Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 3 Viewing (Spoilers)

[Micah Sweet]

They aren't acting like bad caricatures. How can you tell? Pike's hair.

No, I am not kidding.

What they are showing you is the effect of pure logic - unless you are careful, like Spock, it magnifies one's base assumptions and preconceptions, like it magnified Pike's hair. Logic takes you to extremes if you don't pay attention.

If you are paranoid and lean to violent solutions, you get Vulcan La'an. If you are an over-achiever, you get Vulcan Chapel. If at your core you are a people-pleaser with fantastic hair, you get Vulcan Pike.

It demonstrates how much work (and self-honesty) is required to be a balanced Vulcan like Spock is.

Now that is an explanation I can get behind! Thank you!

 

[Ryujin]

They aren't acting like bad caricatures. How can you tell? Pike's hair.

No, I am not kidding.

What they are showing you is the effect of pure logic - unless you are careful, like Spock, it magnifies one's base assumptions and preconceptions, like it magnified Pike's hair. Logic takes you to extremes if you don't pay attention.

If you are paranoid and lean to violent solutions, you get Vulcan La'an. If you are an over-achiever, you get Vulcan Chapel. If at your core you are a people-pleaser with fantastic hair, you get Vulcan Pike.

It demonstrates how much work (and self-honesty) is required to be a balanced Vulcan like Spock is.

Check out Anson Mount's Instagram for his explanation of the hair.

 

[MarkB]

They aren't acting like bad caricatures. How can you tell? Pike's hair.

No, I am not kidding.

What they are showing you is the effect of pure logic - unless you are careful, like Spock, it magnifies one's base assumptions and preconceptions, like it magnified Pike's hair. Logic takes you to extremes if you don't pay attention.

If you are paranoid and lean to violent solutions, you get Vulcan La'an. If you are an over-achiever, you get Vulcan Chapel. If at your core you are a people-pleaser with fantastic hair, you get Vulcan Pike.

It demonstrates how much work (and self-honesty) is required to be a balanced Vulcan like Spock is.

That's a reasonable in-universe explanation for why they're acting like racist charicaturea of Vulcans. But they totally are.

 

[Umbran]

That's a reasonable in-universe explanation for why they're acting like racist charicaturea of Vulcans. But they totally are.

What they were doing was actually pretty consistent with other depictions of Vulcans in canon.

Imagining that all Vulcans are like Spock would be the racist bit. Allowing them variation implies diversity among them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What they were doing was actually pretty consistent with other depictions of Vulcans in canon.

Imagining that all Vulcans are like Spock would be the racist bit. Allowing them variation implies diversity among them.

Except they're all extremists with preferences, so not really all that diverse.

 

[MarkB]

What they were doing was actually pretty consistent with other depictions of Vulcans in canon.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. To me they were such exaggerated parodies that they'd be considered cringeworthy racism if they were of a real-world culture.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, they certainly could have tried a little harder there.

Yeah but again, there's so much of this permeating Trek already that coming up with a better explanation for one thing is like taking an umbrella with you during a hurricane.

Sometimes, when they do try to explain stuff without resorting to meaningless Treknobabble, it's the literal "Voodoo Shark" and just raises more questions. For example, "The Chase" felt the need to explain why there are so many humanoid aliens in our galaxy, and a potential explanation for why so many different species can interbreed, despite some vast differences in biology.

Ok so in order to explain why so many alien races are depicted as just people with weird skin color or stuff glued to their foreheads, which we know was simply due to budget and technical limitations, you introduce this super ancient species who undermine the evolution of species in Trek, especially Humans (as Q seem to see as something special, but apparently they're run of the mill or worse, as they seem to be one of the few aliens who don't have special powers) and in the end reduces all races in the Galaxy to what? a lab experiment by the Progenitors?

Or how an otherwise excellent episode of Strange New Worlds tries to explain the wonky timing of The Eugenics Wars, despite the fact that, as time goes on, it's still going to end up becoming dated, rather than just admit "yes, actually Star Trek isn't our future" which we all know it can't be already.

And patching The Eugenics Wars does nothing to fix The Bell Riots place in the timeline.

 

[Dire Bare]

That's a reasonable in-universe explanation for why they're acting like racist charicaturea of Vulcans. But they totally are.

Not so much "in-universe" but metaphorically. In universe, they gave the same wishy-washy explanation as above, that since the serum is based on Spock, somehow Spock's view of Vulcans is affecting the team.

Makes no sense to me. But the metaphor Umbran mentions I think is the writer's intent.

I still had to turn my brain off for it, so I could enjoy the episode. Which I did, it was a lot of fun!

 

[Kaodi]

They aren't acting like bad caricatures. How can you tell? Pike's hair.

No, I am not kidding.

What they are showing you is the effect of pure logic - unless you are careful, like Spock, it magnifies one's base assumptions and preconceptions, like it magnified Pike's hair. Logic takes you to extremes if you don't pay attention.

If you are paranoid and lean to violent solutions, you get Vulcan La'an. If you are an over-achiever, you get Vulcan Chapel. If at your core you are a people-pleaser with fantastic hair, you get Vulcan Pike.

It demonstrates how much work (and self-honesty) is required to be a balanced Vulcan like Spock is.

That is an interesting explanation but I am not sure I completely buy it. Self-awareness is logical, and these guys displayed none. They also failed to expressed the idea that cosplaying as another species when one had a choice not to was wrong, regardless of the abilities conferred, especially in light of Federation laws against genetic modification. This was highly illogical.

 

[Ryujin]

That is an interesting explanation but I am not sure I completely buy it. Self-awareness is logical, and these guys displayed none. They also failed to expressed the idea that cosplaying as another species when one had a choice not to was wrong, regardless of the abilities conferred, especially in light of Federation laws against genetic modification. This was highly illogical.

I don't generally quote Janeway, because she was a terrible captain, but - "You can use logic to justify almost anything. That's its power - and its flaw."