WHY WE LIKE IT: It's funny.
WHY WE DON'T: Too far, between Spock and Chapel?
REVIEW: A follow-up to one of my favorite episodes from the previous season (Spock Amok), I am not going to claim Charades has a water-tight plot - it throws up too many questions, especially in terms of why characters behave the way they do - but it does manage to be as funny and heartfelt as its predecessor. The growing awkwardness between Spock and Chapel is coming to a head. She's on track to meet Roger Korby, and he's having to spend time with the in-laws. A the start of this, I was fully intending to mention how strange their will they, won't they subplot is, given we know they won't. Well, about that...
Something pretty definitive happens, even if in the wake of Spock being turned human for a day. The device be which it happens is perhaps suspect - are we to understand the Vulcans, with their big brains and head start in the space race - never investigated the bright space-time anomaly on the Kerkhovian moon apparently in their space? - but missing dialog to explain it aside, these are akin to Bajoran Wormhole Aliens (which now throws suspicion on DS9 failing to ever make the connection). These guys (living colors?) fix Spock after a shuttle accident, but confused by his mixed heritage, use pure-bred Chapel as a template to make him fully human. I guess he should be thankful they didn't change his sex as well. (But shades of The Cage and Vina's reconstruction.) And overwhelmed by human emotions and the lack of Vulcan discipline (which is wholly genetic?!), he acts like a teenager for the better part the episode. Ground covered with Data in the films, you might say, but the Charades draws a bit more out of that premise.
At first, it's cool and the gang as he integrates with his crew mates, laughs at jokes, gets angry at sloppy Sam Kirk, and eats bacon until he feels sick - mirrors of earlier scenes showcasing his discipline. But when he must take part in a V'Shal dinner - a sort of inspection by the in-laws on both sides (with Amanda the only one in attendance on his side, of course) - and be scrutinized by T'Pring's extremely judgmental mother, we have the makings of a strong sitcom proposition where things could all fall apart. The tuque to hide his "deformity", the "how to speak like a Vulcan" scene, and Spock's general knee-jerk reactions are all quite amusing, but it's Amanda who perhaps shines most as 1) the emotional core of this story and 2) a mirror of Chapel, the "woman who dared love a Vulcan". Whether because he has momentary empathy, the ability to feel and express love, or because of the memory she shares with him in the ritual, Spock recognizes for the first time that his personal drama as a rejected child was an echo of her own personal drama, as a stinky human living on Vulcan, and through her, he also comes to understand Christine's own drama.
The memory also might explain his big move at the end of the V'Shal ritual. To track back... This is a ceremony in three parts: Serve some boiling hot tea, get told how you suck by your in-laws (be given awareness), and a mind meld with your own parent. As a human, these are all difficult, especially given that the old battle axe disapproves of T'Pring marrying the half-human Spock. In the background, T'Pring's dad, a rather gregarious Vulcan, is much more easy-going, but keeps comically deferring to his wife (one of my set of grandparents was the same, but I wouldn't have called it a comedy), and Pike mills around cooking for the group and at some point, to buy Spock time before the impossible mind meld, devises a game of charades as the "human" part of the ritual. Up to each viewer to decide if we were mercifully spared seeing them actually play or if it's rather a shame that Chapel runs in with a cure just then. But in the end, Spock has passed the tests, and to rebuke his mother-in-law, he reveals he was human all along (albeit, with enough restored genome at the end to perform the mind meld). Which seems unnecessary. Evidently, his own mother was a human who passed this test at one point, proving the point. So jeopardizing his marriage after saving it... Still running on teenage human fumes? Regardless, T'Pring having been kept out of the loop, even if she accepts the logic of it - but then, T'Pring is a very emotional Vulcan, nervous about the ceremony, frustrated with her mother, hurt by Spock, she even says "how am I to feel?" - is discouraged by his lack of trust in her and decides they should spend some time apart. Given they already do, for long stretches of time, are we to understand they won't see each other again until Amok Time? And so he runs into Chapel's arms.
And that's the other side to this story. Initially, Christine's subplot is to pass an interview with the Vulcan Science Academy for a fellowship in archaeological medicine (which she gets to practice thanks to the Kerkhovians). The interviewer is amusingly curt and dismissive, and eventually eats as much crow as a Vulcan could, but she doesn't get the fellowship. (Her experience does reveal how Roger Korby himself might take an interest later though.) After the shuttle accident, she goes above and beyond to restore Spock's genetic code, roping in what I will now start calling the girl group (her, Ortegas and Uhura) to help her sneak back to the wormhole to ask the aliens for help. Above and beyond, but just short of admitting she's in love with Spock. I feel the other girls' frustration - why don't you just tell the aliens what they want to hear?! - but it's a human moment. She eventually admits to sufficient connection that she can lodge a complaint (these aliens offer terrible customer support, so it's not easy) and get the cure. When administering it, she cuts him short of admitting it himself, so you believe in the "won't they" until the end. Big twist then, and I'm not sure what fandom will think.
SECONDARY WATCHING: Still holding off on "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". No need to rewatch "Amok Time" yet again. A bit too ambitious to rewatch every episode that has a significant interaction between Spock and Christine. But all of these are relevant.
LESSON: Your in-laws will prefer you to have callused hands.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Script manipulations aside, there are some honest laughs and poignant moments to be had.
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