#and i know what it's meant to show--spock matters. the one matters beyond death itself

[favvn]

I keep thinking about how, because of their positions of authority and the choices demanded by that authority, Kodos* and Kirk hold more similarities than differences.

Kirk, of course, has already had to live with the loss of friends and crew members due to his decisions as a captain, even before meeting with Kodos. The loss of life is a risk inherent to Starfleet. Jim Kirk knows this, yet his authority to make the decisions for the crew and the planets and life they come into contact with means he handles another person's life or death, be they a member of his crew or someone from outside the ship (a colonist or alien or even an entire planet. It's ultimately Kirk's decision that can enable the survival or loss of others' lives even beyond the scope of the Enterprise. This is why his moments of selfishness are so devastating, especially when looking to his past on Tarsus IV. ) This authority to decide who lives and who dies is not entirely different from Kodos choosing who would live and who would die on Tarsus IV, which is what makes Kodos' words so stinging. "You're a man of decision, captain. You ought to understand that." Regardless of the good that Kirk strives to do when he is at his best, he still has blood on his hands from the choices he has to make.

Even Spock's final words (before his resurrection), "The needs of the many outweigh... [the needs of] the one," spoken years after Kirk sought vengeance for the wrongs of his past, recall what Kodos tells Kirk, that some have to die so that others may live. Not even Kirk can outrun that reality, no matter how smart he is, how flexible his logic is, or how fast he thinks on his feet. (Or what records he creates by beating the unbeatable.)

*obligatory disclaimer: Kodos took power. He did not earn it or have it freely given in a time of peace. He used a time of hardship and distress to help himself.

[fireinmywoods]

the heart of the matter (is Leonard McCoy)

Followers...friends. I come to you today, hat in hand, to ask for your support in a certain fandom matter, a trifling concern of little real consequence which nevertheless has been driving me absolutely cross-eyed bonkers for some years now.

Simply put: can we please all agree that Bones is the heart of the Enterprise???

In AOS, I mean. I’m not aware of any debate over this when it comes to TOS, where the roles of the triumvirate have always been explicit, though there are a few different ways to identify them:

Spock = logos = superego = head

Bones = pathos = id = heart

Kirk = ethos = ego = soul

So clear! So clean! So universally accepted by Trek fandom at large!

Oh, but things get murkier in AOS, and there are plenty of posts floating around which suggest that it’s Kirk, not McCoy, who serves as the heart in the Kelvin timeline. Even the writers of the first two AOS films have outright stated that their interpretation of the triumvirate had the original roles switched, with Kirk as the highly emotional one and McCoy as the arbiter between Kirk’s passion and Spock’s logic. It’s true that this technically counts as a Word of God pronouncement by the actual creators of 2/3 of the series thus far, which some would argue renders it canon. However, it’s equally true that those same creators also felt that Kirk was a fuckboi and that Benedict Cumberbatch wonderfully embodied their vision for Khan Noonien Singh, so honestly, who gives a hot hollerin’ fuck what those dingdongs think. This seems as justified a time as any to invoke Death of the Author, and in fact, it’s my firm belief that despite the writers’ intentions, Star Trek and Into Darkness both support the original triumvirate breakdown.

Under the cut you’ll find a long-winded and self-indulgent ~*~character analysis~*~ of the Kelvin-timeline incarnations of Jim Kirk and Leonard “Bones” McCoy, reviewing why Leonard is still unmistakably the heart, unpacking what the hell Jim’s deal is, and finally taking a look at some key examples from canon, because ya girl believes in showing her work.

Let’s get down to business.

[A quick warning, as this is starting to spread beyond my own followers: if you don’t like McKirk as a romantic pairing, you ain’t gonna like part IV, so I’d bow out before then or just take your leave now.]

i. Leonard

Independent of Jim’s characterization, it should be blindingly obvious that Leonard is the heart. He’s by far the most nakedly emotional of our seven core crew members, a trait we see writ large and small throughout the films. He’s reactive; he’s passionate; he’s humane. He cares, first and foremost.

Not about Starfleet, of course. Leonard doesn’t give a damn about playing the game or advancing his career, or even really about the Enterprise’s mission - he has no desire to explore strange new worlds, he’ll pass on seeking out new life and new civilizations, and he spends half his time trying to convince everyone else that boldly going where no man has gone before is a great way to die horribly. Fuck exploration, fuck space, and fuck the Federation while we’re at it. Leonard is perhaps the most improbable of the Enterprise’s senior officers for the simple reason that he seems to resent everything about the job.

