#Sybok Spock and Michael all look at each other and think 'these two are the most pitiable bastards in the universe....'

[bumblingbabooshka]

Enough perfect mom Amanda Grayson. It’s time for middling mom Amanda Grayson who loved all her kids but was never close enough to any of them and is somewhat idealized in their heads because of it. Amanda Grayson who seems great in comparison to Sarek but is actually, when you look objectively at it, strangely absent: A mother who is always facing away from you, who you have to call but who always has a smile ready for when you do. Amanda Grayson who contrasts Sarek’s overbearing rules and expectations with an almost hands-off approach that felt like a refreshing reprieve at the time but as her children grow they realize was also hurtful in different respects. Amanda Grayson who loves her children almost as much as she loves her husband. A mother who listens when you complain about dad, who agrees and nods and pets your hair and says “I’m sorry, honey” but nothing ever comes of it and at a certain point you both know nothing’s ever going to come of it. Amanda Grayson who pretends she does not see it. Amanda Grayson who is too human for any of her children to let themselves love. And because she’s human maybe she resents them for it a little bit [do you think your mother knows you love her? Did you ever say it? Do you think she ever wanted you to? Do you remember when she held you and repeated it over and over again and told you she wouldn’t tell your dad if you said it just once and you answered her with silence?] And because she’s human she loves them anyway. She knows anyway. She can hear it even in the silence. /pos

[tomfooleryprime]

I love Sarek. But he’s really not that great.

Sarek and Amanda are my favorite couple, not just in Star Trek, but ever. I’ve written more than half a million words of fanfiction about them. I’ve watched episodes featuring them so many times I secretly worry Netflix will put me on blast.

But I am not a Sarek apologist.

I’m pretty sure what draws most people to this couple is the age-old romantic notion that opposites may attract but the power of love can overcome anything. Cue cheesy instrumental music and a torrid kiss in the rain at a train station. I imagine a lot of women see themselves in Amanda, a seemingly regular woman with a regular life. Then they see a successful guy like Sarek, a dude who’s physically fit, well-educated, powerful, and absurdly intelligent, and it’s only natural that a recipe for hotness is born.

Because I’ve devoted literally years to dreaming up various ways this couple might have shacked up and vomiting the results all over AO3, I’ve also been forced to examine the personalities of both characters in great detail, and the only consistent conclusion I come to is fanon (myself included) gets it wrong most of the time.

Their marriage can’t have always been smooth sailing. If you’re not willing to believe me, then believe Amanda. 

Oh sure, there are tons of one-shots where they have little spats, but they almost always end with both of them making heart eyes at each other and jumping into bed. I get that Star Trek originated in the 1960s, but that doesn’t mean Sarek and Amanda had one of those “golly gee” wholesome relationships that could put Ward and June Cleaver to shame. 

Whichever version of Sarek you personally subscribe to, be it Mark Lenard, Ben Cross, or James Frain, it’s entirely possible to find the actors attractive but still think the character of Sarek could use some improvement. It’s also possible to love a character and admire their good qualities while being disappointed in their shortcomings. Maybe it makes me a shitty fangirl. Maybe it makes me realistic.

Literally decades of fanfiction and fan art have polished over Sarek’s unprettier bits, often portraying him as a hopeless romantic, a tender lover, a devoted father, and a man fiercely dedicated to his wife. I’m not going to argue each of those is patently false—hell, as a fanfiction writer, I’ve bought into some of those tropes myself—but I think some are truer than others. Let’s examine the canon.  

When we first meet him in “Journey to Babel,” he’s callous and aloof. He’s Vulcan, I get it, more on that later. But seriously, the guy has a habit of summoning his wife and acts like he doesn’t even know his own damn son. No one should be standing up to enthusiastically applaud and hand the man a husband or father-of-the-year trophy. Even Amanda seems pretty resigned to the arrangement.

I already know what the pushback to this assertion will be. He’s Vulcan! You can’t judge a Vulcan by human standards! Well, his wife is human and one of his sons is half-human, so I would argue that it should at least be an option, but I wrote a whole other essay on Star Trek’s moral relativism problem. 

Long story short, Star Trek glosses over a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas by using the argument, “Who are we to judge a culture we’re not part of?” I can’t answer that, but I will say someone once gave me a great piece of advice that I think applies to this idea of moral relativism: no person’s belief is inherently worthy of respect, but every person is. Maybe to understand Sarek as a person, we should look first at Sarek as a Vulcan.

Obviously Sarek subscribes to Vulcan philosophy, and while Vulcan philosophy seems pure as hell with its pacifism and its belief in embracing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC), I’m going to assert the Vulcan adherence to that philosophy seems to be a little lunch counter in nature. Yes, they take two scoops of resting bitch face and they’ll pass on the extra helping of tolerance. Sarek hails from a culture that is ostensibly exclusionary, sexist, and xenophobic in its practices.

When we encounter Vulcans in Enterprise, they’re people who mock humans for being too volatile, go to war with their Andorian neighbors, and aggressively purge the Syrranites for wanting to get back to the true meaning of Surak. But you might say, but that was before the Federation! They got better when they put T’Pau in charge.

Really? When we meet them next in the chronological timeline in Discovery, they’re telling Sarek they’ll only admit one of his weird social science pet projects (or as Sarek calls them, his kids) to the Vulcan Expeditionary Group.

In the Discovery episode “Light and Shadows,” Amanda reveals that Spock had a learning disability as a young child, which clearly embarrassed Sarek. Sadder still? Amanda explains there didn’t seem to be any educators on Vulcan willing to help a half-Vulcan child with a human learning disability. 

In the alternate timeline, when Spock applies to the Vulcan Science Academy, the admissions folks give him a pat on the back for achieving so much, despite his great disadvantage of having a human mom. Replace the word “human” with any religious, racial, or ethnic group, and see how you still feel about that sentence. 

Yes, Vulcans have racists and nationalists just like the rest of us and it doesn’t seem like they’re a rare breed either. Sarek is clearly attempting to be a better Vulcan, so kudos to him. However, not being an overt racist is not synonymous with sainthood. 

