The Spock/Uhura romance in STID was disappointing.

Not bad for a movie that supposably couldn't stand up to any serious analysis.

 

It's been a while since I've seen the movies but I got the impression that Uhura, Kirk and Abrams are pretty judgmental toward Spock and that their views are that he should gradually become more and more human.

 

I just put together what was niggling me about this:

GR OK <----> GROK

 

This line of thought is turning me around to being more accepting of the relationship. Thanks

 

Uhura is not Spock's wife sending him off to a war-zone. She's a fellow officer and you don't behave that way in a military "workplace" situation. It's embarrassing and distracting. At least the inter-office romances in the TNG era were mostly handled in the corridors during off-time or in quarters and not in the midst of crisis situations.

But Starfleet in nuTrek makes no distinction between on-duty and off-duty or public and private life. Everyone is 100% casual all the time in a very Trek V T-shirt and bomber-jacket sort of way.

 

Two things: 1) It's entertainment, not the real world. 2) Do you honestly have any idea how silly it sounds trying to predict how people will behave in any given situation, three hundred years in the future? Across species?

 

The storyline didn't bother me or take anything away from either movie.

I can't see TOS Spock having this relationship because obviously, he didn't.

Why this Spock should be so different from what we saw in TOS and the movies, I don't know. The new timeline shouldn't have changed much, or anything, for Spock.

Kirk absolutely. He lost his father where TOS Kirk hadn't, so I could see Kirk being a different animal compared to what we knew.

 

But, he did have a relationship with a human woman sometime around 2260. Leila Kalomi. (See: "This Side of Paradise")

I'm not sure they really changed anything for Spock? He's a human/Vulcan trying to live in a human world. The Spock I see in the Abrams films matches up pretty well with the smiling, "The Women!!!" Spock from "The Cage".

 

Agreed. ^It, and good points made by all who see through the heart of this issue, should be assembled into a single post and be required reading before allowed access to the forum.

I love prime Spock and the way he was portrayed but I don't want to see him done the same way again. If he was being redone in the exact same mold as before there'd be no reason for me follow the character again.

 

(shouldn't the title be more generic now?)

not for the first time I find myself honestly wondering if mos6507 is making a parody of some trek fans.. (the use of the word emasculated for Spock was the icy on the cake.. )
If that is really your perception.. well, it's just fascinating how two people can watch the same movie and yet see two completely different things..

and really, Uhura teasing spock and kissing his helmet, of all the scenes, in indulgent affection when he doesn't get her joke is so honestly cute.
Her smiling and shaking her head when she hears him reciting the prime directive is priceless because it tells me that Spock must have recited that rule so many times, but she just loves her dork who knows regulations by memory and doesn't get her joke when after helping him put all that stuff on, she asks him if he's sure he doesn't want her to go instead.
there is so much honest affection in that interaction (and it says so much about them with very little). Even Sulu saying 'sorry Uhura' when they have to leave Spock there is a nice touch because he knows about their relationship and he cares, and I wish it was always that easy for the movie to hint the family bond among the crew because contrary to what mos6507 is saying, I think the movies are supposed to be about people. If Tos's purpose had been being a doc about the army and their rules, I doubt we'd get the same show...I don't even know how people with certain issues can appreciate the tos characters and their interpersonal relationships since, following their logic, they shouldn't exist then.

when it comes to the present (or at least the fictional present of the characters), the destruction of vulcan does, alone, change Spock's path a lot for me. Not to even mention his father admitting that he loved Amanda.. tos Spock never had any vulcan, especially not his father, telling him that vulcans have feelings too and it's - gasp - ok to have them and embrace them.

of course, Spock was in a relationship with Uhura before any of that happened and in that scene he just, basically, got daddy's blessings to be himself. Inevitably, he must have been his own person compared to tos Spock even before the vulcan diaspora. Sarek's admission, in context of Spock already being in love with someone and already allowing himself to be in a relationship, has relevance in that maybe up that point Spock thought that him and Sarek were different or that his father wouldn't approve his choices and who he is, but in that moment he understands that they are actually similar.
I find it more interesting than if S/U got together only after the destruction of vulcan and the Sarek/Spock scene because it adds to Spock's conflict and strong personality, and makes him far less predictable and more layered.

