Sarek is the Best thing in this show

[Jedman67]

Why?

Not sure exactly. From the long black (or dark grey) cloak he wore when talking to Georgiou, to the way he seemed to be....overly persuasive.....to Cornwell and Starfleet Command. It's nothing specific, just a feeling.

 

[T'Bonz]

I feel about Sarek as I do Burnham: Neither has engaged me so far, and I can't tell if it's just the writing or both the writing and the performance.

TBH, I wouldn't mind if we never saw Sarek again.

Blasphemy! I'm banning you!

My only wish is that his family didn't seem to be SO fucked up. One wonders how he became a famous diplomat if he was so inept and made bad choices more than once.

 

[Alan Roi]

Blasphemy! I'm banning you!

My only wish is that his family didn't seem to be SO fucked up. One wonders how he became a famous diplomat if he was so inept and made bad choices more than once.

Were his choices really bad, though? Exactly how horribly did his kids turn out (as far as we have seen)? Sybok maybe, but can you really blame Sarek for how he turned out since there's a lot of deals there we don't know?

 

[T'Bonz]

I'm still mad at TNG for having Sarek and Spock estranged again. Really pissed me off. They had reconciled by the end of the original series (movie) and well, meh.

 

[fireproof78]

Blasphemy! I'm banning you!

My only wish is that his family didn't seem to be SO fucked up. One wonders how he became a famous diplomat if he was so inept and made bad choices more than once.

Perhaps he was great as his job and sucked at his home life.

 

[Alan Roi]

Perhaps he was great as his job and sucked at his home life.

He dreamed that his kids would change the world and tried to make that dream a reality. How often does that work out as planned? Most diplomatic negotiations have far less lofty goals.

 

[fireproof78]

He dreamed that his kids would change the world and tried to make that dream a reality. How often does that work out as planned? Most diplomatic negotiations have far less lofty goals.

I feel like this misses the point of my post but fair enough.

 

[XCV330]

Not sure exactly. From the long black (or dark grey) cloak he wore when talking to Georgiou, to the way he seemed to be....overly persuasive.....to Cornwell and Starfleet Command. It's nothing specific, just a feeling.

Agreed. Sarek at best seems to have the kind of strong but flexible ethics one might need to be a behind the scenes advocate for an organization like Sec. 31. He and his family being terror targets probably would not hurt for motivation, either.

 

[BillJ]

Were his choices really bad, though? Exactly how horribly did his kids turn out (as far as we have seen)?

Both Spock and Burnham have committed mutiny.

 

[Alan Roi]

Both Spock and Burnham have committed mutiny.

So he taught them to stand for what they believed in, for those they loved, even if that might mean some personal cost. Bad dad!

 

[Jedi_Master]

Take away the "e" and the "k" and replace it with an "u" and I agree with the OP.

 

[BillJ]

So he taught them to stand for what they believed in, for those they loved, even if that might mean some personal cost. Bad dad!

Discovery hasn't done Sarek any favors, and we already knew he was a poor father. Good kids can come from poor parenting.

 

[XCV330]

Spock had his faults but worked with them and overcame them. We've met three Spocks in Trek and they've always been the most interesting character. There's a special nobility to Spock. It's really his show. He's also seemingly the one with the worst relationship with Sarek.

Michael: mutineer, and judas-goat for the Klingon War. Reconciled with Sarek. She's a work in progress. We don't know how she ends up. She would not be alive without Sarek, so her past is completely tied up with Sarek, for better of good.

Sybok. Wierd cult like dude that finally did the right thing at the last possible moment. It's difficult to say if his flaws are much to blame by Sarek, and who cares because he's Sybok and can we please just forget Sybok.

I'd say Sarek has an uneven track record as a father. He's not worst father in Trek (you still get to keep that trophy, Worf, don't worry), but he has accumulated some very serious mistakes as one, and now it seems like Amanda did too.

 

[BillJ]

...(you still get to keep that trophy, Worf, don't worry)...

 

[Hythlodeus]

can we please just forget Sybok.

never! he's awesome! but, I can feel your pain

 

[Jedi_Master]

Discovery hasn't done Sarek any favors, and we already knew he was a poor father. Good kids can come from poor parenting.

Certainly not. Each new revelation is worse than the last.
I’m pretty sure Michael’s unforgivable sin was siding with Sarek against Spock.

 

[Noname Given]

My only wish is that his family didn't seem to be SO fucked up. One wonders how he became a famous diplomat if he was so inept and made bad choices more than once.

^^^
Where was it said Sarek was a famous diplomat? Hell, he married a Human, so that's probably the main reason why they made him the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth and had him deal with the multitude of illogical and emotional members of the Federation Council. No REAL Vulcan wanted to bother.

