This is a tough ranking for me.
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What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
- Start date
This is a tough ranking for me.
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To this day I refuse to believe that Sarek is a bad father.
Yes, he and Spock often argued. That tends to happen sometimes! Father and son argue. water is wet, film at 11!
And Sarek had what I consider to be a perfectly good reason for being angry with Spock: Sarek had to choose which one of his children would attend the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. He chose Spock, AND had to lie to Burnham and say she was rejected. Then Spock goes and joins Starfleet, rendering the whole thing futile. I can't say I blame Sarek for being a bit cheesed off.
Sarek is a conflicted father. He is not a bad father. Far as I'm concerned, he did the best he could. I mean, look at how he reacted when he thought Kirk had abandoned Spock on Genesis in ST III. That is clearly the reaction of a loving father.
How's THAT for controversial!
I could see it, actually. I don’t think it’s fair for him to demand Spock take a particular path, but of course he meant well. Thing is — and I’m not calling Sarek abusive here — but overbearing parentage (and child abuse) often do arise from parental good intentions.To this day I refuse to believe that Sarek is a bad father.
Yes, he and Spock often argued. That tends to happen sometimes! Father and son argue. water is wet, film at 11!
And Sarek had what I consider to be a perfectly good reason for being angry with Spock: Sarek had to choose which one of his children would attend the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. He chose Spock, AND had to lie to Burnham and say she was rejected. Then Spock goes and joins Starfleet, rendering the whole thing futile. I can't say I blame Sarek for being a bit cheesed off.
Sarek is a conflicted father. He is not a bad father. Far as I'm concerned, he did the best he could. I mean, look at how he reacted when he thought Kirk had abandoned Spock on Genesis in ST III. That is clearly the reaction of a loving father.
How's THAT for controversial!
I would never claim Sarek didn't love his children. BUT... he clearly didn't give them what they needed. Sybok, for reasons we don't yet know, completely rebelled against the Vulcan way. Spock twisted himself into a pretzel trying to be The Perfect Vulcan when he never could be because he's half-human. Michael is fully human and truly couldn't be a Vulcan. To be honest, I think Amanda deserves some of the blame for Spock and Michael as well. She, as a human, should've known better and tried to encourage a more well-rounded upbringing.
I've felt for a while that Sarek's issues are indicative of how problematic Vulcan culture is as a whole. If one goes back and watches the TNG episode where Picard mind melds with Sarek, to me, it depicts the Vulcan way-of-life as being a metaphor for a "closeted" existence in an even more evocative way than the metaphor for closeted homosexuality does in "The Outcast."To this day I refuse to believe that Sarek is a bad father.
Yes, he and Spock often argued. That tends to happen sometimes! Father and son argue. water is wet, film at 11!
And Sarek had what I consider to be a perfectly good reason for being angry with Spock: Sarek had to choose which one of his children would attend the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. He chose Spock, AND had to lie to Burnham and say she was rejected. Then Spock goes and joins Starfleet, rendering the whole thing futile. I can't say I blame Sarek for being a bit cheesed off.
Sarek is a conflicted father. He is not a bad father. Far as I'm concerned, he did the best he could. I mean, look at how he reacted when he thought Kirk had abandoned Spock on Genesis in ST III. That is clearly the reaction of a loving father.
How's THAT for controversial!
From what we have seen of the Vulcans, on a society-wide basis, they are judgmental against any perceived deviation from dispassionate logic. They discriminate and treat as an outcast anyone they perceive to be an aberration from that standard. And they expect people to suppress expressions of their desires and love.
In every way, that could describe the life of a closeted gay man or lesbian living a life in an oppressive society where they cannot express who and what they are, or show their feelings for those they love.
PICARD: (expressing Sarek's thoughts) Perrin. Amanda. I wanted to give you so much more. I wanted to show you such tenderness. But that is not our way. Spock, Amanda, did you know? Perrin, can you know how much I love you? I DO LOVE YOU!
Imagine going through life watching the child you love struggle because other Vulcans see him as an "outcast" for being half-human or living decades with a woman that you feel passionately about, and having to stuff all of that down inside because you're not to say it out loud. That's what Vulcan society is. And the more you think about it, the more fucked up it is.
And I think that colors Sarek's performance as a father. He loved Spock. He loved Amanda. But he was expected to be an example of the "Vulcan way" and it twists how he acts as a father.
