Requiem for Methuselah

[Trekfan12]

I was thinking about the ending of this episode. When Spock and McCoy are in Kirk's quarters and McCoy tells Spock that Flint is dying because he left Earth. And then goes on to tell Spock how he'll never know what love can drive a man to do simply because the word 'love' is not written into his vocabulary. (of course we know it is,) Then Spock does a mind meld with Kirk and says "forget" I was wondering if he Kirk forgets everything that happened with Flint and Rayna or if he just forgets Rayna. And wouldn't Spock have to tell McCoy what he did, otherwise the next time Bones sees Jim he'd say something to him about Rayna. And what about the ship's logs, would Kirk have recorded the events in there?

 

[Timo]

On this oft-discussed subject, I'd again like to raise the point that Kirk probably won't forget about Rayna, as he never cared about the fembot to begin with.

In his tired confession to Spock, Kirk feels sorry for the two men involved in the triangle - the fembot gets no mention at all. McCoy probably sees the conversation through a needlessly heteronormative filter and mentally inserts the fembot angle, but there's no need to assume Spock would feel the same. What Kirk really must forget is his worry of one day becoming Flint...

As for logs, Kirk was editing them left and right when the need was pressing. And they were dictated quite some time after the actual events anyway - none of the logs dictated and read out loud to the audience in this episode contain any compromising bits as such, and may be the sanitized result of Kirk first forgetting his pain and only then doing the dictating.

"Forget" would no doubt entail forgetting just the negative feelings in any case, not the objective facts... So afterwards, McCoy going "Remember Flint?" would only elicit a "Yes, Bones, what about him?" rather than mental collapse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UnknownSample]

Don't know. I doubt anyone would mention Rayna to Kirk, though. They both wish he could forget her.
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McCoy is of course right, love is not written into Spock's book.
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I like fanon as much as the next guy, but let's favor what characters actually say onscreen over fanon...

 

[Gary7]

Kirk says "A very old and lonely man. And a young and lonely man. We put on a pretty poor show, didn't we?"

He's the young and lonely man. And their arrogant brawl led to Rayna "dying." I don't think it's so much having been in love with Rayna, as the guilt for having helped destroy her.

McCoy says he wishes Kirk could forget her... and I think Spock helps alleviate the memory... maybe not erase it, but make it "distant"... like thinking about an old love from many years ago. When the incident is fresh, it hurts most. When it's an old memory, it doesn't feel quite so bad.

 

[UnknownSample]

Oh, was Timo saying the old and young lonely men were both Flint? Yeah, that was Kirk being self-deprecating. Flint doesn't even appear young.

 

[Poltargyst]

I agree with those saying that as Captain, Kirk needs to retain his knowledge of everything that happened, so Spock was not making him forget Rayna, but forget his feelings for her instead.

 

[Timo]

Certainly McCoy nails it, even if holding the hammer at the wrong end - it's "the ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories" of love that make Kirk so destitute. And those are things specific to the two suitors, Kirk and Flint, as their target of adoration never experienced any of the above. What Spock would make Kirk forget is the whole kit and kaboodle that McCoy listed, the rivalry over Lady McGuffin.

Whether that would require making Kirk forget Rayna or Flint ever existed depends solely on Spock's finesse, I guess. He has not demonstrated the amnesia skill previously, nor will he ever demonstrate it again. But Vulcan telepathy apparently does have a stabilizing effect on a distraught mind, having its uses in fighting the Bendii Syndrome and all. Perhaps that effect can be applied without too much precision or experience?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[11Alive]

I agree with those saying that as Captain, Kirk needs to retain his knowledge of everything that happened, so Spock was not making him forget Rayna, but forget his feelings for her instead.

Yes, I'm sure he'll remember all about her, but only as a beautiful woman (whom he would almost certainly want to bed, being infamously James T. Kirk and all) and not as someone he fell in love with. There are way too many factors that determine whether or not two people fall in love and I'm sure Kirk didn't fall in love with every attractive "space princess" he met. He never even pined for Areel Shaw, Ruth or Carol Marcus, and he certainly had some feelings for them. Could be that Spock just adjusted his memories so Rayna hadn't shown any interest in Kirk at all so he and Flint never actually got into a fight.

 

[Poltargyst]

Yes, I'm sure he'll remember all about her, but only as a beautiful woman (whom he would almost certainly want to bed, being infamously James T. Kirk and all) and not as someone he fell in love with. There are way too many factors that determine whether or not two people fall in love and I'm sure Kirk didn't fall in love with every attractive "space princess" he met. He never even pined for Areel Shaw, Ruth or Carol Marcus, and he certainly had some feelings for them. Could be that Spock just adjusted his memories so Rayna hadn't shown any interest in Kirk at all so he and Flint never actually got into a fight.

But I think he would need to remember that too.