April 18, 2008

The Spock-etype

Yeah, another post related to Star Trek. It's something that I'm sure has been noted before, and existed before him (see: 1930s/1940s robot stories), but Spock has to be the iconic man on the outside. There's not a Star Trek series without a Spock-figure. It's the crew member who, due to circumstance, doesn't understand humans/humanoids/solids/etc. and gets to be somewhat funny because of it.

  • Spock, Star Trek. I know I already mentioned him but come on, he deserves another. This green-blooded (copper-based blood) Vulcan/Human hybrid. Cold, calculating, declarer of irrationality, he was a great foil to McCoy.
  • Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation. With even less connection to emotions (except for when he got too much from the emotion chip left to him/forcibly implanted into him by his creator or his brother Lore), his inability to use contractions doesn't make him that much different from a lot of other Science Fiction aliens. Except he's an android, so he's more like a classic robot that way.
  • Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He's actually the most human of the bunch, even if he's a) not human and b) not even a naturally solid being. He understands us solids, but that doesn't mean he deals with life like us.
  • Emergency Medical Hologram, Star Trek: Voyager. Probably the most consistently written character on Voyager. He also got some of the best episodes. Funny guy.
  • Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager. I have to say that by the time she became a fixture on the show, I wasn't really watching that much. Still, in this case, we have a human made inhuman by most of a lifetime as part of the Borg collective.
  • T'Pol, Star Trek: Enterprise. Another Vulcan - like Spock - but pure - unlike Spock - she had to learn to deal with humans at time where they weren't fully accepted members of space-faring society.
Yes, that's right, every single Trek series has a Spock-like person aboard, even if they didn't stay that way to the end. Interestingly enough, I can't think of any of the other TV space series that had one. Maybe Andromeda, but I only put that forward because I didn't watch that much. Any others I'm forgetting?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you've ever watched Stargate SG-1, but I think Teal'c fits that mold almost perfectly.

Sam said...

Yeah, I watched it. He does fit the mold, and he escaped my mind because I was thinking of shows primarily taking place in space on spaceships.