#the ready room

ichayalovesyou:

Analyzing Ethan Peck’s statements on Spock & Chapel in regards to ‘Spock Amok’

From the most recent Ready Room on Chapel and Spock that very much caught my ear! The whole interviews (with both Gia and Ethan) are extremely good! Especially with Ethan Peck, he’s really enriching himself with his interpretation of Spock and enriching Spock in turn, but I wanna specifically talk about some of the things Ethan Peck says in it:

“I think he finds that human inspiration and permission, firstly Captain Pike, then in season two of Discovery in Michael Burnham. And now, in sort of a different angle, a romantic one, right, with Nurse Chapel, played by Jess. I think Jess brings this sort of sparkling and electric impulsiveness to Nurse Chapel, that makes her so fun and wonderful to watch. I think makes Spock so curious and fascinated, forgive me for using that word.”

I don’t know about y’all, I feel like this is a testament to what a lot of us already knew. If Sarek is Spock’s Vulcan father figure (as messy and terrible as that relationship is) Captain Pike is his human father figure and that brings an immense sense of joy to me. I genuinely think that Spock gets that intense “no man left behind (except for me)” overactive self-sacrifice habit from Captain Pike. Along with many other things, and now I genuinely wanna rewatch TOS just to recontextualize Nimoy Spock and what that character has learned and how he has been inspired and emulates from Pike, Burnham, and Chapel respectively after season one of SNW is over. I think he learns selflessness from Oike, rebellion/stubbornness from Burnham, and being a little shit for funsies from Chapel. Speaking of which! The words “sparkling and electric impulsiveness” and “romantic” definitely has me suspecting more than ever that Spock and Chapel may become A Thing later in SNW canon. Maybe not specifically that they’re romantically involved with each other, but that the tension between them gets worse, tension perhaps strong enough to snap?

“It’s really a gift to be able to explore those two halves of him and with those other characters like that. Because he is so disdainful of his human half in The Original Series, and I believe in Strange New Worlds has a great deal of shame with his Human side, and this is a time in his life where he really begins to accept it, explore it, and find strength in it. Because what I think is that he’s learning that emotion plays a big part in his logic as wrong as that sounds. Because the emotion that he feels and then interprets and intuits from, I think plays a big part in his problem solving.”

I love that he says this and now I’m even more curious on how that sense of shame Spock feels transforms into outright disdain by TOS, what happens to him?? Because you can see him going through accepting some of his humanity that certainly doesn’t just magically go away in TOS (the self-imperilment, feisty stubbornness, and enjoyment he gets out of being an impulsive little shit all being very illogical things he’s learned from human friendships).

But you can tell based on the contrast between Peck Spock and Nimoy Spock that something happened that hurt him and damaged him in a way that’s similar but not quite the same as damage he and Michael spend most of the second season of Discovery healing from. Somebody (probably Human) hurts him big time, or he hurts someone big time by letting his emotions/humanity rule him. I highly doubt it’s Pike, and he’s still grieving for Burnham, I wouldn’t find it a stretch for it to be Chapel.

Mostly because of the damaged, broken, practically still bleeding tone their relationship has in The Original Series. I mean, even if they were just friends, purely the exchange they have in The Naked Time is fucking heartbreaking. Chapel rhetorically saying Spock would never hurt her and that she sees him, all of him, and Spock apologizing profusely and breaking down in tears after being infected? I mean?? He lets her touch him and we know how Vulcans regard touch! The exchanges they have in Amok Time are also laced with an air of history and damage and sadness. Something MUST have happened to drive these two apart, since they obviously aren’t nearly as close in TOS. So like, what did happen???

I can’t wait to find out >:)