Remember, as we just saw on DSC, Sarek felt terrible guilt over the whole thing with his children both wanting to join the Vulcan Expedition. They couldn't take both, so Sarek had to pick one over the other, and chose Spock - who instead joined Starfleet, rendering Sarek's whole decision (and his intentional misleading of Michael Burnham into believing that HER application was rejected) futile. So Sarek may have been angry at Spock for joining Starfleet, but now we know...that was the reason. If, for example, Sarek had chosen Burnham to be accepted to the Expedition and she did so, then it wouldn't have mattered to him whether or not Spock joined Starfleet. Remember, Sarek spent a great deal of time aboard the Discovery in Season 1 of DSC, and doesn't seem to have a problem with Kirk or any of the other crew in "Journey to Babel"; clearly he has no problem with Starfleet as a whole. And Sarek had to know that there was an entire Starfleet SHIP (the Intrepid) crewed by Vulcans, so it would be illogical for him to be against Starfleet. And if Sarek was racist against humans, he never would have married Amanda in the first place. He's not Captain Solok, you know.
I would add to my earlier comment, aren't Sybok's other visions he give people based in true events? That lends weight to that being an accurate portrayal of Sarek at Spock's birth. Yes, Sarek's duplicity around him blocking Michael from the Vulcan Academy does complicate the Starfleet issue, but that's hardly Spock's fault. Sarek rejecting Spock for 18 years because of Sarek betraying Michael doesn't make him come off any better. God forbid he had actually sat Michael and Spock down and discussed what they wanted for their future. Sarek could work with humans in Starfleet, accept other Vulcans in Starfleet and still have a problem with his son in Starfleet (if he does - I'm not entirely sure he does, just playing Devil's Advocate on this point). Discovery if anything makes Sarek seem like a bigger hypocrite since he was rejecting Spock because of something Sarek had actually done. As for Sarek not being racist because he married Amanda, people, even Vulcans, can be complicated, and hypocritical. Compare this to a white man that marries a black woman, has a son with her, but is angry when his son isn't "white enough". I don't see how Sarek pushing Spock to reject his humanity is any different than that. That's just how Sarek seems to me with what we've seen of him.Charismatic, interesting, but a secret racist that doesn't get called out on it, and an awful father. He does love Spock, I'm sure, but he treats him awfully. A side point, I recall many novels that have dealt with Spock's childhood, but I don't recall anything dealing with Sybok's life before STV. Just seems like a missed opportunity there for storytelling and character development. We know next to nothing about Spock and Sybok's relationship. I don't know if Michael even ever met him.
Actually, I think it might have been Dwellers in the Crucible. Which came out immediately before Pawns and Symbols.
The Spock birth scene may even have been one of Sybok’s own memories...eh? Strange as that may seem but maybe Sybok was present at his half-brothers birth. No stranger than giving birth in a cave. Personally I don’t see Sarek as a racist but a Vulcan supremacist,a subtle difference perhaps.
The only other vision we actually saw was McCoy's, which is based on something he experienced in adulthood, so presumably Sybok drew on his memories of it. But Sybok's powers weren't magic. He couldn't just open a time portal and show people what actually happened. He was just using a variation of Vulcan telepathy, presumably, and that meant the visions he showed were based on either memory or imagination. And that's my point -- nobody in that room was actually present to witness Spock's birth, except Spock, who was a newborn infant and thus unlikely to retain such a memory. Sure, you can handwave and claim that his magic Vulcan super mind powers theoretically could have let him remember his own birth, but my point is that isn't the required or exclusive interpretation of the scene. It's also possible, and I would argue more likely, that it was a secondhand reconstruction of the event or a depiction of Spock's childhood fears that Sybok had been aware of. There's no indication that the younger Sybok is present in the scene, though I suppose it's possible. But why would it be strange for a person to be present at a family member's birth?
Work it out. Amanda though an advanced human of the 23rd century might still balk at having a young male non- relative observing at such an intimate time.He was her stepson.
Or maybe she didn't have the same unhealthy body hangups that we have, and it's a gross failure of imagination to take it for granted that everyone everywhere for all time will think exactly like our culture and generation does. What is the point of science fiction if not to broaden our minds to alternative ways of thinking and living?
That's interesting. When watching the scene I assumed it had a lot to do with Sarek being critical of Spock's human half going all the way back to his birth. And perhaps he was told about it. You got me curious though so I decided to look it up in Dillard's novelization of TFF (I remembered that she described a number of the crews memories, not just McCoy and Spock). She treated it basically as historically accurate. In the novel at first Spock was confused (he thought it was something from Vulcan prehistory) but then realized it was a long buried memory from deep in his consciousness. In the novel it noted giving birth in this way was common on Vulcan. Something that did not change with Surak's teachings.
