Spock News

[DaveyNY]

You mean in the same way that Spock told Uhura "Vulcan has no moon..." in TOS S1 - "The Man Trap" yet in ST:TMP (overseen by the great bird GR himself) in 1979, we get this shot of Vulcan:

^^^
Tell, me what are those TWO things in the upper right corner?

Figments of your imagination...

 

[Nerys Myk]

I ' m pretty meh on DSC, but I think they should let it be its own thing. Al most seems like tptb don't think it strong enough without all the TOS stuff.

i know I a m in the minority, but I don' t really want family dynamics drama/melodrama. I would like strange, new worlds, moral conundrums, what-ifs, allegories, you know, star trek.

Nothing wrong with family dynamics in Star Trek. Some really good episodes in that catagory (Journey To Babel, Family, Brothers ect) "Strange, new worlds" is actually pretty low on my want list.

 

[mos6507]

I can't believe Kutzman is gonna make Spock emotional. He said Spock will be there with all his characteristics and style. But at the same time very different from the Spock we all know. An earlier more emotional Spock..

Talk about revisionism. Not good
I was hopeful till I read that!

So damn tired of the emotional Spock. It's a real misread of the character and defeats the whole purpose of presenting a stoic character as a character-study.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So damn tired of the emotional Spock. It's a real misread of the character and defeats the whole purpose of presenting a stoic character as a character-study.

Nah, ^ that's a total misread of Spock.

 

[mos6507]

Spock WAS more emotional in the "Pike Era".

So does that mean "lithium" crystals are also canon? Early mistakes in the pilot or first few episodes are just that, mistakes. Don't base today's canon on them.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So does that mean "lithium" crystals are also canon? Early mistakes in the pilot or first few episodes are just that, mistakes. Don't base today's canon on them.

Everything is canon. Whether or not a writer chooses to use it is a different matter.

 

[DaveyNY]

So does that mean "lithium" crystals are also canon? Early mistakes in the pilot or first few episodes are just that, mistakes. Don't base today's canon on them.

We saw that Spock for the first time in the 11th episode of Season 1. (1966)
And again in the first TV airing of "The Cage" in 1988.
I'd hardly call that a "mistake' from one of the first few episodes.
Seems to me that it was meant to be pretty intentional.
Especially since in neither instance was it edited in any way, shape or form.

 

[mos6507]

We saw that Spock for the first time in the 11th episode of Season 1. (1966)
And again in the first TV airing of "The Cage" in 1988.
I'd hardly call that a "mistake' from one of the first few episodes.
Seems to me that it was meant to be pretty intentional.
Especially since in neither instance was it edited in any way, shape or form.

Go watch Leonard Nimoy interviews where he talks about finding the character. It's a mistake. There's really no valid debate to be had over it. In an ideal world they would have worked the character out first, but characters can shift. Doctor Smith on LiS, for instance, went from serious to campy. It happens.

 

[DaveyNY]

Go watch Leonard Nimoy interviews where he talks about finding the character. It's a mistake. There's really no valid debate to be had over it. In an ideal world they would have worked the character out first, but characters can shift. Doctor Smith on LiS, for instance, went from serious to campy. It happens.

I've seen that several times.
Whether he believed it was a "mistake" or not is irrelevant.
What we see/will see 'On-Screen', is where this discussions main focus has been and is the gist of my reply.
You bringing up a real world explanation, while factual, isn't really valid to the discussion at hand.

 

[Tuskin38]

We have Spock from TOS, more toward the logical Vulcan side.

Don't forget emotional Spock from 'The Cage', which was only a couple years before DSC season 2.

 

[mos6507]

You bringing up a real world explanation, while factual, isn't really valid to the discussion at hand.

Sure, if you insist on rationalizing everything in-universe into a seamless whole. I understand the impulse. I get it. We want to hold onto suspension of disbelief for dear life, but fiction, especially 50+ years of it, is messy. I don't feel the need to explain away any and all production mistakes.

 

[Tuskin38]

Sure, if you insist on rationalizing everything in-universe into a seamless whole. I understand the impulse. I get it. We want to hold onto suspension of disbelief for dear life, but fiction, especially 50+ years of it, is messy. I don't feel the need to explain away any and all production mistakes.

And yet, the reused the footage from The Cage in Season 2. That solidifies it in-universe.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Don't forget emotional Spock from 'The Cage', which was only a couple years before DSC season 2.

Yeah....my guess is that's probably the way they're going. Working it in and exploring it, rather than having it as a 'mistake'. Which is fine with me. Depending on what they do, and who the actor is, I wonder if a significant percentage of fandom is going to be complaining that they are just aping Quinto, it's not prime, and all of that?

