While some have criticized Kirk for his attempt to "emotionally unbalance" Spock with reference to his mother, and it certainly seemed rather heartless and cruel to anyone not in on the reason for it, I took his use of Amanda's death as, at least, some attempt at "payback" for the way Spock rather cavalierly used George Kirk's death as a bit of a "slap in the face" to Kirk. Anyone else see it this way?
Perhaps. I still think something like that would have influenced the examples he chose in an attempt to "unbalance" Spock (not to mention it provides another, though rather superficial, point of commonality about them--as their somewhat unhappy childhoods in parallel demonstrated). Still, I could be totally over analyzing this point (this is, after all, a Star Trek forum
).
Spock did not have to employ the tone he used when referring to Kirk's father, though. He seemed to be relishing putting the "challenger" in his place just a touch in that sequence.
Yes, he did. Kirk is the toughest of characters.
It was a choice, not a requirement, for Spock to use that tone with that example. In his precise situation, I may well have chosen the same path. What I'm trying to get at (and I'm not expressing it as clearly as I would like, I think) is that a consequence of Spock's choice of example and tone was Kirk's own choice in the later confrontation between the two. I simply think Kirk would have been more reluctant to "go there" with regards to Amanda had Spock not opened that door earlier on.
That's what I was trying to say (much more cumbersomely). And now I'm really off to sleep.
