Latest news with #Spock
New Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
A pinch of strangeness at play
How many of you have played rock, paper, scissors? We played it all the time in school — sometimes just as a game, sometimes to decide who would play first in a game, and sometimes to break a tie. I remember, a few years ago, watching an episode of the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon comes up with a new version of rock, paper, scissors called 'rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock.' I was amused that someone could complicate such a simple game. However, this perspective changed when I attended a conference on traditional games in Spain. One of the delegates demonstrated on stage the game of Morra. It is a more sophisticated version of rock, paper, scissors, and is played in various versions across Europe. It is a hand game, that I understand, dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times. While there are many variations of Morra, most forms can be played with a minimum of two players. In the most popular version, the players throw out a single hand, each showing zero to five fingers, and call out their guess as to the sum of all fingers.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EPs Tease Spock and Chapel's Future — Does He Have a New Love Interest?
Warning: This post contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 2 of . Spock's heart was shattered — if Vulcan hearts can even shatter, that is — this week on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But a fellow Enterprise crew member may be about to mend that heart. More from TVLine Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EP Breaks Down Pike's Emotional Struggle in Premiere: 'It's an Opportunity for Him to Dig Deeper' It's Official: Samuel L. Jackson to Star in Tulsa King Spinoff NOLA King at Paramount+ - See First Photo Evil Cast, Creators Still 'Sit Around and Talk About It Endlessly,' Aasif Mandvi Says - See Reunion Photo In Season 3's second episode (which hit Paramount+ on Thursday), Spock was excited to welcome Chapel back after her fellowship, but she didn't return alone: She was accompanied by her dashing new boyfriend, Dr. Roger Korby, played by Cillian O'Sullivan. Spock had trouble processing her new romance — it's not logical! — but after a mischievous alien created an alternate reality where Spock and Chapel were about to be married, Spock realized it wasn't right and did the noble thing, reuniting her with Korby. So now that they're no longer a romantic item, what's next for Spock and Chapel as shipmates? 'They will have to interact,' executive producer Henry Alonso Myers tells TVLine, and 'that interaction will be dramatic, no matter what… We promise you that those great dramatic and comic scenes between them will continue on. Just because we end that particular romantic part of their relationship doesn't mean that there aren't future interesting parts of the relationship that you're gonna run right into the face of.' Spock and Chapel have 'a very complex relationship that they don't always spend enough time talking about,' Myers points out, 'and that's part of the challenge that they run into.' Fellow EP Akiva Goldsman adds that 'we love the characters [of Spock and Chapel], and so they're going through a thing, you know. It's hard.' What might make it easier, though, is a new romantic prospect for Spock, and we saw some hints of that in his interactions with security officer La'an in Episode 2. (We're not the only ones who felt a vibe from those dance lessons, right?) Spock and La'an's connection is 'more casual, and more grown-up,' Myers notes. 'They come into it very much like adults who appreciate what they have to offer each other. They're friends first, I would say.' But maybe not just friends in the end, we're thinking. Are you liking the idea of Spock and La'an together? Or are you still holding out hope for a rekindling with Chapel? Beam down to the comments to give us your thoughts. Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EPs Tease Spock and Chapel's Future — Does He Have a New Love Interest?