It's very possible that Spock's life wasn't exactly the same in this reality compared to the other. I might be wrong but, for example, at the time where here he met Uhura (sooner than in tos) while working at the academy, tos Spock was already working with Pike on the enterprise. Even the tos Spock who worked with Pike was different from the one we saw later.
Of course, from a doylist perspective we can say that he was different because the character wasn't clearly defined yet and the writers changed their mind later. But from a watsonian perspective (the story) we don't know what happened to Spock that made him different from the guy who worked with Pike. Whatever happened, maybe never happened here or maybe Spock faced that differently.
We don't know his backstory in details. Maybe he fell in love with someone at one point and it went bad so he decided to never try relationships again. Or maybe there are things that simply happened to this Spock that never happened to the other so it's hard to understand what is 'in character' without having an identical situation for the other Spock to compare.
Nevertheless, after all the whole thing about free will (and IDIC, if we want to include even vulcan culture here) means that even if Spock&Co might have lived a similar life compared to their counterparts from another reality, they might still make different choices.


for me, the movie makes S/U all the more plausible the moment they show Spock beating the s**t out of the vulcan bullies and when he essentially gives the middle finger to the vulcans at the science academy. [can we mention the fact that adorable little smart kiddo Spock pretty much told his father that he was a hypocrite for marrying a human and yet expect him to be only vulcan. Gotta love that kid ]
These can be events that happened to the other Spock too and maybe they did, but the point for me is that for this Spock, at least, it seems to me that he's not someone who is ashamed of his human side even if he wants to embrace the vulcan culture. When they insult his mother, and thus his human side, he is having none of that s**t and he just won't apologize for being human. He's as defensive of his vulcan side with the humans as he's of his human side with the vulcans. I love the way he looks at that old vulcan dude as someone who is pretty much past the point of trying to make them accept him for who he is and he doesn't give a s**t anyway.

this portrayal makes more sense to me.
Spock loved his mother and his mother was human. He might feel insecure as a kid because he's mixed and not fully vulcan like the other kids, but being ashamed of his human side would be like being ashamed of his mother which it is pretty obvious that he isn't. Just watch the scene where he tells her about him possibly choosing kolinahr and he takes her hands in his and says he hopes she doesn't take offense from that, or takes it as him being against her. He respects her and will defend her... and let's say it, perhaps he has a better relationship with her than with Sarek anyway because she always made a point she'd accept him the way he was while maybe Sarek, from his pov (see the scene between them when he's a kid), didn't do that.
And remember that he had already made a request to join starfleet too (to which the vulcans comment saying it's weird for him to make that request too since he'd get accepted to the vulcan science academy anyway). Someone who wants to embrace only vulcan wouldn't even contemplate the idea to leave vulcan to live on earth for years and join an academy there.

This Spock can have his conflict but he doesn't have to be Sarah Jane from 'Imitation of Life'.

 

Ahh, I was waiting for the Abrams hate to surface.

Uhura was in a committed relationship with Spock, and her actions were completely appropriate. Starfleet is not a purely military organization, nor has it ever been portrayed as a place where normal human interaction is not allowed or is "distracting."

By the way "distracting" is a long way from "emasculating", so nice claw back there.

The relationship between Uhura and Spock is one of my favorite parts of nuTrek, and its development really served to add some needed emotional depth to STiD.

 

Not to mention Picard spent some time with one of his underlings, in "Lessons".

 

I'm not an Abrams hater but I don't like the way the relationship is portrayed while on duty. I was fine with everything except the kissing on the transporter pad in NuTrek 1. I was not a fan of the domestic in the shuttle in STiD. If they can't keep it professional while on duty, transfer to separate ships! Why do we need female characters anyway? This is NuTrek!

 

I hope that if I was being sent somewhere, to possibly die, that I would get a moment with a loved one.

I thought it was entertaining. Especially, Spock's "Uncertain".

 

I like a lot of the humour in NuTrek; my problem with a lack of professionalism in Trek is a general one. Obviously many people want the romance or they would not include it. I just happen to think that the place to show it is in private moments and not in front of other crewmen while on duty and more particularly while the cusp of important, time-sensitive missions. I probably just grew up on too many WWII movies where war heroes bottled it all up.

