Yes, that was it. Makes no sense whatsoever, but the part relevant to this discussion is that he was not being his normal self.
Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND
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Which is true every time he goes "emotional", including in 09 and STID.
The difference is, Spock losing it,from time to time, is part of his character. Once again, it is key to his character. His conflict between emotion and logic is core to the character. Having him lose out to emotion drives that home. Which is why it has happened so often in TOS. If you don't understand that. you don't understand Spock.
No. He was not altered, or drugged in any way. He goes fucking berserk in both of the new films, in an emotionally challenging situation. They managed to do six films without him doing that. Berserk rage is now defining feature of the new Spock more than being logical and calm is. I don't like this.
TOS is my benchmark not the six film. In TOS, Spock in much more complex and capable of rage, joy and other emotions. Even though he usually keeps them in check. ( till the plot says otherwise)
Obviously. I was merely explaining why I don't like the new Spock. (Of the new main trio, the only one I like is McCoy. I think Urban nailed it and there was no script based attempt to drastically alter the character.)
I'd have to say you don't understand Spock beyond the surface level of logic and lack of emotion.
He lost his cool, what three times, during the entire series. And was any of them just because of a stressful situation?
Vulcans have stronger emotions than humans, Spock has very little control of his emotions at times due to his mixed heritage. Come on, all this was established at the very beggining of Trek.
This Spock lost several billion of his people, no one here would be out of a mental asylum after that nevermind stable enough to continue military duty.
This Spock lost several billion of his people, no one here would be out of a mental asylum after that nevermind stable enough to continue military duty.
Which seems to be three times too many by your metric. But yes. three times establishes that Spock can lose his cool. So losing it in the newer films isn't out of character.
I think losing one's mother and planet goes beyond simple stress. Especially for a telepathic species.
Transcript time again
Imagine what billions would do.The Immunity Syndrome said:
LOL so let me understand, now you are saying that I'm being defensive and justifying a whore because of ...personal experience? really? =)
this thread gets better and better.
it's puzzling. it seems like Spock is an old pervy dude having a torrid affair with a 16 years old teenager. It's starfleet academy, he's barely 3 years older than her and a recently graduated himself. He probably got to teach some classes while waiting for the enterprise to get completed so he could work with Pike(**)
We're talking about an imaginary society where humans are not even the default anymore.
Frankly, from my perspective it would make zero sense for starfleet to have rules against relationships made no doubt according to human prejudices and assumption of human weaknesses (like favoritism). Who in their right mind would ever accuse a vulcan, of all the people, of favoritism and tell him that he can't date a person just because they are their instructor or superior officer??? are we serious?
which begs the question why Spock still overcompensated: because he's not infallible. I think that his logic probably knew that the favoritism concern was unfounded because her credits spoke for themselves and were a fact, but his emotional side would still remember the prejudices he had experienced his whole life (see the fact he was bullied by vulcans because of his mother) and that informed him as a person, and maybe he simply didn't want Uhura to experience anything similar for his fault, and thus for anyone to come and discredit her or them because of their relationship... (and the way she uses logic to counter argument him tells alone a lot about their relationship). In short, maybe he didn't trust people's judgment being fair.
Or maybe he was just being stupid.
back to the point, I don't think it would make sense for them to specifically forbid only romantic relationships especially when, and the movie shows that, platonic ones involving humans would pose similar risks in terms of favoritism, anyway. It seems hypocritical to point fingers at couples and yet, say nothing about mentors or best friends that do what they want. Even in terms of the ship, come on now... Kirk might not have a girlfriend but don't tell me there is absolutely no possibility of favoritism from his part for crew members who are his best friends too. Don't tell me there is no conflict here.
The fact that the movie showed that Kirk got on the ship because of a relationship, but it's still S/U that people point fingers at is very telling about our double standards about romantic couples compared to platonic relationships. And yet, feelings are feelings, it doesn't matter if sex is involved or not, if you are in love or just love someone as a friend.
