It is Stardate 2369.2, and Enterprise is docked at Starbase One. Chief Fleet Inspector Commander Pelia from Operational Support Services and her team are performing systems checks and upgrades.
No lawyer will take up Una’s case, not even the lawyer Pike and Una have in mind. The authorities have offered Una a plea deal but Pike advises urges her not to resign. Pike offers to confront the lawyer face to face. She is on the other side of the quadrant, 2.5 days round trip in “one of the newer shuttles”, indicating they are warp capable. Spock becomes Acting Captain, although he points out the lack of a Chief Engineer, a Security Chief and Una’s absence.
M’Benga notes Spock seems to be suffering from stress. He points out that Vulcan emotions are stronger than human ones, but that they control them through suppressive cognitive blocks. Spock removed those blocks to fight the Gorn (SNW: “All Those Who Wander”), so his emotions are flowing more freely.
M’Benga presents Spock with a lyre, to help him channel emotion into expression. The lyre was first seen in TOS: “Charlie X”, and subsequent appearances in canon have established it as a Vulcan lyre (or lute). This suggests that it was M’Benga who gifted Spock his lyre at this moment. This is consistent with M’Benga being familiar with Vulcans because he did his internship on the planet (TOS: “A Private Little War”). Spock’s heart rate goes down as he plays it, only for him to stop and have it shoot up when Chapel enters.
Chapel tells M’Benga she’s thinking about applying for a fellowship in archeological medicine, which will be 2 months on Vulcan. This is probably how she will meet her future fiancé Dr Roger Korby (TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”), who was a renowned figure in the field.
Ortegas has reversed the pitch and yaw controls on her helm console because the standard configuration wasn’t fast enough for her. Uhura is at the communications station and is no longer wearing her cadet insignia, indicating she’s graduated and is an Ensign.
Uhura tells Spock she has detected a distress signal from La’An originating in the Cajitar system, on the edge of Klingon space. April denies Spock permission to investigate, despite the message saying that there is a dangerous, anti-Federation threat on Cajitar IV and Enterprise’s resources are critical. Cajitar IV is a rich dilithium mining planet - the Federation alternates access to it with the Klingons thanks to a carefully negotiated treaty and for this month it’s the Klingons’ shift. If Enterprise shows up it will be an act of war.
Spock briefs the featured crew, including navigator LT Jenna Mitchell, on his plan to get the inspectors off the ship and steal the Enterprise to help La’An. This foreshadows Kirk & Co. famously doing the same thing to help Spock in ST III, a sequence called “Stealing the Enterprise” on the soundtrack album.
Mitchell triggers an intermix chamber coolant leak alert in Engineering. Plasma coolant dissolves flesh, as seen in ST: First Contact, and lack of coolant can cause a warp core breach.
Pelia teaches a course in warp core breaches at Starfleet Academy. Heightened temperatures around an intermix chamber is the most common factor mistaken for a breach. Purposely simulating coolant leak on the sensors violates about 17 Starfleet regulations.
Pelia notes the Vulcan inability to lie (a myth, as we’ve seen on several occasions, and Spock will get much better at it in future) and that they don’t do things without a good reason. She reveals she knows that Spock is Amanda Grayson’s son and suggests Ortegas to vent ionized plasma from the warp nacelles. Doing so triggers an alert on Starbase One, with Docking Control blowing the docking clamps and ordering Enterprise to make space between the ship and the station.
Pelia offers her services as Chief Engineer and says it’s been 100 years since she’s gone out with engines of her own. Ortegas scoffs, and Pelia says it’s a really long story. Uhura identifies her accent as Lanthanite, and Pelia confirms it.
Spock’s go-to-warp catchphrase is, “I would like the ship to go. Now.” Mitchell’s previous captain’s was “Zoom”, and Ortegas has been workshopping “vámanos” (“let’s go” in Spanish).
On Cajitar IV, La’An wins a bloodwine drinking contest with a Klingon, Kr’Dogh. She gets a meeting with someone named Greynax. One wonders how La’An is outdrinking a Klingon since the sense was that she was not genetically enhanced like her relative Khan - unless we’re being set up for another revelation like with Una, which might be over egging it with two genetically modified people in the main cast.
M’Benga approaches La’An, drawing a line under his eye with a finger like he did in SNW: “Strange New Worlds”.
Cajitar IV became a valuable source of dilithium during the war. When it ended, a new mining syndicate made up of ex-Klingon and Federation soldiers decided peace was bad for business and want to restart the war. To an unknown end, they are acquiring Federation technology, and a recent mining explosion exposed the town to ion radiation, including Oriana’s parents. M’Benga says that ion radiation isn’t from dilithium, but can be created by photon torpedoes.
Both Chapel and M’Benga served in the Klingon War (she implies that they served together). M’Benga likes reading up on weapons systems, and notes that the war produced 100 million Federation deaths for “a parsec of space or two”.