Or...maybe she did. Despite your assertions you don’t know any more about this than I do.Perhaps certain inhibitions will have fallen away by Amanda’s time but perhaps not.Childbirth and it’s throes are a deeply private thing despite all the camcorder sand so forth. And please don’t talk to me about gross failures of imagination you who try to browbeat anyone who disagrees with you.I’ve had this before from you and enough is enough.
What???? None of this is about certainties. My point is simply that there's reasonable doubt about whether the depiction of Sarek in Sybok's vision of Spock's birth is accurate. It's unclear whether it's real or false and thus shouldn't be taken as an absolute fact. That's all I'm saying, that it's inconclusive.
Spaceflight Chronology Introduction and the 1957-2000 timeframe In the interrim between the next “new” book that I read, I wanted to still have new material to break up the revisiting of books I have already read. I still feel like there are many worthwhile things to say about The Final Reflection, which I've already read and gushed about it elsewhere. So I thought that the SFC would be good for smaller doses of TOS 80's Novel Continuity. Like any non-fiction, it's tough to just sit down and read it, like one might with a novel. I tend to dip in and out, and bounce around wildly in these kinds of reference books. To an extent I'm still doing that, even as I am trying to make it a little more focused. So I'm going to go through it one section at a time, starting with the 20th Century era. At one time I considered reading it backwards. To start in the era of TOS and gradually track how that future unwinds to where the future history meets up with our own real history from the point the book was written in the early 1980's. I'm not an expert in real history of spaceflight, but I've had a casual interest, enough to draw me to movies like The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. After a certain point, though, obviously the 1980's and beyond shown in this book will diverge from the real history we know. My early usage of this book was to get a sense of a timeline, particularly for The Final Reflection, and at the same time put the year numbers of the more familiar ST modern dates side-by-side. I feel a little bit of a twinge about untangling my thoughts from the more familiar ST timeline, since there's a more simple conversion happening with how TOS five-year mission is place in the late 60's of the 23rd Century and the majority of the movies are in the 80's decade. It's an easy short-hand, compared to the SFC reckoning. Opening Theme Let's go with an alternative version of the introduction to the Enterprise television show, with that nice song and montage of space exploration. It's the same up to a point, but with SFC ships replacing some of the modern Trek ships: the DY-100, the Goddard Moonbase, ect. Introduction The introduction helpfully gives the parameters of the book's focus, it's going to stick with the spaceflight history of the planet Earth (those humans and their Earth-centric POV!). Hah, we get our book first, with the promise of spaceflight history volumes for other major members of the Federation. This and the future volumes, if we ever get those, are for Star Fleet Academy cadets. It would be amazing if Diane Duane could provide consultation for the Vulcan counterpart of this volume, but maybe hopefully I'll get a sense of that when I read The Romulan Way and Spock's World. And John Ford and Dr. Emmanuel Tagore to reunite for collaboration on the Klingon Spaceflight History volume; for Konom and other future hopeful Klingon Star Fleet personnel. The introduction talks briefly about the Eugenics Wars, helpfully reminding us that this historical overview is still connected to the coming Star Trek future. The SFC indicates that one of the results of the Eugenics Wars that humanity continues to embrace diversity, rather than correct genetic defects (I suppose one could suppliment reading SFC by watching the movie Gattaca for a version of human society wrestling with the temptation of utilizing genetic engineering to correct undesirable genetic defects, and extrapolate from the movie what the ST outcome would be). Reading between the lines, there's a seeming gap between the space shuttle program coming to an end after 12 years, in 1992; and the emergence of the DY-100 ships which seem to be Earth-Moon shuttles. SFC doesn't specify, but it does say there are international missions to the moon (I assume set up for the moon base), and I would guess that they are using a couple prototype/variants of what would become the DY-100. 2 years later, the SFC says the DY-100's are being mass produced. The Eugenics Wars doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on spaceflight and space exploration, at first glance. In the image/timeline section, we see Pioneer 10 with it's appearance much like the later Voyager probes, and the entry elaborates that the Voyager probes are follow ups to the Pioneers. It was fun to read through the information in the SFC and then hop on my computer and google it for visuals and confirmation of the mission profiles. I didn't do this extensively, but I thought it was interesting to compare the first Pioneer's appearance to Pioneer 10, which looks so much like the Voyager probes. SFC mentions the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, but after elaborating on the Eugenics wars it plays coy with the rest of the Voyager series. Incidentally, this book combined with a recent watching of TMP made me think about my preconceived notions of the size of these things. I used to think they were much smaller (maybe because of pictures I had seen of humans standing next to the Sputnik satellite). When I first saw TMP, it was the first time I realized that the real Voyager probes were much bigger than I imagined. For some reason I find them a bit