Well. Almost everything.

See, what Leonard cares about is people. He cares about their lives, about their stories, about their hopes and dreams, about their suffering. That’s why he entered and has stayed in an extremely taxing caring profession, and it’s why he’s still on the Enterprise despite his incessant bitching about everything they do. He wouldn’t trust anyone else to take care of the crew he’s become so attached to, and he finds fulfillment in helping the people they encounter out there in the nightmare of space.

In every timeline, Leonard McCoy defines himself by what he can do for others: the pain he can ameliorate, the wounds he can heal, the diseases he can cure, the small amounts of good he can bring to a galaxy filled with so much absolute horseshit. Unlike most of his colleagues, he’s not motivated by curiosity or an adventurer’s spirit or a burning desire to make sense of the universe. (Fuck the universe, too, as a matter of fact.) Instead, he’s driven by the incredible depths of his compassion and empathy and concern for the people he serves alongside and those they meet along the way.

Sure sounds like the heart to me.

ii. Jim

I actually totally get why some people characterize Kelvin-timeline Jim as the heart. He’s quite literally a different man than the original timeline’s Kirk, and he definitely has more of the pathos qualities to him. Early on, he’s a total spitfire, fierce and hot-blooded, quick to anger and other sharp-edged emotions we’re not used to associating with James T. Kirk. Even as he grows into himself and leaves some of those traits behind, he remains spontaneous, passionate, protective, and self-sacrificing - easy enough to mistake for the heart if you squint.

But let’s not confuse having a heart for being the heart. Sure, Jim is more openly emotional and reactive than his TOS counterpart, but there’s still a marked difference between the way he and Leonard express and act on their emotions.

AOS Jim definitely has a lot of feelings - big ones - but at the end of the day, he’s not driven by his heart. He’s driven by his gut.

Whenever there’s trouble, Jim makes a beeline right for the center of it. He’s impulsive as hell, rarely pausing to think past his first instinct, because he just wants to be doing something, no matter the odds, no matter what it costs him. He explicitly calls himself out on this in ST:ID when arguing with Spock: “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I only know what I can do.” He doesn’t have the patience or the constitution to sit and debate all the options, either internally or with his crew. If there’s a path forward from where he is, even a bad one, Jim’s gonna take it.

[Sidebar: One could make the case that the roots of Jim’s instinct to act reach back to his childhood traumas - canonically ignored abuse and neglect on the one hand, and the Tarsus IV famine and massacre on the other - but that’s a whole post on its own and we ain’t got all day here.]

Jim can’t not act, and while that gets him into a lot of trouble, it also saves lives. Sulu probably appreciated that Jim’s gut drove him to leap off Nero’s drilling platform without a moment’s hesitation after a man he’d only just met. He may have been a real shithead about it, but Jim’s impassioned insistence on going after the Narada and not wasting time on the possibility of a better option was key to saving Pike and Earth itself. And I don’t know why Spock was so surprised that Jim intervened to save him on Nibiru, considering that the reason they were there in the first place was because Jim couldn’t sit back and watch the Nibirans die when there was something his crew could do to help them, even if it meant risking a violation of the Prime Directive.

Jim is a good man with a big heart, and he cares about people, absolutely. But he cares most of all about Doing The Right Thing - which in the heat of the moment often translates to Doing Something, Anything, Hold My Beer.

iii. heart vs. gut (i.e., time for some receipts)

I think one of the main reasons Leonard and Jim’s characterizations get confused is because they both tend to act on instinct, only lightly informed by higher reasoning. However, I’d argue that their motivations and the nature of those actions are super distinct, and those distinctions remain relatively consistent throughout all three films. (And y’all know I really mean this shit if I’m out here calling ST:ID consistent.)

Jim is a big picture guy, figuratively and often literally heaving himself full-body into the mix of whatever problem the crew has encountered for lack of any better alternative. That energy propels the plots of all three films: the chaotic path he carves through the events of Star Trek and ST:ID, and the slightly calmer but still undeniably bananas course he charts for himself and his crew in the second half of Beyond.

