So, Iāve been thinking about this line in the tos episode The Enemy Within:
SPOCK: Captain, no disrespect intended, but you must surely realise you canāt announce the full truth to the crew. Youāre the Captain of this ship. You havenāt the right to be vulnerable in the eyes of the crew. You canāt afford the luxury of being anything less than perfect. If you do, they lose faith, and you lose command.Ā
I italicized the important part, because this - this is why Spock/Kirk is so understated in the series (I mean their love is clearly there, but we never see a full extent of it).
I recently saw an older post with some fans wonderingĀ āHow does Kirk send Spock to his death so easily throughout the series? Or seem so casual when heās considered dead?ā In fact, in Return to Tomorrow, Kirk does seem (on the surface) very calm about the fact that Spock is supposedly dead after that alien takes over his body. In the quote:Ā
KIRK: Spockās consciousness is gone. We must kill his body ā the thing in it.
he comes to this conclusion rather decisively, quickly, and with no sorrow or obvious remorse. Hell, even the person I was watching the episode with turns to me and says, confusedly,Ā āMaybe he didnāt care about Spock that much at all?āĀ
But thatās just the thing. Every time Spock is in danger (when he was in Pon Farr, when he was flying that little ship to his assured death in The Immunity Syndrome, when Nomad the superprobe took over his brain), Kirk only shows a visceral reaction to it when heās not witnessed by the majority of the crew. Because, as Spock himself says,Ā he canāt be vulnerable in the eyes of the crew. In fact, I argue that the more Kirk tightens up and has a facade of not caring, that indicates that heās feeling very deep emotions at the situation at hand. But he buttons it up, even more, because he canāt afford to be vulnerable.Ā
When Nomad took over Spockās brain? Kirk freaked out. Only because there were only two security guards witnessing the scene, and there was an empty hallway that Kirk and Spock where recovered their wits about them. Hell, Kirk had his hands on Spock for a full MINUTE:Ā
and when Kirk is doing a Captainās Log in The immunity Syndrome, and he calmly but sadly records Spockās death and recommendations for him? You can barely see the emotions on his face, and he seems collected, but we all know that if the bridge crew wasnāt watching him closely, it would be a whole other story. This is an example of the more Kirk thinks he needs to hide, the more blank he seems to be.
Kirk canāt afford to be vulnerable in the eyes of the crew. And the thing that could make him look the most vulnerable? His love and devotion to Spock.
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