"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Yes, Spock never once smiled or laughed in the original...
Yes, but then they nailed down the character to be a calm, logical creature and extended that to all Vulcans. His emotionless facade and the continuing character development with Vulcans made it clear, the smiling Spock in early TOS was simply not done being created yet.
Yes, Spock never once smiled or laughed in the original...
Yes, but then they nailed down the character to be a calm, logical creature and extended that to all Vulcans. His emotionless facade and the continuing character development with Vulcans made it clear, the smiling Spock in early TOS was simply not done being created yet.
In point of fact, Nimoy's own explanation for that moment in "The Menagerie" was that Spock, being half-human, was experimenting with letting his human emotions surface, much as he did in that elevator scene with Number One in the short. Something between then and TOS caused him to abandon that idea - given available data, I'd say it had to do with his breakdown in DSC Season 2.
> @jonsills said: > (Quote) > In point of fact, Nimoy's own explanation for that moment in "The Menagerie" was that Spock, being half-human, was experimenting with letting his human emotions surface, much as he did in that elevator scene with Number One in the short. Something between then and TOS caused him to abandon that idea - given available data, I'd say it had to do with his breakdown in DSC Season 2.
That scene is from the first pilot “The Cage,” as featured in “The Menagerie” parts 1 & 2. Spock also yells in that episode “(They took) the women!”
The scenes were before Spock was fully developed. In fact, Roddenberry’s first pitch just describes Spock as having an alien curiosity, being of a quiet nature, and “emotionally” akin to Captain O’Neil.
If Nemoy commented directly on that scene, it may have been an explanation in hindsight.
If you want to read Roddenberry’s first pitch—it is a “fascinating” piece. I will link it here:
Look, we either insist "the canon" is what appeared on screen, in which case we know Spock was given to smiling at things when he was younger, or we allow the actors' own ideas about their characters, in which case Spock was experimenting. Either way, his actions in that short were consistent with the portrayal of the character during that era.
The problem arises when someone's headcanon is drawn exclusively from those episodes that fit said headcanon, and then they insist that their version applies even when directly contradicted by the show. And I'm only harping on the one example from that dumb video because it's the bit that annoys me most about such discussions of "breaking canon".
Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, and that second picture? That was from "Amok Time", the first episode of Season Two. Are we suggesting now that Spock's character wasn't established by then?
> Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, and that second picture? That was from "Amok Time", the first episode of Season Two. Are we suggesting now that Spock's character wasn't established by then?
The Amok Time scene was awesome. He was overjoyed that Kirk lived and it broke his stoicism.
I like the interpretation you spun on Spock experimenting with emotion prior to the Discovery breakdown too.
I am just interested in how “canon” is established and changes. Also in the points that we sort of gloss over when we think about Star Trek in retrospect.
One thing that interests me is how the Prime Directive seems rarely applied in TOS, even though it is explicitly mentioned in "The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “Omega Glory.” Maybe you see it as more continuous. I know you have read more Star Trek novels than I have. You probably have a better grasp on many nuances.
Technically, the logic and iron suppression of emotion was originally part of Number One's character, not Spock's in The Menagerie. When the network insisted they "loose the ears and dump the broad" Roddenberry and Ball were able to convince them to keep Spock in but they were adamantly against Number One and would not budge, so Rodenberry combined the two characters to keep the personality elements in play.
Number one was Roddenberry's early experiment with what is now called "augments", and was his way of exploring humanist verses transhumanism issues long-term on the show (later on he brought the character idea back in the form of Lyra-a and the Tyranians in "Genesis II", though that series failed to get past the pilot movie stage). When "Space Seed" came along Roddenberry micromanaged the rewrites to hammer Khan and his bunch into more closely resembling the early "uncivilized" transhumans before they went the logic route.
A lot of the Vulcan history is transplanted from Number One's background story, substituting a cultural and philosophical revolution of a naturally violent people for the inadvertent increase in aggression and reduction of moral emotional influences and the eventual implementation of Kantian ethics as a workaround for the damaged moral/sociological sense of the augments.
