Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Shows Us Where One Of The Original Series' Weirdest Relationships Began
This post contains spoilers for the season 2 "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" episode, "Subspace Rhapsody."
In the "Star Trek" episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (October 20, 1966), the Enterprise is sent to a distant, seemingly uninhabitable planet called Exo-III to search for a missing doctor named Roger Korby (Michael Strong) who crash-landed there years before.
Dr. Korby, it is revealed, was once engaged to Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett). Chapel reveals that she continues to serve on the Enterprise partially so she can look for him. Beaming down to the surface and exploring a vast network of underground catacombs, Kirk and Chapel locate Dr. Korby in the company of several humanlike androids. Exo-III was once, many millennia ago, home to an advanced species of aliens that learned to quickly and accurately construct robot clones of themselves. Dr. Korby demonstrates the android-making machine by making a duplicate of Kirk. Of course, Dr. Korby's intentions are sinister; he sends his android Kirk back to the Enterprise, hoping to take over the ship and carry his android maker to a new world that he may populate.
There are a few twists by the end. One of Dr. Korby's android clones, Andrea (Sherry Jackson) has fallen in love with him and has grown murderously jealous. It's also revealed that Korby himself is an android clone, as the real Korby made a duplicate of himself as he was dying of frostbite.
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" is a scattered episode. One might think the "duplicate Kirk" story would be enough to fill it, but it also involves Chapel, Korby, Andrea, and an ancient android named Ruk, played by the great Ted Cassidy.
For deep-cut Trekkies who like call-backs, know that Dr. Korby is mentioned in "Subspace Rhapsody," the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Moving the pieces around
"Strange New Worlds" is set a few years prior to the original "Star Trek," so a great deal of time has been devoted to moving certain pieces around a canonical chessboard, arranging players/characters so that they may end up where they need to be in time for the 1966 "Star Trek" pilot. Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) is already on the Enterprise, as are Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun). Some characters may already be stationed on the ship (Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty), but we haven't seen them yet. Kirk (Paul Wesley) keeps visiting the Enterprise but currently serves on board the U.S.S. Farragut. He's also not a captain yet. Pike (Anson Mount) will, in due time, become grievously injured in a horrible accident.
And Nurse Chapel will meet and become engaged to Dr. Korby. Nurse Chapel has been, over the course of the second season of "Strange New Worlds," trying to advance her career by entering one of several medical study-abroad programs. In "Subspace Rhapsody," her acceptance into one such program is confirmed, and she's eager to accept the offer. In doing so, she would leave the Enterprise and go study with Dr. Korby, forcing her to leave Spock behind. Chapel and Spock have been pursuing an illicit affair for the past few episodes.
None of Dr. Korby and Nurse Chapel's relationship has ever been dramatized, and it remains to be seen if Dr. Korby will appear on screen in "Strange New Worlds" (there is but one episode left in the show's second season).
The Chapel/Korby romance
The exact nature of the Chapel/Korby romance will have to be explored further in the near future. The circumstance of the pair's meeting and the intensity of their romance has never been hinted at. All we know for sure is that Korby will offer Chapel a romantic escape from the torment of dating Spock, an unemotional man who was recently engaged. All audiences currently know about Dr. Korby is that he'll die of frostbite, shunt his consciousness into an android body, and go a power-mad, trying to create an android utopia. Will the "Strange New Worlds" version of Dr. Korby — provided he appears on camera and has actual scenes — have an interest in cybernetic organisms?
Perhaps not. There is a lot of dialogue in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" implying that Korby has changed considerably and that he's no longer the man Chapel once knew. If we do meet a Dr. Korby in "Strange New Worlds," he can behave however the writers want him to. The only other time we really met him, he was an android clone.
It will also be a grand cruelty to Nurse Chapel to see her falling in love with Dr. Korby. As we already know from various canonical sources, Chapel will not date Spock, and she will lose Dr. Korby. In the Kelvin timeline, it's mentioned that Kirk (Chris Pine) had a fling with Nurse Chapel, causing her to leave the Enterprise and pursue medicine in a very, very remote outpost. Poor Nurse Chapel, it seems, is destined to live a life without a successful romance.