It’s pretty obvious throughout canon that while Sarek loves his wife, he’s uncomfortable with humanity, and he’s doubly perplexed with the humanity she imparted in their son. She even directly accuses him of never truly respecting humanity, to which he replies:

Which, let’s be honest, sounds like the rough equivalent of the “I can’t be racist because I have a black friend” defense. So many things in canon point to Sarek being utterly baffled by humans, not cutely intrigued by them as so often seen in fanon. The only time Spock and Sarek seem chummy with each other is when they’re mocking Amanda’s human emotionalism in “Journey to Babel.” Whether or not he meant to (and he definitely meant to), Sarek raised a son who saw his human half as a thing to be overcome.

Discovery has also hammered a lot of nails into the affectionate father coffin. Up until the final episode in season 1, he never called Michael his daughter and instead referred to her as his ward. It’s nice that he finally got over that technical distinction, but it doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of him tucking her into bed and giving her a kiss on the forehead.

He seems to accept her humanity because, well, she is human, but his own son’s humanity isn’t ok? Not like it matters, because his plan was to mold Michael into a Vulcan-like human anyway, which is pretty weird when you think about it. At one point, Michael tells Sarek she knows he must have considered the effect a Vulcan education and lifestyle might have on a human child, but she wants to know what he wanted Spock to learn from the experience of having a human sibling. His reply?

Which is... nice? He doesn’t say the only reason he took Michael in was for her to be his son’s empathy tutor, but he does essentially admit he was worried Spock was becoming too much of a momma’s boy. So the theory that Sarek was just scooping up orphans all over the galaxy like some kind of Vulcan Angelina Jolie doesn’t seem accurate. It gives the distinct impression that even Sarek thought of his hodge-podge brood as an experiment, at least to a degree.

Now, some may argue that Sarek never told Spock that he had to follow Surak’s teachings, which is true-ish. But that’s like telling a kid, “You don’t have to believe in Jesus” and then sending them to a Christian school in the heart of the Bible belt. What decision did he imagine his son would choose when he decided to raise him on Vulcan and stand by when other kids beat him up for not being Vulcan enough?

Seriously, Spock was almost guaranteed to turn out one of two ways: either he would just try harder to out-Vulcan everyone, which he did, or he would give logic the middle finger, which, well, is the option Sybok chose to run with. 

Despite fanfiction and fanart imagining him as this really hands-on parent who changes diapers and decorates baked goods (yes, I wrote a story like this and I’m calling myself out), he admits he’s the kind of dad who works late in the evenings, not the kind that reads stories at bedtime. 

It’s also no secret that as a parent, Sarek holds grudges. In “Journey to Babel,” Amanda confesses that Sarek and Spock haven’t spoken as father and son for eighteen years. In “Brother,” Michael asks Sarek when the last time he spoke to Spock was and he concedes it’s been years. In “Light and Shadows,” he’s clearly [Vulcan] pissed that Amanda is harboring a fugitive, who also just so happens to be his own son.

Is Sarek just that logical that he believes in justice even at a high personal price, or is he embarrassed that his own estranged son has been accused of murder and appears to be in the clutches of a mental breakdown? As far as I can tell, it might just be a little bit of both. 

Then there’s the idea that Sarek is a caring and devoted husband. Is there actually any evidence for this in canon, other than he was married to Amanda and had a family with her? Lots of people are married and have kids and don’t have a relationship that would rival that annoying couple on This is Us. 

Their relationship doesn’t seem like an equal partnership based on compromise, but rather one where Sarek does what he damn well pleases and Amanda follows along as a dutiful wife. 

Amanda gave up a lot of things to be with him: her home, her culture, and potentially even her own son’s well-being. The woman went to extremes for love not even witnessed on the Bachelor, and why?

In some contexts, that sounds like the powerful kind of love and devotion that epic-poems would be based on. In other contexts, it sounds almost like a pathological self-martyrdom. Did Sarek ever fully appreciate her sacrifices? It’s hard to say, but if he did, I doubt he ever voiced his appreciation. 

In his later years, when Sarek is losing his mind due to an age-related degenerative disease and he mind melds with Captain Picard, he tearfully muses (as Picard), “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?”

He's strongly implying he never told Amanda he loved her out loud. I’m sure he did love her, but it hardly bodes well for the idea that he’s a flowers and handmade cards kind of guy. And as for the notion that behind closed doors, he and Amanda had a super intimate relationship that would make even characters in Harlequin romance novels swoon, please, point me to an episode that makes you think that. I will watch it every day for the rest of my life. 

In summary, between his first chronological appearance in Discovery to his death in The Next Generation, Sarek had a lot of improving to do as a person and we see evidence that he most certainly did. He came to accept Michael as his daughter. He started speaking to Spock again after wrecking his childhood and turning him over to Section 31. Even though it clearly exasperated the hell out of him, he occasionally gave into his wife’s emotional needs. 

But that’s still a pretty far cry away from galaxy’s best father, husband, or lover. I think that’s what draws me to this couple so much. Sarek and Amanda didn’t live happily ever after: they did the best they could and made it work, just like the rest of us non-fictional losers. 

What little we have of canon depicts them as a couple who likely got married before they really knew each other, probably should have spent their first few years of marriage in counseling, eventually figured one another out enough to raise three kids who could all probably benefit from some therapy, and loved each other no matter what, even if it wasn’t out loud.

