i am at the moment re-watching star trek tos for the first time since 2019 (showing it to my best friend) and just started recovering repressed memories of the accursed third season (the thing abt season 3 and me is that it hurt me, badly—i am aware that sounds dramatic but it is true). so i just wanted to ask, does anybody remember that ep from late season 3 i think, which ends with that painful scene in kirk's quarters after he's lost yet another love interest, and he's depressed and exhausted and falls asleep at his desk while spock and bones are standing by, and bones makes this whole speech abt how he feels sorrier for spock than he does for jim, bc allegedly the word love "isn't written into spock's book"? and then after bones leaves, spock goes over to kirk and mindmelds with him, taking away his memories of that woman and his pain over losing her? ... that's a joke question, i know we all remember it.
anyway i remember back in the day seeing everyone say that what spock does was an act of selfless love and i always knew that i kinda disagreed with that but couldn't put into words why until now.
i mean don't get me wrong, i agree that spock's action disproves mccoy's assessment of him. spock loves kirk, that's the only explanation for what he does. he loves him so much that he's in pain over it. but i don't think that his action is selfless or even morally okay at all, tbh. even if, before falling asleep, kirk voices his desire to forget.
and i'm not saying that to be like "ugh this is problematic, i wish this scene wouldn't exist", on the contrary, yes it is problematic but i think it adds something interesting and is befitting spock's character and the more flawed sides of him; like his habit of doing things on his own that will impact other ppl without involving those other ppl in the decision-making. kirk has a right to his emotions and him lamenting his pain and loneliness doesn't mean he's giving consent to spock to take those experiences from him.
and just bc spock does it out of love, out of not wanting kirk to be in pain, not wanting to see kirk in pain, that doesn't make it right. to me, that moment is more an illustration of why spock is so afraid of losing control of his emotions. bc he's so "corrupted" by emotion (as he would put it) in that moment that he goes too far. he behaves possessively and breaches kirk's autonomy out of his own desire to take his pain away, just bc as a vulcan he has the means to do so.
i also think that adds another interesting angle to why spock chooses kolinahr at the end of the 5 year mission. his love for kirk is too much for him. it renders him incapable of being what he thinks he's supposed to be. ofc, it was never the truth that he has no feelings. but i think it is the truth that he has trouble understanding feelings and dealing with them; due to his upbringing and resulting shame and struggle with self-acceptance. he was never taught how to deal with that part of himself bc, being human too, the vulcan educational system was not sufficient for his needs. tos-era spock just sees emotions as his enemy bc they're hurting him, so his solution to pain is supressing emotion. so he does the same for kirk in that moment, and for himself, for them both (bc let's be real, if one of them is in pain, so is the other), even though it's not his right.
it's an incredibly painful and touching scene and, put into context with the even bigger tragedy later on of spock trying to eliminate his emotions completely by running away from kirk and attempting kolinahr, it's even more painful. but yeah i think it is more abt the questionable things that love can drive a man to do, as bones put it, rather than the unambiguously good things; more the miseries, the broken rules and glorious failures than anything else. no matter how touching the notion of someone bearing someone else's pain for them, so they don't have to, is.
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