“Greetings and Felicitations!”
I couldn’t help but think of that while watching the second episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3. Of course, that quote comes from the original Star Trek episode, “The Squire of Gothos,” but SNW’s “Wedding Bell Blues” was clearly taking inspiration from that episode.
It also takes inspiration from another trickster god of Star Trek in this superpowered wedding episode.
“Wedding Bell Blues” recap
“Wedding Bell Blues” opens three months after the events of “Hegemony, Parts I & II,” and Spock is eagerly awaiting (as much as Vulcans allow themselves to be eager) the return of Christine Chapel from her fellowship working with Dr. Roger Corby. When Chapel beams aboard, she is accompanied by Dr. Corby (Cillian O’Sullivan), with whom Chapel has started a relationship.
After Mr. Spock pouts a bit, a mysterious bartender offers him a drink. Suddenly, Spock awakens in bed with Chapel on the eve of their wedding day. At this point, the bartender is now the Wedding Planner (Rhys Darby), and everyone on the ship is going along with the pending nuptials, except for Roger Corby, and soon, Mr. Spock himself.
The remainder of the episode is spent with Spock and Corby trying to convince the rest of the crew that reality has been altered, all while the Wedding Planner goes out of his way to stop them. We see that the Wedding Planner has various supernatural powers, making him a serious threat to face, despite his frivolous persona.
Ultimately, Chapel realizes the problem as well, and an amorphous being (voiced by John de Lancie) comes to collect the Wedding Planner, noting that he is a naughty child, in a way very similar to the reprobation of Trelane by his parents in “The Squire of Gothos.”
Minding our P[lanners]’s and Q’s
Is Rhys Darby’s Wedding Planner actually Trelane, as played by William Campbell in “The Squire of Gothos”? Is the fact that Q actor, John de Lancie, voiced the Wedding Planner’s father an indication that the Wedding Planner/Trelane is a Q? According to the Star Trek wiki, Memory Alpha, the answer to all of these questions, the answer is currently yes.
Without an explicit statement in an episode, however, I remain unconvinced. While the Wedding Planner dresses similarly to Trelane, he is not identical (and I don't really care what producers say in interviews if it isn’t said on screen). Also, if the Wedding Planner was Trelane, then he and Spock should have recognized each other 10 years later.
As for the Q question: de Lancie’s cameo could have been just that. He was not explicitly credited in this episode as Q. Furthermore, the effects of the Wedding Planner’s powers were more akin to Trelane’s (hard cuts), rather than the flashing effects produced by representatives of the Q Continuum. On top of that, the Wedding Planner and Trelane don’t need to be Q to have powers.
The vagueness in “Wedding Bell Blues” invites assumptions to be made that many fans may want to be true, but they are not verified within the episode itself. Even that aside, this episode failed to live up to either “The Squire of Gothos” or the many classic misadventures with Q in the 24th-Century series. It’s cute, but it asks more questions than it answers.
As a light jaunt after the tense thrills of “Hegemony,” “Wedding Bell Blues” does its job serviceably. It is not uproariously entertaining, and its hand-wavy allusions to beloved Trek characters come across as more desperate than endearing.
Nonetheless, this episode was fun. I didn’t touch on it much here, but many of the non-uniform costumes in this episode were incredible. From Uhura’s bright, 1960s-inspired off-duty outfit to the various gowns at Chapel and Spock’s sham wedding, the costume designers crafted a gorgeous, retro-futuristic wardrobe that makes up for the headache caused by the story itself.