This article contains spoilers for the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” episode, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass.”
In the most recent episode of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” an impish, childlike space deity, played by Rhys Darby, who uses his seemingly infinite powers, has decided to conduct an experiment on human emotions. The character is very fond of Earth soap operas and has decided to push the crew’s emotions to their very limits by forcing them to reenact the melodramatic events one might see in an episode of “Days of Our Lives.”
In one of the show’s overwrought storylines, Spock (Ethan Peck) has been grievously injured in an accident and requires an immediate heart transplant. The only viable donor they know, however, is his long-lost twin brother Sybok (also Peck), who is currently locked away in a distant prison. This requires La’an (Christina Chong) to spring Sybok from prison and take him back to the USS Enterprise for transplant. A sizeable portion of the episode follows their return trip, during which La’an has intense conversations with Sybok. This soap opera version of Sybok is snarling and seductive and evil, more like a sexy pirate than anything.
To pass the time, Sybok and La’an take turns playing a small Pick-Up-Sticks-like Vulcan game called Kal-toh. The object of the game is to carefully extract and rearrange a chaotic clump of small metal rods so that they resemble the skeleton of a complex dodecahedral figure. Trekkies’ eyes will light up at the appearance of the game, as it was a regular feature on “Star Trek: Voyager.” It was regularly played by that show’s Vulcan character Tuvok (Tim Russ), “Star Trek’s” best Vulcan, and was first seen in the third-season episode “Alter Ego.”
Kal-toh, the Vuclan version of Pick-Up-Sticks, comes back for Strange New Worlds
The actual rules and functionality of Kal-toh are never adequately explained on “Star Trek.” Also, unlike 3D chess, there doesn’t seem to be a way to reproduce the game in the 21st century, as it relies on holograms and energy-altering technology. When one removes a Kal-toh rod from the central chaotic cluster, only to replace it elsewhere, a portion of the cluster will briefly dematerialize and rearrange itself according to the rod’s placement. It’s not a game of balance, necessarily, but seeing patterns in chaos. As Tuvok himself says, Kal-toh is “not about striving for balance but about finding the seeds of order even in the midst of profound chaos.” I imagine the patterns within the chaos are so complicated that only a Vulcan can understand them.
Indeed, Tuvok also notes that “Kal-toh is to chess as chess is to tic-tac-toe.” It’s a game of profound gambits and logical deductions. Tuvok was usually the one seen playing Kal-toh on “Star Trek: Voyager,” but Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) was an enthusiast as well. Harry admitted that he wasn’t good at the game, but that he loved playing it nonetheless. Tuvok found a formidable opponent in Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), the Borg character who joined the crew in “Voyager’s” fourth season. Because the Borg were familiar with “spatial harmonies,” Seven was able to grasp the game right away.
Kal-toh only appeared in five or six episodes of “Voyager,” although one might see the game base in people’s quarters throughout the series. In the “Voyager” finale episode, which flashed forward many years, one could see that a middle-aged Captain Harry Kim still kept a Kal-toh set in his quarters.
Star Trek is full of fun imaginary games
After “Voyager,” there were a few scant references to Kal-toh. Naturally, the reference-heavy “Star Trek: Lower Decks” features a scene in which two characters, one of whom is Vulcan, play the game idly, and one can see Seven of Nine playing it again with her would-be girlfriend, Raffi (Michelle Hurd), on “Star Trek: Picard.” Its appearance on “Strange New Worlds” is just a further expansion on the game’s galactic ubiquity. It’s like Hi-Q or Go. Everyone plays it. The game has never been vital to any plots on “Star Trek,” but is merely a fun world-building detail, a note that alien cultures have their own traditional games and pastimes.
Indeed, “Star Trek” has long been very good at incorporating such details. Some Earth sports survive, of course — Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is a fencing enthusiast, for instance. Others have merely evolved. Chess, as noted, is now played on multiple planes with elaborate, multi-tiered sets. The more obsessive Trekkies out there likely have bought a 3D chess set and might have even learned the rules. Yes, there are rules. And yes, it’s very, very hard. I’ve played it.
There are multiple references in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” to some kind of violent, strenuous, and incredibly violent game called Parrises Squares. The makers of the series, however, always teased viewers with it; it has never been depicted on camera. We did get to see two people competing in a bizarre blind martial art called anbyo-jyutsu, which is just as much a martial art as it is an “American Gladiators” event.
Know, then, that if you find yourself tossed forward in time to the 24th century, and you’re on a Starfleet vessel, there will be plenty of games and sports to keep you occupied.
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