Star Trek: Strange New Worlds [SPOILERS]

Mia Kirshner, a Toronto actress known in Canada for Atom Egoyan's award-winning Exotica.

Fun fact: she danced naked in that movie for Captain Pike.

EDIT: Fuck you, @14thDoctor

Yeah, the writing on SNW leaves something to be desired at times. You could have easily set that up in a different way and make the entire thing work. But that's old Trek - new Trek just says 'fuck it.'

But SNW works because it's just FUN, and this episode was no exception. The cast is a huge part of that, and that is one thing the writing does consistently well.

When it's not fun and takes itself seriously those writing issues show more.

But here you overlook stuff like this, or the fact that even with Spock becoming human and evidently going through adolescence (?) he's still Spock, he didn't lose his memories, and he absolutely wouldn't have needed to have explained to him how Vulcans speak or the components of the rituals, etc.

The first couple of episodes this season were Meh in my opinion, but they've done well with the last three and I hope they keep it up.

He also wouldn’t stop being a vegetarian.

yeah, that one was a bit of a gaff... but worth it.

then again, they've also shown him drinking both blood wine and bourbon, and I'm pretty sure Vulcans are straight edge.

He drank the blood wine in order to prove to the Klingon captain that he was being truthful so it was for the safety of the crew. He drank the whiskey for ritualistic purposes because he was learning to cook from Pike and I suppose it's bad form to turn down a drink from your captain. Both seem like the most logical course of action.

logically, that'd excuse the bacon then

The only problem is wouldn't Pike know he doesn't eat meat so he wouldn't offer it in the first place?

I was thinking, why didn’t Pike stop him from eating the bacon? He knows Spock is vegetarian. He knows they are going to do everything to make Spock “right” again. He knows Spock is going to be upset about eating the bacon. So, why didn’t he even try to stop him? First, not after Spock was ready to hurl.

Do they though? I'm not saying you're at all wrong, I'm just trying to expand these things a skosh, when it comes to our thought processes.

The blood wine makes sense for the reasons that you give, it's the whiskey and the meat that I'm thinking there might be a bit of a flaw in your argument (though not an unreasonable one). If Vulcans drink alcohol or imbibe other intoxicants, I can see it for reasons such as a social nature (you know, you're dining with members of another species and they drink booze with their meals, etc.), or it's used as part of their various rituals to keep them focused on rationality.

At the same time, however, one would expect Pike to know that Spock was a low-use individual when it comes to recreational pharmaceuticals, even if he was unfamiliar with Vulcans needing to get their freak on every seven years. So, what Pike could be doing is a test of Spock. He's seeing if Spock's someone who'll rigidly adhere to the customs of his own people and not explore those of non-Vulcans. Of course, if you're Spock, you have to worry that this is a bit of a trap. If you say to your captain, "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't drink alcohol or eat animal products," ideally, he should respect that. After all, he's someone you're going to be working closely with, and your lives will depend upon one another, so you don't want to be connected with someone who'll let you get killed because you didn't touch his Spam banana surprise dinner. At the same time, there's going to be instances, such as with the blood wine, where it makes sense for Spock to ignore the prohibitions against booze, etc. The question is: Is this one of those instances? I don't know.

Also, while Vulcans being vegans (because, let's face it, if they refuse to eat animal flesh, they're also going to refuse to eat things like dairy, so they're vegans) makes sense, it doesn't automatically follow that he would refuse every offering of meat handed to him. Because while TOS never really hit on the idea of replicators (though some episodes did give the implication that they existed), we've got vat grown-meat now, so even if they haven't fully worked out replicators by Pike's era, it is entirely possible that Spock could eat animal products that didn't involve the suffering of any animals, because it's all synthetic. It really depends upon how far down that particular rabbit hole you want to go.

I thought about that too, it could be fake bacon, fakon. TM The whiskey can't be synthahol though because in the TNG episode "Relics" Scotty had never heard of synthahol. I'm thinking Spock knows one shot of whisky isn't going to impair his judgement so he did it out of respect for Pike.

From what I understand, Vulcans being Vulcans is 20% Vulcan physiology, and 80% all the rituals and meditation they do. I mean, Spock is half-human and he generally manages to keep up with full Vulcans on Vulcanness, he just has to put in a bit more effort sometimes. After becoming fully human, he should still be able to act Vulcan, just struggle a bit more. Like wincing a bit when picking up the tea pot, or excusing himself to go into the bathroom and scream into a cushion.

