Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Brought Back An Often Ignored Vulcan Trait

In the "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" episode "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans,"the Enterprise finds itself in an unusual position. A distant planet called Tezaar is having trouble with their nuclear power stations and require a repair team. Tezaar, however, is a pre-warp society, which means that Starfleet cannot, by their own Prime Directive, interfere with their development. Luckily, the Vulcans had previously revealed their existence to the Tezaarians, meaning Vulcans can beam down and offer all the assistance they need. 

The Enterprise, however, has no full-blooded Vulcans on board — Spock (Ethan Peck) is half-human — so Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) contrived a way to genetically turn Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), Lieutenant Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), and Uhura (Celia Rose-Gooding) into Vulcans. As far as the Tezaarians were concerned, they were dealing with Vulcans. Of course, complications arise, and Dr. M'Benga is unable to transform the crew back into humans once the mission is over. The episode is largely comedic, with Pike, Noonien-Singh, Uhura, and Chapel discovering what it is to be Vulcan.

And why do they behave like Vulcans? It's explained that when Dr. M'Benga made the transformations, it was derived from Spock's brain chemistry, so the crew also found themselves in an advanced logical state, their brains more or less overtaken with ultra-Vulcan personalities. This was in addition to their Vulcan physiology. 

The four new Vulcans find that their new Vulcan noses are notably more sensitive than their human ones, and are suddenly struck by how horribly their crewmates smell. Because they have ultra-Vulcan personalities, they also have no issued pointing this out. The fact that Vulcans have an ultra-sensitive sense of smell hasn't been mentioned on "Star Trek" since an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" in 2001.

Specifically, Pike, as a Vulcan, had to prepare for a dinner with his human girlfriend, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano). While the food was cooking, Pike, now lacking all sense of tact, announced that the food was hard to smell because of the human odor in the room, wafting from Batel's body. Naturally, Batel was miffed at the observation. 

Throughout "Star Trek," it had repeatedly been stated that Vulcans, in many ways, are physiologically more advanced than humans. They have two hearts and powerful immune systems, making them surprisingly resilient to diseases, and incredibly long-lived (Vulcans can live about 250 years or more). Vulcans also have much more powerful brains than humans, allowing them to make much more sophisticated calculations; there's a reason why Spock was the Enterprise's science officer. Additionally, Vulcans are very, very strong, and can easily best a human in hand-to-hand combat, should the need for such a thing arise. 

In the "Star Trek: Enterprise" episode "The Andorian Incident," it was also revealed that Vulcans have an acute sense of smell. This meant that, to Vulcans, humans had an overwhelmingly powerful body odor. The Vulcan T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) revealed that she, as the only Vulcan on a ship full of human characters, had to give herself a special nasal numbing agent just so she could tolerate her stinky crewmates. On the original "Star Trek," Spock (Leonard Nimoy) never talks about requiring a nasal numbing agent, but then he is half-human and may have a higher tolerance. 

So humans smell like big walking armpits to Vulcans. Remember this the next time you see Vulcans and humans interacting on "Star Trek." It may go a long way to explaining Vulcans' snippy, exasperated behavior.