Worked ok for his old man.
Spock & Uhura romance
- Thread starter jtkirk
- Start date
So you've concluded that she didn't have a crush on him, based on the evidence... that she acted flirty with him?
That's a new wrinkle, for sure.
Saldana's Uhura clearly isn't a bit intimidated by Spock. If anything, it may be the other way around - which makes a certain amount of sense given Spock's discomfort with feelings and the fact (as noted by another poster) that he has the whole human mother thing going on. He's gotten a lot of mixed messages throughout his life about emotions and about human beings.
The boy's got a lot of issues, and always has.
It's pretty obvious, though, that Orci and Kurtzman got the idea for the relationship in the movie from watching TOS.
In fact, I believe they even stated that they did.
They're good, creative people who see the potential in these familiar things rather than treating "canon" as a straight jacket.
There was no soap opera in TOS, because soap opera by definition is a serial with an open-ended narrative spanning numerous episodes. TOS was made strictly of standalone episodes with very few continuity nods.No surprise here. Folks have become so used to the soap opera aspects of contemporary Trek that they're seeing things never meant to be there and/or trying to shoehorn the soap opera into TOS. No surprise since Abrams drek plays to that very sensibility.
If, however, you're referring to standard romance plots, TOS has plenty of those - in romances of the week.
Romance of the week vs ongoing romance? Both of those can be done well or done badly. But the former tend to be predictable and cliche more often, IMO, as the romance has to be over by the end of the episode and then never be mentioned again. Frankly it baffles me why anyone would think that the use of reset button is superior to actually having the guts to have the main characters get involved in relationships that will affect the series.
I think that this is the fallacy in the whole argument. We keep projecting TOS Spock onto the JJ Abrams interpretation. What we have to remember is JJ Abrams interpretation is a decade younger and Spock as seen in The Cage (which is much closer to Star Trek 2009 timeframe) is much more emotional.
Whether or not I agree with the direction Orci & Kurtzman took the character, I think their interpretation is entirely valid.
Why do you think this tends to be understood in terms of "guts" or "courage"? I ask because I see that is fashionable to speak in these terms about certain types of plot developments, notably character death and, perhaps less frequently, ongoing relationships.
It's strikes me that it is mostly just a different story-telling style. After all, no one would accuse a daytime soap of being "gutsy" for having its characters get involved in long-term relationships that affect the plot of the series. Same for character death, since I think this happens pretty often on those series as well, though I confess I don't have much (any?) real experience watching those shows.
Not that I mind the soap-opera elements of some modern Trek, at least not on principle (actual results have been mixed), but I wouldn't spontaneously qualify it as courageous or gutsy. Is the gutsy part of these situations facing up to raging fans that are mad you killed their favorite character or got him/her involved in the wrong "ship"? Or is it breaking genre conventions? Or something else?
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yuh, ok, have it your way -- Kirk WAS banging a new alien chick every episode. Whatever you say. Thanks for your two cents.
It's certainly not gutsy on soaps, since that's what they're expected to do. But on a standard police drama or legal drama or SF drama etc. with a regular crew of main characters, anything that changes the status quo of the main characters may be seen as a risk. For instance, how is the audience going to react if the main characters finally get together instead of continuing with the same sexual tension with nothing really happening and is it going to drop in ratings as "Moonlightning"; how they'll react if this character gets married, or that character suffers a stroke and spends half of the next season recovering, etc. And of course, very few shows will actually kill a popular character unless the actor is leaving, or it's the last episode of the series. Networks usually stick to the rule that you shouldn't change a concept that works. Only if the ratings are bad, it would be considered a good idea to introduce a change to get the ratings up again.
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At a certain point, though, once something has been defined as "gutsy" and therefore admirable, it becomes the trendy choice and is no longer the product of actual guts but of the simple calculation that "if we do not include these elements that are perceived as gutsy in our show, it will not succeed." (Similarly nuBSG's "grittiness" might have been momentarily risky, but is now merely trendy when it is reproduced.)
I don't watch enough tv to know if ongoing romance has entirely trumped one-episode style romances in sci-fi genre shows, but it wouldn't surprise if it has, or if it did at some point, considering that this approach is widely seen as superior.
Where do the guts begin and where do they end? At some point would avoiding soap-opera elements become gutsy because that approach would widely be seen as a turn-off and therefore risky from a ratings point of view?
