My Gripes with STID!

[Hartzilla2007]

One thing that stretches credibility in that movie is that Spock seems much more upset by the death of Kirk than he was by the death of nearly his entire species, including his own mother.


We didn't see him shout whatever the name of the villain was in the first movie, did we?

You obviously missed Spock's mega meltdown when Kirk was dissing his feelings for his Mama in Star Trek (2009).

Or wanting to leave Nero to die in a black hole.

I don't understand people who can't quickly become emotionally attached to someone. I proposed to my wife three weeks after I met her.

Spock is a Vulcan. The only times we see him manifest any emotion at all in TOS are in Amok time where he's supposed to be undergoing a severe/deadly hormonal unbalance and in all our yesterdays, where he's regressed to a prehistorical form of his species.

Do you know of any other?

And in This Side of Paradise where once again he kicks Kirk's ass. And in TMP where V'Ger makes him cry, And in The Cage, where he laughs and raises his voice. And in The Naked Time where he cries about his mom. Then there are the times he get perturbed with McCoy or some other human. ( different episodes) You see it in Nimoy's expression or tone.

Or deciding to throw logic out to save everyone in Galileo 7.

Seriously why do so many people think Spock is just an emotionless robot.

 

[urbandefault]

Seriously why do so many people think Spock is just an emotionless robot.

There's probably a psychological explanation, but I'm not qualified to even approach it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

One thing that stretches credibility in that movie is that Spock seems much more upset by the death of Kirk than he was by the death of nearly his entire species, including his own mother.


We didn't see him shout whatever the name of the villain was in the first movie, did we?

You obviously missed Spock's mega meltdown when Kirk was dissing his feelings for his Mama in Star Trek (2009).

Or wanting to leave Nero to die in a black hole.

Spock is a Vulcan. The only times we see him manifest any emotion at all in TOS are in Amok time where he's supposed to be undergoing a severe/deadly hormonal unbalance and in all our yesterdays, where he's regressed to a prehistorical form of his species.

Do you know of any other?

And in This Side of Paradise where once again he kicks Kirk's ass. And in TMP where V'Ger makes him cry, And in The Cage, where he laughs and raises his voice. And in The Naked Time where he cries about his mom. Then there are the times he get perturbed with McCoy or some other human. ( different episodes) You see it in Nimoy's expression or tone.

Or deciding to throw logic out to save everyone in Galileo 7.

Seriously why do so many people think Spock is just an emotionless robot.

Probably fans of TNG and Data.

 

[Kemaiku]

Kirk was only mostly dead, not all dead. Khan's blood didn't revive him, it just repaired the damage done by the radiation.

Not that big a stretch, by Trek standards.

Basically what I said 2 or 3 posts up.

 

[nightwind1]

In that universe, Kirk appears to have a much stronger friendship with Dr. "Buckle up" McCoy than Mr. Spock, plus having only known Spock only a fraction of the time that they Knew each other in TWOK. I didn't buy Spock's reaction in that crappy rip-off death scene at all.

I don't understand people who can't quickly become emotionally attached to someone. I proposed to my wife three weeks after I met her.

Spock is a Vulcan. The only times we see him manifest any emotion at all in TOS are in Amok time where he's supposed to be undergoing a severe/deadly hormonal unbalance and in all our yesterdays, where he's regressed to a prehistorical form of his species.

Do you know of any other?

Smiling at the "singing" plant, and yelling "The Women!!" in The Cage/Menagerie.

Making sweet, sweet Vulcan romance with Leila Kalomi in This Side of Paradise.

Bawling his eyes out in The Naked Time.

Crying over I-Chaya's death in Yesteryear.

Weeping for V'Ger in TMP.

Getting emotional over meeting Surak in The Savage Curtain.

Just to name a few...

 

[BillJ]

Smiling at the "singing" plant, and yelling "The Women!!" in The Cage/Menagerie.

Making sweet, sweet Vulcan romance with Leila Kalomi in This Side of Paradise.

Bawling his eyes out in The Naked Time.

Crying over I-Chaya's death in Yesteryear.

Weeping for V'Ger in TMP.

Getting emotional over meeting Surak in The Savage Curtain.

Just to name a few...

The argument they'll make is that those instances were caused by external factors. My argument is that the reactions by Spock in the Abrams movies were caused by external factors (death of his mother, destruction of Vulcan, death of Kirk). Plus, you have to figure there's a cumulative effect there. Kirk's death in and of itself didn't on its own push Spock over the edge, it was just another piece of an overall puzzle.