Going about it that way may have worked as a side plot, but as the main plot, it would have been boring, and going a bit more extreme with it was probably the right call.

It's bacon, that's all that needs to be said.

The last episode was the first 5/5 I've given any NuTrek episode.

This run of episodes is the most I've enjoyed TV Trek in 25 years. This episode in particular snuffed out any lingering doubts.

What an about turn. Watching Trek and not bitching about it.

I agree that was the way to handle it, I just miss the old days when they would have addressed it. For example, a simple line that he was suffering from some long term memory loss or brain fog would have been more than enough. It would have also given Christine a more urgent reason to try to 'fix' him.

Overall I really enjoy SNW, but in general I've noticed more and more shows just ignoring problems or even large plot holes simply because it's convenient. I'm a fan of good writing, so it annoys me when they do these things. In this case, it didn't bother me us much because the show was very fun.

Pike didn't offer it to him. Pike was cooking with it, and Spock asked what it was that smelled so good, and then Spock wanted it and had it.

Ideally, Pike would have brought up that Spock was vegetarian.

It's possible that Pike didn't know that, though it seems unlikely. And it's possible that Pike knew that and thought it was OK for human Spock to eat meat.

It's also that the writers forgot/did not know that Spock and other Vulcans are generally vegetarian.

which brings us back to only in the same sense that he knew Spock doesn't drink, but still poured him a glass.

and as Raoul pointed out, Spock chose the bacon whereas he was offered the drink.

As far as I know, synthehol didn't exist in the Federation in Scotty's time -- I think a non-canon source said it was invented by the Ferengi who would use it to ply people into drunkenness and then swindle them because the Ferengi could shut off the the effects. Then they realized there was an actual market for synthehol.

But that Scotty, huge drinker though he is, hadn't heard of synthehol does not mean that it doesn't exist in his time.

It's fair to assume the Scotty who showed up in Relics wasn't 100 percent at his best memory, in light of his comment that he thought Kirk got the Enterprise out of mothballs to save him, when in light of Generations, Scotty should have believed Kirk was dead.

Jesus tapdancing... only a bunch of nerds could spend a page and a half parsing the nuances of Spock eating meat or drinking alcohol.

it's a nice change to discuss character development without some folks being aggrieved over gender or emotional expression?

You should see TBBS, they have like 35 pages talking about this stuff.

Spock isn't a Mormon or a recovering alcoholic; he's just a guy who doesn't drink alcohol because he's never seen any point in it. By offering him a drink, Pike isn't leading him to harm himself or violate any of his ethical convictions.

Similarly, he doesn't seem to have any moral objection to intoxication -- when he gets a buzz off of the sucrose in a peppermint patty in TVH, his only real concern is that his impaired judgment might make it harder to carry out the mission.

So it doesn't seem like Pike did anything wrong in offering him a drink.

With the bacon, eating meat is against his moral convictions, but Pike wasn't egging him on in any way.

Are Vulcans vegetarian for moral reasons, or simply because raising livestock is an inefficient method of producing food and they live on a desert planet where water and arable land are extremely scarce? I'm sure they claim it's a morally superior stance when it gives them a chance to look down on other species, but I question their actual motives.

I've heard the theory that their touch telepathy works on animals (we see Spock use it on Gracie the whale) so killing animals to eat is like killing your pet times 1000.
Course, the Spore Network fucks this all up.

I believe there's an episode of TOS where Spock says something along the lines that it's a primitive thing to kill an animal for nourishment and T'Pol says that Vulcans have been vegetarians for hundreds of years.

Yeah, I know.

Does it matter? Spock is vegetarian. We know this. It is established within the story. Pike should have known and should have at the very least asked Spock if he was sure he wanted to eat meat or drink alcohol and reminded him that he isn't thinking clearly and that he may regret those choices.

I trust Christopher Pike enough to assume that he wouldn't tempt someone with meat or alcohol if he knew they had a moral or religious code against such things. Since he seems to host group meals for his crew regularly, I'm sure he's familiar with all of their dietary restrictions and the reasons behind them.

Well. If you trust him. Then I guess everything is all good.

A quick line of dialogue would have solved these minor quibbles. Same thing with the Vulcans not exploring that moon. It was said in Enterprise that Vulcans don't explore like humans, but that moon is in their sector, you'd think they would want to check it out, but most people apparently confused sector with system and sectors include multiple systems so it's possible they just didn't have a need to explore it.