Ethan Peck cast as DSC's Spock

[Kane_Steel]

I went for it. Made as quickly as possible.

Good try, but unless they find some way to elongate his face, make his nose bigger, lips thinner and change his features, he won't look like Nimoy.

He isn't the first actor to play a re-cast Spock, and definitely won't be the last. Spock is such a bankable character for Star Trek that the Spock character will likely have multiple future actors playing him in future decades.

The image of the Nimoy version of Spock will slowly fade away over time, despite being so iconic. This is likely a step in that direction.

 

[Jadeb]

And in ds9's first season, they transferred Miles O'Brien (and wanted Ensign Ro), brought in the enterprise and Picard, gave the hero a connection to Picard, brought back Q and Vash (another Picard name-drop), and did a Lwaxana Troi episode. It isn't unusual for Trek to mine its own history early on, especially when the setting (contemporaneous and geographically close to another known setting) allows it with ease. Voyager (too far away) couldn't do it as much although even then when they did call home, of course its Troi and Barclay who are involved.

Admittedly, part of the difference is that I did not find DS9’s first season as creatively bankrupt as Discovery’s.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Good try, but unless they find some way to elongate his face, make his nose bigger, lips thinner and change his features, he won't look like Nimoy.

He isn't the first actor to play a re-cast Spock, and definitely won't be the last. Spock is such a bankable character for Star Trek that the Spock character will likely have multiple future actors playing him in future decades.

The image of the Nimoy version of Spock will slowly fade away over time, despite being so iconic. This is likely a step in that direction.

Time unfortunately has a habit of constantly moving forward. There will be Star Trek movies and shows long after we're all dead.

 

[Kane_Steel]

Admittedly, part of the difference is that I did not find DS9’s first season as creatively bankrupt as Discovery’s.

Completely OT. Ds9 S1, despite being a shorter season, has one of the most praised episodes in Star Trek history.

Set the tone for the quality of future seasons.

 

[Yistaan]

Time unfortunately has a habit of constantly moving forward. There will be Star Trek movies and shows long after we're all dead.

You mean circa 2063, when all of us wonder where our warp drives are? (I myself will be 80 then presumably).

I still think Wrath of Khan's (and the following movies/shows) biggest mistake was to definitively tie the franchise to the 23rd century onwards. Even Space Seed left some wiggle room. It defeated the whole point of stardates. I have a feeling in the future Star Trek will be rebooted with stardates only so that it's no longer tied to our calendar once we start missing the obvious benchmarks like 2063. It was easy to write off when Khan didn't take over in the 1990s, but will be harder as time goes on.

 

[eschaton]

Admittedly, part of the difference is that I did not find DS9’s first season as creatively bankrupt as Discovery’s.

DS9 Season 1 isn't anywhere near as bad as people claim it is (it's the best first season of non-TOS Trek by far).

That said, a lot of the first season was just throwing things against the wall and seeing what stuck. They had the tone down, and they were working out the bugs in the characters, but they really hadn't figured out yet the stories they wanted to tell.

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I don't know about you lot, but I'm still mad about them casting Stephen Manley as Spock!



lol

 

[DaddlerTheDalek]

Per Variety: Ethan Peck cast as Spock

"A veteran TV actor, Peck has been cast to play the iconic Starfleet officer Spock in season two of CBS All Access drama “Star Trek: Discovery.”

"Peck’s TV credits include roles on “Madame Secretary,” “Gossip Girl,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” and “That ’70s Show.”

Of note: he's Gregory Peck's grandson.

He seems to look the part.

 

[Paradise City]

Nimoy is indelibly associated with Spock. I don't think that's going to change, 60s Spock is a cult icon that towers over popular culture itself. There's certain light challenges in getting the optimum recasting of Spock.

Peck lacks that slender general Nimoy look? And that's a mild negative. That's said, I wish Peck all the best in his new role.

 

[Franklin]

Not sure. Quinto is a great actor, and I don't think he came close to Nimoy's interpretation of the role. There have been plenty of Vulcans over the years, and only Mark Lenard created one that I felt was worthy of Nimoy.

I can't be 100 percent certain if that's the actor or the writing, but Spock must be more difficult to pull off than it looks.

Nimoy made Spock a hard act to follow. Not just the look, not just the demeanor, but the voice. Nimoy's wonderful voice and the way he used it to deliver his lines in a way that gave ever so slightly nuanced feelings to the supposedly unemotional Vulcan.