Everyone, even Vulcans, have a limit on how much emotional damage they can handle. Then there's the fact that Spock is only a half-Vulcan.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I don't totally buy the half Vulcan angle. Most of what keeps Vulcan emotions in check is discipline and control. Being raise by a human would be a bigger factor than any human genetics/physiology/biology.

 

[BillJ]

I don't totally buy the half Vulcan angle. Most of what keeps Vulcan emotions in check is discipline and control. Being raise by a human would be a bigger factor than any human genetics/physiology/biology.

I don't know? I think there would be quite a bit of both physical and cultural conflict going on within Spock.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I don't totally buy the half Vulcan angle. Most of what keeps Vulcan emotions in check is discipline and control. Being raise by a human would be a bigger factor than any human genetics/physiology/biology.

I don't know? I think there would be quite a bit of both physical and cultural conflict going on within Spock.

For sure. Being raised on Vulcan as a Vulcan, yet having to look at your human mom across the breakfast/lunch/dinner every day has got to mess up the poor guy's head. Especially after being harassed by schoolmates all day.

 

[Amaris]

Smiling at the "singing" plant, and yelling "The Women!!" in The Cage/Menagerie.

Making sweet, sweet Vulcan romance with Leila Kalomi in This Side of Paradise.

Bawling his eyes out in The Naked Time.

Crying over I-Chaya's death in Yesteryear.

Weeping for V'Ger in TMP.

Getting emotional over meeting Surak in The Savage Curtain.

Just to name a few...

The argument they'll make is that those instances were caused by external factors. My argument is that the reactions by Spock in the Abrams movies were caused by external factors (death of his mother, destruction of Vulcan, death of Kirk). Plus, you have to figure there's a cumulative effect there. Kirk's death in and of itself didn't on its own push Spock over the edge, it was just another piece of an overall puzzle.

Everyone, even Vulcans, have a limit on how much emotional damage they can handle. Then there's the fact that Spock is only a half-Vulcan.

Bingo. The mind, regardless of how strong it is, can only handle so much before it takes a temporary vacation. Personally, losing nearly my entire fellow species would likely be enough to shut me down for a while. That he also lost his mom probably pushed him to the red line. Kirk was fast becoming his closest friend, aside from Uhura, and suddenly Kirk is taken away, and that just snaps the final stable nerve in his brain, and he let his anger out.

Personally, I love this approach. I've always admired Spock, and I've always felt sad for him that his father was willing to shun him for two decades because of choices he made for his own life; choices which ended up being fruitful.

 

[BigJake]

The argument they'll make is that those instances were caused by external factors. My argument is that the reactions by Spock in the Abrams movies were caused by external factors (death of his mother, destruction of Vulcan, death of Kirk)

In most of those cases, "they" have "external factors" to talk about that are actually external and not just about stress on the mind. But even given that and in all fairness, I do think just about anyone would have to spot you "destruction of Vulcan" and "death of his mother" by association. ("Death of Kirk" is a tougher proposition. Spock's friendship with Kirk made sense with Nimoy and Shatner precisely because it had ripened over decades, and even then, Spock's emotional reserve would have forbidden certain things. We all know the certain things. )

Honestly, the major problem with Spock is just that having someone to be "the logical character" hasn't aged well from the Sixties and is harder and harder for directors and actors to sell [even where the character is an actual machine, like Data]. This has been visible with Vulcan characters for ages. Emotion is interesting, the lack of it isn't, it is therefore super-hard for creators to avoid emotion.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

One thing that made Spock in TOS so interesting was not his lack of displayed emotion, but rather the ways in which he was constantly subtly displaying emotion, despite all his protestations to the contrary. Disdain, impatience, satisfaction, concern, regret, and pride were feelings that Spock displayed frequently in subtle ways that are these days readily apparent to me.

 

[BigJake]

Indeed, and subtlety and restraint was the absolute key. Virtues that are hard to sell in the blockbuster era of the 21st century.

 

[Jax]

Kirk was mostly dead, not all dead.