I think NuScotty's near total lack of professionalism is tiresome. Similarly, Malcom Reed used to get a hard time for being a stick-in-the-mud while Trip was repeatedly insubordinate and unprofessional. That really irked me. McCoy scraped by because he was not part of the chain of command and because his outbursts were most often during private meetings. I just prefer it when command officers act like they are in command and not on a jolly with their girlfriends and boyfriends. Imagine if Troi came and sat on Riker's lap while he's on bridge duty - yeeesh. Bad enough that Janice Rand would always bend from the waist when she dropped her padd.

So far I'm rather enjoying the Last Ship. The officers do their jobs while on duty and, apart from the occasional bit of flirting among the junior crew, they save their whining and kissing for their alone time.

 

Successive generations within Western culture (and Trek is firmly anchored in that culture) have behaved in increasingly informal ways, such that going back a century (let alone three) would be a shock for someone today--and vice versa. The fact that a fictional representation of a quasi-military institution three centuries in the future happens to be a touch less formal than today is, if anything, a conservative estimate of the lack of formality that is likely to be the norm, should present trends continue. (Conversely, a far more rigid formalism may exist three centuries hence--history is not a linear progression and formal manners have waxed and waned throughout time.).

Most importantly, though--it's just a movie! (patent pending ). It's fine to be annoyed with the choices made by the filmmakers. It's rather absurd to even pretend to have any clear notion what social norms regarding workplace behaviour three centuries from now will actually be like.

 

Hear, hear! Amen! Bi-La Kaifa, and +1

I think Spock/Uhura's relationship as portrayed in both movies is just fine as is. The kissing moment on the transporter pad made for a nice, light, awkward, and comedic moment for Kirk....which is advantageous to storytelling....it serves the mood of the moment, and makes the story that much more entertaining.

KIRK: Her first name is Nyo--?
SPOCK: I have no comment on the matter.
The theater erupted in hearty laughter at that moment.

I think it also reinforces Uhura's attitude toward Kirk (still only hours into his command), and that "she hopes Kirk knows what he's doing" because now, Kirk is endangering her loved one more immediately than he's already endangering his crew. She also seemed to forget, this was a mission that Spock volunteered for, even at Kirk's initial hesitation.

The descent to Kronos in the smugglers' shuttle was another moment that seized the initiative to catch the audience at the most emotionally stirring moment.

My view on engaging storytelling is to set up your moments where you will catch the audience off guard for maximum effect.

The character, Uhura, handled her personal moments with Spock in the best situations for which the pace of the story allowed. In all cases, it was in situations where the fewest crew members were present. (Save for her browbeating Spock into assigning her aboard Enterprise...but she did keep her voice tactfully subdued....as far as onlookers were concerned, it was a simple conversation between officer and cadet.) -On Spock losing his mother, and Vulcan, she comforted him in the relative privacy of a turbolift.

-On seeing him off before he and Kirk boarded the Narada, there was only Kirk and Scott present. I already stated the reasons why she might want Kirk to see her and Spock's love for each other. As for Scott, he was likely still in the final stages of completing calculations to beam Kirk and Spock over.

-In the shuttle flight over the volcano on Nibiru, Sulu was busy hovering the shuttle into position while Uhura played a little flirt with Spock.

-On the smuggler shuttle ride down to Kronos, Hendorf and the other security guard were the only officers present outside of Uhura's inner circle of Spock and Kirk, and I don't think we really got to see any reaction from them...so they were likely busy trying to think up tactical scenarios on the way down. Uhura, at Kirk's objection, involves her captain in trying to make her point to Spock.

In no case, did Uhura flaunt her relationship with Spock before the larger whole of the crew in the corridors of the Enterprise. A scene in Uhura's or Spock's quarters before the missions would've slowed down the pace of the story. She handled her moments with Spock in as professional a manner as the pace of the story allowed.

Why else did these things happen the way they did? Because they made for good emotional responses from the audience. Largely they were played more for their comedic value rather than their romantic airs....but they worked.

 

I want to know where some of these people are having these perfectly organized relationships where an angry significant other waits only until the most appropriate time to broach a subject that seriously concerns him or her, and who never involves their friends (as Kirk is most definitely a friend by this point). I'd also like to know who wants the kind of partner who thinks to themselves "well, I'd love to kiss my lover one last time, just in case they're going off to their certain death, but I'll just stand back here and nod. They'll understand, I'm sure."

I mean, what turns a man neutral? Lust for gold? Power?

 

The "professionalism" thing is a non starter. Is any one really interested in seeing these characters as Dragnet in space?