Oh, wait....a significant percentage of fandom complains, no matter what. I keep forgetting that.

 

[johnnybear]

So does that mean "lithium" crystals are also canon? Early mistakes in the pilot or first few episodes are just that, mistakes. Don't base today's canon on them.

Not so much a mistake rather than an early idea which was changed later on! Glad it was altered as Lithium is a common name these days while Dylithium sounds much better!
JB

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

So damn tired of the emotional Spock. It's a real misread of the character and defeats the whole purpose of presenting a stoic character as a character-study.

Nah, ^ that's a total misread of Spock.

Quite. Here's a pertinent passage from Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry's The Making Of Star Trek (1968, reprinted 1994), pg. 226:

"Because of his mother's origin, however, Spock does have a human side to his personality. A human side with emotions. The result is a continual struggle within himself to suppress his feelings. But his Vulcan half is normally in control. Conditioned since childhood not only to deny but also to be ashamed of emotion, Spock thrusts feelings aside and finds a "logical" rationalization to explain it.

WHICH IS ONE OF THE REASONS SPOCK IS AN INTERESTING CHARACTER: THE TURMOIL AND CONFLICT WITHIN. AS HALF-HUMAN AND HALF-VULCAN, HE IS CONTINUALLY AT WAR WITHIN HIMSELF. FOR SOME REASON THIS MAKES HIM PARTICULARLY DELIGHTFUL TO OUR FEMALE VIEWERS, AND OF ALL AGES. I GUESS THEY KNOW THAT SOMEWHERE INSIDE HIM THERE IS A STRONG, EMOTIONAL EARTH MAN TRYING TO COME OUT. AND THEY WOULD LOVE TO HELP."
​

(The all-caps text is used to indicate Roddenberry's personal comments in the book.)

When you see Spock laid bare under the influence of the virus in "The Naked Time" (TOS), that is the "real" Spock you are seeing there as much as at any other time in TOS. (Just as you see the "real" Kirk, terrified of losing the Enterprise, and yet tormented by the loneliness of command.) That virus wasn't imposing those characteristics on them; it was merely revealing them. As Sybok would say, "I've done nothing. This is who they are. Didn't you know that?" Of course, Spock grows as a character from there...but ultimately not by stoically denying that part of himself. On the contrary, the complete opposite—by gradually learning to accept and be at peace with it. That's what his whole arc in TMP and the subsequent films is about!

-MMoM

 

[Nerys Myk]

I've a feeling that if they hadn't grafted Number One's emotionlessness on to Spock we might have ended up with a character more like Data.

 

[dahj]

I've a feeling that if they hadn't grafted Number One's emotionlessness on to Spock we might have ended up with a character more like Data.

Or Tuvix.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Well, I think that it would match the visual evidence better. The big planet is a gas giant, and Vulcan and the small planetoid are its moons. I'm no expert, but I have hard time imagining that two planets in separate orbits would come that close, or if it is a twin-planet arrangement, the moon could maintain any reasonable orbit with them.

Well, do keep in mind that they apparently think that a distance of 100 AUs looks like this...

(Actually, given the mention of terraforming in the very same episode, I agree with the interpretation that what they intended to convey there may have been that Sol has a new ninth planet to replace the "loss" of Pluto.)

Memory Alpha has this on the origins of the "Vulcan moon" (or "sister planet") issue:

Although Spock tells Uhura that "Vulcan has no moon" in TOS: "The Man Trap" – a phrase that is repeated exactly in the script of the 1973 episode "Yesteryear" – a moon-like body was portrayed in close orbit of Vulcan in "Yesteryear". This was because it was typical for the artists of the animated series to never refer back to the script or descriptions, once past the storyboard process. Even though Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana noted "NO MOON!" on a preliminary sketch of the planet when the drawing was submitted to them for approval, this was also ignored. By 1974, several people had inquired as to what the orb was intended to be and, in reply, Roddenberry and Fontana had had to refer to it as a sister planet. (Babel #5; Enterprise Incidents, number 11, p. 27)

[...]

Several sources – such as the officially-licensed reference works The Worlds of the Federation (p. 18) and Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 58) – offer the explanation that the sister planet was named T'Khut. This name was coined (spelled "T'Kuht") by fanzine writer and artist Gordon Carleton in 1975 (upon which, he stated that T'Kuht was "the Vulcan name" for the sister planet). Carleton was influenced by D.C. Fontana's earlier postulation that Vulcan was part of a twin system. [14]​

(And of course, Memory Beta has much more on how it's been treated in other works over the years.)

-MMoM

 

[TrickyDickie]

Loss of Pluto?

 

[thribs]

Actually by the 24th century, Pluto is a proper planet again.