Kirk Your Enthusiasm (11)

What do you think?

1. “He’s pleased to meet famous T’Pau, impressed by her, but — like an American meeting a foreign head of state — maybe not impressed enough.”

   Perfect. Nice post, Flourish.

2. I did always wonder at the circumstances under which this actually somewhat sexist and colonial show could portray a formidable female head-of-state (or of-planet) and a foreign/alien culture worthy of respect (if not comprehension), and you nailed it with a pointy hatchet-spear — the Enterprise’s mission is to seek out new civilizations but the distance they cross to make contact is moderated by the distance they keep as allies. Picking up souvenirs of cultural-exchange recruits along the way. They took a trip to Vulcan and all they brought us was this stuffy Science Officer.

3. How strange you should say that Adam….my earliest memory of watching TOS dates from 1972, when I was five years-old. I convinced myself that there had to be an episode “where they find Spock” but it never got shown.

   Thanks for the fine bowl of Plomeek Soup, Flourish! Kirk does look genuinely scared and a little lost for a moment. I’d not registered how much until you focused on it.

4. Greg, we know from the end of Star Trek: First Contact that the Vulcans followed us home. Yes, Flourish is an inspired observer — I never looked deeper at Kirk’s quandary of personal loyalty to see his crisis of cultural comfort.

5. Kirk is always interfering in Spock’s love-life!

   As you point out, not for the first time is the Prime Directive shown to encapsulate the main conflict between states (or nation-states) (or planets) and the union (or the UN) (or the United Federation of Planets): non-interference works best when everything‘s fine. When everything isn’t, the choice is between interference, or a weakening and thus eventual break-up of the larger governing entity. Over and over, the Trek franchise argues for the Federation, interfering, banning, or withholding group resources from members, or potential members, who thwart its principles. That this conflict plays out here in the body of Kirk was perhaps a way of adding emotional purchase to what can seem abstract rules of governance.

   Or… at least just upping the emotional investment for the viewers, who could probably risk any of the crew if they had to, from redshirts on up to Spock – but not our Captain. The episode’s placement at the very beginning of season two might have prevented viewer attrition and helped make sure there was a season three.

6. You’re right Peggy, benevolent strongarming, like the guy who (notwithstanding my own JFK-centric post) really *was* president while the show was on (LBJ) — though ironically the Federation’s tough-love foreign policy allegorizes Lyndon getting Civil Rights passed in his recalcitrant Congress domestically, while his photon-torpedoes-blazing approach in Vietnam probably lowered his ratings among the average TOS viewer for all time…

7. I always felt real sorrow for Spock, never fully at home anywhere (outside of the Enterprise). It was an interesting conceit, having Spock, the half-human, being a prime example of an alien being. There were a few ham-handed “half-breed” swipes at Spock over the course of the series, but the internal dissonance within Spock made for more interesting drama than would have pedantic lectures on the evils of racism.

   In the set up of the “Amok Time” conflict, it might be expected that some latent Vulcan prejudice against Spock for his being less than purely Vulcan, would drive the plot. There was some discussion of his heritage (Spock had hoped to spared the blood-ordeal, and at one point T’Pau questions him on his bloodlines). But Spock is a revered figure on Vulcan, which spoke well of the enlightened state of that culture.

   Poor Spock! It’s not enough that he cannot escape the ancient Vulcan, biological imperative. He doesn’t even get the “mate or die” payoff! Why couldn’t the series have gone on it’s way with Spock back aboardships, and a little, quarter-Vulcan Spock left behind with T,Pring? Or, failing that, why couldn’t Spock die a noble, idealized death, instead of turning himself in and facing court-martial and murder charges?

   No, Spock, who will neither live long nor prosper, instead must bow to his basest, primordial urges and strangle “my captain and my friend” with his own hands. Loyalty and friendship are overwhelmed by the same Vulcan source that powered Spock’s logic and ordered his life. But there are greater forces at work, and these ancient Vulcan drives, the somber, dignified rituals, the trappings of Vulcan state, racial memory, biological evolution, all are brushed aside by another of Kirk’s clever subterfuges.

   Back on board the Enterprise, Spock’s revealing joyous reaction that he has been snookered is as much a moment of his being totally compromised and won over by Kirk’s flexible ethos, as it is Spock’s human side showing through. The show must go on, so Spock and Kirk must live, which we are only too glad to see. But doesn’t Spock pay a price? He has neither mated or died, nor has he renounced his Vulcan identity, nor his rejection of the human way of thinking. So what is he but a man without a people (apart from his crew)? The way I thought about this episode, if it had been a matter of Spock’s humanity sparing him when it came time to kill Kirk, Spock would have staid his own hand and Kirk would have “lived”. But the Vulcan triumphed over the human and Spock acted to kill Kirk. It was then, when Spock begins to regain his mind, that it’s Spock’s personal relationship with and loyalty to Kirk, that emerges and stronger still, than his predominate Vulcan nature. The price for Spock to fully embrace his human nature is too high. He renounces T’Pring, abandons this hard-fought opportunity to claim his birthright and instead returns home to the Enterprise to meet his fate. Vulcan over human, Kirk over all.

   I never felt the need to supplement my enjoyment of TOS by seeking out and investing in backstory or subsequent stories not actually appearing within the episodes themselves.

8. You’re right, Esoth, it never struck me that Spock is re-enacting the Vulcan odyssey from brute emotion to self-sacrificing coolness by winning the battle and then denying his “reward” — a smarter scriptwriter might have then had T’Pau congratulate him on this and tell him the joyous news that he has to stay on Vulcan. Or maybe she realized what was best for him and knew what scam was being played all along…

9. There’s a great moment, maybe it only lives in my memory, but it’s how I remember it. When Spock says “I see no logic in preferring Stonn over me” no one says anything. The camera just flits from character to character. All politely silent.

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