Spock

Background

Advertisement

Powers and Abilities

Spock was a prodigy even by Vulcan standards. As an adult, he became renowned for his scientific skills, demonstrating a particular genius for computers and physics. His invention of a method to recrystallize dilithium in warp engines was revolutionary. Spock’s analytical skills extended to detective work as well. His deductive abilities saved the Enterprise on several occasions.

His telepathic abilities were quite formidable for a Vulcan as well. These allowed him to mind meld with creatures as alien as silicon-based life forms (“Devil in the Dark”) and artificial intelligences (“The Changeling”). He even had weak hypnotic abilities and could sometimes affect people at a distance.

Spock also has the superior physical strength and endurance of a Vulcan, despite being half-human. In his later years, Spock followed his father’s path and became a diplomat, a role at which he excelled.

History

Spock was born in 2230 in the city of ShariKahr on Vulcan. The marriage of the prominent Vulcan Ambassador Sarek to the human woman Amanda Grayson was seen as highly unorthodox by many Vulcans, and Spock suffered the scorn of his peers for his emotional outbursts.

This lasted until he was 7, when his future self came back in time to save his life during the traditional wilderness survival rite of passage. Not only did he survive despite being unusually young, his future self taught him the Vulcan neck pinch. The young Spock promptly used on his classmates (ST: Animated Series “The Infinite Vulcan”).

Though he was no longer openly harassed, Spock still felt uncomfortable with his fellow Vulcans. He often went back into the mountains for days at a time (ST: TNG “Unification, Part I”). Spock was also betrothed to T’Pring that year, and would be drawn to her when Pon Farr struck (“Amok Time”).

In the Navy

Upon reaching maturity, Spock entered Starfleet Academy, against his father’s wishes. Sarek had hoped that Spock would join the Vulcan Science Academy. He was so opposed to Spock’s chosen career that the two did not speak again for almost 20 years (“Journey to Babel”).

Advertisement

Spock was the first Vulcan to join Starfleet and the combination of that and his incredible intellect quickly made him a bit of a celebrity.

During his later years at the Academy, Spock served as Science Officer of the USS Enterprise on his cadet tour, under Christopher Pike’s command. When Spock graduated the Academy, he simply continued his tour of duty aboard the Enterprise for two 5-year missions with Pike (“The Menagerie”).

During the 11 years and 4 months they served together, Spock found himself in command on occasion, including when Captain Pike and his first officer were both captured on Talos IV (“The Cage”).

Enters Kirk

When James T. Kirk took command of the USS Enterprise in 2266, Spock was selected to be his first officer as well as Science Officer. The two came to know each other very closely during this time, and along with the acerbic Dr. McCoy, formed a a highly compatible triumvirate whose friendship would last for the rest of their lives.

Ambassador Sarek and Amanda Grayson came aboard the Enterprise on a diplomatic mission to Babel, which gave Spock and Sarek the opportunity to finally reconcile their differences (“Journey to Babel”).

Amok time

Spock experienced Pon Farr for the first time during his tour on the Enterprise in 2267. He had to return to Vulcan to be with T’Pring. She wanted another Vulcan as her husband, though, and in the Vulcan tradition chose Captain Kirk as her champion in a fight to the death with Spock.

T’Pring’s reasoning was that no matter who won, the winner would have to return to the Enterprise and continue their mission, leaving her free to marry Stonn.

A surreptitious tranquilizer shot applied by Dr. McCoy made Kirk appear dead. The battle and Spock’s Pon Farr thus ended. Spock was extremely surprised to find Kirk alive again afterwards, so much so that he broke out into a rare smile (“Amok Time”).

Back and forth to Vulcan

After the end of Kirk’s 5-year mission in 2271, Spock decided to go to Vulcan and undergo Kolihnar training. This would purge all of his emotions. He spent almost 2 years there until his training was interrupted by telepathic contact with V’Ger, an alien probe of immense power.

Spock rejoined the Enterprise crew, which was intercepting V‘ger on its way to Earth. He then mind-melded with V’Ger. This experience not only told Spock what V’Ger wanted, but also helped him finally come to terms with balancing his human and Vulcan halves. Spock decided to remain with Starfleet thereafter (ST: The Motion Picture).

By 2285 the Enterprise had become a training vessel, under Spock’s command. Unfortunately, during a training cruise that had reunited the original Enterprise crew, the Enterprise found itself under attack by the Reliant, hijacked by Khan Noonien Singh.

The Enterprise crew was able to defeat Khan and escape the detonation of the stolen Genesis Device. But this required the sacrifice of Spock’s life: he suffered fatal radiation exposure repairing the warp drive (ST II: The Wrath of Khan).

He’s dead, Jim

Spock’s katra, his living spirit, was salvaged, however, by melding with Dr. McCoy.

