Strange New Worlds; or, I regret to inform you that the straight people are at it again

[netgirl_y2k]

I like almost everything about Strange New Worlds with the exception of the Chapel/Spock/T'Pring love triangle, which just chews up lots of screen time that could be better used on literally anything else, and feels like it's only there because her having a crush on Spock is the only thing anyone remembers about TOS Nurse Chapel.

I just don't care about Spock's love life, I never have, I was bored by Spock/Uhura in the kelvin movies, and will probably be indifferent when the Star Trek remake of 2064 makes Spock/Kirk canon. That said, I liked Spock's relationship with T'Pring well enough. T'Pring is a stone cold fox, more patient than Spock probably deserves, and did I mention the stone cold fox thing. More importantly the two actors have chemistry; even at their most Vulcan I absolutely believe that Spock and T'Pring are five seconds away from boning at all times.

And it's not like Ethan Peck and Jess Bush aren't great on the show, they both have great chemistry with other actors, they just don't have any with each other. It is the biggest failure of chemistry testing since Jon and Dany in the latter seasons of Game of Thrones.

There was a scene between Chapel and M'Benga in the S2 premier where their mouths are briefly close together and for a second it looked like they were going to kiss, and there was nothing in that episode or their prior relationship that implied that they were kissing type friends, but if they had I would have rolled with it because those actors have great chemistry. I have a hard time believing that Spock and Chapel want to kiss even when they actually are.

Speaking of, Spock having his tongue down Chapel's throat five minutes after he and T'Pring 'took a break' was...Like, Spock is not my favourite character and he is a lot of things, but he is not that flavour of dick.

It's not like SNW can't do romance well, with one episode Kirk/La'an (a ship I came fully prepared to to dislike) reduced me to the good kind of tears, where a season and a half of build up and Spock/Chapel has elicited naught more than a groan of '...who asked for this?'

And I know I've been sarky about how overwhelmingly straight SNW is, but this kind of half arsed, he was a boy, she was a girl shit is why.

Comments

[scintilla10]

I'm bored and frustrated by so much of the Chapel/Spock stuff, too – so much runtime gets eaten up by this storyline!

The cliched relationship between T'Pring's parents really weighed the episode down for me, too.

Chapel, Uhura and Ortegas on a road trip to interdimensional space was fun, though.

[netgirl_y2k]

Ethan Peck has great comic timing, and that's part of why he's so good as Spock, and this episode should have been another Spock Amok (a high point of S1, for me) but it was dragged down by the sitcom Vulcan parents and the millstone that is Spock/Chapel.

The Chapel, Uhura, Ortegas roadtrip was great. I loved Chapel interrupting their, frankly, delicious looking meal, and her solving the problem by can I talk to your manager-ing interdimensional space beings was funny as fuck.

[tamoline]

For all the time that they spend on the love triangle, it still manages to feel weirdly rushed at the same time. I mean, given that they've spent a whole episode on this nonsense, it feels a little odd they didn't spend even a reaction shot in the previous episode, where memories are lost and only feelings remain. Not that I'm complaining that the triangle *didn't* intrude, but still. Timing feels odd.

Speaking of which, I do wonder if they're going somewhere with Ortegas possibly being more into her friendship with Chapel than Christine is. Last week, they had amnesiac Ortegas definitely recognise Chapel, but Chapel kind of only seemed to look blankly back, and this week it kind of felt like Ortegas was more into the crazy shenanigans for Christine, as opposed to Christine being in them for Spock, and Uhura seemingly there for adventure and the chance to save someone (and possibly for chaos). I don't think there's anything romantic there, but I wouldn't mind if it got addressed at some point. I mean, we've repeatedly seen Ortegas there for Christine, but never really the other way around.

I can buy the kiss? I think it's a horrifically bad idea that the show doesn't really have the bandwidth to handle and should almost certainly detonate messily in fairly close order, but I do buy it, given the day Spock had just had. (At least from his end - what the hell Christine is thinking, I'm not entirely sure.) I do agree that T'Pring is entirely too good for Spock, though, and he treated her awfully this episode.

I also wasn't particularly fond of the scene where Chapel was trying to get the aliens' help to change Spock back, either. I hate it when a guy makes a girl's problems all about him, and apparently I'm not particularly fond of the reverse either. It felt really icky to have Chapel talk about this fundamental violation of Spock, and have her break it down into how it made her feel. I... That really hits the trans-adjacent feels for me, you know? (Involuntarily bodily change to fit someone else's aesthetics etc and so forth.)

Ugh.

The worst part is that - given they're trying to cleave to canon - they're going to have to have at least one more episode of this nonsense, since Spock needs to get back with T'Pring (somehow) and presumably break up with Chapel.

[netgirl_y2k]

I think one of the things SNW has been trying to do (mostly successfully, imo) to make it feel like old Star Trek is have all the episodes be mostly self-contained, but that does mean that when you do have a through line it can end up feeling weirdly disjointed; it was true of the plot with M'Benga's daughter in S1 too, even though I enjoyed that one better.

I think whether you see chemistry between actors can be subjective, but a perceived lack of chemistry can ruin even a well written romance, which this one isn't.

Ha, Ortegas was who came to mind when I was talking about characters who had more chemistry with Christine than Spock does.