Some points about Star Trek VI:The Undiscovered Country

I think the plot could have been tweaked if Saavik had been the traitor. They could have made it a slightly more tragic, more redemptive arc and avoided the awful forced mind meld.

 

Doubtful, considering how quickly they turned out that movie to get it out during the 25th anniversary year. I'm sure that if they'd kept the character as Saavik, they would have used the exact same script, with only the variances of Kirstie Alley's performance to differentiate it. And it was never supposed to be a redemptive arc.

And I personally love the mind meld scene. It's dramatic because Spock is pushed to a point we've never seen him pushed to before. If it had been Saavik/Alley in that scene, the audience would have felt the betrayal more, as it would've been a character that we knew and had affection for.

 

How??? The movie, as is, points to only one person who could be the traitor. Valeris. I doubt any viewer, Fan or not, could've believed Spock, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekhov be possible conspirators to the assassination. Tweaked is a little optimistic, the script doesn't create much wiggle room for error... which there were a lot.

I liked it as well because Spock needed the information and he needed to get it at any means necessary. The Enterprise can't afford another assassination as the conspirators are still at large.

 

I don't like the idea of Saavik as a traitor and certaily wouldn't have minded the redemptive arc for Valeris. Honestly, getting rid of the mind meld scene would have been nice, and is a low point for an otherwise enjoyable film.

 

I dunno, I don't personally feel that torture should be more palatable because you don't know the person as well. It should be seen as a vile and disgusting act borne out of anger and desperation (and laziness to be honest - Sulu was an option before the torture and they don't need the names of the co-conspirators there and then to resolve the immediate problem). Trek's history of telepathy being used to invade privacy continues to annoy me.

Kirk can persuade computers to self destruct. Shunting one of his trademark inspirational speeches a bit earlier in the movie could have worked and if guilt tripping her over David's legacy doesn't work then I'm sure he or Spock could out logic her. Janeway's speech to Tuvok about using logic to justify any action if it isn't tempered by wisdom seems an appropriate theme. There were a lot more appealing options.

I would not find it troubling that Saavik would betray the Federation, since some of her superiors approve of her actions and Valeris clearly thinks that this is for the Federation's own good. The one thing that I would find troubling is murdering the conspirators. That seems unnecessarily brutal.

Some elements such as, "A lie?" "A choice," Would definitely seem less hokey if applied to Saavik.

 

That is not what I was saying at all, and I'm definitely not going to get sidetracked into a debate about the ethics of torture with you. That's a topic for The Neutral Zone, not here.

What I like about that scene is that it shows Spock in a way that we've never seen him before, and it's interesting to contemplate what drove him to that point. I find it fascinating from a character standpoint, not because I find torture palatable.

Well, considering that that refrain was a deliberate call back to TWOK's "You liked." / "I exaggerated." exchange, I definitely feel that it being Saavik would've worked better.

 

I agree that Spock is totally off the rails (for him) in the sick bay scene and that takes him down a dark path. Nimoy was great at giving very nuanced performances as Spock. He's lost control of his inner self and it gives us a glimpse of why Vulcans need to rely on logic. I suppose the point for me is that resorting to torture largely undermines the point of the movie. It's perhaps one of the first rungs on the ladder to the darker Trek of the modern era and it's born out of relatively lazy writing; the need to wrap up the final third of the movie. It's a shame.

That Valeris fell for such a transparent trap is about as realistic as Khan falling for a coded message that a 7 year old could see through. Top of her class? That was a dumb year.

 

I rationalize Spock's line about Valeris being the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at the Academy as being about her graduating at the top of her class in Command School. As Vulcans are the intellectual giants of the Federation, one of them graduating at the top of a Starfleet Academy class shouldn't be especially notable by the 2290s. But a Vulcan being ambitious and driven enough to show that not only are they potential Captain material, but they're the best out of the bunch in their particular year? Now that's unusual.

Not the original intent of that line, I realize, but it helps it make sense for me within the context of larger ST Universe.