[michaelburnhamfanclub]

Cause I’m trash for soulmark!AUs Michael believing that she doesn’t deserve a soulmate after the Shenzho then meeting your person of choice on board the Discovery

okay i recently read a soulmate-universe story where different pairs of people have different indicators for their soulmate so LETS GO WITH THAT cuz i rly like it

michael grows up in an interesting household for soulmates. she knows that sarek and amanda were colorblind before they met each other, and that the whole world burst into color the first time they locked eyes. spock gets hurt when he isn’t doing anything, and healers tell him that it’s because he can feel his soulmate’s pain. sybok has a mysterious tattoo in vulcan script that michael may have been able to read had sybok not burned most of it off before her adoption

all she knows is that she has no indication of having a soulmate. and she prefers it that way. it’s infinitely more practical than forever wanting to search the galaxy for some idea of a person

this practicality turns to something darker after her mutiny, tinged with a lot of survival’s guilt, and she’s fiercely glad that she doesn’t have a soulmate

but then she gets drafted to the discovery

she notices the first tattoo her very first day. in small, clinical handwriting, it appears on the inside of her left wrist, saying scary

competent appears shortly after beneath it. michael hates it. she doesn’t want to have a soulmate

kind appears after she gives tilly her book. she doesn’t think about it. she can’t think about it

the next word is lovely. she absolutely does not think about that

they rescue lorca from imprisonment, and on her right wrist, in a distinctly different bold blocky writing appears, interesting

then, human

michael isn’t an idiot. she can match her left wrist with her experiences with tilly and her right wrist with her experiences with ash. she knows that the only thing worse than having a soulmate is having two. amanda says she’s lucky. spock understands, his eyebrows rising in sharp sympathy across lightyears of space

ash and tilly aren’t idiots either. they know. they both do. but none of them say anything

on michael’s left wrist is the word devastating. on her right wrist is the word heartbreaking. she always wears long sleeves

years after the war, after everything, michael looks at the horrible and beautiful words crawling down her arms and thinks that maybe she’s worthy of love after all. she looks at tilly and ash and doesn’t feel complete and utter dread. she says, “i have something to tell you about.”

they look at her, gazes measured but wary, ready for her to break their hearts again, and again, and again

she takes a deep breath and says, “we call it t’hy’la.”

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 7 Easter Eggs & References

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This Star Trek: Discovery article contains spoilers for “Unification III.”

It’s Spock time! In “Unification III,” Star Trek: Discovery has continued a story that The Next Generation began in 1991. And, in doing so, the series has created an episode of Trek that is both nostalgic as hell and also forward-facing and new. Back before we even knew what Discovery would be like, we were told Michael Burnham was Spock’s adoptive sister. And now, Spock’s sister has come home! 

From TNG vibes to sweet nods to the reboot films, to a lot of references to Spock, here’s all the Easter eggs and shout-outs we caught in Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3, Episode 7, “Unification III.”

New Starfleet Logo on USS Discovery

During the opening moments of the episode, we see that a newer, more rounded Starfleet insignia adorns the shuttle bay of the Discovery. This feels commensurate with the upgrade we saw the ship get last week.

USS Yelchin 

One of the “black boxes” Burnham recovered is from an “old” Federation starship called the USS Yelchin. This feels like a huge tribute to actor Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the Star Trek reboot films. Tragically, Yelchin died just before the release of Star Trek Beyond. 

Two-Dimensional Thinking 

Tilly tells Burnham that mapping all the Burn data works fine in two-dimensions, but not in three-dimensional space. This could be a slight nod to Spock in The Wrath of Khan. In that film, Spock points out to Kirk that Khan’s strategies indicated “two-dimensional thinking.” 

Vulcan becomes “Ni’Var”

The new name for the planet Vulcan — Ni’Var — comes from OG Star Trek fan culture. In the 1968 fanzine called Spockanalia, fan writer Dorothy Jones came-up with the word “ni var,” which she claimed was a Vulcan word that referred to “two forms.” This is not the first time this word has made it into canon though; in the 2002 Enterprise episode “Shadows of P’Jem,” the NX-01 encountered a Vulcan ship named Ni’Var.

Saru and Burnham have no idea that Romulans have pointed ears

When Saru learns the Romulans are sharing the planet formerly known as Vulcan, he says: “The Romulans were considered enemies in our time.” Vance points out that “history forgot this in your time, but Romulans and Vulcans were two tribes of the same race…” All of this is true, but the funny thing is that because DISCO’s point of origin happens in 2258, that’s a full eight years before the events of “Balance of Terror,” in 2266, in which Kirk, Spock and pretty much everybody in Starfleet, learned that Romulans looked a lot like Vulcans.

Spock and “Unification III”

The title of this episode is a reference to the two-part episode in The Next Generation, “Unification Part 1” and “Unification Part 2.” However, in the TNG days, some of the multi-part episodes were styled this way; meaning the onscreen text read “Unification II” not “Unification Part 2.” This was also true of episodes like “Redemption II.” It was not the case with “The Best of Both Worlds,” “Time’s Arrow,” or “Descent.” It’s also not the case with the title of Discovery’s first episode of Season 3, “That Hope Is You, Part 1,” which very clearly spells-out the “Part 1.” That said, Discovery is the first Trek series to not actually show the episode titles during the opening credits, a tradition that continued with Picard. (Although Lower Decks used the TNG style and has the titles spelled-out in the credits.) That said, “Unification III” is the very first time an episode title in one Trek series directly posits itself as a sequel to an episode title from a totally separate show. 

Spock’s “death”

Vance mentions that the reunification of the Vulcans and Romulans “took centuries after [Spock’s] death.” To be clear, this is a presumed death. Starfleet’s records would show that Spock fell into a black hole in 2387, right around the time of the Romulan Supernova. They have no idea he actually went back in time to 2258, and also slid sideways into the J.J. Abrams universe in Star Trek 2009. Then, he eventually died in an alternate version of the year 2263 (Star Trek Beyond), which, in the parallel Prime Universe is like two years before Kirk and Spock even meet. 

So, Spock “died” in 2387, according to Starfleet records, but really went back in time to an alternate 2258, which in the Prime Universe, is the same year from which Michael Burnham went into the future. If you count Spock’s “presumed” death established here in Discovery, and his temporary death in The Wrath of Khan, and his “actual” offscreen death in Beyond, Spock has died three times. Starfleet’s recorded death of Spock being false when time travel was really involved also echoes Starfleet’s incorrect records of Spock’s bestie James T. Kirk, who everyone thought died in 2293 on the Enterprise-B (Generations) but, really, time-traveled via the Nexus and died with Picard in 2371. (It’s like space-poetry. It rhymes.)