M’Benga and Chapel go to offer aid to the afflicted, and Oriana recognizes them. M’Benga suggests inducing recombination to repair genetic damage on her parents, which Chapel administers via a hypospray. They are then taken at gunpoint by a female Klingon and her henchmen.
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Uhura’s PADD identifies the Klingons meeting with La’An (to buy phaser pistols) as speaking an obscure dialect called Kach-Ugh. She manages to decipher that whatever is being planned is happening tomorrow.
Spock calls up to Transporter Chief Jay, who informs him that they lost M’Benga and Chapel’s signals an hour ago. The pair are brought to a huge cave, hollowed out from decades of mining, which has a Federation starship M’Benga thinks the faction built themselves.
Inside, M’Benga treats a Klingon (Ro’Quegh) with ion burns that are normally too severe to treat, but Klingons had a redundant dermal system (like many other Klingon organs: TNG: “Ethics”).
M’Benga was stationed on the moon of J’gal, and after the Battle of ChaKana, there was so much blood in the air that the rain turned red. Klingon blood was established as pink/purple in ST VI, but its depiction on screen has not been consistent.
Chapel says that the severity of the burns suggest the torpedoes are on this ship. M’Benga theorizes that they are going to use the Federation tech to attack the Klingons and restart the war.
M’Benga always carries a vial of green liquid with him that when injected gives him and Chapel enhanced strength and aggression, which they use to beat down a group of guards. He beats answers out of a Klingon: 30 soldiers on the bridge and engineering, armed with phasers, phase rifles and Klingon disruptors, and a transponder on Deck 13.
M’Benga reprograms the transponder to send a simple message which usually only sends out the name and class of a Federation ship. They escape through Airlock 5-E but the ship takes off.
A Klingon D7 battlecruiser warps into orbit. The Enterprise is hiding in Cajitar IV’s rings, which are interstellar ice with a high iron content, so she looks like space junk. Ortegas says she’s hidden from enough Klingons to know when to take a breather, indicating she also served in the war.
La’An says her contacts in the Broken Circle have vanished. That must be the name of the faction that plans to restart the war.
Mitchell identifies the faction ship as a Crossfield-class (same class as Discovery), but it doesn’t really look like one, resembling more an Akira-class. Perhaps this is the standard Crossfield configuration and Discovery and her sister ship Glenn were variants.
Uhura picks up M’Benga’s message (in Morse 2) from the transponder: “Enterprise, destroy this ship.”
The transponders in EV suits activate automatically once they are in the vacuum of space. The D7’s disruptors are mounted on the sides of the nacelles. M’Benga says it will take about a minute for them to die in space, but they will lose consciousness after 15 seconds. While he’s correct about the latter, it should take about 90 seconds before you die from asphyxiation.
The Captain of the D7 is named D’Chok. Spock says he has been known to drink bloodwine, which surprises D’Chok. Pelia interprets D’Chok’s toast as, “May your blood scream,” which Spock implies has to do with how drinking bloodwine feels.
Spock is visibly affected by bloodwine and gets a hangover, although he states in TOS: “The Conscience of the King” that “My father’s race was spared the dubious effects of alcohol.” It may be that the alcohol is acting on his human side. Though we know Vulcan port (DS9: “The Maquis, Part I”) exists, it is unclear if that produces an intoxicating effect in Vulcans or if it is intended for imbibing by non-Vulcans.
Pelia wears a Starfleet delta with a black backing, indicating the Academy, along with another insignia which resembles the flower-like insignia worn by starbase personnel in TOS. Lanthanites are almost immortal and lived on Earth, undetected, until the 22nd Century. Amanda was one of the first people Pelia came out to and she says the worst thing about living almost forever is boredom - echoing Zefram Cochran’s words in TOS: “Metamorposis”: “Believe me, Captain, immortality consists largely of boredom.” Her longevity and experience marks her as potentially a similar advisor-type character as Guinan in TNG.
The war April is worried about centers on what appears to be an incursion by a Gorn attack ship in proximity to Deep Space 2, the Galdonterre system (DS9: “Blood Oath”) and the Cestus system (TOS: “Arena”), the latter two of which are established in Geoffrey Mandel’s Star Charts as near the border between the Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Gorn Hegemony.
The episode is dedicated “For Nichelle, who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open…” in memory of the late Nichelle Nichols, who was both a pioneer as a major black female character on TOS in the day and later worked with NASA to recruit people of color to the astronaut program.
Personally I always took that not as "Vulcans aren't affected by alcohol", but "Vulcans historically have no culture of drinking."
'Being spared the effects of alcohol' could indicate that Vulcans aren't affected by it. Their blood chemistry being different may mean their bodies don't metabolize alcohol the way humans' do, and so there's no hangover because of the lack of metabolic issues.
Not drinking enough to get hungover/at all technically 'spares' one from a hangover, but that phrasing would be strange and clunky. It'd be like telling someone who just got sunburned at the beach that "I never get sunburned at the beach" to convey that I don't go to the beach, when just saying "I never go to the beach" is a direct statement that logically precludes sunburns from beachgoing.