Warning: This post contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 2 of . Spock's heart was shattered — if Vulcan hearts can even shatter, that is — this week on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. But a fellow Enterprise crew member may be about to mend that heart. More from TVLine Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EP Breaks Down Pike's Emotional Struggle in Premiere: 'It's an Opportunity for Him to Dig Deeper' It's Official: Samuel L. Jackson to Star in Tulsa King Spinoff NOLA King at Paramount+ - See First Photo Evil Cast, Creators Still 'Sit Around and Talk About It Endlessly,' Aasif Mandvi Says - See Reunion Photo In Season 3's second episode (which hit Paramount+ on Thursday), Spock was excited to welcome Chapel back after her fellowship, but she didn't return alone: She was accompanied by her dashing new boyfriend, Dr. Roger Korby, played by Cillian O'Sullivan. Spock had trouble processing her new romance — it's not logical! — but after a mischievous alien created an alternate reality where Spock and Chapel were about to be married, Spock realized it wasn't right and did the noble thing, reuniting her with Korby. So now that they're no longer a romantic item, what's next for Spock and Chapel as shipmates? 'They will have to interact,' executive producer Henry Alonso Myers tells TVLine, and 'that interaction will be dramatic, no matter what… We promise you that those great dramatic and comic scenes between them will continue on. Just because we end that particular romantic part of their relationship doesn't mean that there aren't future interesting parts of the relationship that you're gonna run right into the face of.' Spock and Chapel have 'a very complex relationship that they don't always spend enough time talking about,' Myers points out, 'and that's part of the challenge that they run into.' Fellow EP Akiva Goldsman adds that 'we love the characters [of Spock and Chapel], and so they're going through a thing, you know. It's hard.' What might make it easier, though, is a new romantic prospect for Spock, and we saw some hints of that in his interactions with security officer La'an in Episode 2. (We're not the only ones who felt a vibe from those dance lessons, right?) Spock and La'an's connection is 'more casual, and more grown-up,' Myers notes. 'They come into it very much like adults who appreciate what they have to offer each other. They're friends first, I would say.' But maybe not just friends in the end, we're thinking. Are you liking the idea of Spock and La'an together? Or are you still holding out hope for a rekindling with Chapel? Beam down to the comments to give us your thoughts. Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS' Latest Episode Connects the Original Series, NEXT GENERATION, and VOYAGER
In Strange New Worlds' second episode of season three, 'Wedding Bell Blues,' the writers pay homage to several parts of the Star Trek franchise. Not only does it seemingly reference a classic episode of the original series, but it also references Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. And it even pays homage to a non-canonical Star Trek novel by the late, great author and comic book writer Peter David. And and, it features a voice cameo from a true Star Trek icon, John de Lancie as Q. Here's how this new, seemingly frivolous comedic episode ties in various parts of the Star Trek canon across decades. In 'Wedding Bell Blues,' the Enterprise docks at Federation Starbase 1 with a three-month layover for repairs after their encounter with the Gorn in the previous episode. They are also welcoming back Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is coming back from a three-month sabbatical where she studied medical archaeology under Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O' Sullivan). When she returns from her time away, she reveals she's now dating Korby, breaking Spock's Vulcan heart. A now despondent Spock (Ethan Peck) goes to the Starbase 1 bar. There, he drowns his sorrows over Christine entering into a new relationship. Fans of the original Star Trek may remember that Nurse Chapel had a fiancé named Dr. Korby, who had been presumed missing for years. The TOS episode 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' back in 1967 revealed most of this Nurse Chapel backstory. Spock meets an odd bartender with muttonchops who remains nameless, played by Our Flag Means Death actor Rhys Darby. Although he appears human, Spock sees him as Vulcan. This odd fellow promises to fix his current romantic predicament somehow. The next morning, Spock wakes up in bed, next to Christine. We learn that today is their wedding day, and not the Federation centennial as it originally was. The only person on board the Enterprise who seemingly remembers the truth is Dr. Korby. Only he remembers that he and Christine are a couple. After Spock (very uncharacteristically) punches