I don’t often engage in fannish argument of this sort, but…
…Spock’s father Sarek is honestly just an awful, awful person.
We know that he has been involved with three women over the course of his long, long life. Two of them are human. The wife he has when he meets his end, in the two part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Unification,” is described at the end as his second wife period, but as it happens we know that he was involved with another full-blooded Vulcan before Amanda and fathered Sybok, the well-meaning villain of Star Trek V.
So, okay, he happens to have what we would call Jungle Fever. After his first Vulcan wife, he became primarily attracted to women of a different ethnicity. (Actually, it’s bestiality, but we won’t get into that.
Sybok rejected Vulcan ways, and adopted a more affable, human-style personality. As a result, he goes unmentioned, a bit of an outcast.
Spock chooses his Vulcan side, with difficulty that we see gets to plague him his entire life. He is “teased mercilessly” as a child, and fits in so poorly at home that he joins Starfleet in part to find a home for himself. For this, Sarek ostracizes him for decades…even continuing to do so after the forced amiability at the end of “Journey to Babel.”
So, to put this in perspective:
You’re a Christian guy. You have a kid who converts to Buddhism. You don’t talk about him again.
Your wife dies and you marry another one. This time you pick a woman of another ethnicity. Let us say a black woman. You have a mixed-race kid. That kid identifies as white; but he still feels isolated, out of place, unappreciated in his community. So he picks a profession that takes him away from home for long periods. For this you excoriate him. He gives blood when you’re dying. You pull through…but at the end of your life the two of you are again not speaking.
Sarek has no problem marrying human women, serially — and of all the reasons we can posit for this, among them is the fact that human women are more demonstrative mates — but he is a prick to the children who identify with values other than his own.
He’s pretty much a demonstration of the truism that it’s possible to marry into an ethnicity and still be a bigot toward that ethnicity.
So, yeah, he’s awful.
Comment By: Bob Toy
October 14th, 2015 at 9:18 am
Interesting take on the character…
Comment By: Madeleine Robins
October 14th, 2015 at 10:17 am
Well, when you put it like that…
Comment By: John Hudgens
October 14th, 2015 at 10:17 am
Sybok’s mother wasn’t human, tho….
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
October 14th, 2015 at 11:17 am
I have edited the thesis to reflect the parentage of Sybok.
Comment By: Barb Padgett
October 14th, 2015 at 11:18 am
I never got the impression (from “Unification”) that Spock and Sarek weren’t speaking at the end. Arguing a lot, yes, but that seems to have been more in the sense of debating issues than being angry with one another. Remember when Spock tells Picard that he found their arguments almost as useful as those he had with his father, and Picard replied that Sarek found them equally useful? Now *Perrin* didn’t like Spock, but that was another story, and even she admitted to Picard that Sarek wasn’t offended when Spock differed with him publicly over a diplomatic issue.
Comment By: Linda Robinson
October 14th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
Huh. I never thought about it that way, but…you’re right. (And Amanda was a freaking SAINT.)
Comment By: David Vineyard
October 14th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
Major league bastard by any standard. Maybe that’s why Mark Lenard who usually played villains got the part.
Although we may all be taking ST too seriously.
Comment By: voss
October 14th, 2015 at 11:51 am
Its not bestiality unless you consider humans to be beasts. That aside, In star trek IV sarek apologized to spock for not speaking with him saying his friends were of good character. His disappointment with spock was his decision to join starfleet not his human parentage.
His decision to stop speaking with his son had to do with a political disagreement not his human heritage.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
October 14th, 2015 at 12:19 pm
David, my answer to that is that, however disposable any story might be, the characters are what got put down on the page — or on the screen — even if unexamined by the creators.
Sarek is not a nice guy.
Comment By: Cliff Winnig
October 14th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Great essay, and an interesting analysis of the long relationship between these characters.
As a viewer, I love the character of Sarek, in no small part because he’s complex and problematic. Amanda, I think, is just awesome, but Sarek was one of those career-obsessed statesmen who could do much good for many people while paradoxically neglecting his own family, or at least his children. I don’t think he was a terrible person, but I think he wound up being a terrible father to both Spock and Sybok (though we know less about the latter). After the time period of ST III and IV, he did reconcile somewhat with Spock, and may even have felt ashamed of the combination of absence, coldness, and strictness that characterized his parenting. That could be why he never suggested mind meld. He was simply too embarrassed by his own behavior.
But we know that Picard knew how much he loved Spock and was proud of him, and Picard’s gift to Spock at the end of “Unification” was that knowledge.
It helps that both Mark Lenard and Leonard Nimoy were fabulous actors. The bit at the very end of “Unification” where Spock’s reaction to the knowledge of Sarek’s love and pride in his son’s accomplishments is captured in a single facial expression…wow.
I’m a dad, and I certainly won’t be an apologist for Sarek’s terrible parenting. But I think the character is much richer than his bad behavior.
Comment By: Sandy Diersing
October 14th, 2015 at 2:19 pm
I’ve always thought he was who he was (and so was Amanda) to fill out Spock’s backstory. GR seemed kind of fascinated by half-breeds. Now (in a spirit of disclosure) I’ll read the essay.
Update: Seems pretty dead bang on. My father always seemed like a half-Vulcan to me; my grandfather was a prick who divorced my grandmother in absentia during WWII for murky reasons that turned out (in all likelihood) to be around her excessive religiosity. Dad and Grandpa both defined themselves as thinkers, but the truth was far more complicated. Which is what Star Trek, for me, was very often about. IDIC, everybody.