That's true - what is risky today becomes the standard tomorrow.
But specifically relating to TOS, from what I've heard, it was believed at the time that action and adventure heroes had to remain single and unattached; they also thought (I think I read that in David Gerrold' World of Star Trek) that female audience would be jealous if their male heroes were "taken" by another woman and that they wouldn't be able to fantasize about them anymore (
).I thought TNG was a bit silly with the way they tried to keep the tension between Riker & Troi and Picard & Crusher throughout without ever going anywhere with it. I would have preferred either a) no romantic tensions between the crew, all the men and women in the main cast just have professional and friendly relationships, or b) if there is romantic tension between the characters, deal with it somehow, I find it implausible that mature adults would go on for years like that without doing anything at all (especially since it seems that there are no Starfleet rules against relationships between crewmembers).
So you've concluded that she didn't have a crush on him, based on the evidence... that she acted flirty with him?
I've also concluded that McCoy didn't have a crush on him either even though he teased him about having a teddy bear. I've also concluded that Kirk didn't have a crush on him even when he teased him about "irritation". And the entire bridge teased him, and had fun at his expense at the end of Galileo Seven ... but the entire bridge were not necessarily flirting with him and probably they all did not have a crush on him either. Teasing, having fun at someone else's expense, "setting them up" for a joke do not necessarily compromise flirtation. Rand and Uhura exchange a conspiratory wink, agreeing to set Spock up right before Uhura sings a clever, humorous song to him - which makes the onlookers crack-up. Lots of the entertainment industry does the same thing. I don't take the Chippendales too seriously when they "flirt" with me during their performance either.
I wasn't talking about her. If I was on the ship, I would be weak kneed around him. She wasn't and I find that admirable. I would be intimidated by him as well, even if I didn't have a crush on himl. She wasn't. She regarded him as an equal and didn't let him intimidate her and gained his respect early on. I admire that. Clever woman.
Do you think Spock has the socials skills to "shut down a conversation"? In that scene, what Uhura says about the moon totally goes over Spock's head. He has NO IDEA what she alluding to -- and it is humorous. I think she knows this and has fun at his expense again. And this is an element of TOS, and Spock, that the writers of nuTrek dropped the ball on. Vulcan has no moon, they don't flirt, they don't romance eachother -- they don't have our entire gigantic culture surrounding dating, sex, marriage and romance. There was so much room for humor here. Spock is kind of innocent and confused about human emotions and the culture surrounding them. There is a charm in this, lots of room for humor, and it gives us that outsider's perspective from which we could see ourselves. Romance - very illogical but we humans thrive on it.
It's hard for me to take Uhura's conversation with Spock too seriously. In the same episode, where you think she has a crush on him, the salt vampire reads her mind and reveals her fantasy man -- and it is not Spock. It's a handsome Swahili man. You are welcome to insert the idea that he would have to be Black to satisfy the racial attitudes that existed, but if they were alleging a serious flirtation between Spock and Uhura why wouldn't they be consistent and show Spock as her fantasy? The alleged "taboo" was already displayed according to your interpretation. Why be inconsistent?
Spock has emotions, but he tries very hard not to and denies it. If he "slips", he still denies it. Trying to achieve that which he may never do, and looking down on that which humans value - quite an interesting dynamic.
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That is not what I've read (and I remember reading this from Orci himself on Trekmovie). It was Abrams that pushed the issue. At first it was supposed to be a young Nurse Chapel that had a "thing" with Spock in the movie. But then they cut her character, and Abrams wanted some romance, so they used the usual device and placed the most popular character into a romantic relationship with the only female. IMO it shows in this movie.
Later, when they HAD to justify it, they, like those slashers, looked long and hard trying to find some way of justifying the ridiculous, cheap, pairing using TOS with scenes taken out-of-context. Just like that Kirk/Spock back rub scene justifies the slashers.
Yes, I concluded that, too, when Kirk sung that song to Spock about his "devil ears and devil eyes" that drive men on the ship insane, and when McCoy asked Spock to tell him he was a handsome man and talk to him about romantic evenings on Vulcan... oh wait.So you've concluded that she didn't have a crush on him, based on the evidence... that she acted flirty with him?
