“Mister Spock, you’re a stubborn man.”
Sometimes I have a sneaking feeling creeping up over my bones that tells me either Vulcans have no idea what logic is, or that writers subbing lines for Vulcans have no idea what logic is. Spock is in command of shuttlecraft Galileo with a crew made up of high-ranking officers, scientists, and the requisite estrogen requirement personified by Yeoman Mears. They’re on a mission to study the dreaded Murasaki Quasar.
Starships have standing orders to investigate every Quasar (and Quasar-like phenomena) they come across, but Kirk is also being pressured by High Commissioner Ferris, the first in a long line of Federation suits who exist, it seems, to irritate Kirk, Spock, Picard, and Sisko, and anybody else worth a damn. If you ask me, Janeway got off easy getting trapped in the Delta Quadrant. Kirk is under a ridiculous deadline to get to a distant planet and deliver a medicine, which bears the question: if they have this deadline, why bother with the Quasar? They could come back after they’re finished saving lives, right?
Instead, we have an unnecessary detour. The shuttlecraft gets sucked right into the Quasar and is thrown off course to crash land on a nearby planet. A planet populated by large, primitive monsters with big-ass spears that start knocking off the crew one-by-one. Did Spock select his crew? We have McCoy and Scotty on board, for convenience to the story. McCoy is there to bust Spock’s chops (and he’s not alone), and Scotty is there to perform some engineering miracles.
At first glance, this is a tense adventure; Spock and Scotty must figure out a way to get the Galileo off this dangerous planet while Spock must contend with irrational monsters, human and alien alike. I had learned to accept McCoy’s antipathy (even if it is admittedly unprofessional in front of subordinates), but watching Latimer, Gaetano, Mears, and astrophysicist Boma all take shots at Spock’s supposedly cold exterior in the middle of alien attack is unrealistic. Only Scotty behaves like the consummate professional he is. He even defends Spock against Boma’s hostility.
Another idea advanced through the episode is that logic is the antithesis of irrationality. This is simply not true. Logic is a means to an end, and nothing more, and certainly nothing upon which to base a philosophy, but we’ll get into that later. I’ve seen logic used to justify violence, hatred, and intolerance. I’ve seen irrationality used to justify love, devotion, and pragmatism. It’s a big galaxy, filled with endless possibilities. The point of all of this is to put Spock into a “gotcha” moment, wherein he will have to abandon logic if it were to save the shuttlecraft and the surviving crewmembers.
This is a character assassination of the highest order. The twelfth episode in regular production, and the first big Spock episode we get paints the character as unfocused, frustrated, and clueless. The episode doesn’t place humans in the best light either. Once they achieve a minimal orbit, Spock decides to jettison the ship’s fuel (after Scotty spent all that time draining the phasers) in the hopes the Enterprise will see. Kirk wastes no time pinning Spock down for “revealing” an emotion. This elicits laughter from the bridge crew. Two people are dead, and these jerks are laughing.
Star Trek Rewind explores the Star Trek universe. From Archer to Janeway, Kirk to Picard, and Georgiou to Sisko — boldly read what no one has read before!