I'm sure that if in stid Kirk had gone against the prime directive to save the woman he loved rather than the point being 'you(Spock) are my friend', some people would have a nervous breakdown and call him out for being unprofessional and the relationship being too much a conflict. And yet, what would be the difference if he saved his girlfriend or saved his friend? In both cases his actions are informed by his feelings for someone and you can't praise the first and yet criticize the second.
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(**)(which is kind of one of the keys here because I'm under the impression that tos Spock met his own Uhura on the ship years later and after making different experiences on the ship with Pike. While this Spock met Uhura at the academy in a different, possibly more quiet, context away from the ship, and where they possibly got to know each other better. Add to the mix the possibility their counterparts were attracted to each other but never acted on it - as some scenes might suggest - and you have the perfect combo for that so called what if that is a common theme in alternate/parallel realities like the reboot is.)
tos Spock probably spent a lot time pretending to be who he wasn't. New Spock is put in the condition where he doesn't need to. This no doubt in part because his experiences made him like that, and then when your own vulcan father tells you that he has feelings too, that must help too. Just give that ONE scene alone to TosSpock too, and his life would have been different in some aspects, IMO
In the link I posted above, Quinto discussed this aspect and his choice to create a version of Spock that is not a carbon copy of the tos one (and it seems Nimoy himself advised him to do that)
I contrasted it with Urban who, instead, believed he had to make some sort of impersonation to honor Deforest. I disagree with him, obviously, but, again, to be fair to Urban I think their characters are different. In a way, it makes more sense for his McCoy, from the little we know at least, to not be too different from the original, but Spock is a whole other story and Quinto truly had the responsibility to keep the spirit of the character, but still portray him in a way that makes sense with the way he's developed. Making his Spock like tos Spock, now, would mean turning him into a caricature.
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No. As I said that sort of thing works if done sparingly. But in the new films there's not enough time to establish Spock's 'normal' personality well enough so that it would work. And he goes berserk two films in the row.
This is a good observation. Urban's approach obviously worked better for me. But these things are matters of taste.
How many main series characters, that we've gotten to know and care about, have abruptly lost their entire race not only in day, but were present on said planet to see it and their mother claimed infront of them?
Who could even come back from that fully sane. Vulcan emotion never goes away, it bubbles behind all their masks and pretense. But that would crack any mental defense.
Who could even come back from that fully sane. Vulcan emotion never goes away, it bubbles behind all their masks and pretense. But that would crack any mental defense.
Two movies, four years apart is sparingly to me. If Spock is going to be limited to three film every decade I hope they do more than use him as an exposition dump, butt of jokes and science guy.
I think we know who Spock is after 50 years, six movies and three years of TV in constant repeats. Even folks who barely know what Star Trek is have a general idea of who Spock is. It might be limited to an emotionless alien with pointed ears but they know something.
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I am actually absolutely fine with Spocks emotional outburst in Trek09. Losing your mother and the telepathic shockwave of billions of Vulcans dying is enough justification to go beserk in my book.
What I'm not fine with, is that they repeated the same trick in Into Darkness. Spock goes beserk again, because of the death of a close (at this point not yet so close...?) friend. This shouldn't have happened. It kind of implies Spock goes beserk everytime something traumatic happens (what clearly goes against canon and Vulcans), and even worse it totally undoes his character arc from the previous film were he supposedly learned to come to peace with himself.
It is understandable as an alternate character interpretation. But it seems wrong. Actually this whole debate feels a lot like the people claiming "Batman and Superman have always killed their enemies" after BvS. Totally ignoring one of the core concepts of each character, simply because there have been ONE or TWO exceptions in the 50 years (Spock)/80ish years (Batman/Superman) those characters have existed.
