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A review of this week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Level-Five Transporter Accident" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as I get my new chair...
The presence of T'Pring, and her demand that Spock promise "no hijinks of any kind," makes clear that "Level-Five Transporter Accident" is meant as a spiritual sequel to Season One's body swap episode, "Spock Amok," in which we first learned of her loathing of hijinks. That earlier installment was fun because it was well-executed, and also because it was relatively novel. Comedy episodes are a traditional part of Star Trek, and when they work, it's often as much because they come sparingly as because they contain brilliant joke writing(*). But this is now the second episode out of the last three to be played for laughs. It's a substantially better version of it than "Human Best Friend," but still not great.
(*) Even scarcity can't help some of them, like the great majority of Deep Space Nine Ferengi episodes.
