See this is why I enjoy discussing DSC with you as you see these kinds of links - I missed a lot of these the first time round, I suppose my initial dislike of DSC had me with blinkers on
I'm very happy I could help you enjoy it more, even if only a little! At times I've felt myself to be well and truly wasting my time even attempting to battle the tide negativity that frequently encroaches here. (Not to suggest that's unique to this board by any means, nor that there aren't just as many perfectly valid criticisms to be offered up with respect to DSC as there are of any previous
Trek series. I don't mean to smear
anyone with too broad a brush, even if I may unfortunately come off that way on some days!) But your comments, among others, make me feel it is at least somewhat worthwhile.
I guess the only point I’d make here is that “magic” seemed to be the only one that could be considered a direct prequel at the end - but it’s not as though that episode was “how mudd learned of the beauty drug and decided to become a sex trafficker”, so it wasn’t a direct prequel to that episode. More of a prequel to Mudd the character that fleshed out his unexpected backstory.
That's why I said "I, Mudd" (TOS) instead of "Mudd's Women" (TOS). "Magic To Make..." directly sets up his relationship with Stella as depicted there.
I’d say the same for “Lethe” insofar as I don’t think they sat down and thought “let’s write a prequel to journey to Babel”. The interactions we see in that episode are more about Sarek and Micheal than they are about Sarek and Spock. The links to TOS seem more incidental than a deliberate attempt to write the story behind a particular episode.
Apologies for the essay here...
When we watch "Journey To Babel" (TOS) now, we are granted a deeper and better understanding of why Sarek was so upset with Spock over his choice to join Starfleet. It was
never quite so simple as what Amanda suggests (in her own
incomplete understanding as something of an outsider, despite having long lived among Vulcans),
i.e. that Sarek merely wanted his son to follow traditional Vulcan beliefs as handed down through the generations. It's a lot more complex than that, as pretty much everything else we saw portrayed of Sarek up to now, both there and elsewhere, already suggested.
DSC further reinforces for us that Sarek, quite in contrast to most Vulcans, finds the embracing of humans—in
all senses—to be eminently logical and desirable. He is something of a maverick in that regard (as perhaps indeed his father Skon and grandfather Solkar, who respectively translated Vulcan works into English and acted as the first Vulcan ambassador to Earth, per ENT, were too, so Amanda
isn't totally wrong) and in "Lethe" is shown to have faced in his day the same sort of xenophobic resistance from his peers as that seen on display in both earlier (as central running theme in ENT)
and later (in stories like "The Gambit" [TNG] and "Take Me Out To The Holosuite" [DS9]) times. Such prejudices die hard, and all the more so in cultures that steadfastly refuse to acknowledge and openly address them.
Sarek hoped to play a part in dispelling such attitudes through the introduction of both Michael and Spock to the Vulcan Science Academy, seeing in them the capacity to be agents of change. But he was ultimately thwarted in this aim, first trading away Michael's opportunity to attend in favor of Spock's, and then being further faced with Spock's rejection of it. Having essentially capitulated to the unreasonable strictures of this racist establishment to no purpose, Sarek naturally felt both guilty and resentful. He then projected these feelings of frustration at his
own failure onto Spock.
This further ties in with what we later learn in STIII-V, and in "Sarek" and "Unification" (TNG). Despite never intending to, Sarek drove
all his children away from him, and caused each in turn to feel they had failed
him, when in fact he knew full well that it was
he who had failed
them. By not acknowledging his true emotions and their source, he led Spock to
mistakenly believe that he was a disappointment to his father because he was "so human" and not Vulcan
enough, despite the fact that Sarek
actually felt love, pride, and even
envy of his son, as he later revealed to Picard (and
eventually, though him, to Spock). And he could never fully express such feelings to Amanda, either, even though she obviously picked up a sense of them, and says as much "Journey To Babel" (TOS). This is why when Picard is feeling Sarek's regrets,
they are mentioned, but Michael is not: because in the course of DSC's first season he and Michael came to reach a lasting emotional understanding that
resolved any such regrets with respect
to her.
The gulf between him and Spock, however, was deeper and wider, and persisted even beyond their repeated attempts to bridge it. Even though "Journey To Babel" and
The Voyage Home showed some promise and progress toward this end, and
The Final Frontier showed us that Spock in time learned not to be
ruled by his underlying feelings of inadequacy, the misunderstanding nevertheless lingered on beneath the surface, eventually giving rise to a renewed rift in TNG. (Their argument over the Cardassian War would surely have been but a catalyst.)
If father and son had ever melded, this might well have been eased, but they never did—and here again, Michael's part in the story may have played a role. When Sarek melded with Burnham as a child to save her life, he left part of his
katra, essentially his
soul, with her. This itself could have contributed to Spock's perception of distance between them as well; Sarek could never give
all of himself to his son, because it was no longer fully his to give. And since Sarek's long-distance communication with Burnham in "Battle At The Binary Stars" (DSC) was stated to come at a high physical cost, it might have even laid the groundwork not only for an abstention from further taxing himself in melding with Spock (and Amanda too) but also for his later illness, which gradually caused his emotional and telepathic control to erode, and eventually killed him.
Do we want to see another Kirk origin story? Kirk at the academy with Finnegan etc.? Or do we want to see the circumstances that led the Coridan planets to consider federation membership that would ultimately lead to the Babel conference? (For me, it’s no to the former, but yes to the latter)
I'm pretty much with you there. No interest whatsoever in turning DSC into a "Kirk origin story" here. (He should already have been out of the Academy for a few years now anyway, in this timeline. This is around the time he was a Lieutenant on the
Farragut per "Obsession" [TOS]. He seems to have returned there as an
instructor at some point before getting his first command, per "Where No Man Has Gone Before" [TOS], though.) There are plenty of possibilities for making a peripheral reference or two, but it wouldn't bother me at all if they forwent even
that. Same with McCoy and whoever else. Better to keep on doing their own world-building and explore closer connections only as they become directly relevant, as obviously those between Burnham and Spock/Sarek/Amanda have been.
Speaking of which, I certainly
hope their use of Pike and Spock
won't take focus away from Burnham and the other characters,
especially those who really
need to be developed further, like Detmer and Owokesun. (Not making greater use of
them than they have is probably one of my
own biggest criticisms thus far, but I'm sure things will balance themselves out, given time.) I have a feeling they'll be fairly mindful and careful of that themselves, though, so I'm not worried.
As to the Coridan thing, I'm rather indifferent to that one
specifically, but I definitely wouldn't
mind it, or other stuff in that vein, to be sure. Personally, I don't really have any particular desire for it to be a more direct prequel than it already has been, or feel that to be lacking. Still, I do imagine they'll continue to play both sides of that field. I'm content to go along for the ride, and just enjoy seeing where it leads! Glad you're willing to come along too, at least for the time being!
That’s true I guess - the Gorn skeleton hinting at Lorca’s mirror universeness is evidence of that.
Yep. Another example is Burnham's record being expunged, so as to match up with Spock's statement to Chekov in "The Tholian Web" (TOS) that there is "no record" of a mutiny aboard a starship. Also, knowledge of the MU being classified. And defeating the cloak.
-
MMoM
