Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 8 Review — Four-and-a-Half Vulcans

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers for season 3 episode 8.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that even the best television shows have average episodes. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fans are more spoiled than most, simply because we don’t get them very often. In fact, subpar episodes of this series tend to just be straight-up bad before they’re anything as pedestrian as mediocre. See also: Last week’s weird faux documentary, which easily clocked in as the worst episode of the season. Happily, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” isn’t nearly as irritating. But unfortunately, that’s also not the same thing as saying it’s good. 

Maybe it’s that we already saw the episode’s central reveal—four of our favorite Enterprise crew members suddenly become Vulcans—as part of a package of Comic-Con clips released back in 2024 and have had far too long to internalize it. But something about the whole thing feels strangely anticlimactic. To be fair, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” manages to pull off some solid comedic moments, but much of the episode feels more like a series of ideas for various jokes strung together than an actual cohesive story that has anything new to say about its characters.

While on a brief stop for some shore leave, the Enterprise receives an urgent message from the Vulcan High Command. The planet of Tezaar, which isn’t a member of the Federation and technically doesn’t have warp technology yet, is in the throes of a particularly unique emergency.  Their energy system, which was gifted to them from the Vulcans—who made contact with them before the Federation’s founding, thereby not actually violating the Prime Directive—is failing, which means a planetwide nuclear meltdown is imminent. All Vulcan ships are too far away to get to Tezaar in time to repair it before it overloads, which means that the Enterprise is their only hope. (So weird how often some variation of this scenario seems to happen, is all I’m saying.)

But because the Tezaarans have extremely advanced scanning technology, the Starfleet crew can’t just disguise themselves as Vulcans. They have to be Vulcans, which is where Chapel’s newly modified version of the serum that saved the day back when Spock was turned human last season comes in. Pike, Uhura, La’an, Chapel, and Pelia all dose themselves with it, but the latter’s Lanthanite metabolism keeps her from transforming. (Which is honestly a shame, as the idea of a Vulcan version of the loud, hedonistic Pelia is intriguing.)

Strangely, however, after all this build-up, we don’t actually see anything of the rescue mission they’re ostensibly meant to be on, outside of an admittedly badass slo-mo power walk down a ship’s corridor. The threat of nuclear disaster is solved in the space of a couple of minutes, and the speed of its solution is played for laughs. The gang returns to the ship almost immediately, where (to the likely surprise of no one who’s ever seen this show before) the antidote doesn’t work, and they’re all stuck as Vulcans for the foreseeable.

Initially, it feels as though “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” is going to be a Spock episode. There’s the title, for one thing, and the fact that the first thing that the newly changed Enterprise team members glom onto is how Spock is only half Vulcan. (The implication being, of course, that he’s lesser than they are because of it. They’re pretty rude about it, honestly.) But the issue doesn’t really come up again for whatever reason, and the bulk of the hour focuses on the rest of the gang trying to navigate various issues in their personal lives from a more logical, Vulcan perspective. That goes about as well as anyone might expect. 

Pike’s hair has somehow grown at least three sizes in the course of his transformation, and, thanks to his newfound Vulcan obsessions with food and tidiness, Anson Mount gets the rare chance to show off the fact that, underneath his general golden retriever demeanor, he really is an excellent comedic actor. (Someone cast this man in a rom-com, please!) It seems, however, that for the second (third?) week in a row, we just won’t be addressing the fact that his girlfriend seems to occasionally be partially possessed by a Gorn whenever the storyline needs it. (She has….super strength now? Maybe? Sometimes?) 

Batel’s not the only character whose trauma comes and goes when the story requires it. Ortegas, despite her early-season struggles with PTSD, now seems remarkably fine, though understandably upset when she realizes that Uhura’s essentially used a Vulcan mind meld to brainwash Beto into being a more palatable (and malleable) boyfriend. Given that this episode leans into the idea that these people are still humans at their core despite being transformed into Vulcans, it says something….let’s just call it uncomfortable that this is the first thing Uhura decides to do with her new, more efficient consciousness. For her part, Chapel doubles down on becoming a workaholic, severing all the personal relationships in her life, while La’an becomes increasingly violent, obsessed with weapons and the prospect of war. Spock says this has something to do with the fact that she’s half human and half Augment, which is another interesting idea that doesn’t get explored in any real depth. (Here’s hoping that bit where Pike and La’an both appear to acknowledge they remember their encounters with Romulans goes somewhere before the end of the season. 

The best moments in “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” generally don’t have much to do with the whole Vulcan problem. Every time Pelia is onscreen is delightful, and the seeds of what will become James Kirk and Montgomery Scott’s future friendship are planted during a side quest in which they have to prevent La’an from starting a war for fun. It might be better if we all just forget the awful subplot featuring Patton Oswalt as Una’s ex ever existed. Truly, we deserve to learn more about Number One’s life outside of her role on the Enterprise, but this subplot about her being unable to get over her intense sexual attraction to someone as uninteresting as Doug feels almost insulting, not to mention wildly out of character for the woman we’ve gotten to know up until this point. (Also, it’s just awkward as hell. No matter how funny Ethan Peck is while Spock’s pretending to be married to her.)

Maybe that’s the problem here—this whole episode is awkward. It’s weirdly paced, oddly pointless, and doesn’t even seem to have a coherent central message. Is it that we are who we are deep down, no matter what species we happen to resemble? That too much logic can be just as dangerous as too much emotion? That La’an is epically bad at relationships? Your guess is as good as mine. 

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with a finale on Sept. 11.

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