him, he remembers the real version of events. He and Korby try to convince the crew that this version of events is a fabrication. Eventually, they realize the odd bartender, also posing as an Andorian wedding planner, is an omnipotent being messing with reality. The being says he didn't like Korby doing archeological digs on his home planet, and wanted to get back at him. The character's look and demeanor draws heavy inspiration from the character of Trelane. Played by William Campbell, he appeared in the TOS episode 'The Squire of Gothos.' In that episode, the crew of Kirk's Enterprise beam down to a mysterious planet. There, a reality-bending entity dressed in 18th-century clothing named Trelane captures members of the crew. He toys with them for his own amusement, like a child playing with insects. He's only stopped when two beings of pure energy arrive, and take him away. Their respective attitudes in that scene reveal that Trelane is a child, despite presenting as a human adult. The two beings are presumably his parents. The mysterious being on Strange New Worlds has a look and demeanor almost identical to Trelane. In fact, the unnamed being could very well be Trelane himself. He's messing with reality seemingly only to amuse himself. And he's also a 'child.' When his parent appears like a swirling bit of energy to take him away, it's a direct reference to the end of 'The Squire of Gothos.' And that's where the Star Trek: Next Generation connection comes in. The voice of the parent being is none other than John de Lancie, who played Q in several iterations of Star Trek, but primarily on The Next Generation. In addition, this episode recalls the fourth season TNG episode 'Qpid,' where Q creates a Robin Hood-inspired fantasy, all to prove a point about love to Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The silly, frivolous tone of 'Wedding Bell Blues' matches the tone of that particular TNG episode almost exactly. The overt suggestion here is that the troublesome being is Q's child, who is 'a mere 8,000 years old.' As for when Q ever had a child, well that takes us straight to Star Trek: Voyager. In that series, Q and a female member of the Q Continuum have a son. Or at the very least, a child who presents as male, as the Q are really genderless. This junior Q first appeared as an infant in the third season Voyager episode 'The Q and the Gray' in 1996. Here, John de Lancie's Q mates with a female version of his race, producing a child. This joining was an effort to stop a civil war within the Q Continuum. Q then makes Captain Kathryn Janeway the baby's godmother, and disappears into the cosmos. A few seasons later, the child shows up again, referred to as 'Q2' in the episode of the same name. Now he presents as a teen male, played by John de Lancie's real-life son Keegan de Lancie. It turns out, he has inherited all of his father's troublesome personality traits. Q2 and his father depart into the cosmos by episode's end. And this episode marks the end of John de Lancie's time as Q for a very long time. He doesn't pop up as Q again until the second season of Star Trek: Picard over twenty years later. As stated in the final episode of Picard, the Q exist outside linear time. So even though Q died at the end of Picard season two, he reappears in the Picard series finale. He tells Picard's son, Jack Crusher, that the Q exist outside of linear existence. So the version of Q that Picard's son Jack meets comes from a different point in his own timeline. This means the young Q we meet in Strange New Worlds may very well be both Trelane from the '60s series, and also Q's son from Voyager. The voice casting of John de Lancie as the 'father' certainly suggests that he is. Neither being refers to itself as part of the Q Continuum, preserving continuity with TNG, who officially make first contact with the Q a century later. This connection between TOS character Trelane and Q, who was created decades later, was first suggested by writer Peter David. The prolific writer, who wrote legendary runs on comics like The Incredible Hulk, Young Justice, and others, first gave this explanation in the 1994 TNG novel 'Q Squared.' That book revealed that Trelane was the godson of Q. However, Peter David heavily hints that Q was Trelane's actual son. Q denies parentage, but Jean-Luc seems to know the truth. Although he wouldn't openly admit this to Picard. If the character on Strange New Worlds played by Rhys Darby is indeed Trelane, and seemingly Q is his true dad, then this makes at least part of Peter David's novel canon. And although the episode was written long before his passing, it's nice to know something he came up with is now official Star Trek canon. 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Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Returns With an Awkward Case of Tonal Whiplash
