WHY WE LIKE IT: Starfleet's quickest mission. Batel's speech. Pelia getting up from bed in the background. "Drawer people?!"
WHY WE DON'T: It's complete nonsense.
REVIEW: My issues with this season continue, most notably the gear-shifting between horror and silly episodes, making me think the writers would rather be working on Doctor Who or Lower Decks. A 26-episode season can withstand an occasional Wolf in the Fold or A Fistful of Datas, but a 10-episode season doing almost ONLY these kinds of episodes? Afraid not. And the very silly Four-and-a-Half Vulcans, though it advances some personal subplots, has elements that could only really work on Lower Decks. LD could sneak in a Vulcan named Doug, or laugh at the Vulcans in this way, but in the flagship drama, the jokes fall flat and the story feels completely at odds with continuity.
I appreciate certain things like the mission taking only a few minutes and it not being worth our time to show it, and spending more time in Pelia's baroque quarters, and though it's fruit from the poison tree, Pike's Vulcan-like rendition of the opening credits speech. But otherwise, they're really forcing the comedy. Pelia high-fiving and poking Pike. La'an "making it weird". Una having the hots for a shlubby Vulcan whose whole family has human names and yet doesn't seem to know anything about humanity, and all their scenes ripped out of a very mid 80s sitcom. It's sad that THIS is what they gave high-profile Trekkie Patton Oswalt to do in his first live action Trek role (he was a cartoon cat on Picard before this). It just doesn't play to his strengths. He's serious and unexpressive as the ludicrous Doug, a character who, if we take the improvisations in the post-credit scene as cash, can't even repeat contractions back to Spock and doesn't know the most basic thing about the humans he claims to love. Spock play-acting through these scenes like he's a robot looking for words doesn't help things.
The core of the episode is that Pike, Uhura, La'an and Chapel are turned into Vulcans by the same serum that was used to cure Spock of his full humanity last season, and the implication is that, SOMEHOW, all Vulcan cultural norms are genetic. These Vulcans have sudden new hairstyles, disdain the half-Vulcan Spock on sight, and have intense mental discipline and show the racism that was most apparent in early episodes of Enterprise. That goes against everything we know about the Vulcans' tight control over their emotions (which the actors played during the transformation scene AND Una outright says Vulcans take years to get there, no explanation is given as to why this happened) and actually quite racist, thanks. When trapped in these bodies until a cure is found (not that they think it logical to use it), they start acting like jerks and, insanely, never change out of their Vulcan clothes. It's clear to us, if not to the episode as written, that having a Vulcan brain has made them go mad - a particularly anal-retentive (and loud) Pike's impossible crew rotation, Uhura brainwashing Beto to be a better boyfriend, La'an acting like a Romulan (they're inferring something between enhanced genetics and the Vulcans' cousin race that I don't think can be justified in-canon), Chapel's multi-tasking beyond her fatigue tolerance and putting an end to all her relationships - none of this is logical, or perhaps just "technically logical" as Spock amusingly puts it. I appreciate the crew's willingness to find out if their friends' katras (true selves) consent to being permanent Vulcans and accept their decision, but... It's not true that they aren't acting erratically. There IS something wrong. They SHOULD be relieved of duty. But as this is a "comedy", no one is allowed to act professionally. And then we abruptly cut to things being fixed, a near anti-climax if they hadn't kept La'an for the end (hey! live action Cetacean Ops dream, doesn't make sense but cool). The connection between fighting and dancing is well played at least.
While the comedy is going on, they're also trying to work in character moments - Captain Batel getting promoted to running the JAG office (so is the Gorn DNA stuff no longer relevant?), Kirk showing up AGAIN (this wouldn't feel so outrageous spread across 26 episodes, but...) and wanting to hang with La'an (so is it now over with Carol, or is it just as friends?) - unfortunately undermined by half the characters not being themselves. Scotty saves Kirk's bacon again, so that's cool (his character-based comedy DOES work). Ultimately, though, even the non-transformed characters have trouble staying IN character. The hardass Vulcan admiral appreciates Batel's passion. The Vulcan who has studied humans all his life knows nothing about them. Empathic Uhura claims she has trouble connecting with people. Don't get me started on computer-brain Una's behavior. They're just slaves to the absurdity and the good jokes are lost in a sea of very dumb ones. And I absolutely HATE the grating "whimsical comedy score".
SECONDARY WATCHING: See "Amok Time" for further reactions to Chapel's plomeek soup recipe.
LESSON: Your soul knows what's what even if you don't.
REWATCHABILITY - Low: The episode has such a weak (and offensive) understanding of its subject matter that it's better ignored.
Comments
My take? This is all Spock's fault.
Spock is projecting all his self-loathing of his Vulcan side onto to his crewmates, who getting their own taste of Vulcan telepathic sensitivity, are imprinted with that. Because whether or not Vulcans have a massive racial superiority complex? Spock DEFINITELY thinks they do, and it would be rather easy for that to get imprinted. It's not hard for me to see a throughline of "Strange New Worlds" being that Spock is hating BOTH his human and Vulcan sides...which sets him up for his journey through the "classic" Trek timeline where he reconciles with both sides of his heritage.
Just putting that part out there.
"'I will guide you through the process.'
My take? This is all Spock's fault."
This is a good take that would have redeemed, at least somewhat, this poorly-constructed story.
Una: "Because they derived the serum from Spock's percieved experiences, it has left our crew in a kind of logical state that normally takes Vulcans years to develop socially...."
Does it make a lot of scientific sense? I don't really claim it does, but they DO handwave the whole thing as being more than just "Vulcans are genetically logical" (which, of course, does indeed fly in the face of established canon, not only in Trek-at-large, but this series itself).