If one goes back to watch "Journey to Babel" and The Voyage Home, Amanda plays those scenes which touch on her love for Spock and Sarek with a coy smile. She knows they love her. But she also knows they can never say it. She's understanding of the conflict. But it says something that the conflict exists at all.
Vulcans are played as stiff upper lip stoicism rather than classical Greek.
Sadly, many still believe that Spock, Tuvok and Data are more to be emulated than more emotional characters.
Sadly, many still believe that Spock, Tuvok and Data are more to be emulated than more emotional characters.
Right up until they do it again over the Cardassians, per “Unification”. Cause they can both be stubborn jackasses sometimes.
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I haven't seen the new dsc season yet.
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I haven't seen the new dsc season yet.
Oh, we're doing rankings in the controversial opinions thread? In that case I need to add a couple of extra seasons...
- Disco 2
- Picard 3
- Disco 1
- Picard 1
- Disco 5
- Picard 2
- Disco 3
- Disco 4
- SNW 2
- SNW 1
Posts like this remind me that I still don't completely buy either Sybok or Michael Burnham as being Spock's siblings. I agree with D.C. Fontana that Spock should be an only child, and him having siblings, any siblings, diminishes his character and dilutes his character arc with Sarek.
Not only do I think that 23 years and 51 years are both way too late in the day to introduce "a secret sibling the audience has never heard of before!" to one of the major characters of the franchise, I think it's stupid that they've done it using Spock both times. Moreover, I just don't think it makes any logical sense for Sarek to be so unaccepting of Spock when he's also raising a full-blooded human child under AND a full-blooded Vulcan child who ultimately embraces his emotions under the same roof. You'd think Spock would become the favorite son under circumstances like that.
I honestly think Burnham could've been interesting on her own without shoehorning her into Spock's backstory, and it's a shame that DSC didn't have enough confidence to do that. It'll be interesting to see what SNW does in the future to make Sybok make more sense, though.
I accept Burnham and Sybok and their given backstories when I'm watching DSC and SNW, but whenever I rewatch TOS or the movie series, Spock is still an only child in my mind.
Essentially, Spock is an only child. Sybok and Burnham would be family embarrassments at least for a young Spock who is picked on by his peers, so he most never talks about them. After all, not talking about embarassing stuff is the Vulcan way.
At least they didn't shoehorn her into Khan's backstory...
<P.S. New controversial opinion: I actual like the SNW shoehorn of La'an.
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Yeah, I like La'an, although her being a known descendant of Khan makes Kirk and company look REALLY slow on the uptake in "Space Seed" now.At least they didn't shoehorn her into Khan's backstory...
<P.S. New controversial opinion: I actual like the SNW shoehorn of La'an.
This is why I just consider SNW an alternate universe when I watch it now. That way the discrepancies with TOS don't bother me as much and I don't drive myself nuts trying to reconcile everything in my head. I'm not saying it's an alternate universe in the official ST canon; I'm just saying it's an alternate universe in my mind. It lets me just enjoy it as a show.
I'm kind of the same way, there are 4x Major Timelines now IMO.
That basically solves most of the inconsistency issues introduced by the various shows.
Here's my controversial opinion. Michael Burnham is the best thing to happen to the Spock character since the Genesis wave.
Bingo. It's one of the things I could not get behind with DISCO. She could have been adopted by a completely unknown Vulcan family and it would have changed nothing about her character. Even the Spock plot in season 2 could have her just being an old friend or colleague. ("Lethe" is the only thing this would have changed, and despite it being one of the only season 1 episodes I really liked, it could have been done later on SNW.)
Considering how Burnham was supposed to be the primary focus of the entire series, the creators of the series are already telegraphing to the audience that they don't believe in the character, and by extension the series itself, enough to be interesting on their own merit so they made her have this major connection to a character who is basically the face of the franchise.
My controversial opinion about your controversial opinion: By trying to insert her into Spock's family, they made Burnham the equivalent of Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch and Scrappy-Doo from Scooby-Doo.
A previously unheard of relative that comes into the picture and made to be a significant part of the other character's background, but feels tacked-on and a gimmick.
I think everything they tried to do with putting her into Spock's background would have been better achieved by making it her own story with no connections to anything else.
I agree she should not have been a relative of Spock's if only so that the character stops getting maligned as a relative of Spock's and people look at the actual character development.
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