Also, to be fair to Quinto and now Peck, Nimoy had a lot more time to tinker with the character and his performance of him. Not just from TV to the movies, but even within the run of the series, you can see some changes in how Spock is portrayed by Nimoy. I actually thought Quinto did a good job capturing the character without just mimicking Nimoy, all things considered.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Meh, STD didn't need Spock. They went and cast him anyway. For all the talk about STD standing on it's own. It's all bullshit. Whatever, let it all burn. I'll wait for Trek that doesn't need to continuously reference other better Trek to make it on it's own.

If they go with an Enterprise based series for the 3rd show, they're already 3/4 or 3/5 there. We just need a Doctor and a Chief Engineer.

 

[Yistaan]

If they go with an Enterprise based series for the 3rd show, they're already 3/4 or 3/5 there. We just need a Doctor and a Chief Engineer.

All these casting announcements does feel like they are just going for a Pike Enterprise show. They need to cast Dr. Boyce, then they can pick up Scotty along the way who is on some lonely outpost in the Vulcan system.

 

[Jayson1]

He looks close enough for me but I hope he has ditched those muscles. Nobody wants a hunky good looking Spock.

Jason

 

[Tuskin38]

All these casting announcements does feel like they are just going for a Pike Enterprise show. They need to cast Dr. Boyce, then they can pick up Scotty along the way who is on some lonely outpost in the Vulcan system.

Well they don't nee Boyce, he could have retired.

 

[Greg Cox]

He looks close enough for me but I hope he has ditched those muscles. Nobody wants a hunky good looking Spock.

Jason

Millions of fan-fic writers might beg to differ.

 

[Cyrus]

Seems like a good choice. All the actors casted for Discovery have been top notch, so I wasn't worried.

I think Gregory Peck would have made a good Spock. Hopefully his grandson will too.

 

[thribs]

So is this whole Discovery thing a front to just do TOS again? Could explain why they made the whole STD cast assholes. So that they wouldn’t overshadow the TOS crew.
To be honest I’m a bit bored of Spock. We know what he was doing during this time.
Kirk or even McCoy would be more interesting since only a little is known of them during that time.

 

[Kane_Steel]

Peck looks like an older version of the kid from Gotham:

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Good try, but unless they find some way to elongate his face, make his nose bigger, lips thinner and change his features, he won't look like Nimoy.

That isn't particularly important, and shouldn't be the goal in recreating a character specifically so that we can see him cast—no pun intended—in a different (but complementary) light to what we've seen before. Spock was a character we watched Nimoy develop and make into his own through TOS and the films. It happened in real time as things went along. Spock wasn't like that until then. He was different. So why shouldn't he look different?

The idea (hopefully) isn't to recapture Nimoy's looks or performance, but rather to show us the character of Spock before he was the person we came to know him as. Much as Quinto's Spock (who I really wouldn't agree looks much, if any, more like Nimoy than Peck) is a character ultimately meant to be close to the Spock we know, but not quite the same, because of different life experiences—including the death of his mother, the loss of his planet, and contact with a future version of himself much farther removed from his "contemporary" self in TOS, all leading to him lacking the lingering false belief that he was a disappointment to his father because he was "too human" and the general sense of inadequacy at not being "Vulcan enough" that Spock Prime felt up until TMP—Peck's Spock will undoubtedly be one possessing at least some of TOS Spock's character traits, but at the same time without some of those that Nimoy originated, and quite intentionally so.

The image of the Nimoy version of Spock will slowly fade away over time, despite being so iconic. This is likely a step in that direction.

I would venture there's little cause for such hand-wringing. If anything, the advent of DSC will to prompt more people who have never seen TOS in its entirety to do so, and Nimoy's Spock will only become better known. So be at ease on that front.

-MMoM

 

[Kane_Steel]

So is this whole Discovery thing a front to just do TOS again? Could explain why they made the whole STD cast assholes. So that they wouldn’t overshadow the TOS crew.
To be honest I’m a bit bored of Spock. We know what he was doing during this time.
Kirk or even McCoy would be more interesting since only a little is known of them during that time.

They aren't doing TOS again, but they are launching their new characters on the back of TOS.

Methinks some CBS executives aren't very confident in STD standing on it's own and need these well-known characters and IPs to draw in fans and gen audiences to subscribe.

STD will still be the Michael Burnham show, Spock and Pike are just there to support and elevate her, the same as Sarek.

Would be funny if they found a way for Picard to do the same.