Summary
Star Trek: Strange New Worldsseason 3 calls back to the genius of Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) fromStrange New Worlds' first 2 seasons.Star Trekfans were treated to afirst look clip ofStrange New Worldsseason 3at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, which shows a 5-minute episode excerpt in which Nurse Chapel administers a treatment to Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Commander Pelia (Carol Kane), and herself.Nurse Chapel’s admittedly"jury-rigged"serum is set to turn the away team’s humans into Vulcansfor an undercover mission. Watch the clip below:
The practice of surgically turning Starfleet officers into aliens dates back all the way toStar Trek: The Original Series, with Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) being surgically altered into a Romulan inStar Trek: The Original Seriesseason 3, episode 2, “The Enterprise Incident”.
The practice became more widespread inStar Trek’s 24th century, especially for the USS Enterprise-D’s first contact missions inStar Trek: The Next Generation, where surgical alien alteration was imperative for keepingStarfleet’s Prime Directiveintact. Details of exactly how Starfleet accomplished these surgical procedures were never explained, untilStar Trek: Strange New Worldsrevealed the origin of surgical alien transformations.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 - Cast, Story, Trailer & Everything We Know
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 ended with an epic cliffhanger and here’s everything known about when it will be resolved in season 3.
Nurse Chapel Invented Surgically Altering Starfleet Into Aliens In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1
Chapel’s Surgical Alteration Technology Makes First Contact Easier
Nurse Christine Chapel invented the practice of surgically altering Starfleet officers into aliens, in a process that was shown inStar Trek: Strange New Worldsseason 1, episode 1, “Strange New Worlds”. When Captain Pike, Lt. Noonien-Singh, and Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck) need to pass as natives of Kylie 279 in order to rescue Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) from a botched first contact mission, Nurse Chapel relishes the chance to use an experimental procedure that she’s invented.Chapel’s technology swiftly and radically restructures an individual’s genome— at least on the outside — so they won’t be detected as alien to the pre-warp Kiley.
Genetic augmentation is banned within the Federation, but it’s perfectly fine for Nurse Chapel to play fast and loose with the Enterprise away team’s genetic structure.Chapel’s technology results in a temporary alteration,and it wears off on its own (sometimes a little too quickly, like it did with Spock) instead of being a permanent augmentation.
Nurse Chapel is a civilian on loan to Starfleet from the Stanford Morehouse Epigenetic Project, as part of a program focused on exploring pre-warp civilizations without causing cultural contamination. This is Christine Chapel’s area of expertise, and a huge part of why Chapel is on the Enterprise, specifically.
Nurse Chapel Replicated Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2’s Kerkhovian Alien Serum
Chapel Seamlessly Integrated Alien Technology With Her Own Invention
In the Comic-Con first look clip, Nurse Chapel explains that the treatment to turn the Enterprise’s away team into Vulcans is based on a serum created by the Kerkhovians inStar Trek: Strange New Worldsseason 2, episode 5, “Charades”. The Kerkhovians benevolently restored the health of both Chapel and Spock after a shuttle crash, but mistakenly interpret Spock’s half-Vulcan physiology as an error, accidentally returning a fully human Spock to the Enterprise.
When Chapel points out their error,the Kerkhovians grant Chapel a serum that will restore Spock’s Vulcan genetics. This is the serum that Nurse Chapel learns to replicate in order to alter the away team.
It’s not surprising that Nurse Chapel would jump on the opportunity to reverse engineer the Kerkhovian serum, and eagerly test it out on herself and the Enterprise away team as soon as possible.Chapel must be absolutely delighted to explore the alien approach that differs from Chapel’s own invention, comparing different processes and looking for ways to synthesize improvements.
TheStar Trek: Strange New Worldsseason 3 clip suggests that Pike, La’an, Uhura, and Chapel might be stuck as Vulcans a little more permanently than they’d hoped, but with Nurse Chapel’s genius, theStar Trek: Strange New Worldsteam will be human again in no time.
