8 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.2 — Wedding Bell Blues

This writer is almost contractually obliged to give this UP, Seán's eyes and the weight of his own family name boring into his soul. More to the point, Cillian O'Sullivan, Irish or otherwise, deserves praise for his brilliant performance as Doctor Roger Korby in Wedding Bell Blues.

 "First Cork man in Space [sic]! Claimed it," O'Sullivan noted on Instagram, even though, as he told the Strange New Pod last month, he wanted to play Korby in a British accent (don't shoot the messenger!) It was executive producer Akiva Goldsman who made the call to stick with Irish. As for the 'original' Korby, it was always tough to know what his accent truly was.

For this earlier version of Korby, O'Sullivan gets to make the character his own. His portrayal is as charming as it is comedic, playing beat for beat with titan of comedy, Rhys Darby. "It's DOCTOR!" might become the new tagline for "Korbs," the expert in Advanced Ancient Cultures who is also far from a fossil.

The exploration of Spock's emotional side in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been, as he would put it, 'fascinating'. We are sometimes quick to forget that Spock is half-human, though Vulcans have emotions too. It's not like he never cracked a smile in The Original Series!

Though feelings have always been about balance for the character, Strange New Worlds occasionally drifts into pure emotionalism and sentimentality. From before Hegemony, Part II to Wedding Bell Blues, Spock's lovesick pining after Nurse Chapel edges towards teenage obsession and jealousy rather than adult interaction (in the workplace). 'Moody' and 'jealous' are hardly endearing traits in anyone, let alone in the beloved science officer.

Then again, the premise of Wedding Bell Blues relies on the emotional tension between Korby, Spock, and Chapel, a tension which, by the end, appears to have been partly resolved. Spock's interactions with Korby were also highly entertaining. In the main, we know what the more distant future holds for all three characters. For the moment, we just hope Spock can put aside some of that sulkiness.

"Don't yell Q! They haven't met him yet," scolded Beckett Mariner in Those Old Scientists. "They had kind of a Trelane thing going on." Well, with a good deal of finger snapping and snappy dressing in Wedding Bell Blues, it seems like they always had both.

When it was announced at New York Comic Con last year that Rhys Darby would be joining the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as a "legacy character," high on the list of speculation was Trelane, the mischievous, quasi-omnipotent being from The Squire of Gothos.

The teaser trailer all but confirmed it with that outfit. Whilst the episode itself doesn't definitively say anything either way, it is heavily implied that the wise-cracking, finger-clicking wedding planner IS, indeed, Trelane, and that Trelane, long-suspected, is a Q (more on that later).

If Darby is 'Trelane,' he was the perfect choice for the role. He plays the character with the precise amount of camp and childish hubris — at once old and much younger than his 8,020 'Earth years'. The zingers and one-liners roll off the tongue. We, the audience, are as "happy as a Ternaran bat," whatever one of those is.

Doubly clever — no one aboard the starship or the starbase ever sees Darby's face in William Campbell-style Trelane/Q form (save for as an energy cloud near the end). That was a great way to keep in check with canon. Hardly a piece of cake, yet very well done!

After the high-octane, gut-wrenching stakes of Hegemony and Hegemony, Part II, La'an was always due a break. It had been three months since she had helped send the Gorn packing at the end of a phaser rifle. For her, the induced hibernation also meant the end, however temporary, of a lifetime of worry about the Gorn's return.

We knew Christina Chong could sing, as in, really really sing! We'd also caught a glimpse at her dancing abilities in Subspace Rhapsody. In Wedding Bell Blues, Chong gets to show off a lot more of her moves when La'an takes on the task of teaching Spock a few steps before the centennial celebrations, and then again pre-wedding when reality is changed.

The result is delightful — a moment of calm mixed with humour. It is surely a nod to a certain 'Dancing Doctor' and her equally stiff and logical student of another Enterprise. Data needed to stop staring at his feet. Spock needed to loosen up those shoulders. 

What Are Little Girls Made Of? asks the nursery rhyme and the episode of Star Trek: Original Series that first featured Doctor Roger Korby. Like the rhyme once more, Wedding Bell Blues asks the same question about the boys. Slapstick comedy, creative insults, and an actual dog ensue.

Spock's punch right on Korby's kisser was as out-of-the-blue as it was hilarious. And who would win in a rigorous battle of intellect? We might be about to find out. Spock's attempts to awaken Sam Kirk from the wedding planner's spell were inspired. We all like your moustache, Sam!

Best man, then maid of honour, at the wedding of his own girlfriend, Korby was compelled to object even though the question hadn't been asked. For his trouble, Rhys Darby's Wedding Planner transformed him into a dog — a British bulldog, in fact (still in frilly suit).

That was surely designed to hurt the Irishman more than all the rest. Note that John de Lancie's Q once changed Doctor Crusher into an Irish Setter, and later tried to woo Captain Janeway with one too.

"Been waiting so long to post this. Ensign Gamble, reporting for duty! (I don't actually say this line)," noted actor Chris Myers on Instagram yesterday, picture in the doorway of a turbolift and all. Welcome aboard!

Though Nurse Gamble is not named as such in Wedding Bell Blues, we do learn that he was temporarily assigned to the Enterprise to cover Nurse Chapel in her absence. He impressed so much over the three months that his "direct supervisor," Doctor M'Benga had already requested that Starfleet Medical make his transfer permanent. "I like you, Ensign," noted Una. So do we! So do we!

We got to see more of Gamble a little later in the episode, now in civies for those cocktail drinks in the port galley. We'll forgive him for the rather endearing faux pas when Spock arrived, too. He is pretty new to this crew, after all. It also gave us the chance to see Doctor Korby's brilliant deflection away from a suddenly awkward "romantic story".

Well, that was a surprise! John de Lancie is Rhys Darby's Wedding Planner's Dad. Credited in the subtitles simply as "ENERGY BEING," we can all read between the lines. This is Q (Senior), making Darby Q Junior, thus making Q Junior also very likely Trelane.

These connections are hardly new, though they've never before been made in canon (unless you include Mariner's comment in Those Old Scientists). On the invention of Q in the first place, Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation writer David Gerrold once commented, "It's Trelane all over again".

The similarities between Darby's Wedding Planner and Trelane of The Squire of Gothos (especially in that episode's ending) are too striking to ignore. Finally, though non-canonical, Peter David's novel Q-Squared confirmed that Trelane was a member of the Continuum.

As for Q Junior, we first met him in the Star Trek: Voyager episode The Q and the Grey. He returned, several years older, and played by de Lancie's real-life son Keegan, in Q2. In the latter episode, on Captain Janeway's suggestion, Q leaves to spend time with his son, years, in fact, "in Q time," though less than ten minutes on Voyager's "temporal plane". Could that timey-wimey gap be the 'Trelane years' for Q Junior? Could one of those parents at the end of The Squire of Gothos be Suzie Plakson's female Q?

In Wedding Bell Blues, John de Lancie's Q says to son down below, "Shall I show you once more what the consequence is for disobedience?" That has echoes of what father said to Trelane at the end of The Squire of Gothos — "You're disobedient and cruel". It is also reminiscent of the 'punishment' inflicted by Q and the Continuum on Q Junior for his misbehaviour in Q2 — "life as an Oprelian amoeba," or "How's that for consequences?"

Federation Day looks like a lot more fun than Frontier Day. Both occasions celebrate the pioneering exploits of Captain Archer and crew, who've already enjoyed a few mentions in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. For this, the centennial of the founding of the Federation, it would have been the cherry on top of that wedding cake if T'Pol had shown up. We hold out hope.

Pike's awkward speech about 'awkward interactions' to mark the occasion was a spectacle to behold. Cut to two Bolians: Is he talking about us? "And the bar is open" to our first ever live-action Edosian and master mixologist with the multiple appendages. Just don't drink the Alanni Rye if you are fond of your oesophagus! It looks like this Edosian has also bagged a gig aboard the Enterprise.

This was a moment of shared joy for the crew, especially post-Gorn. Joy is an accurate descriptor for the episode as a whole, transmitted through the screen as Wham!'s 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' begins to play. For one member of the crew, however, events had taken a much darker turn.

After her terrifying brush with death in Hegemony, Part II, things started off well for Ortegas in Wedding Bell Blues, back on her feet and boxing her little brother Beto (aka "the Haymaker"). Outwardly, she was in good spirits, making jokes about the mounting flirtations between Beto and Uhura. From the beginning, however, there were indications that, deep down, she was struggling.

When Beto began using his camera drone to film the sparring match on the Enterprise, Ortegas' reaction was more than just the 'get that thing out of my face' that us slightly older folk can sometimes feel. She was evidently affected by the camera's presence on a more profound level, punching it so hard it nearly wound up filming the next centennial.

At the episode's end, Ortegas makes manifest her trauma into the punching bag, having left the party early in no mood to dance. Moving to the window, she sees a Gorn in the reflection, but there is no Gorn behind her in the room. A hallucination, perhaps? Only further episodes will tell. It was certainly a dramatic twist to an otherwise comedic tale.

After 'Dad' appeared, Q Junior/Trelane/Rhys Darby's Wedding planner explained to Spock why he had been so fixated on Doctor Roger Korby this whole time. "I spotted him [Korby] digging in the dirt on the old homeworld," he noted. THAT is likely one of the biggest reveals we've ever had about the Q as species.

The origins of the Q have been shrouded in mystery. In Death Wish, Quinn suggested that the Q evolved from humanoid-like beings. In The Q and the Grey, on the other hand, John de Lancie's Q stated that "the Q didn't come into existence. The Q have always existed". Now, it would seem the species had a homeworld. By Korby's digging location, that homeworld would have to be Vadia IX.

Furthermore, whether green/blue energy is, in fact, the Q's 'natural' (evolved) state, or whether that was more of a visual nod to The Squire of Gothos, we simply don't know for the moment.

Of particular note amongst numerous other references was Spock's "Vulcans as a rule do not dance" to La'an. That may or may not have been a subtle allusion to Tuvok's similar aversions and Neelix's persistent bothering in Homestead.

Whilst reality was altered, Sam Kirk also brought a bottle of Saurian brandy to Spock's bachelor party. That beverage has featured countless times in Star Trek over the years. Scotty's reply to being offered a glass was, then, dripping with irony — "honestly, I'm not really much of a drinker. I hardly touch the stuff".

The rest, as they say, is counting tribbles.