Finally, it should be noted that all of Sarek’s children end-up as time travelers, except for Sybok, who, in The Final Frontier, touched the face of an evil space god, and got esploded. 

Multiple Spocks! 

The flashbacks we see of Michael talking to Spock (Ethan Peck), as well as kid Spock (Liam Hughes), come from the Discovery Season 2 finale, “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2.” Combined with the archive footage of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) from TNG, this is the only episode of Star Trek, ever, in which Spock appears three times, played by three different actors and in none of the scenes is the character “alive” in the present. This is also the only time Ethan Peck and Leonard Nimoy appear as young and old Spock in the same Star Trek thing. That said, there are oddly several precedents for Trek episodes or films in which multiple Spock actors appear in the same story. 

In the TAS episode “Yesteryear” Spock (Leonard Nimoy) meets himself as a young child (Billy Simpson.)

In The Search For Spock, Leonard Nimoy appears in the same movie with four other Spock actors, Carl Steven, Vadia Potenza, Stephen Manley, and Joe W. Davis. All of these other Spocks played Spock in his various stages of hyper-aging on the Genesis planet. But, don’t get it twisted, like Billy Simpson and Liam Hughes, these Spocks are canon!

In The Final Frontier, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is in the same scene with an infant version of Spock. We don’t know who that baby was, but it’s a good bet that it wasn’t archive footage of Nimoy’s actual birth.

In Star Trek 2009, Leonard Nimoy obviously appears alongside Zachary Quinto, but you also have a third, child Spock played by Jacob Kogan. 

In Star Trek Into Darkness, obviously, both Quinto and Nimoy appear.

In Star Trek Beyond, two still photos of Nimoy exist in the same story as Zachary Quinto as Spock.

In the Star Trek: Discovery episodes “Light and Shadow,” and “If Memory Serves,” Liam Hughes plays child Spock in the same episode that Ethan Peck plays an adult Spock.

Anyway. That’s a lot of Spocks! Does any other Trek character come close to having this many people play them? Second place seems to be a tie between Jean-Luc Picard and Christopher Pike, who have each been played by four distinct actors. Oh, and don’t even get me started on Molly O’Brien. 

The Spock flashback!

By now, it’s obvious, but just in case you missed it, the scene in which Michael views archive footage of Spock comes from two different scenes in “Unification II.” One scene, where Spock alludes to “closed minds” happens fairly early in the episode. The rest of the speech, however, happens at the end of the episode. In both instances, Spock was talking to Jean-Luc Picard. 

I never finished the command training program

Tilly mentions that she never completed her command training. This was a major plot point in Discovery Season 2, specifically the episode “Point of Light,” when we saw Tilly win the Command Training Program half-marathon. 

Graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy

Burnham mentions she is a “graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy.” This is something her brother did not complete. We saw Burnham’s graduation day in the Discovery Season 1 episode, “Lethe.” 

“Since the time of Surak”

Burnham mentions Surak, the founder of Vulcan logic. The first canonical reference to Surak was in the TOS episode “The Savage Curtain,” in which Surak fought with Kirk and Spock, alongside Abraham Lincoln. 

Qowat Milat and “absolute candor”

We learn that Burnham’s biological mother, Gabrielle Burnham, has become a member of the Qowat Milat. This references the Romulan warrior nuns, introduced in the Picard episode “Absolute Candor.” Like Elnor, Gabrielle Burnham has a sword on her back. This episode was written by Kirsten Beyer, who, along with Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman, and Alex Kurtzman, co-created Star Trek: Picard.

The Temporal Accords

The Vulcan president, T’Rina (Tara Rosling) tells Saru: “Your jump to the future is not widely known, even within Starfleet.” Saru tells her that’s because they don’t want to be “polarizing, given the Temporal Accords.” This references Enterprise, in which Daniels told Archer that the Temporal Accords prevented time-travel from being used illegally. But, it also seems to indicate that Vance hasn’t told all of Starfleet where Discovery is actually from. 

Essof IV

Burnham’s mom mentions that she landed “right back on Essof IV.” This references the planet on which the Discovery crew tried to “capture” the Red Angel. Presumably, Dr. Burnham didn’t land “right” back on Essof IV. She also, clearly, journeyed into the future. How long has she been living on Ni’Var? We don’t know. Long enough to become a warrior nun! 

Needs of the many

Saru and T’Rina briefly debate about the maxim: “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.” This originates in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That said, in The Voyage Home, Spock’s mom, Amanda, pointed out that Spock’s friends believed that “the need of the one” — specifically Spock — was “more important to them” than the needs of the many. Amanda raised Michael Burnham, too! 

Vulcan gongs and fire reference “Amok Time,” and The Search For Spock

When Burnham invokes the T’Kal-in-ket, some very retro Vulcan-ceremony vibes. The gongs and fire are not only evocative of Spock’s “wedding” in the TOS episode “Amok Time,” but also the ceremony in The Search For Spock, in which Spock’s Katra was put back in his body.

Tilly and Burnham still share a room!

After much speculation, it seems very clear now that Tilly and Burnham still share a room. This is because Burnham makes a joke about Tilly asking her to “switch my bed to the other side of the room.” This means that they have been roommates since “Context Is For Kings” in Season 1 of Discovery. Is there just not that much room on the ship? Or do they just like it? 

“Live long and prosper”

Somebody doing the “Live long and prosper,” thing isn’t exactly an Easter egg, but it is the first time we’ve seen Saru give the famous Vulcan salute. Saru joins several other non-Vulcan Starfleet captains who have flashed the famous hand gesture, including Captain Picard and Captain Archer. Is Saru the first non-human and non-Vulcan to do it? It seems so.

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Star Trek: Discovery is streaming now on CBS All Access.

