Christine Chapel in "Operation: Annihilate!"
This is the third and last appearance of Christine Chapel in the show's first season. She last appeared in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" which was the seventh episode aired and tenth produced. "Operation: Annihilate!" was the first season finale. Therefore, Chapel went 20-plus episodes without appearing!
Christine Chapel's first appearances gave her much more significant material to work with. Her appearance in this episode is rather anti-climatic and unmemorable. Unfortunately, most of her appearances in the series are along these lines.
Quick summary of the episode: There are these parasites that are traveling from star system to star system causing their inhabitants to go insane. It's up to the Enterprise to stop it at the planet Deneva.
Kirk and a team beam down to find that his brother and his family who lived on Deneva, are dead or close to it. Peter Kirk, Jim's nephew is a survivor and is brought to Sickbay. We see Chapel in the background tending to him.
Then of course, something goes awry on the landing party and Spock is infected with the parasite.
We get to see Chapel again as she assists McCoy with Spock's surgery. They try to remove what the parasite has implanted Spock with. They succeed in getting a sample but tension between Chapel and McCoy comes to a head when he orders her to prepare to close up Spock.
I love how she goes from concerned, confused, to being on the verge of calling McCoy a motherfucker. Let's be real here, that's totally what she is thinking.
During the surgery, she notices how off Spock's readings are. This kind of shows off her intelligence because she knows what constitutes as abnormal in humans and Vulcans. She fights McCoy on his order, insisting they can do more. I think it's great that Chapel is willing to challenge McCoy, proving she can think for herself and isn't intimidated by him.
Even though it was not her career path, she takes her nursing job very seriously. As she will state in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", she is a nurse first and an officer second. She is willing to disobey orders if it is for the well-being of her patient.
Later as Spock is sedated and resting from surgery, he comes back to consciousness and basically goes berserk. Since Chapel is the one who is monitoring him, she tries to stop him but, understandably, fails. Then she does what any competent officer would do and alerts the bridge of what's happening.
When Spock takes off for the bridge Chapel is actually hot on his heels, quickly arriving as four officers, including Kirk, struggle to subdue him. She arrives with a sedative already in hand without being ordered to. True, McCoy could have gave the order off-screen; however in all the commotion, there was likely no chance and it is reasonable to assume Chapel did it of her own initiative. She plays a critical role here as she allows Spock to be sedated instead of hit with phaser fire when the inevitable security team arrives, and prevents crewmen from further harm from Spock as he is much stronger than humans and could do some real damage. Her timely arrival helps quell the melee on the bridge, even though McCoy is the one to administer the hypo.
The next time we see Chapel, she is in the lab. This is the first instance we see of her outside of her capacity as a nurse. At heart she is a scientist, not a nurse. It's cool that the writers remembered that about her and utilized her background in research when writing her into episodes. Meanwhile, Kirk and McCoy are having a discussion about killing the parasites, coming to the conclusion that they might have kill everyone on Deneva as well as Spock, and Kirk's nephew to prevent the parasites from spreading to another planet. They have this conversation in Chapel's presence; they do not ask her to leave. We can assume this is because they can trust her with such delicate information or that she is such a non-entity in their lives, they think she is an inanimate object. I choose to believe the former.
Chapel is later present when they conclude a full spectrum of light might kill the parasites, further showing how integral to the process she is.
Everyone gets to wear groovy goggles as they test the light.
She along with the big three crowd around the door way to inspect the parasite. When they confirm its death, Chapel takes the parasite for further analysis. The boys decide to test the procedure on Spock right away before the analysis is over. They realize that throwing the full spectrum of light at Spock can make him blind. McCoy suggests rigging up a special pair of goggles for Spock. Kirk and Spock stupidly disagree with McCoy, stating they must recreate how it would be on the planet. McCoy, like an idiot, agrees. To no one's surprise, except to McCoy, Kirk, and Spock, Spock comes out blind.
In her last scene of this episode, Chapel hands McCoy the full analysis. As it turns out they did not have to blind Spock. A light that is insensitive to humanoid eyes can destroy the parasite. If Chapel had been there in their initial discussion, she probably would have fought with them and called them idiots.
The Enterprise is successful in killing all the parasites without killing the hosts, and in a moment of deus ex machina, Spock can see again because he had an inner eyelid that blocks light. Go figure.
Overall, there is not much Chapel in this episode. In her last two appearances in the first season, no reference is made to her attraction to Spock. It was seemingly forgotten. She treats him as any other crew member. They even hardly acknowledge each other unless forced to do so. At this point, it seemed her confession was meant to be a fluke. From now until the end of the series, Chapel was given less meaningful screentime than her first two episodes. Later she would mostly be found in Sickbay or a lab, often in the background with few lines.
Fanfiction for this episode:
After the Light: Annihilate Rewritten
Spock/Chapel. Mature Content. What really happened at the end of Operation Annihilate.
Rated M
99,133 words
The author also has a PG version on her page. It is much more nuanced in its portrayal of Spock's blindness, and a sweet relationship develops between Spock and Chapel. I highly recommend it!
