These are the days of miracle and wonder aka Set phasers to party aka Why i loved the new Star Trek

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OR How I LEarned to Stop Worrying and Love the JJ Team's Rebootverse, including Star Trek Into Darkness

I originally posted this all to fiercynn's dreamwidth (which was a total bombardment, as I don't know even know her, except via some good Star Trek Into Darkness fic recs she just posted) in response to a post she wrote about how she actually really

Comments

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1) I don't think this Spock is as different as he seems.(**SEE footnote) Firstly, I think there's still a level that he doesn't share with Uhura *at all,* and second, he was still bullied terribly as a child (to the canon-extent that the 2009 film lifts whole bits of bullying dialogue directly from the Animated Series's "Yesteryear" for those scenes!), and finally, he still has a history of estrangement from his father -- a shorter one yes, rather than the longer one revealed in "Journey To Babel." Sure, this nu!estrangement seemingly only lasts as long as his Starfleet Academy training and into his first year or so as a professor at the Academy/serving under Pike (so what? like 4/5 years? My father was only estranged for two years from his father for some of the choices he made in his own identity -- and his mother, very Amanda-like, had to patch them up finally -- but that was long enough to definitely change some things between them, I think, for a good while and perhaps forever). So Spock does reunite with Sarek after the destruction of Vulcan and Amanda's death brings them together again, but that makes sense to me. In a world in which they've lost *everything*, they would come to peace sooner than in TOS. You just realize what matters after something as devastating as that -- but there are still things there that must be difficult for them, and further, Spock has a new wound in this universe -- from his mother's death and the death of his homeworld.

So first, I don't know how different this Spock fundamentally is. And 2) You may never agree with this, but I don't actually think this version of Jim's interaction with him is truly mocking or non-loving. I think that first, Spock is in a slightly better place to take said mockery, and Jim, as the instinctive being he is, recognizes or feels this on some instinctual level (as Spock actually has a human romantic relationship with an attractive, formidable woman and was already in a position to reprimand Jim at the Academy, etc.), and I think that this Jim is just more colloquial, a bit more outwardly redneck-acting (cause that was the Iowa identity he chose to take on in his rebellion, etc.), and that that comes with the territory. It's like my Jewish cousin who grew up in the Bible Belt and dealt with a lot of shit -- bizarrely, he took on that identity as part of his rebellion against it and is in love with alt-country and tobacco chew. I think Jim's remarks to Spock are much more on this level -- and that at some fundamental level he's still the same Jim, who instinctually accepts all types and stripe -- which is why he tells Spock he's going to miss him when he's demoted in STID and is pissed when Spock can't respond in kind -- and that his antagonism toward Spock is much more deep-seatedly related to how they met at the Kobayashi Maru hearing -- and I guess their changed dynamic just works for me in a different way.

Like, it isn't the Jim and Spock of that first blessed chess game, where you visually see on Spock's face, as you say, his falling for this gentle, lovely, teasing Jim. But I think *this* Spock falls for *this* Jim just the same, but that falling outwardly looks a bit different… In a world in which Jim's father has died horrifically, and he grew up with a terrible stepdad and a grieving, absent mother, he's not able to receive Spock in the same wonderful, loving, flirtatious way. That level of Jim is buried under quite a bit of hurt, but Jim still attaches himself to Spock, as you see in these films, just the same -- *and* this Spock is a bit more able to "take" the ribbing and antagonism too (though one suspects he reels on an inward level just as much).

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So I guess the TOS formula was: 1) a Jim damaged by Tarsus and quite private and in control in his leadership style ("I need my pain!") but fundamentally 75% functioning + 2) a Spock who was highly competent but guarded as hell and inwardly not doing so well = which equaled a relationship where Jim was able to give Spock the unconditional acceptance he needed VERSUS the Reboot formula with 1) a Jim who is fundamentally even more damaged and unsure and angry + 2) a Spock who is again highly competent and a little less unsure but still quite lost = equalling a relationship with more verbal and physical explosions, hiding, of course, the same love drama as always.

But I know I probably am never going to be able to persuade you and that it's instinctual -- you either feel it or you don't.

Like you, I just also lived with them in my head since I was 14, and I guess I still fundamentally recognize them. I wish you did! cause you're great, and this new universe is so fun to play in. (And there's another thing too, I guess, which is that I don't want to be left in the sandbox only with nu!fans because so much of the epicness and wonder for me is the whole stretch of the entirety of the canon, from 1966 to now, and what am I gonna do with people who don't get that?)

**I think it's fascinating that Leonard has talked several times about how his portrayal of Spock's social isolation was heavily influenced by his experience as a Jewish boy growing up in early 20th century Irish Catholic Boston. I think that Zachary Quinto's experience of being publicly closeted and of being gay in general has a lot to do with his portrayal of Spock. Not to mention that Spock is of course partly an original amalgam, by Gene R, of the female Number One and the more emotional pilot!Spock -- so there's an aspect of the oppressed feminine in him as well. Basically, Spock is THE Marginalized Other (whether racially as a bi-racial Vulcan Other -- i.e. why Obama likes him, apparently, as a biracial black man, or as a Jew, or as queer, or as a woman in the patriarchy, etc.). I think this interpretation has that but less racially and more identity-wise somehow.