I struggle a lot with this episode. While it has a few funny moments, and there are some interesting elements in it, I find this episode very problematic. When changed into "full" Vulcans, Pike, La'an, Uhura, and Chapel all end up playing into dangerous Vulcan stereotypes. Frankly they don't act like Vulcans at all, they act like the worst characteristics of what people think Vulcans act like, and that's just.... awful frankly.

The Vulcan superiority complex is amplified to the maximum in this episode, and it turns into a strange Eugenics argument that is just very frustrating. The newly "full" Vulcans feel themselves superior to Spock and constantly tear him, and all non-vulcans down throughout the episode, it is painful to watch.

It is also strange that something that is repeatedly specified as a learned behavior for Vulcans, logic, is treated as a genetic trait in this episode. My best head-canon way to solve this is that they aren't turned into Vulcans, but instead are more about adding the characteristics, both physical and mental, that the Kerkhovian syrum (from the much better Season 2 episode Charades, written by the same writers and directed by the same director as this episode) tried to restore in Spock to turn him back into a half-vulcan. So it tried to override their normal approach to logic and emotion with those suppressed emotions and logic re-added back to Spock. Why the syrum turned them into "full" Vulcans instead of adding vulcan to their human bases to make them all half-vulcans is completely unclear to me. I personally think that would have made the episode more interesting and a lot less problematic.

There are a few bright elements that raise this from being a Civilian ranked episode for me to being just a mediocre episode.

The fantastic guest appearance by Patton Oswalt as Doug, the full Vulcan who is obsessed with Human culture makes a great foil for the humans-turned-vulcans, and the post-credits scene where Spock is explaining human things to Doug genuinely made me laugh out loud.

Another interesting element was La'an's latent augment DNA interacting with the Syrum to make her more Romulan like instead of Vulcan like, that's actually kinda interesting, though still very Eugenics forward, it leads to the implication that it is genetics that makes both Vulcans and Romulans the way they are, rather than their upbringing. This is a dangerous thought in the nature-vs-nurture argument.

My enjoyment of Trekculture would be remiss if I didn't point out that I got a kick out of the fact that this episode appears to show the first live-action version of Cetacean Operations as in the mind-meld-dance-party between Spock and La'an shows what appears to be either Dolphins or whales swimming under the floor in the Science room. While the swirling blue was seen before, this was the first time I noticed something swimming in it, implying that the science lab is located directly above Cetacean Operations.

Overall, this episode was awful, but with moments of lightness that keep it from being an overall failure. I feel like without Oswalt I would have probably rated this episode Civilian, but with him, it rises to Cadet. A shame his excellent character couldn't have been introduced in a better episode.

HD3 Episode Rank: Cadet (D Tier)