It's been almost two years since Star Trek: Strange New Worlds left us on a tense cliffhanger, and now it's finally back to pay it off. It is perhaps an unfair pressure to put on the show, that circumstances outside of its control have kept this return anticipated for longer than it should have. But even beyond the context of its Hollywood strikes-induced delay, there was going to be pressure on Strange New Worlds to put its best foot forward regardless. So… it's perhaps not ideal that the series has returned with a bit of a mixed bag. A premiere of two episodes that couldn't be further in tone from one another—one a grim, intense, high-stakes action conclusion to last season's cliffhanger, the other a Spock character piece bursting with goofy, silly shenanigans—season three's debut at its best speaks to the variety of storytelling modes Strange New Worlds can weave itself through. But beyond the specific executions of those plots, these very different episodes both ring a bit hollow in similar ways, as they both struggle to both wrangle with the show's episodic desires with increasingly serialized elements, and also struggle with how they handle their relationships to wider Trek canon. The premiere episode itself, 'Hegemony, Part II' (Strange New Worlds' first actual two-parter, made all the cuter by letting Anson Mount pick up with Star Trek tradition and lead us into the episode with the 'And now, the continuation,' narration!), picks up like there hasn't been a two-year wait to see just what Pike and the Enterprise crew will do to escape the wrath of the Gorn over Parnassus Beta. Like Strange New Worlds' prior Gorn-centric episodes, 'Hegemony, Part II' provides a masterclass in high-stakes tension. Albeit more action-forward than the creepy Alien horror vibes of past Gorn encounters, the episode deftly and cleverly weaves three distinct plotlines together around them. First, we have Pike and the Bridge team racing to try and rescue their captured crew and the missing Parnassian colonists and save the Federation from a potential Gorn invasion; then, elsewhere on Enterprise we have Spock and Chapel trying to save Captain Batel from her Gorn infection; and then we have the aforementioned captured crew themselves—La'an, Ortegas, Sam Kirk, and Dr. M'Benga—trying to escape alive from what can only be described as 'The Collector Base from the ending of Mass Effect 2, but full of Gorn.' It's a lot, and it's all filled with high tension and big action setpieces, from body-horror rescues to starship and ground shootouts, and again, it's all cleverly weaved so everything climaxes together just so: each thread of the narrative ends with our heroes saving the day, in spite of the odds, and with the Gorn, Strange New Worlds' most persistent of threats, are seemingly done for. All that sounds good and fun, right? Well, it mostly is from a spectacle standpoint. But If this really is the end of Strange New Worlds' envisioning of the Gorn (save for some potential lingering trauma this season, more on that next episode) and the show has had all it wants to say in setting up this connection from here to the classic Star Trek episode 'Arena,' then 'Hegemony, Part II' feels like a climax that really doesn't have a vision for the Gorn beyond treating them as unequivocal monsters for the most part. There was a fleeting moment in part one where Spock and Chapel felt a twinge of regret for having to kill a Gorn warrior that seemed to suggest that Strange New Worlds was going to have the potential to pivot and bring some nuance to a species that it had, up to that point, treated as little more than primally aggressive creatures. But while that particular beat is paid off in their shared handling of curing Captain Batel's infection (by feeding the Gorn embryos the sustenance they need so it doesn't fatally burst out of her, letting it absorb into her system), the rest of 'Hegemony, Part II' just continues to do that for the most part. There's some attempts made, sure, as part of the way Pike and the crew eventually discover how they can stop the Gorn from invading the Federation—their aggression, it turns out, is driven by increased solar activity in their home system, with the Enterprise managing to reverse the effect just in time to send a huge Gorn armada back into hibernation. But even that small layer of depth to the titular Hegemony is largely shadowed by Strange New Worlds continuing to portray the Gorn as explicitly animalistic monsters. The Federation doesn't even consider co-existence, it sees war with the Gorn as inevitable and wants Enterprise not to find a peaceful solution, but a way to 'punch back.' The capture of the away team and the colonists reveals that the Gorn, when they don't violently impregnate their victims to breed, just melt down their prisoners into biomass fuel in a long, excruciating, and horrifying process, an act of profound evil. Even when La'an and the mostly-not-melted Enterprise