Rewatching TOS After SNW
- Thread starter Odo
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SNW recontextualizes a great deal of TOS in general, if one wants to play with it that way. I mean, how you connect the dots between stories and events for the sake of entertainment is very individual. But here are two things I personally find really interesting:
- M'Benga has become a confidant and mentor to Spock with respect to Spock's learning to deal with his emotions. There may be some roots here for Spock's running antipathy to McCoy, who's a very different person and may initially be a disapointment or frustration for Spock to deal with;
- TOS can now be seen as a "post-war world" in very much the same way that the 1950s and 60s were in the United States (and much of the rest of the world). We're seeing the continuing personal and cultural impact of the Klingon War in SNW. So now, when one asks "why is Starfleet so military in Kirk's time and less so in Picard's?" well, maybe the answers look a little different - i.e., Starfleet had to militarize in the recent past to deal with the Klingons (and maybe, the Gorn?) and all of that is still unwinding. And perhaps the context of Kirk's remarks to the Organians about the Klingons in "Errand of Mercy" make a different sort of emotional sense if one assumes Kirk to be a war veteran who experienced some taste of what M'Benga and Ortegas and Chapel have...
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"I have seen what the Klingons do to planets like yours. They are organized into vast slave labor camps. No freedoms whatsoever. Your goods will be confiscated. Hostages taken and killed, your leaders confined. You'd be far better off on a penal planet. Infinitely better off...I'm a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell you the truth."
Well, Kirk's sugar-coating it a bit...
Well, Kirk's sugar-coating it a bit...
I one hundred percent read Kirk as a veteran of the Klingon War.
I don’t think SNW makes me rethink the basic events of any episode except Amok Time. However, there are a couple of particular moments within episodes it makes me rethink, like the Chapel/Spock convoy in Naked Time.
I don’t think SNW makes me rethink the basic events of any episode except Amok Time. However, there are a couple of particular moments within episodes it makes me rethink, like the Chapel/Spock convoy in Naked Time.
Balance of Terror comes to mind.
Arena to be has been recontextualize to me especially after the SNW S2 finale. It makes me wonder if Cestus III was really a Section 31 operation to keep an eye on the Gorn .
"Amok Time" is hard to reconcile. If Spock and T'Pring could break their engagement with a simple exchange of phrases over the viewscreen in "The Serene Squall," how come T'Pring needed to arrange a fight to the death to get out of her marriage?
It's not entirely hard to reconcile, given that the crew didn't actually know the enemy was the Gorn until the Metron told them. But Kirk certainly doesn't seem to recognize the name "Gorn," which is hard to square with him being close to La'an. Though I've seen it suggested that when Kirk said "the creature the Metrons called a Gorn," it meant that he didn't recognize that particular variety of Gorn (since they seem to have multiple different appearances) and had to take the Metron's word that it actually was a Gorn. (Which is reconcilable with SNW, as "All Those Who Wander" established that the Gorn can evolve and adapt quickly to new circumstances. So they could have a wide range of different phenotypes.)
Why does everyone want to give Section 31 credit for things that would actually be Starfleet Intelligence's job? Is it just because it has a catchier name?
It's not entirely hard to reconcile, given that the crew didn't actually know the enemy was the Gorn until the Metron told them. But Kirk certainly doesn't seem to recognize the name "Gorn," which is hard to square with him being close to La'an. Though I've seen it suggested that when Kirk said "the creature the Metrons called a Gorn," it meant that he didn't recognize that particular variety of Gorn (since they seem to have multiple different appearances) and had to take the Metron's word that it actually was a Gorn. (Which is reconcilable with SNW, as "All Those Who Wander" established that the Gorn can evolve and adapt quickly to new circumstances. So they could have a wide range of different phenotypes.)
Why does everyone want to give Section 31 credit for things that would actually be Starfleet Intelligence's job? Is it just because it has a catchier name?
I think T'Pring's actions in "Amok Time" actually make more sense after SNW if you consider them her taking revenge against Spock and his human inclinations.
Only if she's an out-and-out psychopath. It's one thing to go through with a ritual that requires someone's death if it's literally the only way to get out of an unwanted marriage. It's another thing entirely to get someone killed out of sheer pettiness.
In the light of SNW, I don't think she is a psychopath, but I also don't think she did this only to get out of their arrangement; she did this to inflict the most damage on Spock in retaliation for his betrayal of their relationship as well as betrayal of the Vulcan-ness that is so important to her. Of course, future episodes of SNW could change my perception of this, but for now this works for me.
Section 31 is highly overrated.
I'm not saying she is. I'm saying there's an inconsistency between the two portrayals of how Vulcan divorce works. Theodore Sturgeon meant the fight to the death to be a necessity, the only option T'Pring had. "The Serene Squall" implies it's something she did by choice, just for the hell of it, and that is far more evil. Yet as you say, the way T'Pring is portrayed in SNW is incompatible with her being evil. Hence the difficulty in reconciling the inconsistency.
You're saying she chose to get someone killed merely to get back at an ex she was mad at, and you don't think that qualifies as psychopathic behavior?
I wonder if Pike City was the name of the original Cestus III colony name? Obviously named after Captain Pike, but was it for his actions against the Gorn? Could the colony have been setup by survivors from other attacks?
Because if the city was founded as the rebuilding of the colony after Kirk dealt with the Gorn, wouldn't Kirk City or Kirktown make more sense?
As for T'Pring, maybe she was being traditional and formal, like her mother.
Because if the city was founded as the rebuilding of the colony after Kirk dealt with the Gorn, wouldn't Kirk City or Kirktown make more sense?
As for T'Pring, maybe she was being traditional and formal, like her mother.
After all, you don't just let anybody slap your face repeatedly.
One seeks to understand, the other just doesn't get it and frequently ridicules, however good-naturedly and well-meaning it may sometimes be.Are there possibly multiple levels of Vulcan engagement? Like school jacket to promise ring to engagement ring?
Mutual agreement is one thing. If one wants to bow out and the other doesn't (particularly the male), perhaps that's the only way the objecting party can force the issue.
I almost suggested that maybe the rules are different when the participants are in pon farr. But that still doesn't make sense, since if T'Pring was unhappy with her situation as long as implied, why wait until it was too late to ask for a more amiable dissolution of the betrothal?
Maybe she assumed Spock would never come for her; that he'd find some other mate, Vulcan or not.
I think TOS showed us an aspect of Vulcan culture that was truly different and alien to our own, one that compensated for the total suppression of emotion, and SNW took a big dump on it. Notice how Spock and T'Pring kiss like humans as well, and the whole two-fingers-touching thing has just sort of been dropped?
Or T'Pring went to far over in her human exploration and thought Spock should reciprocate in kind by trying more Vulcan ways. Instead, he continues with Starfleet, becomes a legend and ignores her.
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