All Our Yesterdays...haunting...

An unrelated production question: Does anybody have any information on the tree-covered hill backdrop with the cloudy sky seen through the archway of the Atavachron portal?

 

Good point about us expecting to feel for Zarabeth because we're told to. As opposed to her revealing her loneliness more subtly through lines or acting. Though Ms. Hartley is not bad at all.

The more you all talk about this one, the more I like it.

And Spock does choose comrades over staying and being happy, yes? That's a personal dilemma. And I think the last he sees is lonely Zarabeth in her parka. Reminds me of "Paradise" where he loses Leila sp? and rues that he for once was happy.

 

Probably just a stock background as used in a dozen westerns.

As to Spock in the barbaric past, I still find it out of character despite the story's attempts to justify it. Clearly YMMV.

 

When Kirk was grappling with Mr.Atoz near the end of the show, did it sound to you that he said The Sarpeidon Air Siege rather than The Sarpeidon Ice Age? This has haunted me for thirty odd years or more....
JB

 

You have summed up so much in just a few words.

Thank you.

 

Obviously the Sarpeidons who travelled back in time worked towards the discovery of time travel with the Atavachron and other scientific ventures with their superior knowledge! Plus the exact date of the explosion of Beta Niobe!
JB

 

As pointed out upthread, a good comparison is Spock in "This Side of Paradise".

However, neither "All Our Yesterdays"'s nor "This Side"'s portrayal of Spock perfectly matches how I think Spock would really be like were his emotions unchained, so if this (at least in the case of "Yesterdays") is what you're getting at about being out of character then I would agree, in at least certain specifics. So, it's not so much being out of character per se that's the problem, but being out of character in the wrong way, maybe?

In the case of "This Side", there is an evident intoxicating effect from the spores that has to be factored in, which would explain why we're not seeing the true inner Spock. In the case of "Yesterdays", it's harder for me to put my finger on, but the character is coming off as somewhat flat.

There's also a time-compression problem in the story. It would have worked much better if they could have been trapped in the past for a longer period of time, to have tried and failed to return at least one other time, so it doesn't seem like Spock is giving up so easily. The fundamental problem story-wise with the way the Atavachron works is that there's nothing that Spock and McCoy can do on their end to get back anyway, except be there when the portal opens; to open, the machine has to be set on Kirk's end to view their time period. Perhaps McCoy could have decided to camp out where the portal was until it opened, and one thing pulling on Spock is whether to leave him there. One of the bad lines in the episode is McCoy's quick, "I suppose you're right," to Spock's observation that no portal was there. It's bad because McCoy had just won a hard fought argument to get them all out there in the first place.

I'd say that the episode needed a polish from someone like Gene Coon.

 

I don't know any better than anyone, so here's my take on it.

Having logical Spock in the past would eliminate at least half of the dramatic tension of this episode, and who would blame him, logical or not, for wanting to stay with Mariette Hartley?

They showed that Vulcanians' have a limited telepathic contact as a species. Spock feels when the Vulcans die suddenly on the Intrepid. Part of their logic seems not only an individual choice but a communal choice. This could be why someone like Sybok, who seems ok otherwise, can be banished. Without the communal logic of the Vulcan race 5,000 years ago, Mr. Spock lost that support. That's my opinion as to why he would be suddenly emotional.

 

...or he's telepathically in touch with millions of savage Vulcans, causing him to revert.

 

I left that part out, didn't I?


But, there's my take on it.

 

As others have stated, in the context of the narrative of that episode, it's fully "IN" character. A 5,000 years ago Vulcan is a savage. What's more, that's actually "in character" with everything else we know about Vulcan culture, in-universe--they originally started out as very savage and turned to the logical way of life as an antidote to the self-destruction of that savagery. This underlying savage nature with an overlay of logic, but with the emotions and savagery just barely under the surface, is also reflected in episodes like Amok Time.

Of course I suppose some people, when they read "A Christmas Carol," feel that Scrooge was acting "out of character" when he gave the Christmas goose to Tiny Tim Cratchett.

These things aren't acting "out of character," they are reflective of a richer narrative which has a more complex, multi dimensional characterization showing character development. Not cardboard cutouts.

So the whole point of this aspect of the episode was to show us that emotional savage side of Spock, and probably to give Leonard Nimoy an opportunity to exercise his acting chops a little bit.

 

Did he need to exercise his acting chops though, Mr.Hengist? Heh,Heh
JB