away team (save for poor Ortegas, who loses a good chunk of one of her hands from not being brought out of pod-capitivty soon enough) are making their escape, there's no humanization or understanding: the Gorn are there to run at them in droves and be gunned down. Strange New Worlds' Gorn are treated as largely undeserving of understanding (if anything, making their aggression driven by natural stellar phenomena underlines that these Gorn could never comprehend the concept of diplomacy), monsters that the Federation must bend rules to defeat no matter the cost. And by resolving things, seemingly for good in terms of what's left of Strange New Worlds through putting the Gorn into an early hibernation—that even the show has Pike acknowledge is just punting the issue down the road for someone else to deal with—Strange New Worlds avoids having to wrestle with that treatment, and how it impacts Star Trek's broader approach to treating even the greatest of antagonists with nuance and depth. And even wilder, considering we know what Strange New Worlds is kicking the issue down the road to: it's only six years after the fact when the events of 'Arena' in original Star Trek take place. 'Arena' is an episode of television almost 60 years older than 'Hegemony, Part II' that somehow manages to give its singular Gorn a more nuanced and understanding portayal—and a more nuanced and understanding portrayal of humanity's own path to Star Trek's utopian future, questioning the potential for both humanity and Gornkind alike's potential for violence, and the hope in their striving to rise above it. 'Hegemony, Part II' instead only considers that the Gorn are animals, and deserve conflict until it can make treating them better another show's problem. Among the slick spectacle of all the action and tension that really works here, it's an oddly incurious move for a show in a franchise that prides itself on its curiosity. Well, after all that seriousness, why don't we move on to something fun! 'Wedding Bell Blues' is an interesting parallel to 'Hegemony, Part II' despite being radically different in tone, like the equivalent of a photographer at the titular wedding yelling 'let's do a silly one,' but as an entire episode. If 'Hegemony, Part II' was the contination of the show's action-disaster, year-of-Hell type riffing seen in prior episodes of the Gorn arc across season one and two, then 'Wedding Bell Blues' is, somehow, the third in a line of camp comedies that can only be described as the 'Something Silly Happens During a Time of Tumult In Spock's Love Life' genre. An oddly specific trend! Picking up three months on from the events of 'Hegemony, Part II'—a timeskip that allows Strange New Worlds to conventiently dump having to explore the lingering traumas of those events, for the most part, in order to wildly swing its tone—the episode sees Enterprise docked at Starbase One to celebrate the Federation's centenary, only for things to take an awkward turn when Nurse Chapel returns from her fellowship not to romantically reunite with Spock, but reveal she is now actually in a very serious relationship with her mentor, Dr. Korby (guest star Cillian O'Sullivan) instead. Womp womp! Offered a strange drink by a mysterious bartender (none other than Our Flag Means Death's Rhys Darby) to soothe his heartache, Spock suddenly finds himself waking up in a reality where Enterprise is docked at Starbase One to intead celebrate his impending marriage to Chapel. From there, Strange New Worlds engages in a whole host of familiar comedies, as an unaffected Korby (and soon after a realizing Spock) race to try and snap everyone else out of the the mystery bartender-slash-wedding-planner's illusion. It's a breezy and fun episode, but doesn't really have much to do or say, even building itself around the interesting beat that we're seeing a an inversion of Spock and Christine's relationship in the original Trek (where Chapel pined after an unreciprocating Spock) as he wrestles with letting her go for good. The real hook is not necessarily that character arc, but instead the mystery of who Darby's mystery illusionist really is… To which, again, Strange New Worlds doesn't really have a strong answer. Darby's character has reality warping powers like original Trek's godlike being Trelane from 'Squire of Gothos,' and certainly dresses the part (with the sideburns to match), but the climax of 'Wedding Bell Blues' instead leans more to suggest that Darby is playing a Q, right down to a voice cameo by John de Lancie himself as a shapeless parent entity who shows up to stop the bartender playing with mortals so everyone can get on with actual reality. It's such an odd play to nostalgia, because Darby's riff is neither explictly made out to be Trelane or a member of the Q Continuum in the text of the episode, but kind of a mish-mash of both, an aesthetic here, a particular handmotion. Which