Strange New Worlds gets it right with "Spock Amok"

They are getting it right.

In almost every detail, large and small, they are getting it right.

I don't know how to express it better than that: the creative team behind Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW) is getting it right. From musical cues to visual jokes, from the humour to the drama, they are capturing what Star Trek is all about.

The latest episode, "Spock Amok", is their first attempt at creating an episode where fun is at its core and they hit every note almost perfectly. The fun is fun, the characters develop and yet we still have a decent dramatic plot.

That's not easy to do and credit must go to the writers of this episode, Henry Alonso Myers and Robin Wasserman, the director, Rachel Leiterman, and the many actors whose characters are featured in the show, especially Gia Sandhu (T'Pring) and Ethan Peck (Spock).

The fact that the episode is also visually breathtaking is just the icing on the cake.

I have to admit, the episode title "Spock Amok" had me worried. It seemed both silly and somewhat insulting to the powerful TOS episode from which it draws much of its inspiration: "Amok Time". But that opening sequence -- Spock's dream in which his Human and Vulcan halves battle under the Vulcan tradition Koon-ut-kal-if-fee -- was an immediate salve to my concerns.

I'm sure fans of TOS recognized almost immediately that every detail in that scene, other than the people, recreated the Kirk/Spock battle from "Amok Time". The gong, the bells, the music, even the choreography of the fight, were intimately familiar to TOS fans. It was almost chilling.

And the fact that Spock's two halves fight (a wonderful way to represent his own inner turmoil) is psychologically significant. It sets the tone for the entire episode's consideration of the challenges Spock faced growing up, in his current relationships with T'Pring and with Star Fleet, and in his daily life. The issue, key to the character, is addressed in "Spock Amok" in a respectful, deft and subtle way -- while other editions of Star Trek have hammered character development home with a hammer, SNW uses an artist's brush.

I found it interesting, for example, that when Spock tells Chapel about his dream later in the episode, he says something like, "I had a dream where I fought my Human half". Spock, who later says he is incapable of lying, is not truthful here. In that dream sequence, he was his Human half -- his Vulcan half was foreign, dark and alien. He fought his Vulcan half.

I think this is significant: Spock struggles to accept that his Human side is as much at the core of who he is as his Vulcan side. Chapel later tells him he needs to "be true to himself" including accepting his bi-species nature and the importance of both species of origin to who he is. This is a lesson he continued to learn in TOS and, especially, in the TOS-inspired films.

On other issues, it would seem that the creative team is still struggling to figure out who Ortegas and, to a lesser extent, M'Benga are. Both get significant screen time in "Spock Amok" but both play support roles to Chapel. Chapel is the centre of each story in which she is involved: Spock's struggles, M'Benga's shore leave and her own relationship issues.

We are witnessing the slow development of Chapel's infatuation with Spock that is presented, in a fairly superficial way, in TOS, though in this rendition Chapel is much more an active participant.

I like Ortegas and want to see more of her. Melissa Navia has a sparkle to her on screen and I think Ortegas could grow into a central character on SNW, if she is permitted to do so.

The subplot involving the Hyphens (Noonien-Singh and Chin-Riley) is charming and fun but I think Rebecca Romijn struggles to hold her own on-screen with Christina Chong. I am willing to accept that perhaps this is intentional: Chin-Riley is, after all, labelled "Where fun goes to die", but she seems bland and uninteresting when compared to Noonien-Singh. They clearly have a strong relationship, of course -- it just seems unequal.

"Spock Amok" ends with breath-taking visuals and a satisfying end to each of its plots. It gets things right.

An Instant Classic: SNW scores with "Memento Mori"

Enterprise under pressure

Wow. That was intense.

"Memento Mori", episode 4 of Star Trek: Strange New World's inaugural season, is a thrill ride from start to finish. It's an instant classic, taking its place among the best Star Trek episodes of all time.

Ortegas proves herself again

Writers Davy Perez and Beau DeMayo pay homage to two classic TOS episodes -- "Arena" and "Balance of Terror" -- while adding some of the strongest features of the 1957 Robert Mitchum film, The Enemy Below, upon which "Balance of Terror" is based.

With Dan Liu's skillful direction and some amazing sound work by Supervising Sound Editor, Matthew E. Taylor, and his team, this SNW episode "Memento Mori" does more than pay homage -- it does justice to those earlier television masterworks.

Even more remarkably, the creative team manages to deliver a deeply suspenseful episode while incorporating significant character development without slowing the pace.

I am sorry to admit how much this delights me but the creative team also manages once again to suggest that Star Trek: Enterprise is NOT CANON.

In "Into a Mirror, Darkly", Berman and Braga's catastrophically awful series, Enterprise, brings a Gorn on board the ship and Captain Archer actually wrestles with it. This earlier in-person encounter with the Gorn does not come up at all in "Memento Mori". 

Chapel and M'Benga get creative

No one on Pike's Enterprise, except Noonien-Singh, knows what a Gorn looks like. The data bases have no visual records.

Noonien-Singh states categorically that, other than herself, the only members of Star Fleet ever to see a Gorn died shortly after seeing it. These facts make it clear that Archer's exploits are not part of Star Fleet history, or records.

"Memento Mori" represents the first time we see Pike, his ship and his crew under intense, unrelenting pressure -- Pike consistently assures his team that "Enterprise can take it" but it is his crew, as much as his ship, that proves itself under pressure.

Archer wrestles a Gorn: Best left forgotten

Uhura and Bemmer overcome fear and injuries and learn to work together to deal with a crisis in Engineering. M'Benga and Chapel reach for every tool in their medical bag (including some that belong in the 20th Century) to keep injured crew members alive. Ortegas embraces hope and innovation in proving herself, once again, one of the best pilots in the fleet.

And Spock and Noonien-Singh combine forces to develop new strategies, new innovations, to help take down an overwhelming, unrelenting foe.

"Memento Mori" also introduces to Star Fleet tradition "Fleet Remembrance Day" -- the day each year when Star Fleet crew wear the insignias of previous ships upon which they have served to honour the crew mates, scientists, explorers and civilians who have been lost in the service of human exploration of the galaxy.

Bemmer and Uhura -- Teamwork

Based on the British Commonwealth tradition of "Remembrance Day", upon which people in Canada and other commonwealth nations take a moment to remember members of our military, as well as civilians, lost in war, "Fleet Remembrance Day" adds a certain formal depth to Star Fleet and its history.

I thought it played well in this episode and now wish it had appeared in Star Trek series that have already been completed.

Facing her past

As I write this post, I worry that I have become so enamoured of Strange New Worlds that I am less critical of it than I have been of other Star Trek series. But it has been a long time, a very long time, that I have spent a week actively anticipating the next episode of a television series, that I have set aside time to watch it uninterrupted, to savour it thereafter.