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[indecentwarwlf]

Star Trek Secret Santa #2

The first one felt a bit short so I figured I'd do another short-ish one. Happy Holidays @onetobeamup hope you like this! (Even tho it turned into more of the Triumvirate instead of just Kirk and Spock) "I still can't believe you didn't tell us you had a brother!" Kirk paced circles around his two closest friends, completely exhausted from their most recent escapade that Starfleet would most likely reject as hyperbole (again) but still too wired to rest properly. "We've known each other for decades, Spock!" His Vulcan first officer watched him with an air of impassiveness that could have fooled anyone except Kirk. And maybe Spock's own mother. "Sybok is not exactly someone I was overeager to share about." Brown eyes flickered up to lock steadily with his, a surprising emotion dancing in their depths. The tired Human slowed his movements and sat with a heavy thump between Spock and Bones. Frustration and sadness weren't things Kirk was used to Spock emoting in his own subtle way. "Well I guess I can understand that. Not wanting to share the more painful details of your past." Kirk brushed his shoulder against Spock's before leaning onto Bones, who snorted softly. "Sybok certainly is painfully embarrassing. Especially for our incredibly logical Vulcan and his incredibly logical father." Bones wiggled his eyebrows at Spock who was studiously not looking at the Human doctor. Kirk barely managed to contain the chuckle that threatened to leap from his mouth. "Hey Jimmy, what do you think is more painful for Spock? The fact that Sybok chose to pursue the blasphemous path of emotion? Or that his brother has seen all the dirty bits of our mind too?" This time Kirk wasn't fast enough to stop the laughter and it bubbled forth as he sat warm and safe with his favourite people in this galaxy. His joy spilt his face into a broad smile, warmth coursing through his body from the tip of his head to the tips of his toes, as Spock and Bones continued to bicker over his head. No matter how much he did or didn't know about his friends past, some things could always be counted on to stay the same. Spock's eyes found his again and he noticed the previous roiling emotions had faded. "It was never my intention to lie to you, Jim." Spock paused, glancing over to Bones before continuing. "Nor yourself, Leonard." Kirk squeezed the Vulcans forearm reassuringly, rubbing it gently before he spoke again. "I know...sometimes I get swept up in the old fear that you're going to...well... leave again." At Spock's alarmed posture, Kirk tacked on, "I know you won't! But you of all people should know how hard emotions are to control. And besides, it's not like you've kept anything else from us." Spock cleared his throat quietly, fidgeting as much as the Vulcan did before opening his mouth to respond. "I do in fact have a sister as well." This time it was Bones' turn to bounce up, rocking back and forth on his feet as he ranted at Spock. "You green-blooded son of a-- I can't believe you didn't tell us you had a sister! I mean I can believe it! But still..." Kirk sighed as Bones kept up a steady stream of expletives. "This one won't dig around in my mind will she?" "Certainly not. Michael has always had a much better understand of boundaries...and Humans in general for that matter." Kirk sat up a little straighter and Bones paused mid swear word as the both looked over at a very demure looking Spock. "Shit...that doesn't sound like your family." Bones muttered. "Even your ma, bless her perfect heart, is a meddler." Both Human continued to stare at the Vulcan who eventually shrugged. "She is adopted."

[anotheruserwithnoname]

New thoughts on The Orville and Star Trek Discovery

This post contains spoilers on both series up to “Cupid’s Dagger” for The Orville and “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” for Discovery. As I’ll probably get wordy, I’ll throw in a page break.

Before the break, though, the tl;dr is The Orville continues to be great (though this week’s episode is a bit controversial to some); meanwhile, approximately three episodes ago, Discovery finally became, for me anyway, proper Star Trek. And the renewal of both series is a cause for celebration.

I’ll start with Star Trek Discovery. Up to and including “Choose Your Pain”, the episode that reintroduced Harry Mudd, I was starting to lose hope in Discovery. It was too dark, too unlikeable, the characters were not gelling either as a team or as TV heroes, the Klingon subplot was - save for some unexpected in-show shipping of two Klingons - dull as an economics textbook. It was fading. And I speak as someone who gave both Voyager and Enterprise more than a year each to find their voice. The “icing on the cake” was having two characters unnecessarily utter the F-word for no other apparent reason than to justify the episode TV-MA rating. I was already saying to people that I gave it two more weeks and then I was probably done.

And then came “Lethe” and something great happened. It felt almost like having Stamets and Tilly drop F-bombs caused the show and its writers to snap to attention and snap out of whatever TV-MA/streaming cliches rut they’d fallen into. Maybe hearing two people in Starfleet uniforms make like Malcolm Tucker made them realize they’d taken things too far. Because all of a sudden we began a run of episodes that truly felt like Star Trek, the characters snapped into place as a team and as TV heroes, the plots were interesting, Michael dropped the woe is me routine (for the most part) and even the Klingon stuff became less boring. OK, the tech is still too advanced, the Klingons look awful, and there are a few other problems, some of which (like the fact it’s a prequel) cannot be fixed ... but the show felt like Trek, finally.

“Lethe” gave us some valuable insight into Sarek and Michael’s backstory. And while I still wonder how they’ll reconcile not having any past reference to Spock having an adopted sister (maybe Sybok will show up and whisk her away somewhere), and the new abilities related to the mind meld are coming close to deus ex machina territory, it still seemed to work. Having Canadian actress Mia Kirschner as Amanda - who resembles both a young Jane Wyatt as well as Abramsverse Amanda Winona Ryder - was a bonus and I hope we see her again.

Then came my favourite episode so far, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”. Hopefully this episode will silence those Discovery fans who keep harping about The Orville borrowing/stealing/revisiting storylines and concepts from Trek considering this episode was basically a remake of the classic TNG tale “Cause and Effect” with a touch of Battlestar Galactica 2004′s “33″ tossed in for good measure - and even hints of Doctor Who’s “Heaven Sent”. And it works. Stamets finally became a character I enjoyed watching, and Tyler also became more interesting. Some are complaining about him and Michael becoming an item but, again, this is Star Trek and while TOS never went there, all the other shows had on-board romances. The time loop was intelligently played and out and Rainn Wilson was terrific as Mudd though I hope his cold-blooded killings early in the episode were done with his assumption that time would reset and everyone would be fine - I’m OK with Wilson playing Mudd as a darker character (so far he’s been the best part about Discovery), but making Mudd a cold-blooded murderer crosses the line. It’s also a shame they couldn’t put Mudd in the title of this or the Choose Your Pain episode, as that’s always been a bit of a tradition in the franchise, but they obviously didn’t want to give the surprise of his appearance away.