That said, after the mandated changes before the network would greenlight the series, what Nemoy said about Spock's exploring his human side became the official story while the series was in runup so it was canon from the beginning of the series itself. It would have been nice though if DSC had kept the original concept for Number One intact, in fact she could have been the one to convince him to let go of the resentments and angst and go with his Vulcan training instead of trying to wing it on emotions if they did that. The fact that a Terran transhuman ("Terran" in the real sense, not the mirror universe stuff) helped him find his balance would have made for a nice symmetry.
It would have been nice though if DSC had kept the original concept for Number One intact, in fact she could have been the one to convince him to let go of the resentments and angst and go with his Vulcan training instead of trying to wing it on emotions if they did that. The fact that a Terran transhuman ("Terran" in the real sense, not the mirror universe stuff) helped him find his balance would have made for a nice symmetry.
Well... look at it this way. If there is a Pike series... its possible they can still explore that angle with her and Spock.
It would have been nice though if DSC had kept the original concept for Number One intact, in fact she could have been the one to convince him to let go of the resentments and angst and go with his Vulcan training instead of trying to wing it on emotions if they did that. The fact that a Terran transhuman ("Terran" in the real sense, not the mirror universe stuff) helped him find his balance would have made for a nice symmetry.
Well... look at it this way. If there is a Pike series... its possible they can still explore that angle with her and Spock.
True, if they ever do a Pike series, which they seem reluctant to do. Also, doing the original Number One concept after a totally different performance in DSC would probably get the DSC fans in an uproar even if CBS is willing to do an augment regular cast character.
It would be nice though, and Romijn is definitely good enough an actress to pull it off.
Another odd thing DSC apparently got wrong about the character is that while CBS said they canonized her name from several books, the books specified Una is her first name (where she's Una Lefler), yet on the PADD in DSC the wording makes it her last name instead.
I am just interested in how “canon” is established and changes. Also in the points that we sort of gloss over when we think about Star Trek in retrospect.
Well, the reality is that whatever the IP holder(CBS) says goes. If they say certain books are canon, then they are.
One thing that interests me is how the Prime Directive seems rarely applied in TOS, even though it is explicitly mentioned in "The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “Omega Glory.” Maybe you see it as more continuous. I know you have read more Star Trek novels than I have. You probably have a better grasp on many nuances.
Short version: it's poorly explained but apparently really complicated.
CBS could say canon doesn't matter and call it canon and I still wouldn't believe them.
BTW nice video from Anti-Trekker.
"Great men are not peacemakers, Great men are conquerors!" - Captain Archer" "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway #Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
One thing that interests me is how the Prime Directive seems rarely applied in TOS, even though it is explicitly mentioned in "The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “Omega Glory.” Maybe you see it as more continuous. I know you have read more Star Trek novels than I have. You probably have a better grasp on many nuances.
Can't really rely on the novels - I wish John M. Ford's Klingon novels were canon, and they do get a small nod in the game (the klin zha reference while you talk with K'valk in the Targ's brig), but then again there's also Marshak and Culbreath who really, really wanted to write slashfic but also wanted to get published for money...
General Order One, the Prime Directive, was originally specified to forbid interference in the normal development of a viable pre-spaceflight society. That left a lot of wiggle room for a captain - what's "normal"? what's "viable"? - while still leaving space to punish people like Prof. Gill at Ekos("Patterns of Force"). It wasn't meant to be applied with extreme rigidity - that, after all, was what led Capt. Merik to put the crew of the SS Beagle into the gladiatorial games of the unnamed planet in "Bread and Circuses", while himself rising to the position of First Citizen of the Empire. And of course once a species has gotten off-planet in the Star Trek universe, they can expect to start running into all sorts of aliens, so the whole question becomes moot.
In TNG and later, the Prime Directive was reinterpreted so severely that it essentially made it nearly illegal for a ship's captain to do almost anything he hadn't been personally directed to do by Starfleet Command, up to and including using the PD as an excuse to not "interfere" in the Klingon Civil War even though one side was supposed to be an ally, and they had clear evidence the other side was being supported by a third party that was inimical to Federation interests. (I won't go into how it was treated in VOY, because the writers there just pulled the series every which way to the point that Kate Mulgrew herself said, possibly jokingly, that Janeway started suffering Dissociative Identity Disorder after the shock of being pulled to Delta Quadrant.)
I personally prefer the original version of the PD, but of course I'm not a writer for any of the Trek series, so...
Another odd thing DSC apparently got wrong about the character is that while CBS said they canonized her name from several books, the books specified Una is her first name (where she's Una Lefler), yet on the PADD in DSC the wording makes it her last name instead.
Well... it could be that either they showed it as last name, first name, or they hadn't quite nailed down how they want to do it yet.
So if her name was Una Lefler, it could have been displayed as Lefler, Una.
Although I never caught that when I went through s2.
I DID catch Pike calling her Una at least once though.
Also... Lefler... would be funny if she was related to Robin Lefler from TNG. lol
Another odd thing DSC apparently got wrong about the character is that while CBS said they canonized her name from several books, the books specified Una is her first name (where she's Una Lefler), yet on the PADD in DSC the wording makes it her last name instead.
Well... it could be that either they showed it as last name, first name, or they hadn't quite nailed down how they want to do it yet.
So if her name was Una Lefler, it could have been displayed as Lefler, Una.
Although I never caught that when I went through s2.
I DID catch Pike calling her Una at least once though.
Also... Lefler... would be funny if she was related to Robin Lefler from TNG. lol
The problem is that the PADD said "Lieutenant Commander Una", a form that usually refers to surname, for example official papers would be unlikely to refer to captain James T. Kirk as "Capt. James".
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
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— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Yes, but then they nailed down the character to be a calm, logical creature and extended that to all Vulcans. His emotionless facade and the continuing character development with Vulcans made it clear, the smiling Spock in early TOS was simply not done being created yet.
But we loaded it.
> (Quote)
> In point of fact, Nimoy's own explanation for that moment in "The Menagerie" was that Spock, being half-human, was experimenting with letting his human emotions surface, much as he did in that elevator scene with Number One in the short. Something between then and TOS caused him to abandon that idea - given available data, I'd say it had to do with his breakdown in DSC Season 2.
That scene is from the first pilot “The Cage,” as featured in “The Menagerie” parts 1 & 2. Spock also yells in that episode “(They took) the women!”
The scenes were before Spock was fully developed. In fact, Roddenberry’s first pitch just describes Spock as having an alien curiosity, being of a quiet nature, and “emotionally” akin to Captain O’Neil.
If Nemoy commented directly on that scene, it may have been an explanation in hindsight.
If you want to read Roddenberry’s first pitch—it is a “fascinating” piece. I will link it here:
http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_Pitch.pdf
The problem arises when someone's headcanon is drawn exclusively from those episodes that fit said headcanon, and then they insist that their version applies even when directly contradicted by the show. And I'm only harping on the one example from that dumb video because it's the bit that annoys me most about such discussions of "breaking canon".
Jon's Post, supplemental: Oh, and that second picture? That was from "Amok Time", the first episode of Season Two. Are we suggesting now that Spock's character wasn't established by then?
The Amok Time scene was awesome. He was overjoyed that Kirk lived and it broke his stoicism.
I like the interpretation you spun on Spock experimenting with emotion prior to the Discovery breakdown too.
I am just interested in how “canon” is established and changes. Also in the points that we sort of gloss over when we think about Star Trek in retrospect.
One thing that interests me is how the Prime Directive seems rarely applied in TOS, even though it is explicitly mentioned in "The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “Omega Glory.” Maybe you see it as more continuous. I know you have read more Star Trek novels than I have. You probably have a better grasp on many nuances.