 

[fireproof78]

Spock had his faults but worked with them and overcame them. We've met three Spocks in Trek and they've always been the most interesting character. There's a special nobility to Spock. It's really his show. He's also seemingly the one with the worst relationship with Sarek.

Michael: mutineer, and judas-goat for the Klingon War. Reconciled with Sarek. She's a work in progress. We don't know how she ends up. She would not be alive without Sarek, so her past is completely tied up with Sarek, for better of good.

Sybok. Wierd cult like dude that finally did the right thing at the last possible moment. It's difficult to say if his flaws are much to blame by Sarek, and who cares because he's Sybok and can we please just forget Sybok.

I'd say Sarek has an uneven track record as a father. He's not worst father in Trek (you still get to keep that trophy, Worf, don't worry), but he has accumulated some very serious mistakes as one, and now it seems like Amanda did too.

I think the aspects of Sarek's character are greatly expanded in DSC. I love how he is shown to be flawed, to have some of the fobiles that he regarded a bit negatively in Starfleet. His distance between him and Spock was greatly enhanced by Kelvin Trek and now with DSC, in which we see Sarek trying to do right by his son and by his ward.

I appreciate the fact that he is flawed and interesting. He may not have been what I enjoyed in TOS but I did like his willingness to reconcile with Spock in the films. DSC expands upon that character, warts and all.

 

[LizStargaryen]

I like learning more about Sarek in DSC. It makes sense to me that we've learned so much about Spock's family. For better or worse, not only is Spock the most popular character in the franchise, he's the most consequential -- he's literally affected spacetime in both the Prime and Kelvin universes.

(My kingdom for the Picard show finally getting certain elements of the fandom to hush about the reboot movies -- if they read the comics, novels, and tie-ins like the rest of us, they would've known this was all explained in the Countdown comics.)

I have to say that I did really enjoy Frain's Sarek in season 1. And much more than I thought I would, since the role I most remember him in was Thomas Cromwell in The Tudors. I like that he didn't try to do a Mark Lenard impression. He's doing his own take on the character, which is fine.

I like Frain as Sarek. I also like deconstructing the character, trying to figure out what makes him tick. Here is a Vulcan man from a very high status family who was betrothed in traditional fashion to a girl from an equally high status family, only something went wrong. The girl — Sybok’s mother — got religion sometime after Sarek’s first Pon Farr and became a high priestess in the temple and Sarek and his wife divorced or the marriage was dissolved. For whatever reason, he doesn’t seem to know the first son that well. Maybe there are rules that the offspring of such a marriage is reared by the mother and intended for the temple life.

So Sarek is presumably disillusioned and does what he wants to do, since the traditional way doesn’t work. He becomes ambassador to Earth and is fascinated by humans. He has a thing for human women and falls in love with and marries Amanda, while telling himself it is logical for the ambassador to do so to further human-Vulcan relations. But, contradictory man that he is, he decides that his human wife and half human child should follow the Vulcan path and he puts extraordinary pressure on them both to make that half human, half Vulcan son a perfect Vulcan so Sarek can prove something to the establishment.

When some judge misguidedly allows the ambassador and his human wife to foster a human orphan, Sarek also turns that child into a sociology experiment. Yet he also loves that child passionately and even gives up a literal piece of his soul to bring her back from the dead. And he loves his wife and son, though he never says so outright.

Sarek is massively flawed and a pretty lousy husband and father, but he is an extremely interesting character.

Great take. Thinking back to "Journey to Babel" and that ending, I always wondered why Amanda married him, not the other way around!

I certainly like what the writing has done for Sarek most of all, adding more dimensions to his relationship with his society and how he wants it to become than ever before. And so far, among the recast roles, Sarek has been the most illuminating and wide-reaching when it comes to Star Trek lore as a whole, IMHO.

On the other hand, I would not rate Frain himself as higher than any of the other recast players in terms of their performances. Mark Lenard was simply too impressive a scene stealer to be overtaken by the more subdued Frain.

However, my impression also could be affected by the performances of the other recast actors who have either, IMHO, put in performances which could potentially become defining (Mia Kirshner, Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn) and is already defining as far as I am concerned, Rain Wilson's absolutely standout performance as Harry Mudd.

The bolded is why I'm particularly nervous about what Ethan does with Spock. This fandom is hard enough on actors of secondary characters who get it wrong -- see some of the posts in this thread. I've been bracing myself ever since I sat in that SDCC 2017 audience and heard that the main character of DSC would be "Spock's sister." We'll see soon enough!

 

[Alan Roi]

Discovery hasn't done Sarek any favors, and we already knew he was a poor father. Good kids can come from poor parenting.

Just because he wasn't a perfect father, doesn't mean he was a poor one. Even well meaning parents fail their children.