“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” was not as much fun as the last two, but it gave us some valuable character development for Saru, making him less of an Odo clone. And the subplot where the female Klingon operative teams up with and then appears to betray Admiral Cornwell was interesting. I think there’s more there than we think. By the way, I’ve been a fan of Jayne Brook since she was in WIOU back in 1990 so I’m glad to see her on this show. I hope they don’t kill her character off.

So, yeah, Discovery suddenly got good three weeks ago (and to be fair, “Choose Your Pain” was a good episode too; they just didn’t need to have the juvenile swearing; I was reminded how in one of Torchwood’s first episodes they had Jack announce he was taking a pee mainly because that was something they couldn’t do in Doctor Who. It just served to cement some folk’s negative first impressions). If it keeps on going this way, it’s going to become appointment viewing for me.

The Orville, meanwhile, continues to go from strength to strength. After the surprisingly grim “Krill”, we had “Majority Rule”, which tweaked today’s knee-jerk “like-dislike” culture. (Don’t let that stop you from clicking that little heart at the bottom of this article, though! 😂) I’ve heard people compare it to Black Mirror. Having never seen Black Mirror, my comparison is actually more towards The Outer Limits. It raised some interesting questions and right after watching the episode a friend sent me a video of Katy Perry doing an “apology tour” type TV appearance for some indiscretion of hers, much like LaMarr has to do in the episode. I enjoyed seeing the crew in (sort of) modern day outfits, too.

Then we had “Into the Fold”, a great spotlight episode for Penny Johnson Jerald (formerly Kassidy Yates on DS9) with the surprising reveal that she’s a single mom raising her two boys on board the Orville. The fact we’ve already been introduced to the concept of families on board a starship both with Bortus and his husband - and in TNG before that - makes it less of an ass-pull than such a sudden introduction might usually appear. And it works really well as a character builder for Isaac as he becomes the boys’ surrogate father when Dr. Finn goes missing. I have some issues with Dr. Finn’s rather violent escape (I don’t think shooting the guy was justified) but the episode holds together well otherwise.

Last night’s episode, “Cupid’s Dagger,” was the first overtly comic episode of the series, and it rubbed a few people the wrong way. The same way comedic episodes of TNG and DS9 often did. (Two decades of brain bleach have yet to wipe away the memory of Quark’s head superimposed atop a woman’s lingerie-clad body. 😱) There are also those who questioned the wisdom of an episode about a Deltan-like race that causes anyone who comes in contact with them to become sexually infatuated airing during a time when so many people are accusing or being accused of sexual misconduct and assault. I won’t go into those arguments. I’ll just say the episode was a very strong character building episode once again which gave some closure to the scene in the pilot where Kelly cheats on Ed, while raising more questions. We also saw some resolution to the Finn and Yaphit relationship (uh ... yeah ... I’ll just leave that with a “no comment”), some great Alara moments, and an interesting resolution to the episode’s B-plot involving preventing a war. We also get to enjoy the first appearance by one of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy co-stars, as Mike Henry appears in a very funny running gag about an alien who wants to start piping elevator muzak into the Orville’s turbolifts.

Next week’s Orville is looking to be another dramatic one, and if the promo images that have been released are anything to go by, it might be an Alara-centric story, and more Halston Sage is never a bad thing.

---

So basically where I sit now is that The Orville is still amazing, a lot of fun, and still gives off classic Trek vibes with a little modern edginess, though “Cupid’s Dagger” probably pushes the show as far as I’d like it to go in terms of the comedy. Discovery, meanwhile, appears to have undergone some sort of slight internal reboot/reset after its initial set of episodes. Which is good because I want to be able to enjoy both shows, both for the remainder of their first seasons, and into next fall, too.

As a side note, it’s been announced that a book on the making of The Orville is going to be published in January 2018: The World of the Orville by Jeff Bond.

A North American DVD release for Season 1 of The Orville has also been indicated on Amazon, though no date has been announced yet. I’m assuming sometime early 2018, though with Season 1 ending in early December there’s always a chance they might try to sneak in a release for Christmas.

As for Discovery, a novel based on the show is already out in Canada and the US and IDW is gearing up to start publishing a spin-off comic or two. No word on a DVD/Blu-ray release. Being a streaming series doesn’t disqualify it from physical release (Netflix issues most of its shows on DVD eventually, with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black usually coming out within months of their release - though I wouldn’t be marking any calendar dates re: House of Cards at the moment) but I wouldn’t expect to see anything until at least fall 2018 assuming they release the complete Season 1 at once.

[theromanticrationalist]

My Thoughts as I watched Star Trek The Final Frontier

Sybok: *rides across the sands all dramatic, with windswept robes, wrapped in Mysteryᵀᴹ*

Me: Yep. That’s Sarek’s son alright.

James T. Kirk: Free Soloing before Free Soloing was Cool

- McCoy and Spock both “mothering” Kirk as he tries to do climb a big rock “because it’s there”. 

- McCoy almost having a heart attack. Kirk almost dying. Spock saving the day. Just the Usual. 

- McCoy, Spock, and Kirk literally camping, Spock loving McCoy’s special McCoy Bean “Recipe”, singing camp songs, trying to teach Spock camp songs, “marshmellons”, Spock rationalizing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, the three of them saying “goodnight” to each other one by one - HOW DID WILLIAM SHATNER KNOW WHAT I WANT

- McCoy: “I liked him better before he died!” 

- Kirk: “I have always known I would die alone.” Daaang. Way to kill the mood, Kirk. It was awful how Spock stiffens at that remark and is just like WHAT YOU SAY.

What I noticed right away in this film that it seems like for the Kelvin Universe films, J.J. Abrams borrowed the way the characterizations play out on screen in this film. It was like I could almost see Simon Pegg, Zachery Quinto, Karl Urban, and Chris Pine in these roles! The dorky humor, the bantering, it all felt very much like them! 

Spock: *Sees his brother Sybok holding hostages and making demands*

Expectation:

Spock: *Informs Kirk and the others of the necessary information about Sybok being his half brother, which would have prevented confusing moments like when Spock disobeys Kirk’s commands to shoot him.*

Reality:

Spock: *broods dramatically in the dark*

Kirk upon hearing of yet another family member of Spock’s: “I need to sit down.”

Oh, Kirk honey. Just you wait and hear about the Michael Burnham Sagaᵀᴹ. 

Uhura: *Dances exotically upon the moonlit sands*

Me: 

What the heck??? I mean who actually came up with this idea??? 

Everyone: Quick! We need a diversion! 

Uhura: THiS IS My TImE TO ShINE 

This just cracks me up. I love Uhura and all her weirdness. Also she’s a beautiful dancer. I need to know more about this!! WE NEEDED MORE EXOTIC DANCING UHURA 

McCoy and his Father. Just - 😭 😭 😭

I don’t buy the vision Sybok showed Spock of his birth. I think it was a very two dimensional portrayal of Sarek. Sarek actually loved Spock very much, he thought the world of his son. His relationship with his son is Complicated ᵀᴹ. This is because Vulcans are complicated, and so I don’t think Sarek would say in complete disdain at his son’s birth: “He is so human.” My idea of this scene is that it is simply Sybok reconstructing what HE thought happened, or perhaps how both Sybok and Spock felt like their father treated him. (Obviously Sarek wasn’t the best dad in the world. 😬) I mean how would Sybok know what actually happened? He probably was just a young boy at the time of Spock’s birth! He wouldn’t have been in the birthing chamber at all to hear or see his father’s reaction! Or if he had happened to witness it secretly, I think it could have been a misunderstanding of Sarek’s statement. Sarek could have meant it in amazement and incredulity that he and Amanda had created such a being as their son, half human and half Vulcan. He could have also meant it in a sense of worry and concern for what his son would deal with in growing up upon seeing so much of his human side in him. Sarek didn’t despise the human in Spock at all, even if all his actions and words appeared quite the contrary.

I don’t know. I just have a lot of feelings about this scene and about Sarek and his family in general. There is just so many layers and complex dynamics going on between all of them. I don’t think you can just sum them up in a simple scene like that.

This Movie: *Tries to pair up Scotty and Uhura for some inexplicable reason*

Me: Who ordered that?!

Just no.

Kirk: “I thought I was going to die.”

Spock: “Impossible. You were not alone.”

I think my biggest feeling after watching this film was disappointment. It was such a dull and anticlimactic ending, especially since I thought it had such a strong beginning and exciting premise! I really loved Sybok, I thought he was incredibly interesting and I thought his relationship with Spock was actually very sweet. I could imagine them growing up together, Sybok feeling compassion for Spock and his predicament of struggling between his two halves and his strained relationship with Sarek. I could see them really becoming “partners in crime” in their youth, and maybe getting into trouble and tormenting their father. It was such a wasted opportunity to not only explore a different kind of Vulcan, one who actually was born with empathy (to me that is truly what Vulcans lack - it isn’t emotions or passion, but empathy!), and what that meant for Sybok’s identity as a Vulcan and his identity within Sarek’s family. We should have gotten flashbacks of their home life and flashbacks of Sybok’s life in general to really build on his motivation in looking for True Knowledge/God and his being this cult leader. 

Secondly, the end journey should have been a lot more satisfying and compelling than what we actually got! I mean they build it up about crossing the Barrier and finding this planet at the center of the galaxy, and it just has some weird alien life force trapped on it??? For no reason??? And then Sybok is all like, welp their goes all my life’s purpose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , and he sacrifices himself?? And then everyone goes home and the random Klingons, who have no use to the plot other than to provide some contrived conflict, end up just being like “My bad.” and everything goes back to normal. Also, God is the human heart, I guess.

What a huge let down. 

Sybok and Spock touching hands, though. 🥰

This movie could have been so much more than it was. Yet by the end with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy going back to their campsite and them singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat with Spock accompanying on his harp, I just found myself wishing that the whole movie had just been everyone on their shore leave, with domestic camp scenes, Chekov and Sulu getting lost on their misadventures, Scotty grumbling and complaining about the disrepair the Enterprise was in, and Uhura just being 100% Done with all her boys. That would have been a WAY more interesting film! 

[tomfooleryprime]

Adding to canon is not the same thing as destroying canon

At San Diego Comic Con, we learned that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character, Michael Burnham, is Sarek’s adoptive daughter. The second I heard the news, all I could think was, “Let the hate begin.” And boy, did it ever.

I understand the disappointment, particularly with fan fic writers who invested a lot of time and effort into crafting stories that fit neatly into canon. Amazing how one sound bite can bulldoze right through decades of widely accepted fanon, huh?

Let’s be real, those little behind the scenes moments are almost the entire point of fan fiction: some of us like something so much, we like to imagine all the things the writers didn’t tell us, but now Michael Burnham has come along like a square peg in a round hole, rendering countless stories AU that previously adhered perfectly to canon. Some of mine included.

But fanon isn’t canon. One might say, “How come we’re just hearing about this now?” Surely Spock would have mentioned having an adoptive sister? But would he? Would he though?

No one had any idea he was engaged to T’Pring until the Enterprise showed up to Vulcan on Spock’s impromptu wedding day in the TOS episode, “Amok Time.” What was it he said when Lieutenant Uhura asked who the lovely woman on the viewscreen was?

If you watch closely enough and get creative with your interpretation, I swear Christine Chapel mouths the word, “bullshit.”

And no one knew that Spock had a strained relationship with his father until that time dear old Sarek hopped on Enterprise for the Coridan admission debate in the TOS episode, “Journey to Babel.” Kirk urged Spock to go down to the planet and visit his family before they left orbit, and what was Spock’s reply?

I can’t think of a better example of where Spock made Kirk look like a total asshole.