This just makes me

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I'll give you the blood one. Actually, the miracle blood is my biggest problem with the film. A far too miraculous thing to exist. As for the Spock yell, they should have done the exact opposite. I think his "Khaaannnn" should have been done in a low, seething angry growl. I think that would have been a far better, and much more effective portrayal of his anger and it would have been far more fitting for a half human, half Vulcan - at least I believe that to be the case, anyway. Be that as it may, I still liked the film.

The "miracle blood" isn't all that different than any other miracle resurrections we see in Star Trek. And there is a precedent of sorts in "Space Seed".

MARLA: A man from the twentieth century coming alive.
MCCOY: Maybe. Heart beat dropping.
KIRK: Circuit shorting.
SCOTT: Probably some dust.
MCCOY: Heartbeat now thirty, dropping fast. It's a heart flutter. He's dying.
MARLA: Do something, Captain.
KIRK: Can we?
SCOTT: It'd take an hour to figure it out.
KIRK: What happens if we get him out of there?
MCCOY: He'll die in seconds if we don't.

KIRK: Bones?
MCCOY: He'll live.
KIRK: My compliments.
MCCOY: No, I'm good, but not that good. There's something inside this man that refuses to accept death. Look at that. Even as he is now, his heart valve action has twice the power of yours and mine. Lung efficiency is fifty percent better.

Thanks for giving me ammo that I can use the next time somebody objects to this movie's use of Khan's blood.

 

[bbailey861]

Kirk was only clinically dead, and very briefly, the kind of clinical death that can still result in revival now depending on the type of injury sustained.

In this case, it was severe radiation poisoning, we have no cure for that to repair the cell damage. Kirk was frozen before brain damage or full braindeath set in, as McCoy even states in the film.

They revived him, while transfusing Khans blood to repair the cellular damage, which still seemed to have Kirk in catatonia/coma like state for two full weeks where his recovery was not guaranted to begin with.

There was no magic, he was subject to a brief clinical death where the only difference what caused it, and a "cure" that was the product of the best minds of a generations best genetic engineering, coupled with 23rd century's best medical knowledge and ability, to just manage to save him.

Okay, I like this explanation very much. Thank you

 

[F. King Daniel]

While I think "Khaaaan!" was a homage too far, it definitely fits this Spock - whose prior two meltdowns (against the Vulcan bullies and Kirk) were preceded by a primal scream.

I loved the mirror of Young Spock pummeling his tormentor in ST and current Spock wailing on Khan in ID. Excellent callback.

 

[BillJ]

While I think "Khaaaan!" was a homage too far, it definitely fits this Spock - whose prior two meltdowns (against the Vulcan bullies and Kirk) were preceded by a primal scream.

I loved the mirror of Young Spock pummeling his tormentor in ST and current Spock wailing on Khan in ID. Excellent callback.

Of course, the young Spock fighting bullies comes from "Yesteryear" written by D.C. Fontana from Star Trek: The Animated Series.

 

[FarStrider]

While I think "Khaaaan!" was a homage too far, it definitely fits this Spock - whose prior two meltdowns (against the Vulcan bullies and Kirk) were preceded by a primal scream.

I loved the mirror of Young Spock pummeling his tormentor in ST and current Spock wailing on Khan in ID. Excellent callback.

Of course, the young Spock fighting bullies comes from "Yesteryear" written by D.C. Fontana from Star Trek: The Animated Series.

And also references the TOS episode "Journey to Babel," which was also written by D.C. Fontana. . .

 

[Timo]

Regarding Khan's miracle blood, it almost seems as if it would be a Khan feature, not a Genetically Engineered Eugenically Bred Superman Augment feature in general. Thawing out one of Khan's cohorts ought to have been doable in the time Spock and Uhura tried to corral Khan himself, yet McCoy made no attempt at such. Sure, such a quick defrost might kill the victim, but then again, Spock might kill Khan.

It's not much of a stretch to say that Khan had special blood that was all his own doing. After all, that blood was a key element in his scheme to blackmail a Starfleet/S31 member into doing his bidding - and he would have had access to S31 secrets while formulating that scheme, thus improving on his original 20th century biology considerably. Sure, Khan could simply have distilled a vial of the medicine that healed the little girl - but if the medicine already needed to be a supercure the best doctors outside S31 couldn't even dream of, Khan would certainly be tempted to make it part of his own body, too.

Not that this should be necessary to carry the plot. And the point about Khan in "Space Seed" already defying medical odds is an intriguing one. But it's a possibility.

Timo Saloniemi