frightening. Partly it's V'ger as this insrutable thing at the center of a machine complex and cloud and massively intimidating defenses, with the soundtrack's blaster drum heralding story revelations about V'ger. But I also have this speculative dream/image in my head of hovering in space and watching one of those real life Voyager probes fly by, within a few meters of myself so that I get the full effect of it's size compared to me; which makes the hair on the back of my neck want to stand up a little. Log Entries There aren't any log entries, actually, but the book promises there will be. I already know this, because I've perused the SFC in the ordinary way a little. Instead we get “recreations” of news articles from well known newspapers or news media of the day. Curiously, there is a Preface entry which is placed after three of these recreations that “reassures” it's in-universe audience that after the year 2000 the book will shift to “more reliable” formats of the log entries. Why wait 'til after three entries? To a certain extent I don't mind a book that jumps into the narrative before backing up just a little. I've read or tried to read a number of real life history books that have introductions and forewards that go on and on before getting to the subject matter, but that's just a guess at the rationale. The preface talks about trying to capture the raw flavor of the various nation-state's propaganda as they accomplish each major spaceflight milestone. The first two entries, for Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin made me think of that reoccurring visual from the movie The Right Stuff, where the Russians keep getting ahead in the race, and then we see the poor messenger running through the halls of the White House bringing the Bad News. Zooming out again to look at the impression the SFC gives me: the Spacelab is the only space station so far, although one of the entries talks about a bigger project called Satellite City. SFC also talks about energy gathering satellites solving Earth's energy needs; making spaceflight and space exploration more tenable. A bunch of probes find the asteroid belt is rich with raw material to make space exploration easy, too which is very helpfully convenient for building a better Star Trek future. I think it's interesting that a major step is the set up of an international moon base, and the proposed Satellite City doesn't seem to have been put up yet. It feels like a step has been skipped, and the SFC history is leapfrogging a bit (admittedly this probably comes from my understanding of real life history, it makes sense to establish a permanent major construct upstairs in orbit; the moonbase seems like it needs to be a few steps after establishing a space station or Satellite City). The entries discussing the U.S. space shuttle program reiterate that these shuttles establish the human races' permanent presence in space. It's weird to think about that, and compare with how the space shuttle program actually only retired very recently in our own real life history, but it feels like space exploration has dried up a bit for us, other than space probes to the planets in our system. The first section of the SFC history ends with the establishment of the Goddard Moonbase in 1998, as a joint international space facility. It says that the Eugenics Wars has had a unifying effect, globally. The entry makes a point that recycling technology is highly efficient at this point, and I imagine it would have to be; I've got the impression that our real-life recycling technology isn't quite up to the standards of keeping a base on the Moon or Mars as a self-sustaining living space. It does seem believable that the 1990's could have been a point where global cooperation would have worked better, and there's a tidiness with closing out the 20th century with a major milestone such as this. This version of Star Trek history feels fast-tracked compared to the modern ST history. Modern ST history doesn't seem remotely this far along given what we see in the movie Star Trek: First Contact, and the depiction of a very war before 2063 and Zefram Cochrane's flight. SFC's proposed history and timeline has to be on the fast track, though, given that it's timeline placement of ST TOS era is about 60-70 years earlier than what modern ST history has established.
It is plausible that he ‘experimented’ with human romance rituals, and then his strict Vulcan upbringing led to him marrying Amanda due to responsibilities. There’s lots against that, but it could explain why he is so...anti human...there. He grows out of it later. Though the stereotypical shotgun wedding scene featuring a Vulcan is amusing to imagine, especially it Treks context of growing out of the Westerns of the early twentieth century.
Sarek married Amanda because he loved her. It's as simple as that. nuSarek specifically said so, and I see no reason to think any differently about Prime Sarek.
I remember Saavik and David talk about her remembering her birth at the beginning of the TSFS novelization.
No, I don't think Sarek had a problem with that, either. DSC's "Lethe" showed the real reason why Sarek had a conflict with Spock: Sarek had to choose which of his children would be accepted to the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, and Sarek chose Spock. (Not only that, but Sarek was forced to mislead Michael Burnham into thinking that her application had been rejected.) But Spock chose to join Starfleet instead, rendering Sarek's whole decision - and the emotional turmoil that came with it - meaningless. Sarek clearly has no problem with Spock's human side, or his expression of it. If he had, he never would have married Amanda in the first place, because Sarek (due to his love for Amanda) knew full well of humans' emotional nature. Remember, in ST09, Sarek says "You will always be a child of two worlds. I am grateful for this, and for you."
