped over the mind melds and catra explorations into 3 of the 4 characters. What did they talk to spock about? How much of a push did Pike need to realise he was hurting his crew? How did uhura initially react when she realised she had brainwashed someone with the intent to further a relationship with them? How did chapel come to terms with the fact that she’ll have to give up her science experiments? This all would have helped to develop the characters. And in the one we did see, given how driven La’an was to become a mirror universe character, I don’t understand how a dream sequence dance with spock was enough to change her mind. Maybe there are some visual metaphors in the direction I’m missing. Or maybe it was literal and Spock dream danced with Pike to change him back too!
Some stand out scenes with Kirk and Scotty. Also Batel speaking out against power, challenging perceptions, and then getting recognition and a job offer all while struggling with a new medical disability. That was a nice outcome.
I want to see the Spock/Pike dream dance!
At first I didn’t really like this episode because of how off as Vulcans they seemed. Like they were overacting pretending to be a Vulcan.
But then I started thinking “well it kinda makes sense - they aren’t “real” Vulcans but a blend” and thankfully the whole Katra thing basically said the same thing.
Basically hardware-wise they are Vulcan and software-wise they are still human and as a result the 2 “systems” have trouble working together.
I loved Patton as Doug - even if it didn’t really make sense to me with everything we know about Vulcans.
In the end though it’s just another episode that makes me sad this is a prequel and all the great character development will get thrown out.
I’m especially mad they keep developing Spock specifically. Ethan Peck has done such a great job portraying Spock working on understanding and accepting his 2 halves that this show ends up being a disservice to both him and Leonard Nimoy.
Since La’an doesn’t make it to TOS, my guess is she dies by the end of the show and the pain of losing her drives Spock to push his humanity aside. I was expecting that to happen with the Chapel break-up, but then they brought La’an into things, so I transferred the theory onto her instead 😂
fixmycodethis episode was the most lower decks episode in the show, and I don’t say it as a compliment.