Rewriting T’Pring is ‘Star Trek: Strange New World’s Smartest Move So Far
There are many changes Star Trek: Strange New Worlds makes to the canon that improve it significantly. T’Pring’s arc is the best of it.
Star Trek: The Original Series is a great show. Beloved. One of the most seminal series in the history of television. But there’s a criticism for both and it involves how women are written. Nurse Christine Chapel basically has one character note and it’s that she is in love with Mister Spock. Uhura has more to her, but most of that comes from Nichelle Nichols herself.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds does a ton to rectify this. Chapel, for example, is now adventurous, funny, and an expert in genetic alterations. In “Children of the Comet,” Uhura basically gets more backstory in that one episode than she does in almost the entirety of TOS.
And then there’s T’Pring.
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T’Pring: Original Recipe
In Star Trek: The Original Series, T’Pring only appears once in the episode “Amok Time”. In that single episode, we find out a few things about her. She is bonded to Spock as his wife-to-be from childhood. Spock must return to Vulcan for pon farr (basically Spock must mate every seven years). The intention is or Spock to mate with his “wife” T’Pring and then they will be married for real.
However, the biggest thing people know about T’Pring from “Amok Time” is that she is not in love with Spock. She has eyes for Stonn, another Vulcan. She comes up with a plan where she invokes kal-if-fee, which basically means Spock has to fight a champion, chosen by T’Pring, to the death to prove his love.
T’Pring chooses Kirk as her champion. Logically, this means that, no matter the outcome, she will likely be able to get out of her marriage to Spock. If Spock kills Kirk, Spock will leave T’Pring out of disgust. And if Kirk kills Spock, then it’s game over, period. Either way, T’Pring gets Stonn.
The behavior pattern gets painted as coldly logical, but it’s basically just baselessly cruel. And since we rarely see Vulcan women on Star Trek at all, this is a bummer both for this interesting character and for Vulcan women in general.
Fortunately, now we have a new incarnation of Spock’s betrothed.
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Strange New Worlds Update
Right from the pilot episode of Strange New Worlds, T’Pring is very different. For one thing, she is the one who approaches Spock about formalizing their betrothal. And for another, they give her a lot of sexual agency with Spock. In fact, maybe the biggest difference on that surface level is that Spock and T’Pring are both very into each other.
And on the flip side, we also see right away how this relationship between the two may fail. Spock’s dedication towards duty and Starfleet is at odds with what T’Pring expects from him. Halfway through SNW‘s first season, the episode “Spock Amok” shows us that she also has a serious job–she’s trying to pull Vulcans back toward the teachings of Surak. T’Pring expects Spock to balance his career and personal life the way she has.
One other interesting thing about this version of T’Pring is that she is willing to work at understanding how Spock’s humanity impacts him. There’s a scene where she tells Spock that she’s been reading up on human sexuality. This scene is compelling because it shows that T’Pring loves Spock completely, not just his “Vulcan side”. But also, the scene is very funny. T’Pring and Spock have this wonderful dry, comedic timing that makes her seem, for lack of a better term, far more human.
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The Serene Squall Effect
T’Pring is in three episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season one. The third and final episode is “Serene Squall” which actually opens on T’Pring in the Vulcan rehabilitation center Ankeshtan K’til. This episode hammers home a couple of things. For one, it shows T’Pring’s dedication to helping Vulcans rediscover logic. And while “Amok Time” shows T’Pring as coldly logical, “Serene Squall” shows an almost empathic kind of logic.
But obviously, there are two characters on Ankeshtan K’til with T’Pring who are extremely important. One is Stonn. He’s only on screen for a moment, but the seed of a burgeoning relationship with another man is there which shows a path towards a steady change in T’Pring.
The biggie, though, is Sybok. The idea of T’Pring having a connection with Spock’s half-brother and to the V’tosh ka’tur who abandon Vulcan logic almost entirely. This suggests a lot of ways that T’Pring may change between now and the events of “Amok Time” including the possibility that she may, in some ways, be impacted by Sybok’s philosophies.
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T’Pring and Nurse Chapel
Yes, it’s wonderful that Nurse Chapel is more than just a lonely gal who wishes Spock will love her back. But that unrequited love is still part of the character. And the final way we’ll look at the changes to T’Pring is in how she reacts to Chapel. In “Serene Squall” she acknowledges that she knows Chapel is into Spock. But T’Pring also says she does not believe Spock reciprocates those feelings.
There’s a strong argument to be made that T’Pring lies when she says she trusts Spock with Chapel. Vulcans are not supposed to lie. Once again, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds takes some of the notions of this character and expands on them in ways we might not suspect.
“Amok Time” portrays T’Pring as cold and calculating. SNW radically departs from that narrative giving the character tons of dimension. She loves Spock, possibly specifically because he’s human. And that subversiveness makes her unpredictable. The most important thing Strange New Worlds needs to do with T’Pring is to build tension.
Arguably we already know how this story ends. But SNW makes us question what we know. And even if the story still plays out as it already has on TOS, it’s unlikely we know how or why T’Pring will change to get us to “Amok Time”.