In the UK, We have a show called "one born every minute" that has been on for years that shows people give birth - so if people now are happy to broadcast the event to the viewing public then it's not a stretch to think that by the 23rd century that such an event would not be common place.
The Final Reflection Opening Credits We'll use Jerry Goldsmith's Klingon theme, which first appeared in The Motion Picture. However, I'm going to go a little anachronistic, and use the version from Star Trek V The Final Frontier, so that V'ger's Blaster Beam musical stings aren't interrupting. The Klingons are winning here, thank you. As the music plays we see close-ups of a mural of Klingon history and legend, offering glimpses of a version of Kahless, some mythic battles of the afterlife Black Fleet. And maybe throw in the primordial killing of the Klingons' gods; or what they think were gods, even though it the “wrong” continuity. Suggested Prerequisites This one is pretty user friendly, and very standalone. Although, there's a fun little Easter Egg having to do with the university Makropyrios which is attended by Dr. Emmanuel Tagore of this novel and Dr. Georges Mordreaux from The Entropy Effect. I read The Entropy Effect and The Final Reflection out of order and didn't even pick up on this detail at all, until some research on Memory Beta provided this unexpected connection. The Spaceflight Chronology also doesn't have to serves as a prerequisite; but it's awesome to be able to look in and find a somewhat innocuous entry; which The Final Reflection takes and shows an elaborate and frightening background for. These books together complement each other well. Read the entry that The Final Reflection draws inspiration from, and then read other entries in The Spaceflight Chronology and wonder what other full-length novels can serve as a zoomed-in experience. The Needs of the One I've held back on doing a reflection for this one, because I'm somewhat at a loss for what to say. I've read other fans say things about this book that I ended up agreeing with, like “It's not just a great Star Trek novel, it's a great novel, period.” Or: “I didn't understand it, but strangely I still enjoyed it a lot.” That kind of stuff. I was skeptical about the first claim, but I was able to to give the book space to prove itself to me. There is something about The Final Reflection...both the remembrance of the experience of reading it, and the experience of being in the moment, reading it. I know because I did it again. It's one of those very few books that I've gone back and reread. There is one other Star Trek book that I have read multiple times, and that has to do with nostalgia. The Final Reflection was the book that I test drove my kindle device on; I've been slow to adopt this form of reading, but it was fun to start trying. I have a rule though, I prefer that a book I read on the kindle is one I've already read a physical copy of. The kindle is so that I have a compact, mobile library. What else can I say about The Final Reflection? I also had difficulty understanding it. I enjoyed that it made me work as a reader to put together the pieces of the puzzle that make up the Klingon culture this book presents. The prose reminds me a little of Frank Herbert's Dune, when weighing the density of information in the prose. You have to pay close attention to even small details sometimes. You may have to take notes; I certainly did. Has anyone else? And I've gotten to the end twice, and still been puzzled about some of the nuances of it. On the surface level there is enough content that shows character progression and accomplishment, but some of the goals are elusive. The Federation is in danger of tearing apart, and there's a movement that wants humans to eschew space exploration and colonization, return to our ancestral seat and become isolationist. There are conspiracies and factions within Klingon society, with an eye on how the Klingons want to deal with the Federation who are expanding. The Klingons feel boxed in by other space empires, which causes conflict with their cultural belief that organizational structures that grow are admirable and respected, while structures that wither and die are what they hate the most. It's a real puzzle given these elements, what causes a Klingon captain to take action that would help a government, the Federation, that his society has taught him to view as trash? That Klingon captain, Vrenn who becomes Krenn, is quite a character. The changes in fortune that he experiences as he climbs the ranks in a society that seems so oppressive it made me feel claustrophobic at times are fun to follow, but the backstory behind them is one of the things that makes the book seem somewhat impenetrable. Is he really the son of that person who was killed? What's the deal with his adopted father, was he really friends with the man that might have been Krenn's father, or is he being groomed as a tool? What side is his adopted father on, and what do his political enemies want in the grand scheme? I couldn't tell if Krenn ended up serving the camp that killed his father and/or adopted father, at the end. There's a point where it's all laid out on the table, that everything that is being done is for revenge; but again is that revenge for the man he thinks is his father, or revenge for his adopted father...or is it revenge on behalf of himself and his love for how hard they've had to fight to scrape their way into the positions they achieve in their society? The one major critique I have with the book is