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4thofelevenIn which hijinks fail to ensue.
With “Spock Amok”, Discovery tries its hand at something a bit more comedic, and the results are... fine? I mean, it's no “Trouble With Tribbles”, but it's not painful to watch or anything, it's just kinda … fine. And I don't think that's a failure on the show's part, it's not meant to be laugh-out-loud funny. I can see what they were going for – do a wacky body swap story, but have it be Vulcans who are body swapped, so rather than wacky hijinks and miscommunications, they react in a calm and sober fashion. It's potentially an amusing reversal of expectations, but it really doesn't seem to build to anything. Spock and T'Pring admit the situation at the earliest opportunity, but due to forces beyond their control they have to briefly impersonate each other, but they're both highly skilled individuals so they can complete each other's jobs with no real issues. It's all... eminently forgettable.
Well, mostly forgettable – there is one issue, and that's the obvious one: Where are they going with T'Pring? I'm not opposed to fleshing out her character and presenting her in a more sympathetic light, but I'm really not sure how to reconcile this take on her character and her relationship with Spock with the events of “Amok Time”. Before SNW, my assumption was that, due to his falling out with Sarek, Spock hadn't been to Vulcan in decades, leaving T'Pring to navigate the rigid customs of Vulcan on her own, leading her to see the kal-if-fee as the only solution to her dilemma.
And while the SNW pilot challenged that somewhat, it still made sense to me – T'Pring had tried to build a relationship with Spock, only to have him turn his back on her for his career. If that had been the last we'd seen of her, I still could have seen how we ended up at “Amok Time”.
But now – now we have to accept that no, that wasn't the end of it, that Spock and T'Pring were in regular contact, that they were aware of the issues in their relationship and were working on it. Not only that, but T'Pring seems far less isolated; she has a job that takes her away from Vulcan, she's not trapped within the Vulcan social structures. So why and how did she get to the point where she decided a ritual duel to the death was the best way to handle things, rather than, you know, telling Spock at some point in the intervening decade that things weren't working between them?
And, you know, I'm not opposed to radically re-imagining characters and kind of ignoring details from the original series if it makes for a better story. SNW's take on Chapel might as well be a different character, but she's fun and I'm fine with that. No effort was made to cast a Chief Kyle who looks anything like the TOS character, and that's fine too. But this episode directly calls back to “Amok Time”, even down to the title, and yet I don't see how the characters we see here end up there, and I'm honestly not sure how they can satisfyingly resolve that contradiction. It's the problem of the prequel; you're setting up story-lines that won't and can't have a payoff in this series itself because they've already been told.
Oh, and could we at least have gotten a token explanation for why the body swap even happened? Just one line of technobabble from M'Benga - “Oh, T'Pring must have been exposed to kironide compounds when she visited planet whatever on her last assignment. That can create unusual telepathic effects.” There, main plot justified. Paramount, hire me!
Meanwhile, Una and La'an play Enterprise Bingo. And this is a fun concept, I really like the idea that the lower decks crew have their own little customs and games that the senior staff are either ignorant of or turn a blind eye towards. I do have one quibble though; we're now halfway through the season, and the Big Dramatic Reveal about Una from “Ghosts of Illyria” hasn't been mentioned once. That episode ended with La'an feeling betrayed by Una's augment heritage; now they're back to being best friends with everything resolved entirely off-screen? I almost wonder if some episodes got moved around in production order – did the effects-heavy “Momento Mori” have to be delayed, and this episode which is presented as a follow-up to the Gorn attack also have to be moved back? It feels like it would have been more emotionally satisfying if we'd seen Una and La'an's friendship emphasised here and then had the revelation that challenges it come afterwards.
With “Spock Amok”, Discovery tries its hand at something a bit more comedic, and the results are... fine? I mean, it's no “Trouble With Tribbles”, but it's not painful to watch or anything, it's just kinda … fine. And I don't think that's a failure on the show's part, it's not meant to be laugh-out-loud funny. I can see what they were going for – do a wacky body swap story, but have it be Vulcans who are body swapped, so rather than wacky hijinks and miscommunications, they react in a calm and sober fashion. It's potentially an amusing reversal of expectations, but it really doesn't seem to build to anything. Spock and T'Pring admit the situation at the earliest opportunity, but due to forces beyond their control they have to briefly impersonate each other, but they're both highly skilled individuals so they can complete each other's jobs with no real issues. It's all... eminently forgettable.
