Spock DID Get Emotional in this Show!!!
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
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Maybe it only comes into play and drives the male Vulcan insane if he doesn't participate for seven years rather than having to do it once every certain set of years?
JB
JB
As an episode, "Amok Time" really didn't do Spock any favours. It really made him seem like he was a freak, especially when T'Pau was made to cope with him, in his condition. She had a notable air of disdain about Spock, whenever she found herself having to address him.
So... she's a Vulcan?
Only if the entire Vulcan race is living a lie, claiming to be repressing the experiencing and feeling of emotion, while actually having an internal emotional life just like humans. Maybe. And maybe Klingons lie about the warrior thing, and in private, they're all peace and love. But I doubt it.
Vulcans are not born without emotions they are taught to repress or not express them, there is a reason Surak's teachings took hold because as a culture they chose logic as a way of life. Its not in their DNA. And like all belief, religious or political some practise what they preach and some do not. E.g V'Las and his ilk.
Only if the entire Vulcan race is living a lie, claiming to be repressing the experiencing and feeling of emotion, while actually having an internal emotional life just like humans. Maybe. And maybe Klingons lie about the warrior thing, and in private, they're all peace and love. But I doubt it.
That's a common misunderstanding. Vulcans do not claim to not have emotions. They feel emotions. They are trained to suppress and not express them in favor of logic.
I've been re-watching ENT and am currently a few episodes into the second season. I remembered being a little put off by T'Pol when the show was originally airing, but I'm actually finding her a very effective character very well payed by Blalock. There's a lot more depth and nuance to her performance than I recalled; her inner struggles and insecurities are conveyed as clearly and convincingly as her strengths, if not moreso. I'm loving the progression of how she is initially disdainful and standoffish toward Archer and the other human characters, as they are toward her, but gradually she becomes more at home as they all start to trust and rely on each other. By the time we get to that scene where she sticks up for them all in front of the Vulcans who want to cancel their mission at the conclusion of the "Shockwave" 2-parter, and then Archer goes to thank her afterwards, there is a wonderful sense of a strong bond of loyalty, respect, and even affection between them.
It's equally possible to interpret Spock's displays of physical intimacy toward Uhura in the rebooted films the same way you interpret Sarek's toward Amanda. Uhura's really the one who initiates the examples we do see, IIRC.
I must admit that Spock and Uhura's relationship does rub me the wrong way a bit, or at least did at first. But for me the problem was never Spock having romance in his life per se. I have no objection to that. What bothered me was him having a romantic relationship with someone who was introduced as his student and then subsequently became his junior officer aboard the Enterprise.
In "Fusion" (ENT) it seems to be suggested that at that point they did generally only mate during pon farr when driven to, given Kov's fascination with the prospect of humans mating year-round, but he also says later that they've "been developing methods to accelerate the mating cycle," which I interpreted to mean some sort of Vulcan version of Viagra. (There could also be natural variation among individuals, too, of course. Not every human has identical sex drive.)
Quite.
From "Yesteryear" (TAS):
SPOCK: Vulcans do not lack emotion. It is only that ours is controlled. Logic offers a serenity humans seldom experience in full. We have emotions but we deal with them and do not let them control us.
From "Sarek" (TNG):
TROI: Well, Vulcans have the same basic emotions we do. They've just learned to repress them.
[...]
SAREK: Vulcan emotions are extremely intense. We have learned to suppress them. No human would be able to control them. They would overwhelm you.
From "Riddles" (VGR):
NEELIX: Well, you won't call it fun. You'll call it deriving satisfaction. But it's basically the same thing. You'll still experience emotions.
TUVOK: But I won't express them.
From "Repression" (VGR):
TEERO: [to Tuvok] I'm a student of the mind. Yours is remarkable. Disciplined, orderly. On the surface, that is. Beneath...boiling emotions, repressed violence.
From "Impulse" (ENT):
HAWKINS: May I ask you a question? How is it possible that this crew could turn so violent, when Vulcans aren't supposed to have emotions?
T'POL: A common misconception. We have emotions. We simply keep them suppressed, under control.
From "Twilight" (ENT):
PHLOX: Vulcans experience the same emotions as any other species. They're simply better at hiding them.
From Star Trek (2009):
SAREK: Emotions run deep within our race. In many ways, more deeply than in humans. Logic offers a serenity humans seldom experience. The control of feelings, so that they do not control you.
(There may be still other examples, but I thought these more than sufficient.)
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I'm FINALLY starting to see the semantics problem underneath all this. These days, people hear the word "emotion", and think behavior, as in being demonstrative, "getting all emotional" as in a display. The word "emotion" does not refer to behavior, it does not even refer to facial expressions. It refers purely to feeling. Expressing that feeling is a separate matter. One can have any sort or level of feeling, emotion, without showing it at ALL. Even human beings, who very often do not behave according to their emotions.
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Every time ST talks about suppressing or repressing "emotion", I think today's fans have been translating that into the exhibiting of emotion, when they don't say that. Repression is a psychological concept referring to the pushing of states of mind onto a lower level of consciousness, where you end up disconnecting them from your conscious mind. These and other such ideas were much more in the air then, than now.
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Behavior does not need to be "suppressed" or "repressed". You simply don't act on what you feel. Hard sometimes, but those words don't apply. What fans are mistakenly seeing as Vulcans' behavioral "suppression" is merely learning to be well-behaved and in control of yourself. Repression is psychological. Vulcans have mental disciplines to dampen the feeling of emotion, believing it to be the source of destructive behavior, and the only real solution. Nip it in the bud.
