I fell asleep while watching TMP yesterday
- Thread starter alpha_leonis
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That actually bolsters Nick Meyer's case for killing Spock off permanently. It's the most perfect epilogue for the Spock journey that led through TMP.
A comfortable, dare we say "happy" Spock, who has learned so much about himself thanks to his Kolinahr and V'Ger experiences, ends up sacrificing himself for duty and friendship.
I'm glad we got more of Nimoy and Spock than just that, but still. What a story!
Ease up on the ad hominem nonsense. You don't know me, and you don't want to make me angry at you.
And learn to take a joke.
I was getting there myself, and rather enjoying it too as I must rise in a scant six hours, but then a couple of fellow forumites started yelling at one-another and now I need coffee and a hot shower.
And neither of you want us mashing the "notify the moderator" buttons, which some of us will if this continues in this direction.
I'd say "fever pitch" is a serious overstatement.
I disagree. Spock had left what he'd been doing his entire adult life to isolate himself in an extreme ritual of meditation and deprivation. He was trying to literally purge himself of fully one half of who he was. If that isn't fever pitch, I don't what is.
I agree, though I think it also makes a very strong case that Spock and not Decker was the natural choice to join with V'ger. He'd melded with it. He had gotten his own act together. He'd "grown". The next thing for him was probably not the same "Starfleet science officer" thing he was doing five years earlier.
All good dawg. Allll GUUUUUUD.
But we don't see that. We see Spock about to receive his meditation medal, then he looks up at the sky. His next appearance is on the ship. We can infer that all sorts of interesting things are going on, but they aren't shown, and Spock's arc is only a minor part of the plot.
TMP is too long. It's too long because it feels too long. Take out all the boring tracking shots and shots of middle-aged people traveling and the movie would be about 90 minutes long and might actually be intriguing.
In your opinion, it is. There's plenty of us that don't feel that the movie is too long. It's all a matter of personal taste.
Well, yeah. Thank you Capt. Obvious.
Yep. Hell, I want the Special Longer Version* on Blu-ray! I love TMP.
*Though I may be suffering from some kind of brain defect I'm not aware of.
Your account does not quite reflect what was onscreen. No inference is needed. The nature of the Kolinahr was explained in the officers' lounge scene.
It's a discipline to purge all emotion, it's a discipline Spock broke to seek V'ger, and it is a discipline he broke because he thought V'ger held answers related to his desire to purge all remaining emotion.
If that isn't clear enough there is the later scene in sickbay in which he says he has learned a simple feeling is beyond the comprehension of a machine god. Later he cries for V'ger "as he would for a brother" because he empathizes with V'ger's emptiness.
No other character in the film experiences anything like this degree of growth. Not even Decker, who for all we know ceases to exist. Maybe you don't see it, and that's fine. But I'd be surprised if many people posting in this thread would agree with you.
"Fever pitch" is by definition "a state of intense excitement and agitation." Spock is trying to rid himself of ALL emotion. Then he ends up laughing and later, crying. In one story. We only see him laugh a very few times (and cry just once IIRC) in the entire TOS. I will not argue semantics any further and allow you your aversion to the term while still pointing out that in no other Star Trek story does Spock (on his own) laugh AND cry. In no other Star Trek story does he try to rid himself of all emotion. In no other Star Trek story does he decide he's fine with himself the way he is. Since the battle between his human, emotional side and Vulcan, logical side is the defining conflict in the depiction of his character, it makes Star Trek- The Motion Picture unique as a transformative, resolutory story for Spock.
Looking back, it appears Spock had reached a conclusion about himself during TOS, to the point where he did not have to attempt to bury his human side as much it is referred to in "The Naked Time," or treat it as a lost, partially understood emotional weight on his shoulder as seen by the end of "This Side of Paradise." Consider the reactions from those who knew him best: his arrival on the bridge in TMP is met with bursting joy, as it can be said the old crew just did not merely work with Spock, but knew him--understood him (as a close friend) as well.
If true, that means he finally reached a balance within that no longer required the hard, cold act seen early in the series, which in turn, means he reached out enough to bond with humans (or, humans to feel they could), and the entire TMP plot of Spock trying to find himself seems completely out of place. It robbed him of all of the natural growth built over the three TV seasons.
TWOK addressed Kirk's self worth and his need for command--forced to the surface by age and feelings of creeping irrelevance as all he believed himself to be as man and captain.
I maintain the character dealt with his human side with each passing TOS season. I doubt anyone viewed the Spock character as in need of some internal resolution with his mixed heritage by the time the final episode aired--or in character assessments in the decade between TV and 1st film.
Well, you were speaking as if it were a known, proven fact.
This isn't the TOS Spock I remember. He starts out wearing his emotions much more readily. In "The Cage" he is more demonstrative than almost any of the other characters. He is more reserved by WNMHGB, but not much. Throughout the first half of that first season, he speaks loudly, catches himself veering into human displays of emotion, in short seems less in control. If anything, I think he goes from being more comfortable displaying human emotions as a young man to vying within himself for greater and greater degrees of self control during TOS. The decision to undergo Kolinahr was the natural continuation of this path, one which he ultimately abandons because he realizes the Vulcan way cannot encompass enough of what he has experienced. Spock was Rodenberry's creation and he obviously thought this way too, because he chose to give Spock this story. And while other forces were also at work, this idea of Spock's evolution must have appealed enough to Nimoy to interest him because he, like Spock, abandoned his self imposed exile to return to the Enterprise.
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