is, itself, a seperate play to nostalgia: there's long been a fan theory that retroactively establishes Trelane, who's real nature was never covered in 'Gothos,' as a Q. It's been touched on in Trek books, and even Strange New Worlds itself, via Lower Decks characters Boimler and Mariner joked about it in last season's crossover episode as a nod to the theory. This is the closest on-screen Trek has come to floating it as canon, but again, the episode leaves things vague and unanswered: a cloud voiced by John de Lancie comes in and tells Rhys Darby off, he turns into a cloud himself, and off they both go. What does Strange New World get by digging into this fleeting moment of fanon, but then only gesturing rather than saying anything explicit? What does whether or not this is Trelane, or a Q, or those are both the same thing, push out of our characters? Spock's whole arc of reconciling how he feels about Christine moving on could've easily happened without the diversion of shenanigans. It speaks to a strange relationship with ephemerality that Strange New Worlds has had as it's progressed. The show's desire to maintain that episodic vibe, switching up tone wildly from week to week with little carryover, is brushing up more and more with the times it wants to have things of consequence happen with its characters. Spock is perhaps the rare exception as we've seen him have to process first his doomed betrothal to T'Pring, and now losing Christine. But Chapel herself is put aside in the process of that latter arc, her romance with Korby happening entirely offscreen and then having to be defended on merit through the filter of this reality-warp-wedding-drama (interestingly, the arc of their entire would-be-romance kind of takes place almost entirely through these more comic episodes—getting together after Spock briefly became human in 'Charades,' cutting their relationship off during the musical episode 'Subspace Rhapsody,' and now this). They're not the only two characters impacted in 'Wedding Bell Blues' either. The three-month timeskip lets La'an essentially acknoweledge that she can now be over her traumatic childhood encounter with the Gorn now they are dealt with and seemingly won't show up again, meaning we do not get to really sit with her as she sits with concluding a defining element of her character. There's also Ortegas, who has struggled to exist on the show so much that at this point all the show can do with her is have her say 'I'm Erica Ortegas, and I fly the ship' instead of have an actual character. She literally did that again in 'Hegemony, Part II' after being put through the wringer being horrifically injured during her capture and the escape—a truama 'Wedding Bell Blues' brushes over for the most part, using its timeskip again to even literally handwave her losing part of her hand in the last episode (at least there you can thank Starfleet's advanced medicine). 'Wedding Bell Blues' tries to give Ortegas something more by introducing her brother Beto (Mynor Luken), but he immediately instead becomes a potential romantic foil for Uhura, away from Ortegas' orbit. But it then also concludes with the revelation that, understandably, Ortegas is indeed dealing with trauma over her capture and injuries at the hand of the Gorn: a character depth the episode had spent its entire runtime ignoring, and essentially La'an's own prior character arc now just transferred over to her. Which they can do, because she's not really had much of a character so far, but also because Strange New Worlds' relationship with what actually matters for its characters from week to week has become so weird. 'Hegemony, Part II' and 'Wedding Bell Blues' are a likewise weird set of episodes to pair (perhaps unfairly, as the decision to release both at once is likely not a creative decision on behalf the show, but on Paramount), but they reflect something that's been a flaw in the background of Strange New Worlds for a while now. The series wants to do big, deep things with both its characters and its connection to wider Star Trek continuity, but it also doesn't want to commit with what it means to stick with some of those things in order to maintain its episodic variety. The show wants to jump from horror-disaster-action epics right into camp comedies and clean the slate each time, but cleaning that slate leaves its characters in an odd limbo. Maybe this is just a particularly off combo of episodes to amplify this flaw, but it's also perhaps that Strange New Worlds is now in its third season—and the reality that there are now 24 finite episodes of its runtime ahead of it—and well into a familiar, comfortable pattern with itself. These are both episode formats we've seen the show execute on multiple times before, and now we can see the pattern ourselves… and some of the cracks in its approach, beneath the slick sheen. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
