A question about Spock and Romulans

[Icy_Penguigo]

First of all, this is something I've NEVER really understood about Spock(or Vulcans in general). I'm wondering what everyone's take on this is, and how it translates to the new movie's storyline.

One of the defining characteristics of Spock is that he is torn between his Vulcan half and human half. But my understanding is that Vulcans suppress their emotions because they normally experience dangerously intense emotional extremes. So much so that they nearly destroyed their entire civilization several times. They're not born emotionless. They make themselves that way as a matter of survival.

So why would containing his human half be a major struggle for Spock? It seems that keeping his Vulcan emotions in check would require just as much discipline, if not much more. I just don't get why that's a defining characteristic for him.

As for how it relates to the new movie, how do you guys feel about this portrayal of Spock as seemingly emotional(at least from the new trailer)? Angrily rebutting Kirk and strangling and hitting him and whatnot. It's never been clearly defined what training the emotional purging involves, but IMO I always felt that professional adult Vulcans would have accomplished that before they went on to serve in space.

I realize that there are probably no logical answers to this question(yet, anyway). The first two pilots of Star Trek had inconsistent portrayals of Spock. Smiling and stuff. But I wanted to know what peoples' opinions about this are. Do you think there is a good explanation for this in the film?

My second question is purely an opinion question. We know Romulans are involved in the movie, fo sho. I'm just assuming here, but I'm guessing our heroes will come face-to-face with Eric Bana at some point. I mean...it'd be silly if they didn't, right? But I grew up with TOS(the first thing my Dad showed me), and one of the defining moments of that series for me was discovering that Romulans look EXACTLY like vulcans. It was a big deal to me when I was a kid. And it was only possible because human beings hadn't SEEN Romulans before that.

So I don't know for sure if the Romulans are seen by humans. How do you all feel about this? I'm ambivalent. If they do, it will destroy one of the arguably important pieces of canon for me, and I kind of wish they'd picked Klingons(and reinvented THEM) instead of doing Romulans. But I'm on the fence still, and if the movie impresses me, I'm willing to look past it.

Apart from those overly-wordy questions, I'm very excited by the new trailer. Bring on the film!

 

[Guartho]

Perhaps they will not know that Nero and his merry men are of the same species they fought a war with 100 years earlier. They may be passed off as "Renegade vulcans from the future" which is not entirely untrue.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Spock's dilemma was discussed in several of the early books. It wasn't that he needed to 'contain his human half', but that his human half meant he believed himself to be inferior at mastering the Vulcan disciplines needed to control emotions. The idea was that the intensity of Vulcan emotion translated into an intensity of control. Half human = weaker control. Of course any child would respond to their mother, and so Spock simply learned emotional responses in his home. The conflict of philosophies in his raising resulted in a psychological complex that made him eventually overcompensate in the middle of lhis life - to try to out-Vulcan all the other Vulcans.

In Balance of Terror, the first Romulan episode, it is related that humans and Romulans fought a war without ever seeing each other. So you can assume it is not required in this movie that anyone ever get a clear enough look at Romulans to know they share characteristics with Vulcans. But it is also not required that this movie protect the "unveiling" moment in Balance of Terror.

A new history is being written from the beginning. Nothing is sacred.

 

[Icy_Penguigo]

Spock's dilemma was discussed in several of the early books. It wasn't that he needed to 'contain his human half', but that his human half meant he believed himself to be inferior at mastering the Vulcan disciplines needed to control emotions. The idea was that the intensity of Vulcan emotion translated into an intensity of control. Half human = weaker control. Of course any child would respond to their mother, and so Spock simply learned emotional responses in his home. The conflict of philosophies in his raising resulted in a psychological complex that made him eventually overcompensate in the middle of lhis life - to try to out-Vulcan all the other Vulcans.

In Balance of Terror, the first Romulan episode, it is related that humans and Romulans fought a war without ever seeing each other. So you can assume it is not required in this movie that anyone ever get a clear enough look at Romulans to know they share characteristics with Vulcans. But it is also not required that this movie protect the "unveiling" moment in Balance of Terror.

A new history is being written from the beginning. Nothing is sacred.

The Spock explanation makes sense to me. I am interested to see how it plays out in the film. I wonder if it will be like that at all?

Also, as far as the Romulan question is concerned, I normally wouldn't care. Trek canon isn't some holy grail for me. And the provided explanations are good enough to brush off my concerns. The only niggling detail is that the writers said the movie is somehow going to fit into the existing Trek timeline. Either that means awkward, contrived situations where they don't meet face-to-face with Romulans, or wacky time travel handwavium. And I've had enough of magical fix-all time travel situations. HEROES drives me nuts with those on a weekly basis...I don't need more of them. :P I hope the first true big-budget Trek film doesn't depend on that time-travel deus ex machina to solve everything.

Not to sound like a stick in the mud. Still excited as crap for the film. I just want to see something exciting, new, and unpredictable.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Either that means awkward, contrived situations where they don't meet face-to-face with Romulans, or wacky time travel handwavium.

I think you can expect some serious time travel handwavium (which is a fantastic phrase, BTW!)

And I've had enough of magical fix-all time travel situations. HEROES drives me nuts with those on a weekly basis...I don't need more of them. :P I hope the first true big-budget Trek film doesn't depend on that time-travel deus ex machina to solve everything.

Yeah, it truly makes me ill that they're going this route. It mucks up a story and for what? To please the folks who get their panties in a wad because this is all fiction and the natural evolution of a continuing story means it will eventually be overwritten to a certain extent.

Not to sound like a stick in the mud. Still excited as crap for the film. I just want to see something exciting, new, and unpredictable.

Good for you! The most I can manage is "not actively retching at the moment" with a touch of "there may be hope". Trek's track record has not been good this past decade, largely because they haven't been able to take a real risk. Now they are, but they're hedging their bets with time travel, which makes me think they don't have the courage of their convictions.

 

[Icy_Penguigo]

Yeah, I'd much prefer that this movie is a self-professed full-on reboot. I'm totally ok with that. The original Trek is very much a product of the sixties, and I'm fine with this incarnation being reinvented for a modern audience, provided the main characters stay true to their essential natures, which I believe are timeless(Kirk the voice of decisiveness, leadership, and sacrifice, Spock the voice of hard logic, and McCoy the voice of human emotion and compassion).

Time travel is tiresome and played out. However my overall excitement about this film is not going away. My butt is still going to be in that theater seat opening night. XD I just hope it's a good movie.

 

[Jarrott2]

I think that it will be revealed that Nero is the son of Spock.
Remember The Enterprise Incident and Spocks laison with the female romulan commander? How do we know that something didn't actually happen between them? hmmmm

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Spock was conceived (and certainly presented to clients by Desilu executives) as similar to half-European/half-Native American characters who were popular in Westerns. Westerns were ubiquitous in American film and television at the time Trek was being sold. There was, for example, a popular character at that time on another NBC show, "Daniel Boone," named "Mingo" who was half-Cherokee, half-English and Oxford educated.

In any event, Spock's inner conflict had to do initially with culture, not biology. His mother and her people were emotionally expressive; he describes his upbringing as being on a world "where love...emotion...is bad taste." That differences in Vulcan and human physiology might be involved was an accretion over subsequent stories.