As for the teacher/student/relationship-thingy: I have always suspected Spock was a lot older than the humans, simply because of the longer Vulcan lifespan (and frankly, the age his human mother had in Tos. If she didn't have a baby with. like, 60, Spock needed to be a bit older than Kirk). Would make sense as well, for a "foreigner" to get to such a high position, since I assumed he had a previous successfull academic career on Vulcan before he left and joined Starfleet. All of this is pure speculation on my part though, and I don't feel like checking memory-alpha for his birth date. It's just that this makes the whole teacher/student-relationship more icky. That got better in Into Darkness were they are purely colleagues, but that movie has this horrible relationship debate in the middle of a critical chase (were Kirk get's rightfully confused about the unprofesionalism of his teammembers). I have decided not to read Malaikas comments anymore, since they're pretty much devoid of any logic or reasoning and it's way too much work to read through the entire wall of text to collect all personal insults.
What I'm not fine with, is that they repeated the same trick in Into Darkness. Spock goes beserk again, because of the death of a close (at this point not yet so close...?) friend. This shouldn't have happened. It kind of implies Spock goes beserk everytime something traumatic happens (what clearly goes against canon and Vulcans), and even worse it totally undoes his character arc from the previous film were he supposedly learned to come to peace with himself.
It is understandable as an alternate character interpretation. But it seems wrong. Actually this whole debate feels a lot like the people claiming "Batman and Superman have always killed their enemies" after BvS. Totally ignoring one of the core concepts of each character, simply because there have been ONE or TWO exceptions in the 50 years (Spock)/80ish years (Batman/Superman) those characters have existed.
As for the teacher/student/relationship-thingy: I have always suspected Spock was a lot older than the humans, simply because of the longer Vulcan lifespan (and frankly, the age his human mother had in Tos. If she didn't have a baby with. like, 60, Spock needed to be a bit older than Kirk). Would make sense as well, for a "foreigner" to get to such a high position, since I assumed he had a previous successfull academic career on Vulcan before he left and joined Starfleet. All of this is pure speculation on my part though, and I don't feel like checking memory-alpha for his birth date. It's just that this makes the whole teacher/student-relationship more icky. That got better in Into Darkness were they are purely colleagues, but that movie has this horrible relationship debate in the middle of a critical chase (were Kirk get's rightfully confused about the unprofesionalism of his teammembers). I have decided not to read Malaikas comments anymore, since they're pretty much devoid of any logic or reasoning and it's way too much work to read through the entire wall of text to collect all personal insults.
I think the two Spocks are different. You kind of felt in safe hands with Nimoy Spock on the bridge, but with Quinto Spock, he's in more of an emotional turmoil so far less stable. I MUCH prefer Quinto Spock than the Motion Picture Spock who was completely without any warmth and almost robot-like after kolinahr. I don't think that Quinto has quite the gravitas Nimoy had but I await Beyond with trepidation. Quinto's ears seem smaller and pointed backward in the new trailers and stills. A mistake or an attempt to humanise the character? Nimoy was always very particular that the ears should point forward rather than back.
Uhura points out in STID that Spock has not allowed himself to properly grieve or express it, to heal. He's bottling up the human side of that and all he does is shut everyone out and redouble the outward appearance of being okay.
He hasn't been since he lost Vulcan, it's way of following the effect it had on him across the movies, instead of just dumping any impact and forgetting about it like oldTrek used to do.
PTSD can follow a person through their entire lives, even with help. And that's for loss orders of magnitude less than what he experienced. I doubt any of us could comprehend that level of pain, especially as you said yourself that his telepathic ability allowed him to *feel* billions of people die near him.
He hasn't been since he lost Vulcan, it's way of following the effect it had on him across the movies, instead of just dumping any impact and forgetting about it like oldTrek used to do.
PTSD can follow a person through their entire lives, even with help. And that's for loss orders of magnitude less than what he experienced. I doubt any of us could comprehend that level of pain, especially as you said yourself that his telepathic ability allowed him to *feel* billions of people die near him.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty obvious that Spock was working through things in the second film. Plus melding with Pike as he died also might have left him emotionally compromised.
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