Normally this would be a simple matter of going to Vulcan and having the healers meld with McCoy to release Spock’s katra. However, Spock’s photon sarcophagus had soft-landed on the Genesis planet due to the fluctuating gravitational fields instead of burning up in the atmosphere. The Genesis Effect had unpredictably regenerated Spock’s body.

Kirk was ordered to stay away from Genesis due to the delicate political situation surrounding the Genesis Device. He disobeyed, retrieved Spock’s body, and brought it and Dr. McCoy to Vulcan for Fal Tor Pan, the re-fusion (ST III: The Search for Spock).

Kirk and his crew then decided to return to Earth to answer for violating orders by traveling to the Genesis planet.

When they arrived, an alien probe was wreaking havoc with the Earth’s atmosphere. Spock determined that the probe was seeking out humpback whales, which had been extinct since the early 21^st century. Kirk and his crew went back in time to secure a pair of humpbacks to communicate with the probe and stop its attack.

Thereafter, Kirk and his crew were pardoned, given the circumstances and their extraordinary heroism (ST IV: The Voyage Home).

As an interesting footnote, during this mission, Spock had an inspiration and repaired their vessel’s engines by inventing a method to recrystallize the dilithium within. This revolutionary invention would change Alpha Quadrant politics, as wars over the scarce dilithium crystals became a thing of the past.

Sybok

The Enterprise crew was posted on a new vessel, the Enterprise-A. Their first mission was to capture the terrorist group known as the Army of Light.

The AOL was lead by Sybok, Spock’s half-brother from a previous marriage of Sarek who had embraced emotion and fled Vulcan. Sybok was convinced that God was hidden inside the radiation barrier at the center of the galaxy and managed to hijack the Enterprise-A to go there.

When they arrived, Kirk and Spock were able to get Sybok to see that this being was not a loving God, but instead simply a malevolent being of great power. Sybok used his formidable psionic abilities to hold the creature for a moment, giving the others time to escape at the cost of his life.

Spock commandeered an arriving Klingon vessel with the help of General Koord (a Klingon ambassador kidnapped by Sybok) and personally fired the shot that destroyed the menace once and for all (ST V: The Final Frontier).

Diplomat

2293 saw Spock serving as a diplomat for the first time. He took the role of Special Envoy to the Klingon Empire in the wake of the Praxis disaster. Spock committed the Enterprise-A to the task of escorting Klingon chancellor Gorkon to a peace conference on Earth. The chancellor was assassinated en route and Captain Kirk was framed for the crime.

Spock managed to find Kirk at the Klingon prison Rura Penthe and determine the identities of the true assassins. The Enterprise rushed to Khitomer, the site of the new peace talks. There it battled a Klingon Bird-of-Prey that could fire its weapons while cloaked (a capacity no other cloaked ship possessed).

Spock deduced a potential flaw in the cloak. With McCoy’s help he reprogrammed a photon torpedo to target the cloaked vessel and disable it long enough to target and destroy it (ST IV: The Undiscovered Country).

While at Khitomer, Spock met with Romulan Senator Pardek and spoke of the possibilities of reunification of the Romulan and Vulcan peoples. It was an association that would continue into Spock’s later years (ST: TNG “Unification, Parts I & II”).

Spock also met a young Vulcan named Tuvok, who expressed his profound disagreement with Spock that an alliance with the Klingon Empire would be a logical policy for the Federation (ST: VOY “Allegiances). This opinion may have been colored by Tuvok’s loss of a friend battling Klingons in the Azure Nebula on the way to Khitomer (ST: VOY “Flashback”).

Tuvok would later become a highly proficient and decorated Security Officer in the late 24^th century onboard the U.S.S. Voyager.

Fade to black

Spock’s life since the Khitomer Conference is mostly unchronicled. However, tt is known that he remained active as a diplomat and political advisor. Spock married at one point, though his wife and her current status are unrevealed.

One of the attendees of the wedding was Starfleet Lieutenant Jean-Luc Picard (ST: TNG “Sarek” and “Unification, Part I”), who would meet Spock again years later on Romulus.

Spock and Sarek had occasional debates on diplomatic positions, but nothing serious until the Cardassian Wars. At this point they publicly disagreed and stopped speaking to one another just as they had before in Spock’s youth (ST: TNG “Unification, Part I”).

The Next Generation

In 2368 Spock disappeared and Starfleet Intelligence tracked him down to Vulcan. It was feared that Spock might have defected and Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise-D was assigned to go to Romulus undercover and investigate. Picard also had the unfortunate duty of telling Spock that his father Sarek had finally died of Bendii Syndrome.

Picard managed to find Spock on Romulus and discovered that Spock was working with Pardek to forward a reunification initiative between Vulcan and Romulus.