I can maybe understand that he never brought his father up in typical conversation, but one would think once they received a mission to pick up Ambassador Sarek from Vulcan that Spock might have mentioned, "Yeah, it's no big deal or anything, but he's my dad." But of course not. Of course it would be "logical" to wait until the last possible moment just to amp up the cringeworthiness. And then there’s the fact that Kirk had known Spock for decades before finding out he had a half-brother named Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

You would think Kirk would be used to Spock family bombshells by now.

So if anything, the idea that Spock had a secret adoptive sister actually feels more in keeping with canon than going against it. Given the weight of the evidence, I wouldn’t be all that shocked to discover he had three step mothers, a couple of wives, a brother-in-law who worked in engineering, and a whole herd of secret love children drifting around out there. I mean, it happened often enough that even Saturday Night Live parodied it.

Spock-O could have been real and you know it. So yeah, there are worse things that could happen to the fandom than Michael Burnham.

The other thing is, as viewers, we tend to get into the habit of thinking that if a character doesn’t specifically address something on screen in front of other characters, other characters are in the dark along with the viewers. Like if a character didn’t explicitly announce some detail about their personal life to the world, not only did it never happen, it never could have happened. And that’s just silly. Think about this: Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew spent five years together on that mission, and we only got to view a little less than 66 hours of it. So imagine all the conversations in the mess hall we as viewers missed out on. Did anyone flip out when it was revealed that Dr. McCoy had a daughter in The Animated Series? You would think he would have mentioned her in The Original Series, no? Maybe he did, but the viewers just weren't invited to that conversation.

Going back and adding to canon is not the same thing as destroying canon. Star Trek, particularly The Original Series, was always more focused on exploring the galaxy and meeting new civilizations – its primary purpose wasn’t to flesh out complicated life stories for each of the main characters. When you think about it, there’s so much we don’t know about Spock’s upbringing or Sarek and Amanda's origins. Almost everything we do know about this family comes from two episodes – “Journey to Babel” in The Original Series and “Yesteryear” in The Animated Series.

I think because we spent more than five decades without any concrete ideas of how Sarek and Amanda met, what Spock’s formative years were really like, or how their family dynamics worked, we just filled in the blanks for ourselves. But fifty years is a long time for the lines between canon and fanon to start getting blurred.

So I’m actually tickled pink at the thought that Spock had an adoptive sister, not furious that they’re "corrupting" more than fifty years of canon. It would be tampering with canon to claim that Spock never existed, that Chekov was a flower child, or that Starship Troopers is actually some kind of prequel to Kirk and the starship Enterprise, but writing in a sister for Spock where one previously didn’t exist isn’t quite the same thing.

Would you like to know more?

The writers of the show are just doing what we as fan fic writers do all the time – filling in the gaps. You’re definitely allowed to feel however you want to feel about it. And I do understand a lot of the dismay and shock. It really sucks to pour your heart and soul into something, polishing it for months or even years until it’s perfect, and then have Michael Burnham thrown into the mix and it almost feels like a bad Photoshop job over your favorite family portrait, ruining your origins fics for Sarek/Amanda or Spuhura or Spirk or Spones or Spotty? (Is that actually what the Spock/Scotty ship is called?). It’s perfectly acceptable to say that Michael Burnham’s existence has ruined your perception of canon, but I don’t think it should be confused with ruining actual canon.  

And worst case scenario… fanfic writers will just do what they’ve always done: include disclaimers explaining how they hate certain aspects of canon so they just plan to completely ignore it. That’s their prerogative, but I often find it disappointing. I see it with Sybok in Sarek/Amanda fics all the time. Many people prefer to just write him out, and while it is tempting to pretend like The Final Frontier never happened, I’ve always included him. I think it does reality a huge disservice to cut him out, and I think it will be just as bad to do the same thing to Michael.

People get hung up on the idea that Spock was so lonely and misunderstood, but what about the loneliness that Sybok must have felt, having his mother die and going to live with a human step-mother, a half brother, and a father he barely knew, if he ever even knew him at all before his mother’s passing? I loved Sybok’s addition because he helps represent the complex reality of blended families. Between Sarek, Amanda, Spock, and Sybok, I think that family was rife with loneliness and misunderstanding long before Michael Burnham was written in.  

I think Michael, if I understand her story correctly that she’s an orphan who was taken in by Sarek and Amanda, only serves to add to the rich tapestry of Spock’s unique family, and it certainly seems as if she'll fit right in with the other misfits in Sarek's brood. A human wife, a moody Vulcan son from a previous relationship, a half-human son from his current marriage, and now an adoptive human daughter. I feel like that’s a true picture of a modern family in all its messy and complicated and beautiful glory.

People like to romanticize the idea of a “traditional” family, but I like the “messier” version so much more. I think it actually fits in better with Spock’s character. I’m sure there are some who will ask, “But then how can you explain why he would say he felt so lonely growing up if he had not one but two siblings?” I also imagine many of those people were raised as an only child.

We don’t really know how much of an age gap exists between Spock and Sybok (or between Spock and Michael Burnham), but just imagine for a second that you’re Spock, and you have an older brother who’s constantly disappointing your father with his talk about emotions and a human adoptive sister who’s constantly struggling to fit in on Vulcan too. It might be easy to feel like an afterthought at times, especially because Sybok is fully Vulcan like Sarek and Michael is fully human like Amanda and you almost feel like something “other.���

Not that Spock feels of course. No, he would “never” do that. But I look forward to seeing how this all plays out and I sincerely hope people give her a chance (canonwise and fanonwise) before dismissing her altogether because she “ruins” Spock’s “traditional” nuclear family.

During the Comic Con panel, producer Alex Kurtzman insisted they have a good canon explanation for why Spock never mentions Michael. He was quoted as saying, “We’re aware [of the situation]. You’ll see where it’s going, but we are staying consistent with canon.” So I’m inclined to keep an open mind and see where they take it before dismissing it outright for being “too ludicrous.” Spock always held his cards close to his chest where his family was concerned, and weirder things have happened within the Trek universe. Give Michael Burnham a chance.