Q&A

Stardate not given: A new science officer beams aboard the Enterprise to begin a life-changing tour of duty. Ensign Spock, a young half-Vulcan, proves to be surprising to Number One as she escorts him to the turbolift that will take him for his first visit to the Enterprise‘s bridge. A turbolift malfunction strands the two in an almost inaccessible space within the ship, and this gives Spock time to ask his new superior questions – lots of them. And every question he asks gives Number One more answers about the Enterprise‘s newest officer.

written by Michael Chabon
directed by Mark Pellington
music by Nami Melumad

Cast: Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Ethan Peck (Spock), Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Samora Smallwood (Lt. Amin), Sarah Evans (Upjohn), Jenette Goldstein (Enterprise Computer)

Notes: This episode is set an unspecified number of years prior to The Cage, and even longer before the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. Other senior officers sitting on Spock’s shoulders will have similarly bad luck tampering with the Enterprise‘s wiring (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). Spock’s shouting is a callback to Leonard Nimoy’s atypical first performance as the character in The Cage. Number One’s name is acknowledged here to be Una, a name first established in the 50th anniversary trilogy of novels published under the banner Star Trek: Legacies; the name was picked as a tribute to occasional Trek novelist Dr. Una McCormack. Though asked never to divulge it, Spock would later reveal Una’s Gilbert & Sullivan affinity under oath (Ad Astra Per Aspera, 2023). The episode is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Robert Chabon, the late father of writer Michael Chabon, and was premiered with no prior warning during the weekend of 2019’s New York City Comic Con, which featured a heavy Star Trek presence. It’s also the first Star Trek episode title featuring the letter Q by itself which does not feature John de Lancie’s character from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager, and the first Star Trek television story in 53 years whose music was composed by a woman, Nami Melumad, who would go on to become the composer of both Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds..