tell me all your thoughts on Spock.
Jun. 1st, 2009 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laurajvThere are a couple things I've seen floating around lots of places that I would like to talk about.
One thing is "AOS Spock is way more emotional than TOS Spock". I disagree -- somewhat. Here's a few things about that:
Firstly, TOS Spock is nearly a decade older than AOS Spock. We know very little about what TOS Spock was like in the 2250s, but he emotes like freakin' hell the one time we see him (The first pilot, The Cage, which became the TOS two-parter The Menagerie). Part of that is because the character wasn't fully developed when the first pilot was filmed, but the bits that were incorporated into TOS canon included that emoting. That Spock might've calmed the heck down in that span of time is hardly a reach; that the Spock we see in The Menagerie might engage in fisticuffs out of anger, or tell the Vulcans to go fuck themselves, is likewise hardly a reach.
Secondly, the way Nimoy plays Spock and the way Quinto plays Spock are both quite emotional, but the emotions in play are not the same. You can see echoes if you look in the right places in the two canons, but in general, Nimoy played Spock in a more understated fashion (which I think has to do with the first point above) and with a lot more humor. Prime canon Spock is very much given to wordplay and teasing and the occasional outright practical joke (he gave the Tribbles to the Klingons, seriously, in collusion with Scott and McCoy, which is the most screamingly funny thing in the entire run of TOS Go to around 47:45 to see what I mean!). Quinto's Spock is a lot more angry in what we see of him, but we're seeing him at points in his life that we never see Nimoy's Spock. (Really, the only times we see flashes of Quinto's Spock's humorous side all relate to Uhura. She is good for him. He needs that.) If we go looking for Nimoy's Spock being angry or simmering with rage in TOS canon, the similarities in portrayal are a lot more obvious -- there aren't that many of them, but they are there. Some of them occur quite late in Spock's life -- we can go to TNG canon and look at Unification (look about 1:45-1:55 of this clip: "I'm afraid I don't know too much about Romulan disruptor settings") -- it's not something that ever changes about him, when he's got something to be angry about (such as gosh-dang Romulan plots. I think he's doomed in all timelines to be involved with gosh-dang Romulan plots).
I enjoy both portrayals, and I do not think they're very different portrayals of the character. I think Quinto is playing a younger Spock, and portraying a lot of the high-stress moments in that Spock's life. Nimoy is playing an older Spock, over a much wider range of moments, but for me it's easy to see the places where they align.
Another thing: Spock's relationship with Sarek. Overall, I think AOS canon portrays a more functional, gentler relationship between father and son, but it's not entirely clear to me how many differences there are. For example, from what we saw on screen, I think it's possible that like TOS canon Spock & Sarek, they were not on speaking terms once Spock went to Starfleet. That, at a maximum, that silence only lasted 11 years instead of 18 is a big change -- engendered by genocide and Amanda's death, which if THAT is not incentive to try to heal a relationship, what the hell is?
I could also see AOS Spock and Sarek never having that serious breach, but we just don't know whether they did (unless we do and I somehow fell asleep for the part of the movie which addressed it?)
And the last thing: Spock's childhood. I've seen lots of people talk about how it was so much rougher than his childhood in TOS canon, and this again is something we just don't know. TOS canon is perfectly clear that Spock's schoolgoing days on Vulcan were miserable, for Spock (and for Amanda). Over atniqaeli's I said: "I mean, if you take TAS as part of Prime canon, his childhood was rough enough to start with that he almost died trying to prove how damn Vulcan he was."
I'm just not seeing the big difference there, aside from the insults of the Vulcan children being nastier in AOS (which I'm not wholly willing to attribute to in-universe timeline differences: TAS could certainly not've gotten away with calling Amanda a whore, while AOS -- a different time, a different medium -- could).
To sum up: the major difference I see between the Spocks is that Nimoy's Spock has calmed down with age. We don't know how different the relationship between Spock and Sarek is, and we don't know how different Spock's childhood was in general.