I've also concluded that McCoy didn't have a crush on him either even though he teased him about having a teddy bear. I've also concluded that Kirk didn't have a crush on him even when he teased him about "irritation". And the entire bridge teased him, and had fun at his expense at the end of Galileo Seven ... but the entire bridge were not necessarily flirting with him and probably they all did not have a crush on him either.
Spock is innocent and confused about human emotions and culture?! We're talking about a guy who grew up with a Human mother who showed emotions all the time! He also spent more than 13 years in Starfleet, serving with Humans! To be confused about Human emotions and culture after all that time, he would have to be very stupid.
Spock obviously knows more than enough about Human culture. He just pretends he doesn't, or he criticizes Humans for their "illogical" ways, because he is a half-Human who has loads of identity issues and is trying desperately to be the most Vulcan Vulcan ever.
People can't be attracted to completely different people? Happens all the time. How come Kirk fell in love with a strong activist like Edith Keeler (also, incidentally, a brunette white woman) as well as with a childlike blonde android Reyna, and submissive Native American tribal princess Miramanee? Why be inconsistent?
Spock didn't have to be her ultimate fantasy for her to be attracted to him.
Good you brought up the M-113 creature and 'fantasy man', that reminds me. How about this possible interpretation (which occurred to me when I watched the episode, not the first, but the second time):
Uhura is not joking when she says she is tired of hearing the word "frequency". (Funny that this scene was in the first aired episode. Those lines get a new meaning when you've seen all of TOS, and you know that saying "Hailing frequencies open" is the only thing she does in most episodes.) She is a very serious professional, dedicated to her work, but sometimes, like everyone, she feels a need for some romance in her life. (In fact, this may be seen as reflecting what happens to all of the crew in the episode: they've been in space for a long time, and many of them probably haven't had any sex or romance lately; and the M-113 creature is using their erotic fantasies to get to them.) Or if not that, then maybe just a bit of flirtation. Spock is someone that she finds attractive and intriguing (which doesn't mean that she is in love with him or anything that serious), maybe even more so because he is stoic and emotionally distant, but she's aware that he's unlikely to respond. She tries to flirt with him, maybe not really hoping for much but trying to get some sort of reaction from him. Of course she can only do that if she is teasing him - what else is she going to do, get all mopey and whiny like Chapel? Haven't you ever seen someone tease a person they find attractive, making a real attraction easier to show by pretending to be joking? Happened in school all the time.
(I also find it more likely than the idea of Uhura pretending to have an interest in Spock just in order to mock him - that would, to me, feel nastier and not so friendly.) She still gets annoyed with him for his typical unresponsiveness - it's probably not a coincidence that. just seconds later, she gets really angry at him over his lack of emotional reaction to a crewman's death (at least I presume that she doesn't normally berate him for his unemotional behavior on every occasion, as they've certainly known each other for a while and his personality is not new to her).Later on she meets the M-113 creature. It reads her mind and presents an image of what she thinks her "ideal man" would look like (it's obviously not a real person; she thinks he's a crewman, but she hasn't seen him before). Some time before, she was frustrated by Spock's unresponsiveness. Spock is an alien, from a different culture, as different from her as anyone on the ship can be, since everyone else on the ship is Human (which can also make him interesting and exotic to some Human women, as Uhura's song in "Charlie X" suggested.) And now, how was she imagining the man she would have a relationship with? Human, of African origin just like her, even speaks Swahili... in other words, as similar to her as possible. And also very obviously interested in her. It actually makes perfect sense that, after having had another confirmation that a relationship with a Vulcan could never be possible, she would start thinking that what she needs is someone she has a lot more in common and who would be perfectly suitable for her in every way.
And so was everyone else "clearly into it" - except Charlie of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSxLqDt2QVA
Wonder if that is SHOUTING SPOCK? After all -- Quinto's Spock should have been constantly shouting in that era. That works too!!
Just like the slashers, people see what they want to see. I personally have no desire for romantic sagas, "Sex and the Starship", gimmicky character interaction. NuSpock has no appeal for me, but many like that sort of thing. That is why I stick with TOS and will probably watch another one soon with my son. Next up: "The Squire of Gothos".
I'm a person that personally thinks that the relationship was handled rather poorly by Orci & Kurtzman. But I also think that there was definitely some chemistry between Spock and Uhura early in The Original Series.
Was there enough to signal a current or prior relationship? That's debatable. But in this instance it serves as a curious "What If?".