 

I think its more it feels out of character for Spock and Kirk to be like "Hey, Spock, you're clearly the logical one here. There must be some way to get the information out of her. Oh, yeah, that works..."

 

And we now know that Spock didn't graduate at the top of his class.

 

Spock never went to Command School. He never took the Kobayashi Maru, after all.

 

I thought he designed the Kobayashi Maru test making the test not part of the Command School requirements when Spock was in Command School one or two years before Kirk. Right?

 

Seems unlikely if Galileo 7 was his first command gig.

 

Seventeen years in Starfleet, First Officer on a Starship, and his first command is a pathetic shuttle ride? Maybe Spock really is a low-rated command officer and a bad people person after all.

KIRK: "Spock, I have another complaint about you on inappropriate sexual comments you made to Yeoman Rand on Stardate 1673.5. I'll have to put this on your permanent record. Also, you have to stop that constant bickering with McCoy in front of the crew. It lowers crew moral to see senior officers at each other's throats. Spock, you're doing a terrible job as XO and First Officer. God, I'm sorry I accepted you as First Officer when I got this command. What was Pike thinking when he promoted you? Now get out and send Doctor McCoy in, next."​

 

Yeah it's not realistic to think that in his 15 year career, he was never in command once. It is possible this was the first time McCoy had been under his direct command on an away mission.

 

It's unclear if Spock was the designer behind the Kobayashi Maru test in the Prime Timeline or not. While I thought it was a neat idea for ST09, I would guess "probably not."

Agreed. I know it wasn't the intent of the episode, as Kirk also says in his log entry that the Galileo mission is Spock's first command, but in my mind that's just McCoy's sarcasm working overtime. You don't become first officer aboard a starship without commanding a few things here & there, even if you aren't actively seeking out command.

Landing party.

 

Well, technically, they weren't supposed to land.

I suppose, if we assume that Gary Mitchell was first officer, which is not impossible, if unstated, then Spock would not have been first officer for that long. If he was just chief science officer, he might always have been under a command officer on landing parties.

Maybe Number One was a control freak.

 

Both plausible theories.

 

How would it work, the shuttle mission being Spock's "first command"? We'd both have to narrow down the definition and make assumptions about Spock. But both are certainly doable.

The above works easily enough, and jibes with onscreen tidbits. Spock in "Enemy Within" still thinks of himself as the second officer, not the first, perhaps out of long habit combined with a deeply ingrained resistance to the idea of choosing a command career. And Pike at Talos going planetside with Spock rather than with Number One appears to warrant a personal apology to the XO, suggesting this is basically the first time this happened, for whatever reason. Possibly having to do with the casualties at Rigel VII: perhaps Pike was unnerved and doesn't want to risk Una any longer, perhaps Number One actually took a serious hit there and is unfit for groundside duty but this can't be stated out loud?

If Spock was Pike's laboratory pit boss rather than a valuable part of his everyday command chain, opportunities for detached command might be few. Being in charge of things shipboard would be the thing we need to exclude from our definition; away missions we can then rule out by postulating this career pseudohistory.

And Spock might have been a career rocket in the sense that he outdid all competition in science prowess, and got shanghaied onto a Constitution right after the graduation, getting no opportunity to command anything unrelated to his chosen specialty.

With this sort of career history, Pike might indeed be wary at Talos, and perhaps afterwards as well. Why, when he was a prisoner, this cold-blooded bastard had tried to do the logical thing and run away!

Kirk might be aware of this, and when finally sending Spock to command a mission, would specifically assign the CMO to spy on him...

Timo Saloniemi

 

So, we think Spock was to Pike what Kim was to Janeway? Harsh.

Still, being intelligent is no substitute for experience. This was one of the mistakes NuTrek made IMO. Making Spock a full commander almost a decade before he became one in TOS pales bedside making newly graduated Kirk a captain, or an newly qualified navigator the chief engineer but it still feels wrong to me. Both Kirk and Spock make poor command decisions in ST09, not that the TOS characters are always firing on all cylinders.