One thing is "AOS Spock is way more emotional than TOS Spock". I disagree -- somewhat. Here's a few things about that:
Firstly, TOS Spock is nearly a decade older than AOS Spock. We know very little about what TOS Spock was like in the 2250s, but he emotes like freakin' hell the one time we see him (The first pilot, The Cage, which became the TOS two-parter The Menagerie). Part of that is because the character wasn't fully developed when the first pilot was filmed, but the bits that were incorporated into TOS canon included that emoting. That Spock might've calmed the heck down in that span of time is hardly a reach; that the Spock we see in The Menagerie might engage in fisticuffs out of anger, or tell the Vulcans to go fuck themselves, is likewise hardly a reach.
Secondly, the way Nimoy plays Spock and the way Quinto plays Spock are both quite emotional, but the emotions in play are not the same. You can see echoes if you look in the right places in the two canons, but in general, Nimoy played Spock in a more understated fashion (which I think has to do with the first point above) and with a lot more humor. Prime canon Spock is very much given to wordplay and teasing and the occasional outright practical joke (he gave the Tribbles to the Klingons, seriously, in collusion with Scott and McCoy, which is the most screamingly funny thing in the entire run of TOS Go to around 47:45 to see what I mean!). Quinto's Spock is a lot more angry in what we see of him, but we're seeing him at points in his life that we never see Nimoy's Spock. (Really, the only times we see flashes of Quinto's Spock's humorous side all relate to Uhura. She is good for him. He needs that.) If we go looking for Nimoy's Spock being angry or simmering with rage in TOS canon, the similarities in portrayal are a lot more obvious -- there aren't that many of them, but they are there. Some of them occur quite late in Spock's life -- we can go to TNG canon and look at Unification (look about 1:45-1:55 of this clip: "I'm afraid I don't know too much about Romulan disruptor settings") -- it's not something that ever changes about him, when he's got something to be angry about (such as gosh-dang Romulan plots. I think he's doomed in all timelines to be involved with gosh-dang Romulan plots).
I enjoy both portrayals, and I do not think they're very different portrayals of the character. I think Quinto is playing a younger Spock, and portraying a lot of the high-stress moments in that Spock's life. Nimoy is playing an older Spock, over a much wider range of moments, but for me it's easy to see the places where they align.
Another thing: Spock's relationship with Sarek. Overall, I think AOS canon portrays a more functional, gentler relationship between father and son, but it's not entirely clear to me how many differences there are. For example, from what we saw on screen, I think it's possible that like TOS canon Spock & Sarek, they were not on speaking terms once Spock went to Starfleet. That, at a maximum, that silence only lasted 11 years instead of 18 is a big change -- engendered by genocide and Amanda's death, which if THAT is not incentive to try to heal a relationship, what the hell is?
I could also see AOS Spock and Sarek never having that serious breach, but we just don't know whether they did (unless we do and I somehow fell asleep for the part of the movie which addressed it?)
And the last thing: Spock's childhood. I've seen lots of people talk about how it was so much rougher than his childhood in TOS canon, and this again is something we just don't know. TOS canon is perfectly clear that Spock's schoolgoing days on Vulcan were miserable, for Spock (and for Amanda). Over at
niqaeli's I said: "I mean, if you take TAS as part of Prime canon, his childhood was rough enough to start with that he almost died trying to prove how damn Vulcan he was."I'm just not seeing the big difference there, aside from the insults of the Vulcan children being nastier in AOS (which I'm not wholly willing to attribute to in-universe timeline differences: TAS could certainly not've gotten away with calling Amanda a whore, while AOS -- a different time, a different medium -- could).
To sum up: the major difference I see between the Spocks is that Nimoy's Spock has calmed down with age. We don't know how different the relationship between Spock and Sarek is, and we don't know how different Spock's childhood was in general.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-07 11:42 pm (UTC)