Well, mostly forgettable – there is one issue, and that's the obvious one: Where are they going with T'Pring? I'm not opposed to fleshing out her character and presenting her in a more sympathetic light, but I'm really not sure how to reconcile this take on her character and her relationship with Spock with the events of “Amok Time”. Before SNW, my assumption was that, due to his falling out with Sarek, Spock hadn't been to Vulcan in decades, leaving T'Pring to navigate the rigid customs of Vulcan on her own, leading her to see the kal-if-fee as the only solution to her dilemma.
And while the SNW pilot challenged that somewhat, it still made sense to me – T'Pring had tried to build a relationship with Spock, only to have him turn his back on her for his career. If that had been the last we'd seen of her, I still could have seen how we ended up at “Amok Time”.
But now – now we have to accept that no, that wasn't the end of it, that Spock and T'Pring were in regular contact, that they were aware of the issues in their relationship and were working on it. Not only that, but T'Pring seems far less isolated; she has a job that takes her away from Vulcan, she's not trapped within the Vulcan social structures. So why and how did she get to the point where she decided a ritual duel to the death was the best way to handle things, rather than, you know, telling Spock at some point in the intervening decade that things weren't working between them?
And, you know, I'm not opposed to radically re-imagining characters and kind of ignoring details from the original series if it makes for a better story. SNW's take on Chapel might as well be a different character, but she's fun and I'm fine with that. No effort was made to cast a Chief Kyle who looks anything like the TOS character, and that's fine too. But this episode directly calls back to “Amok Time”, even down to the title, and yet I don't see how the characters we see here end up there, and I'm honestly not sure how they can satisfyingly resolve that contradiction. It's the problem of the prequel; you're setting up story-lines that won't and can't have a payoff in this series itself because they've already been told.
Oh, and could we at least have gotten a token explanation for why the body swap even happened? Just one line of technobabble from M'Benga - “Oh, T'Pring must have been exposed to kironide compounds when she visited planet whatever on her last assignment. That can create unusual telepathic effects.” There, main plot justified. Paramount, hire me!
Meanwhile, Una and La'an play Enterprise Bingo. And this is a fun concept, I really like the idea that the lower decks crew have their own little customs and games that the senior staff are either ignorant of or turn a blind eye towards. I do have one quibble though; we're now halfway through the season, and the Big Dramatic Reveal about Una from “Ghosts of Illyria” hasn't been mentioned once. That episode ended with La'an feeling betrayed by Una's augment heritage; now they're back to being best friends with everything resolved entirely off-screen? I almost wonder if some episodes got moved around in production order – did the effects-heavy “Momento Mori” have to be delayed, and this episode which is presented as a follow-up to the Gorn attack also have to be moved back? It feels like it would have been more emotionally satisfying if we'd seen Una and La'an's friendship emphasised here and then had the revelation that challenges it come afterwards.
no subject
on 2022-06-25 03:10 am (UTC)I think Film Crit Hulk might be onto something and JJ Abrams has been a bad influence on a whole generation of media. Hide all information until the last possible second and who cares whether that means you lose out on great drama or, you know, making sense. Tell the actors that it doesn't matter if they know what they're saying or why as long as they deliver the lines with conviction. Because it's all just a bunch of pretty, well-acted moments intended to push our emotional buttons. Except that whole "narrative that makes sense" thing is almost always what makes those dramatic moments really work, so we're left with this endless treadmill of, "Ah, but if you just watch this next thing, you'll learn more...okay, no, that won't actually make anything make more sense or be more dramatic, and in fact will be a teaser for the next next thing, but it will be more. Don't you want more?" See also: nearly every Marvel or Star Wars media product since way too long ago.
And the special effects are so pretty that if they have good actors, it's so close to working. There's just that something missing that leaves you feeling hollow afterward.