As the heart, Leonard operates on a more micro level. His concern invariably lies with the individual people caught up in those grand events Captain Chaos is busy dragging them all through. While Jim’s zooming around flipping plot switches, Leonard can always be counted on to bring it back to the personal.

We frequently see this juxtaposed right there on film. Think of that slow pan through medbay in the first movie after the Narada’s ambush and the destruction of Vulcan: while Jim is stewing over what to do about the Big Bad, Leonard has stepped into the CMO role without fuss or fanfare to care for the wounded crew and traumatized survivors.

Or jump ahead to Beyond: during Krall’s attack on the Enterprise, there’s a gorgeous cinematic shot of Jim sprinting down the corridor with two crew members to take on the invaders - and then we cut to Leonard moving slowly through those same ghastly red-lit corridors, searching for casualties in need of help, visibly affected by what his scanner is telling him about the downed crewman he tries to save.

Actually, Beyond as a whole does terrific justice to each of their roles. (Perhaps because it was not written by dingdongs.) The first act finds Jim flailing around for a sense of purpose and forward momentum - an understandable consequence of a gut-driven character having stalled out for too long - and he ultimately gets his mojo back by spending the rest of the film careening through one insane seat-of-his-pants ploy after another. Meanwhile, in the quieter moments between all the mayhem, Leonard serves as the empathetic sounding board for both Jim and Spock as they struggle with deep emotionally charged secrets and Big Life Questions, helping them untangle their feelings and reminding them of the emotional attachments which are ultimately key to their respective decisions to stay on the Enterprise.

More examples, you say? Don’t mind if I do!

Star Trek

GUT: Jim hurtles around the Narada, improvising almost every step of the way and paying the price for his and Spock’s scheme in bodily harm, and ultimately succeeds in rescuing Pike. HEART: Leonard calls out for Jim as he runs into the transporter room, overwhelmed with relief that he’s made it back, and takes Chris Pike’s weight literally and figuratively onto his own shoulders to begin healing him while Jim runs back off to the center of the action.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

GUT: Jim argues with Leonard, Spock, and Scotty in quick succession as he’s preparing to drag them all off to Qo’noS, immune to their attempts to reason with him because, unraveled as he is by grief and pain, he can only focus on his visceral drive to Do Something. HEART: Unlike the others, Leonard is upset not about the larger moral questions of whether it’s right to go after John Harrison or bring torpedoes aboard the ship, but about the fact that Jim himself is hurt and hurting and won’t accept help.

GUT: Jim makes a snap decision to sacrifice himself by hurling his body against the warp core to realign it and save his crew. HEART: Shellshocked by the emotional grenade of his best friend’s death, Leonard suddenly realizes, through the haze of his own numbness and upswelling grief, that he might still be able to do something for this lonely radiation-ravaged body he’s been brought and the life it represents.

Star Trek Beyond

GUT: At the tail end of an improvised plan to out-maneuver Kalara, Jim quite literally shoots first and asks questions later, igniting a fuel tank and setting off an explosive series of events which he and Chekov just barely escape. HEART: The next time we see Leonard, Spock is opening up to him about Ambassador Spock’s death and his own plan to leave Starfleet for New Vulcan - and while he’s empathetic toward Spock (I can’t imagine what that must feel like), Leonard’s thoughts go immediately to the emotional impact of Spock’s plan on the other people he’s closest with. (I can see how that would upset [Nyota]. / I can tell you, [Jim]’s not gonna like that.)

GUT: Jim frantically strains to reach the final switch in the life support hub, believing that he’s going to die either way since the vent has already opened, but spurred on by the knowledge that his ability to move that switch is the only thing standing between Yorktown and annihilation. HEART: Knowing exactly what’s at stake, with the fate of the station and millions of lives hanging in the balance, Leonard’s greatest concern is that Jim won’t make it out in time.

iv. never bet against the heart

Let’s wrap this up with a deep dive on one of the absolute best examples of Leonard as the heart: his decision to sneak Jim onto the Enterprise in the first movie.

As relentlessly as I drag him for the, you know, poisoning and kidnapping aspects of that whole deal, there’s no denying that it is a god-tier heart move. Is it logical? Absolutely not. Is it really the right thing to do for either himself or Jim, as far as he knows at the time? Nope. It’s 100% the wrong choice for his own job security, reputation, and relationships with his fellow crew, and it’s almost guaranteed to get Jim into even worse trouble. Leonard is a smart dude who must understand that this course of action will likely end up coming back on them both in a real bad way. For someone who argues loudly and often in defense of self-preservation, this is a shockingly bad idea.

