Bingo! When everyone else was prattling on about how great Spock was, I was standing there going “Really? Have you seen the episodes when he’s in command? He’s an asshole!”
Spock is indeed surprisingly incompetent at times, the single worst example being, I guess, that scene in Whom Gods Destroy: “Well, one of you is Captain Kirk and the other is a homicidal psychopath who looks like Captain Kirk, so I’ll just turn my back while this gets sorted out…”
Well, say what we may about his abilities as a student, he did finally come up with the definitive real-world solution to the Kobayashi Maru test.
Yeah, i wish they had added pointy ears, because the way you (& others) post it looks funny to me. ymmv
That’s just the episode I had in mind. Although in fairness to Spock, if I’d been in his shoes when that idiot demanded they hold a funeral service before they escaped the planet, I don’t think I could have stopped myself from drawing a phaser on him.
That sure is a fancy way of saying “Get Saved By Captain Kirk.”
I always thought of the three of them as the perfect Freudian trio: Spock was Ego, McCoy was Superego, Kirk was pure Id.
The Paradise Syndrome, too. “It’s months until this asteroid hits the planet, but instead of spending the time trying to figure out a Plan B, I’m going to order Mr Scott to keep the phasers firing until the warp drive burns out and we’re firmly painted into this corner. That way, if the Captain’s in trouble on the planet, I can ensure he doesn’t get any help until about five minutes before the rock hits, instead of later this afternoon.”
Pure Id in command of a starship? :dubious:
What does Pure Id need with a starship?
Hey, you don’t ask Id for his I.D.
Got that all wrong: Spock=Superego, McCoy=Id, Kirk=Ego (as in he makes the final decisions).
I can understand Scotty, but Spock was the First Officer. If Kirk is an O-6 (Captain) than Spock cannot be a Lt Commander in the first season and a Commander in the second. As First Officer he is clearly in line for a command of his own, it does not make sence that he is senior to Kirk.
The Federation is a Homo Sapiens Only club (incorrect statement made during dinner party in ST-VI:TUD)
Who is the monsters from the id? Wesley?
perhaps spock was first in academics, but not in the “plays well with others”; which did something to his grade average.
I don’t TOS!Kirk was much younger than Spock. I took it that Spock was about 35 (Vulcan) years old in the second season, while Kirk was a fear years younger–early 30s or so, since he comments that he’s either 32 or 34 in the Deadly Years.
That said, it’s easy for me to believe that Spock wasn’t first in his class. Starfleet seems to consist of mostly humans, and I can easily see Spock shining in some classes and doing poorly in others because he had difficulty seeing things from a human pov.
In The Galileo Seven in the first season it was clearly stated that this was Spock’s first command. I think in other places it was clear that he was not interested in command - he became a diplomat, after all, not a senior Star Fleet officer after TOS.
Aside from the reboot, I don’t recall any evidence that Spock and Kirk’s paths crossed in the Academy. In The Corbomite Maneuver he claims to never have heard of poker, which is odd for someone at the Academy - unless he was planning to fleece Scott and McCoy.
I choose to believe that Galileo 7 never happened. The premise is simply stupid. Spock wasn’t some random officer; he was the ship’s first officer. Even given Kirk’s propensity for leading landing parties himself, I just can’t believe that Spock had never once been in charge of such a mission. For Athena’s sake, SULU was in charge of the landing party in that episode when Kirk got split in two and Wolf!Kirk tried to rape Janice Rand.
I agree with the Walt Kelly principle: characters mentioned in passing may actually have far more interesting and adventurous lives than those on the show. Maybe other ships had far more interesting adventures than the Enterprise.
Or–horrors!–maybe Spock ran with scissors. 