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They didn't expect a later generation to come along who defined "emotion" differently, en masse.
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Another thing. This turns out to be one of those issues where people define two simple, opposite "sides", and they're both a little right and a little wrong, therefore the simple, absolute debate continues forever.
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People see these as the two sides:
(1) Vulcans are like robots, never feeling anything.
(2) Vulcans are full of emotion just like us, they are just disinclined to show it.
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Then pick neither side, express a third point of view, and each side interprets you as coming out for the simplistic opposite side. I'm in this position on politics and just about everything else. "If you're not for me, you're against me".
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Vulcans very definitely have emotions. They may think we all would do well to be a bit more like computers, but they are as flesh-and-blood as we are. So they are as prey to humanoid weaknesses as us. The flaws of humanoid existence lie there always, waiting to engulf and control us all, Vulcans, humans, everyone organic. So the Vulcans came up with a drastic, extreme re-ordering of the mind, to get some good portion of the way toward lack of emotion/feeling. They exist in a very different state of consciousness than us.
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The two popular, silly positions of "Vulcans are robots" and "Vulcans feel just as much and in the same ways we do", neither apply. Trek asked us to think more than that, and they didn't pre-chew the ideas for us, and didn't always thrust them so much into our faces that there could be no doubt or misinterpretation. They did, however, tell us enough to know that they were talking about repression of feeling. Vulcan were a "concept species" (as in "concept album"...) That's the concept.
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People see these as the two sides:
(1) Vulcans are like robots, never feeling anything.
(2) Vulcans are full of emotion just like us, they are just disinclined to show it.
---------------------
Then pick neither side, express a third point of view, and each side interprets you as coming out for the simplistic opposite side. I'm in this position on politics and just about everything else. "If you're not for me, you're against me".
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Vulcans very definitely have emotions. They may think we all would do well to be a bit more like computers, but they are as flesh-and-blood as we are. So they are as prey to humanoid weaknesses as us. The flaws of humanoid existence lie there always, waiting to engulf and control us all, Vulcans, humans, everyone organic. So the Vulcans came up with a drastic, extreme re-ordering of the mind, to get some good portion of the way toward lack of emotion/feeling. They exist in a very different state of consciousness than us.
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The two popular, silly positions of "Vulcans are robots" and "Vulcans feel just as much and in the same ways we do", neither apply. Trek asked us to think more than that, and they didn't pre-chew the ideas for us, and didn't always thrust them so much into our faces that there could be no doubt or misinterpretation. They did, however, tell us enough to know that they were talking about repression of feeling. Vulcan were a "concept species" (as in "concept album"...) That's the concept.
There is also the episode where Tuvok's mental control blocks were removed and he let it rip!
At the end of "The Enemy Within", Spock, surprisingly, made a mischievous comment to Yeoman Rand.
KIRK: The impostor's back where he belongs. Let's forget him.
RAND: Captain? The imposter told me what happened, who he really was, and I'd just like to say that. Well, sir, what I'd like is...
KIRK: Thank you, Yeoman.
SPOCK: The impostor had some interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?
Spock had an uncharacteristic mischievous grin on his face when he said that to Rand. Rand reacted by turning and walking away in disgust from Spock.
Rand had experienced physical/sexual assault by the imposter Kirk.
I don't know what Spock was thinking or what emotions he was feeling when he said that to Rand. But what Spock said and the manner in which he said it almost seemed sexist.
KIRK: The impostor's back where he belongs. Let's forget him.
RAND: Captain? The imposter told me what happened, who he really was, and I'd just like to say that. Well, sir, what I'd like is...
KIRK: Thank you, Yeoman.
SPOCK: The impostor had some interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?
Spock had an uncharacteristic mischievous grin on his face when he said that to Rand. Rand reacted by turning and walking away in disgust from Spock.
Rand had experienced physical/sexual assault by the imposter Kirk.
I don't know what Spock was thinking or what emotions he was feeling when he said that to Rand. But what Spock said and the manner in which he said it almost seemed sexist.
If we're bringing in later Trek examples, there's also the VOY episode "Gravity."
Tuvok: But I am Vulcan. My natural emotions are erratic, volatile. If I don't control them, they will control me. (source: chakoteya.net)
Kor
I wonder when exactly the writers decided to make Vulcans totally emotionless in the series because there are numerous episodes where Spock expresses a smile (The Cage) (WNMHGB) and even makes a sexist comment to Yeoman Rand as such and he even grimaces in the elevator with Mudd and his women! Something he would never do after the midway of the first season and especially into the second and Amanda speaks to him about not smiling in Journey to Babel (well she should have seen him discovering them blue flowers on Talos IV I think)
JB
JB
The majority of the groundwork was laid in the second pilot, WNMHGB:
Nimoy himself contributed his own interpretations in the early episodes too, which was absorbed into the character by later writers.
I'm not sure if he was ever supposed to be entirely emotionless though. Even if his father's species was thought to be so initially, there's his part human "get out clause". He certainly displayed a lot more human "snark" in the few few episodes produced.
Nimoy himself contributed his own interpretations in the early episodes too, which was absorbed into the character by later writers.
I'm not sure if he was ever supposed to be entirely emotionless though. Even if his father's species was thought to be so initially, there's his part human "get out clause". He certainly displayed a lot more human "snark" in the few few episodes produced.
I think it's been noted already but Spock comments on the likeness of Balok to his Father in The Corbomite Maneuver! So were Vulcans originally going to be bald headed white skinned missogs but with pointed ears, and Spock only looked like he did with hair and pallid complexion due to his human lineage?
JB
JB