But none of that matters, because Jim shakes his hand and tells him to be safe with that horrible empty-eyed smile, and it gets him right in the heart, one-two-three.

One: sympathy, worry, and affection for Jim - his best friend, his wild and troublesome stray, his only family.

Two: guilt over adding onto Jim’s pain, and the instinctive urge to fix whatever‘s hurting him.

Three: fear of heading out into the unknown by himself, the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming, craving for the security and reassurance Jim’s presence would give him.

“Dammit,” Leonard says, as his heart wins out over his brain. He knows this is a garbage plan, and he doesn’t care. His heart chooses Jim. That’s all that matters.

So he goes back for Jim, and to his own surprise it turns out that this Very Bad Idea was actually a Very Good Idea because Jim’s impulsive instincts end up saving Earth, and Leonard’s not in the habit of fixing what ain’t broke so he figures he may as well keep on chasing Jim’s crazy ass around the galaxy for a while, through jungles and off cliffs and into the goddamn afterlife when need be, until finally one day Jim’s gut drives him right into Leonard’s arms and he suddenly realizes that this is what his heart was choosing all those years ago: Jim’s wide terrified eyes, Jim’s voice breaking over his name, Jim’s hand pressing hard against his chest, reaching out for what’s his.

But that’s another story.

[kidsviral-blog]

Leonard Nimoy's Spock Was The Nerd Hero Who Taught Us How To Feel

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/leonard-nimoys-spock-was-the-nerd-hero-who-taught-us-how-to-feel/

Leonard Nimoy's Spock Was The Nerd Hero Who Taught Us How To Feel

We have been, and always shall be, your friend.

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Leonard Nimoy as Spock on Star Trek Paramount Pictures

Star Trek is for nerds. That much has been certain ever since Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic sci-fi vision for the future first debuted on NBC in 1966. From its preoccupation with invented technologies like warp nacelles and transporter pads to the vagaries of made-up alien cultures like the Klingons and the Romulans, you had to be on the show’s particular wavelength to really grasp its lasting hold on the culture. The show, and its subsequent movies and spin-off series, spoke to a unique blend of passions cultivated by often socially awkward men and women whose abiding faith in and arcane knowledge of science and technology was matched by an earnest hope that the world we live in now will, someday, get much better. In other words: nerds.

We wanted to believe we could be Kirk, but we definitely knew we could be Spock.

And Spock — as played by Leonard Nimoy, who died Friday at 83 — was our ultimate nerd hero. The half-Vulcan’s brilliant mind was guided by a razor-sharp perception of the laws of logic that was not just enviable to nerds, it was aspirational. He could cut through the emotions that seemed to clutter up cogent thought, finding the objective reason tucked inside most any problem or scenario. Spock’s counterpart, William Shatner’s Capt. James T. Kirk, was a different kind of aspirational figure: the virile, impassioned leader who was sexual catnip to anyone he wanted to seduce. In order words, he wasn’t a nerd. We wanted to believe we could be Kirk, but we definitely knew we could be Spock.

Though his dispassion at times deliberately read as cold, Nimoy was too adept an actor to make the character an icy, uncaring robot, no matter how often Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) accused him of being one. Because, in a masterstroke by Roddenberry, Spock was more than just half-human — his veneer of Vulcan logic also masked a well of explosive emotions the Vulcan people had spent centuries striving to overcome.

In the Season 2 premiere of the original Star Trek TV series, “Amok Time,” fans were introduced to pon farr, a Vulcan mating phenomenon in which men are engulfed with a kind of sexual madness that has to be satiated or it will kill them. If there is a better metaphor for adolescent puberty, I have not encountered it. I’m not sure if Roddenberry deliberately set out to forge a kinship between Spock and young teenage nerds who were overwhelmed — even terrified — by their own roiling emotions and sexuality, but he did.

