Then there’s young TAS Spock. That puts us on what, 9 Spocks now?
Man.
I was never that much of a Spock fan in the first place, and there now nine of him.
Looks like we will have a fully bearded Lieutenant Spock on Discovery
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Then there’s young TAS Spock. That puts us on what, 9 Spocks now?
Man.
I was never that much of a Spock fan in the first place, and there now nine of him.
Yet let's be honest here, there is only one Spock. The rest are try-hards.
Spock isn’t even the best Vulcan in the series. But his characterisation as a half human is played in a weird way most of the time, when they use it. Who knows.
Well I am biased as we do not see a 'proper' Vulcan until Tuvok, however Spock is probably one of the best characters of Trek... ever. Nimoy owns it.
I was always meh on Spock. Then we got new characters and new Vulcans....like Tuvok, as you mention. But I was still meh on Vulcans and Spock. Now we deify TOS and Spock so much in fandom and the modern iterations of Trek that I am now ‘meh to oh sod off’ on Spock. Behind the scenes...Nimoy is an interesting character shall we say. Him and Shatner both.
Man-bun Spock or NOTHING!!!
I've seen a lot of bullshit in my time, but this takes the cake.
Spock is amongst the very best characters ever created for television. That's not even a debate.
You can be biased toward the remakes of the 90s all you want, as everyone has different tastes, but to say that Spock "isn't the best Vulcan in the show" is a revelation of tremendous personal bias.
Tuvok is the best Vulcan. He took everything Nimoy had done, and built massively on it, to the point where the smallest expression change or vocal shift had great significance. Sometimes that element of Tim Russ performance could rescue a scene or episode that could otherwise veer off.
You seem to confuse ‘personal bias’ for ‘personal opinion’. I have no bias, I am not sure it is even possible to have a bias in regard to this...perhaps if I had seen Voyager first, as opposed to the movies and TOS first, then you could suggest that I have a bias for this reason. However as this is not the case, then your description of it as a bias, as opposed to an opinion based on my own observations, is incorrect and possibly pejorative. Is it possible your own defence and elevation of Spock is also biased? An emotional as opposed to objective response?
Pretty sure I get Vulcans.
So did Tim Russ. Nimoy may have started the trip, but Russ and to a great extent Lenard in his Movie and TNG appearances are the ones who really made it.
I like Russ and his interpretation, but he doesn't come close to the level Nimoy took Spock.
Spock, by overt and regular mentions, is only half Vulcan. He can basically play whatever he likes in there...nothing is out of character, because he defines the rules of that character. Any actor playing a full Vulcan has to play within those rules.
I also don’t think Spock was actually taken to any levels by Nimoy, except on rare occasion. The ‘suppressed emotions’ bit is better done by Lenard and Russ. Spock repressed his emotions like arcing soup through the air...the rest of the time there’s a very arch performance, a heap of camp, as befit TOS in the sixties. He does some stuff in TMP, but everything after his death in Khan is very paint by numbers. An arched eyebrow here, a soundbite there, all reaching its low/high in VI with some very silly dialogue in deadpan. A lot of Spock moments deal with him being a raving loony because his emotions are not in check.. which we also get sometimes with the other lead Vulcans...but they do it so much more amazingly subtly, with greater contrast.
Lenard having a breakdown in ten forward is better than soup through the air, possibly even better than straightening a uniform to die in a glass box. Russ has many such stand out moments...he bit where he wants to tear Taurik a new one for assaulting B’Ellana, and manages to make a scene that could be really really uncomfortable as written, into something much more through how he controls his voice for instance. There’s a reason that little foot shuffle when Neelix leaves actually carries so much emotion, and it’s because of all of the performance and writing to that point. Literally a foot shuffle conveys as much as Spocks entire TWOK death scene, because of the character and the actor. Nimoy, like much of the TOS cast, rarely goes in for subtle. When they do, it’s amazing...Shatner is an excellent actor, and the Meld scene in the beginning of TSFS is amazing because of him going subtle. Nimoy too, in the first two films at least, does a better job of this. DeForest is good with gestures and facial expressions, and it’s one of the things that carries off some of the amazing character stuff in V. Nimoy...doesn’t turn in a good performance there. Russ ftw.
I'll take the soup and the glass box, every single time.
If New-New-Spock wore a sombrero over that mop of hair TrekBBS might like him better.
Well, glass boxes are very good for containing soup. Nd for the record I think that scene in TWOK is awesome. It’s just a shame he never goes to that level of effort again in the other films. His deadpan works in IV, but after that it gets old fast. Oh. Maybe one exception. When he confronts Koord on the bridge. His biggest moments of showing the Vulcan/emotion conflict though are basically his big grin in TMP and that moment there. The rest of the time it’s bemused deadpanning...oh and one more when he gets annoyed and mind-races Saavik in VI. ‘She does not know’. Some of those moments would be stronger if he had gone for more varied approaches in other scenes. For instance, his conversation with Amanda in IV. There’s only the two of them there. At the very least, I would expect a more emotional facial expression, to hint at something below the surface even if his words are not. There’s too many toddler pouts from him in the tail end of the movies, not enough ‘trying to keep the mask up’ acting. He has mask up, he has mask down (rarely) but never the mask is slipping. The mask is slipping is key to Lenard as Sarek and Russ as Tuvok. This might work for Spock, since we keep having it beaten into us how one or the other side is considered inferior by one person or another, and how rather than this making him more than the sum of his parts, everyone treats him as less somehow, (urgh) but as a Vulcan performance? No. Lenard and Russ. That’s if I assume Nimoy is playing this as a Spock thing not a Vulcan thing, but sometimes it’s a little vague, given how much latitude he is given to define Vulcan characteristics, and how often the half human thing only pops up when the story wants to remember it. There’s a reason Amanda reminds him of it in IV. Nimoy and Spock do an interesting job, but fittingly it is only half a job. (Same is arguably true of Alley Saavik. Curtis Saavik is deadpan with a hint of that Mask slipping I mention, around David’s death. She’s underrated too.)
As I say, this isn’t some 90s Trek vs 60s Trek thing...it’s based on watching the thing. Some people put more work into their role, and I think by the time the media style of the day could really let some acting in, Nimoy had given up the idea in some respects.
Maybe more controversial: what color and type of uniform will Spock wear?
Fact: sombreros increase the likability of any wearer by 19.35%
My money is on Vulcan dressing gown at some point. In black.
I believe it translates as bathrobe.
Is there a particular reason the idea of Spock with a beard provokes such a visceral reaction in you?
