Well,
Nyota Uhura must be in the kelvin timeline,
at least ; )
Hopefully, this round Spock doesn't need to have all his hair white by then..
Maybe Kurtzman should retcon a tos Spock/Uhura thing in Discovery to sort of avenge Nimoy a bit since he liked s/u in the reboot and was jealous of Zachary, lol
Original Spock really got the short end of the stick in the movies.
There definitely were some hints in tos because tptb had tried to set it up from the get go. You never got the romance, but you still got the subtext that the writers had toyed with the idea originally without being ever allowed to truly do something with it (aside from the usual examples, one underrated moment is the one where Kollos outed the fact that Spock saw Kirk and Bones as friends AND he found Uhura beautiful, read Byron thinking about her and he looked for the meaning of her name in her African language)
Those were the 60s, and even if Nimoy played an alien it would still be an interracial couple on tv thus controversial. Hence it was dropped before they could even really develop it.
Spock was a bit doomed by the 'hero's nerdy sidekick' trope too and how this kind of characters were treated by the narrative. He even was the one who originally kissed Uhura in that infamous episode but Shatner made them change it...
The tos inspiration is the reason why the reboot was a nice 'what if' surprise. It made sense, to me, that characters who were attracted to each other in the original too could have a relationship in another reality where they met under different circumstances, like kelvin s/u effectively did. It is one of the best innovations of JJ's trek.
If there is any woman who makes sense for Spock it has always been Uhura for me.
For one, I can see them genuinely liking each other and being friends, connect through some common interests (like him teaching her to play the Vulcan lyre)..and then the romantic feelings naturally developing from mutual attraction and deep respect. Personality-wise, she is the kind of woman who would never worship Spock or want to save him from his alieneness like Chapel did.
Uhura seems, in both versions, to matter-of-fact accept Spock for who he is. She never treats him as a freak to pity because
poor guy, he is alien. He isn't a 'prize' for her.
The first movie showed that perfectly: she hugs him when she knows he needs her (and in fact, he instantly embraces her back in the turbolift) but still asks him 'what he needs' and she accepts that logic gives him comfort TOO in that moment. Later, after he almost killed Kirk they share this look full of meaning before he leaves the bridge and you can tell she wants to comfort him there too but she also knows that he needs to be alone and accepts that. When he gets back, she smiles at him and she's proud of him like she knew, because she knows him, that he could make it.
Accepting him doesn't mean she justifies all his bad decisions and flaws on his alieneness, though. In fact, she has agency in her relationship so she can have scenes where she's tender with him and understanding, but she also has no issues calling him out on his bs when he hurts her and their friends, and unlike Mccoy she never makes it a 'you are vulcan, we are humans' kind of thing. She treats him like a person, she doesn't want to teach him human. He already is part human anyway.
However, she doesn't let that Spock hide in his delusions like tos Spock did. She doesn't need him to fill the weird alien role to make her seem more human and 'normal'. She inspires him to be more honest with himself, again not because she teaches him human but because 1) he is part human too 2) she knows that the urban legend about vulcans not having feelings is bs.
In the kelvin timeline SHE has Spock wrapped around her finger.
By beyond, that guy seems to still have a crush on his girlfriend of YEARS and the funny thing is they don't need to truly make him so ooc to show
that. He's a Spock who happens to also be in love.. and he's way less pretentious about it than a lot of male characters from this genre often are in their romances. I don't need the subtitles to see his feelings. It's simple.
I think the movies managed to give us a relationship that is authentic and sweet without being the be all end all of the story. This is something tos didn't allow us to get, it was one of their limits.
And I don't see how a romantic relationship makes the characters less 'professional' than how the guys are written in the bromances,
frankly. That's just blatant double standards people have for a different relationship for everything they give the bros a pass for (eg Mccoy scenes). Trek wasn't a doc about the army, it's too late for fans to want the characters to only be professional colleagues when it's 50+ years now that we celebrate their
unprofessional friendships.
It's comical that some trek fans will preach about 'depth' and poetic cinema when a guy is constantly attacking another male character while they are both on duty (and said male character may be the acting captain), using the friendship element to give them both a pass, yet the same want to harpy on the one time a female character called her boyfriend out on his shit.
Uhura is consistently written as one of the most competent and professional characters, especially when compared to McCoy, Kirk and Scotty (and, at times, Spock himself!)
"A son of Sarek" married. It doesn't have to be Spock. Maybe he had another young (human?) wife after Amanda, and they had a son together.
Uhura woukd have been over 100 years, so it's hard to believe. Same with Burnham. Saavik (who was planned to be pregnant with Spock's child) would be more realistic.
I think the
deliberate subtext in the line about Sarek's son is that it's
Spock.
The writers
wanted you to think that was Spock.
The idea they could refer to a son whose existence we don't even know about is 100% valid too, but it also is a tad more far fetched than simply assuming he is talking about the only son we know Sarek had. That and the fact that the line honestly has less a reason to exist if it isn't also a subtle nod to a character that tos fans would know about and thus go 'did they just..?'.
Besides, it could be a nod to something Roddenberry said once about how he had wanted Spock to eventually get married if the show had gone past the third season.
I think he didn't want him to end up alone and had wanted to give him more closure.
But the movies didn't honour that; they made them all old and alone, married to their jobs. It's the one thing I hated about the tos movies. Even with Kirk, they give him a son out of nowhere but of course kill him asap.
There was always something missing in the original crew, and to me it's the added layer of actually having an ongoing personal life that matters and isn't disposable.
Making these characters so defined by their jobs only, turning male friendship into the be all end all of representation of the interpersonal relationships... that stuff is, honestly, silly. Not to mention limited, childish narrative and not realistic. Not for our world, let alone the reality trek is supposed to decipt.
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That said, I don't like the idea of him marrying Saavik because he really was like a father figure to her, and I don't think the fact she helped young Spock through pon farr is a good foundation for romance, tbh. I'm glad they dropped the pregnancy subplot because it would put her in a very difficult situation after helping a friend, it was problematic.
The novelization also implied a romance between her and David Kirk so Spock would look like a rebound she's forced to marry only because she helped him through pon farr.
If tos Spock were to get married, I want him to marry someone he actually is in love with and who loves him back, otherwise it is useless. I don't see the point and how it would represent an evolution for the character if he were to just
settle.
And, unfortunately, unlike kelvin Spock he didn't have a developed romantic relationship in canon (slash fanfictions aside) so it's hard for me to care about the possibility he got married at one point IF they don't show me that relationship.