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Paramount Pictures

It was alarming for his crewmates and for the audience to see Spock in such a deranged state in “Amok Time.” But it also gave the character — and Nimoy — vital emotional shading, a sense that Spock was far more than just a paragon of logic and intellect. And not just due to his literally dangerous sexuality, either. In the episode’s climactic moment, Spock seemingly kills Kirk in a ritualistic Vulcan battle meant to quell Spock’s pon farr. Back on the Enterprise, Spock announces he will resign from Starfleet in disgrace, only to discover Kirk is still alive — knocked out instead by Dr. McCoy in a ploy to simulate death. Spock is so elated to see his friend still alive that he briefly exclaims “Jim!” and grabs Kirk by the shoulders with a huge smile. It was a great winking moment for Spock, Nimoy, and the audience, letting us know that even nerds are allowed to feel — even if it makes us uncomfortable.

As Trek expanded its reach, and Spock took hold as not just a character but a kind of cultural icon, Nimoy became — for better or worse — synonymous with the role. And like twentysomethings trying to escape their own teenage nerdom, Nimoy tried to shake off his connection to Trek in the 1970s with his autobiography I Am Not Spock. But the gravitational pull of Trek’s growing popularity proved inescapable. And eventually, the actor moved beyond accepting his reality to learning not to take himself or the role so seriously. In 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — directed by Nimoy — we were treated to the sight of Spock loose in 20th century San Francisco. He tussled with antisocial punks, learned how to use profanity (or, in Spock’s parlance, “colorful metaphors”), and he swam in his skivvies while mind-melding with a humpback whale.

Some Trek fans — Trekkies, Trekkers, whichever word you prefer — found this irreverence disconcerting. But actually, it was a gift. Passionate fandom can ossify into an unforgiving cultural rigidity, especially when that fandom is overseen by a core group of nerds who archive and catalog every last detail about the thing they love. But in order to thrive, those cultural entities also need to continue to grow with us and with the times in which we live. And that’s something Nimoy understood. In Star Trek IV, he gave us a looser, less self-important Spock and Trek, something to remind nerds that logic and intellect needn’t preclude a self-awareness and sense of humor.

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Patrick Stewart and Nimoy in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Unification, Part 2” Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

In the ’90s and ’00s, as Shatner embraced his position as a kind of pop-cultural kitsch icon with Priceline ads and his Emmy-winning run on Boston Legal, Nimoy settled comfortably into the role as Trek’s wise elder. His appearance as Spock on Star Trek: The Next Generation in a two-part episode in 1991 was a true television event, earning a reported 25 million viewers, making it one of the most-watched Star Trek TV episodes ever. It was a dream for both old and new Trek fans to see Spock discuss the nature of fallible human emotions with Data (Brent Spiner) — TNG’s own brilliant character at odds with how to express his (perhaps nonexistent) humanity — bringing two nerd cultural paragons together on the same screen.

By the time the actor played Spock in J.J. Abrams’ cinematic Star Trek reboot, Nimoy had come to embody Trek itself, lending the more Star Wars-ian proceedings an air of cultural legitimacy. It’s almost eerie, then, that Nimoy’s death falls at a kind of turning point for the entire Trek franchise: Abrams is setting aside Trek to revive the Star Wars franchise in earnest, and fans regard the last Trek movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, with no small amount of disdain.

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Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com

But despair is not logical. Spock has helped expand the very idea of what it means to be a nerd, making his struggle between emotion and logic feel universal, part of the greater human endeavor to strive for something better. And in doing so, he helped to greatly improve nerdom’s cultural currency. The biggest comedy on network TV today, The Big Bang Theory, is literally about nerds who worshipped Spock as kids — and still do as adults. And President Barack Obama said in a statement on Friday marking Nimoy’s passing, “Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy.” The president even flatly stated, “I loved Spock.”

When I think about Spock and Nimoy leaving us, like so many Trek fans today, I inevitably think back to 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, still the best Trek movie ever and the fullest expression of what Spock meant to me, and to nerds everywhere. Faced with certain death, Spock exposed himself to a lethal dose of radiation in order to save the Enterprise, and sacrificed his body in the process. (That sacrifice would be undone in the follow-up film The Search for Spock, but this is science fiction, after all.)

As Kirk looked upon the ruined body of his closest friend, Spock used his final breaths to share his kinship with Kirk — and, really, with the entire audience — saying, “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” Just typing those words floods me with emotion. Spock was one of our heroes, and by the end, he also became one of our friends. He will stay with us. As Kirk expressed so eloquently at Spock’s funeral:

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Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/we-have-been-and-always-shall-be-your-friend