that it goes further than Frank Herbert's Dune in terms of hinting at the answers. Dune has answers, then it has answers at the level below the surface; I've read and listened to Dune enough times that the plans within plans can be understood reasonably well. Yet with The Final Reflection, some of the answers are just that extra little bit out of reach. I could really use an unabridged audiobook of The Final Reflection to really know the book back to front! The Needs of the Many This was the second book I read of TOS 80's novel continuity, when it started as mainly a Diane Duane run-through with a few other books in between the Rihannsu novels. The idea was that The Wounded Sky would be ground zero, then The Final Reflection and My Enemy, My Ally would establish the Klingon and Romulan cultures. Happily my original reading plan became a structure that grew. John Ford's Klingons would approve, I feel sure. The strength of this novel made me curious enough to chase down Ford's Klingon roleplaying game suppliment, and keeps How Much For Just the Planet a priority read, despite it whimsical reputation. Beyond this, I can't really comment, until I get more of a sense of the Klingons in the books I have on my list. Thinking on the list I have compiled, I have noticed that the books emphasize Romulans and Vulcans more, seemingly. This makes sense from the standpoint of the original concept: the Rihannsu books plus a couple extra. That perspective weighs on the updated version, helped along by Yesterday's Son and Mindshadow also going with Romulans rather than Klingons for their chosen antagonists. This isn't really a complaint; given that I'm viewing it as it's own universe with it's own identity anyway, inspired by the original show. How else to explain how the Klingons are so different? Although I have played the game of how square The Final Reflection with alternative details that later Star Trek stories and series eventually develop. So the nature of this alternative version of Star Trek is that the Klingons and Rihannsu are very different, culturally; and the Rihannsu seem to be the more prominent political and military power that the Federation is having problems with. The emphasis is flipped from the original series, although I know it's just down to the coincidence of individual authors' choices, combined retroactively in a “continuity” that wasn't conceptualized as an alternative continuity anyway. It's the overall impression of having chosen these books and approached as something they weren't originally intended to be. Still, I think that's part of the experience, rightly or wrongly, part of the point of reading these particular books. Anachronisms All the Klingon themes from all the movies popped up in my head, while reading this book. The Search For Spock came after The Final Reflection, but James Horner's Klingon theme is one I grew up with more familiarity of, since that was the first Star Trek movie I owned as a kid. I encouraged the Jerry Goldsmith theme in my mind's eye and ear, but Horner's predominated. The second time I read the book, the Klingon theme from Star Trek Into Darkness also manifested a couple of times, much to my surprise. I liked some of the small Klingon craft that appear in Into Darkness, too, so one of those cast itself as the flyer that takes Krenn away from his orphanage to his adopted father's home. There's some images on Memory Alpha and Beta of a D-5 Klingon ship the type that the IKS Mirror is supposed to be, which is a new midpoint design for Klingon ships, according to the book. I don't know if that is remotely what John Ford had in mind, but I like the look of the D-5; it's one of my new favorite Klingon ship designs (although it doesn't unseat the Bird of Prey as my all-time favorite). I love the reveal of how the Mirror is a rough halfway point, with it's engines and power systems red-lined all the time. Final Thoughts I enjoyed The Final Reflection, obviously, so much so that I read it twice. There's enough there to motivated me to want to visit it again. It's my number one candidate for an audiobook I would like to have for convenience sake, so that I can listen through it again and again, endlessly. I'll leave it at that. Next Mission I've made my way through the second section of the Spaceflight Chronology, and went through a nitpicking phase. I'll try to smooth that out in the reflection I write about that. The human race expands through the solar system. And then finally, I have reached Dwellers in the Crucible. I feel bad, as I intended to read that one sooner, yet ended up prioritizing some other books as quicker, lighter reads. Dwellers looks and feels and gives off the impression of an involved and weighty book (not to dismiss the tragedy of New Athens in Crisis on Centaurus). With apologies to Margaret Wander Bonanno, who was very kind to make a copy of Music of the Spheres available, to round out her trio of books on my reading list. I have been looking forward to Dwellers for a while, and am hopeful that (as sometimes happens) the enforced delay will make the experience more rewarding now that I've finally reached it.
Where do you think Vulcan Love Slave was holoimaged? California? Hell no, there’s a thriving somewhat dodgy holonovel industry thriving on P’Jem. Big stars like T’Its and Kok rake in all the latinum. Though, as it’s a federation world, they can’t spend it on much. Next year they launch ‘I’m and Ambassador, Get me out of here!’ In which various dignitaries do embarrassing things on a ‘crashed shuttle’ in galorndon core.