Number one was Roddenberry's early experiment with what is now called "augments", and was his way of exploring humanist verses transhumanism issues long-term on the show (later on he brought the character idea back in the form of Lyra-a and the Tyranians in "Genesis II", though that series failed to get past the pilot movie stage). When "Space Seed" came along Roddenberry micromanaged the rewrites to hammer Khan and his bunch into more closely resembling the early "uncivilized" transhumans before they went the logic route.
A lot of the Vulcan history is transplanted from Number One's background story, substituting a cultural and philosophical revolution of a naturally violent people for the inadvertent increase in aggression and reduction of moral emotional influences and the eventual implementation of Kantian ethics as a workaround for the damaged moral/sociological sense of the augments.
That said, after the mandated changes before the network would greenlight the series, what Nemoy said about Spock's exploring his human side became the official story while the series was in runup so it was canon from the beginning of the series itself. It would have been nice though if DSC had kept the original concept for Number One intact, in fact she could have been the one to convince him to let go of the resentments and angst and go with his Vulcan training instead of trying to wing it on emotions if they did that. The fact that a Terran transhuman ("Terran" in the real sense, not the mirror universe stuff) helped him find his balance would have made for a nice symmetry.
Well... look at it this way. If there is a Pike series... its possible they can still explore that angle with her and Spock.
True, if they ever do a Pike series, which they seem reluctant to do. Also, doing the original Number One concept after a totally different performance in DSC would probably get the DSC fans in an uproar even if CBS is willing to do an augment regular cast character.
It would be nice though, and Romijn is definitely good enough an actress to pull it off.
Another odd thing DSC apparently got wrong about the character is that while CBS said they canonized her name from several books, the books specified Una is her first name (where she's Una Lefler), yet on the PADD in DSC the wording makes it her last name instead.
IIRC Janeway alluded to it being an entire book.
My character Tsin'xing
BTW nice video from Anti-Trekker.
"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway
#Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
General Order One, the Prime Directive, was originally specified to forbid interference in the normal development of a viable pre-spaceflight society. That left a lot of wiggle room for a captain - what's "normal"? what's "viable"? - while still leaving space to punish people like Prof. Gill at Ekos("Patterns of Force"). It wasn't meant to be applied with extreme rigidity - that, after all, was what led Capt. Merik to put the crew of the SS Beagle into the gladiatorial games of the unnamed planet in "Bread and Circuses", while himself rising to the position of First Citizen of the Empire. And of course once a species has gotten off-planet in the Star Trek universe, they can expect to start running into all sorts of aliens, so the whole question becomes moot.
In TNG and later, the Prime Directive was reinterpreted so severely that it essentially made it nearly illegal for a ship's captain to do almost anything he hadn't been personally directed to do by Starfleet Command, up to and including using the PD as an excuse to not "interfere" in the Klingon Civil War even though one side was supposed to be an ally, and they had clear evidence the other side was being supported by a third party that was inimical to Federation interests. (I won't go into how it was treated in VOY, because the writers there just pulled the series every which way to the point that Kate Mulgrew herself said, possibly jokingly, that Janeway started suffering Dissociative Identity Disorder after the shock of being pulled to Delta Quadrant.)
I personally prefer the original version of the PD, but of course I'm not a writer for any of the Trek series, so...
Well... it could be that either they showed it as last name, first name, or they hadn't quite nailed down how they want to do it yet.
So if her name was Una Lefler, it could have been displayed as Lefler, Una.
Although I never caught that when I went through s2.
I DID catch Pike calling her Una at least once though.
Also... Lefler... would be funny if she was related to Robin Lefler from TNG. lol
The problem is that the PADD said "Lieutenant Commander Una", a form that usually refers to surname, for example official papers would be unlikely to refer to captain James T. Kirk as "Capt. James".
With canister shot, that's cannon not canon.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius