In music, repetition legitimizes; in Star Trek, Spock legitimizes.

(Full disclosure, Iā€™ve watched many Adam Neely videos but havenā€™t actually watched the one above.)

Spock has been deployed again and again when Star Trek has ā€œpushed the envelopeā€. When JJ Abrams wanted to launch a new Star Trek film franchise, he brought in Leonard Nimoy to have Spock pass the torch. When Alex Kurtzman wanted to launch a new serialized streaming Star Trek series, he wrote it about Spockā€™s sister (with Spockā€™s father appearing from the first episode), and brought in Spock himself in the second season.

And when they needed to make the big swing for the fences and literally do a Star Trek episode where everyone is singing as if in a musical, who is the very first character to sing? Yes, of course, itā€™s Spock.

The first Very Short Trek episode, ā€œSkin A Catā€, continues this trend. In this, Paramountā€™s first officially non-canon official production (and debatably their silliest slice of Star Trek yet), the only character voiced by their ā€œnormalā€ actor is ā€“ yes, you guessed it ā€“ Mr. Spock.

Whenever the in-universe era permits, Spock is consistently invoked whenever Star Trek breaks new ground.

We can even extend this analysis retroactively all the way back to the beginning: when Star Trek was ā€œrebootedā€ for the very first time ā€“ after ā€œThe Cageā€ was rejected, and the premise reworked into ā€œWhere No Man Has Gone Beforeā€ ā€“ only Mr. Spock and the Starship Enterprise herself were carried through into the new version, creating a lineage that indelibly legitimizes ā€œThe Cageā€ as Star Trek, even in spite of massive changes otherwise.

(And indeed, the Starships Enterprise play a similar legitimizing role across the franchise ā€“ if an Enterprise appears, itā€™s Star Trek.)

So, here is the question for us: why does Spock enjoy this particular ability to reify something into being Star Trek? Why is it he ā€“ not Kirk, not McCoy ā€“ that gets called on when the showrunners want to ā€œbulk upā€ on their Star Trek bona fides? Why is it that, if Spock does it, itā€™s Star Trek?

  • Piecemakers@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Clearly, Spock is the universal constant as Star Trek, in all of its various permutations and exquisite minutiae, is the cosmarium wherein the consciousness known as Spock explores mortality. Without Spock, there is no Star Trek.