Mickey T

Apropos of my prior share, this single Star Trek TOS scene established who (and what) Spock was. More than almost any other similar scene in the original series. Spock is the audience's gateway to an alien emotional landscape where logic and dispassion displace all other considerations. And it's accentuated because Spock has been trying to prove who he is all his life. His mother's story about young Spock being persecuted by the true-blood Vulcans is a huge tell that Spock is forever working to show the world—as he is working to show himself—that he is totally Vulcan. Master of himself. Disciplined and proper. But there's a heavy toll for that kind of constant vigilance. Spock can't let himself slip up. Not even when his father's life is in the balance. It would cost him not only his father's respect—which he clearly values greatly—but his self-respect as well. And his mother makes it plain that in so doing he will cost himself her respect. In order to be 100% Vulcan he risks the one human relationship which has buoyed him across his years. More even than his relationship with Kirk. This kind of writing is what prevented Star Trek from going to way of a lot of 1960s television that didn't age into successive decades. There were TOS moments when the predicament of *being* was shown with such aching and profound poignancy, it made us overlook the snoozers and the duds in the TOS lineup. And again, scenes like this fully and truly established who Spock was. He became a powerful, three-dimensional presence in the broader story. Not just some stranger with eyebrows and pointed ears. Spock became a compelling person because we all know what it's like to be caught on the horns of weighty dilemmas. When there are no good choices. Just necessary ones. Also, that hand on the door. At the end of the scene. There's so much being told with that hand which isn't being told in words. Masterful acting.