However, it turned out that Pardek had in fact tricked Spock into coming to Romulus to be used as part of a Romulan plot to conquer the planet Vulcan. Spock and Picard managed to escape from Romulan imprisonment and alert the Enterprise in time to stop the invading force.

After the crisis was over, Picard offered to mind meld with Spock so that Spock could share the thoughts of his father (with whom Picard had previously melded), and offer that Spock gratefully accepted (ST: TNG “Unification, Parts I & II”).

Though Pardek’s overtures were only a ruse, Spock did meet numerous Romulans who did wish for peace. He thus decided to remain on Romulus, working toward reunification through teaching of Vulcan philosophy rather than politics or diplomacy (ST: TNG “Unification, Part II”).

Mirror History

The Mirror Spock was first officer of the ISS Enterprise until the “real” Kirk convinced him that the Empire’s destruction was inevitable unless it became more peaceful. After Kirk’s return to his own universe, Spock became a peacemaker in the Empire, and eventually its Commander-in-Chief.

Whether he survived the subsequent enslavement of the Empire by the Cardassian-Klingon Alliance is unknown. But it is unlikely anyone in the Terran Resistance would trust him after seeing where he led them… the Empire didn’t even last as long as Spock said it would if left alone.

In William Shatner’s Mirror Universe novel trilogy, Spock had survived and negotiated the surrender of Vulcan. It was nevertheless devastated by the Alliance, though not rendered uninhabitable as Earth was.

Spock went on to become the top leader of the Terran Resistance and was still active in that role in the late 24^th Century, though the rigors of his life had aged him more severely than his counterpart.

Description

Spock is a tall, aquiline Vulcan male with caucasian skin tones and neatly cut black hair. Spock had a formidable, on occasion literally hypnotic, gaze when he was concentrating intensely or angry. He often expressed doubt or confusion by arching a eyebrow. While on-duty, he always wore his Starfleet uniform.

During his younger years he also wore the uniform while off-duty, but he has since worked to integrate his various sides. In his later years he took to wearing simple Vulcan robes whenever he was not on-duty and this became his standard attire in civilian life.

Personality

During his early years Spock expressed himself as emotionally as most human children do. He soon learned to control his feelings to avoid the disapproval of other Vulcans, particularly his father. His analytical mind-set was very typical of Vulcans, however, and his gifted intellect won him some of the approval that his emotional comportment cost him.

He also had a very strong stubborn streak that caused his father much grief, particularly since it was a trait his father also possessed.

During the early years of his time on the Enterprise with Captain Pike, Spock was very open, smiling in joy at interesting discoveries or expressing alarm when his fellow crewmen appeared to be in trouble.

This had changed by the time Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise and Spock had fully embraced Vulcan stoicism, with rare exceptions. The main one was when Spock broke into a huge smile and grabbed Kirk excitedly when he discovered that he had not inadvertently killed the Captain.

Though Kirk’s and Dr. McCoy’s “human” emotional outbursts bothered Spock at times, Spock greatly valued their friendship.

Spock’s unflappability became a trademark of sorts, as did his keen deductive mind. Spock is motivated strongly by acquiring new knowledge and he often seeks out opportunities to do research or meet with other species to gain their perspectives on the universe.

At the end of Kirk’s five-year mission, Spock decided to learn the Kolihnar discipline and purge himself of all emotion. He could not bring himself to fully embrace the Kolihnar philosophy, though, and when he mind melded with V’Ger he realized that logic alone was not enough.

He then worked to combine both logic and emotion and transcend them into something new. Since that time, he has maintained his logical bearing but has become more comfortable expressing and sharing his feelings when it seems appropriate to do so.

Quotes

“Fascinating.”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“If I were human, I believe I would tell them to go to hell.”

Sela: “If you do not [help]… all of you will die.”
Spock: “It is logical to conclude that you will kill us anyway. Therefore, I choose not to cooperate.”

(Replying very coldly when caught spying on the Romulans) “[Spock], First officer of the Enterprise. Which is your current form of execution?”

DC Universe History

The original Enterprise crew has teamed up with the Marvel Universe’s X-Men on one occasion. The Enterprise crew could easily encounter residents of the DCU under similar circumstances, particularly if Hypertime is involved.

Taken separately, Spock could appear as an advisor for any major political leader, particularly in a future setting. He would fit in quite well serving alongside the United Planets’ President in the Legion of Super Heroes’ era, for example.

He might also be encountered in the modern era engaging in some sort of mission involving time travel, as occurred on numerous occasions in the original series.

By Roy Cowan and Robert Tolliver Marcum.

Source of Character: Star Trek: The Original Series (TV series), character played by Leonard Nimoy.

Helper(s): Peter S Piispanen, Mike Davis, Azraelfl, drphibes, zoomjunkie.