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In which I return to my roots: a Star Trek canon quandary
Saturday, March 9th, 2019 10:22 amThe housemate and I have been watching Star Trek (the original) lately, and enjoying it tremendously. It really is a damned good show, and as we are different people than the last time we watched it (the passage of time and all that), we are picking up different things this time through. Which is mostly awesome, but does lead to the occasional dilemma.
It's long been my personal head-canon that Spock first met Leila Kalomi when he was a cadet, and part of the reason they attached so strongly was that he was homesick on what was to him a very alien world.
However: In "This Side of Paradise", Leila says that she knew Spock on Earth six years ago. The six years is mentioned a couple of times, and in a way that's not really compatible with there having been a previous meeting. But in "The Menagerie", Spock says he served under Pike for eleven years, four months, five days.
I can make the chronology work, no problem. The Enterprise could have put into Earth for repairs or upgrades; Spock could have been detached for a special assignment or done a brief teaching stint at the Academy. That's not even a challenge. But the initial relationship takes on a very different quality if Spock was already established as a serving officer under the Captain he was willing to risk the death penalty for. Not necessarily a worse quality, just different.
And I'm having the devil of a time wrapping my head around it.
So: If you're enough of a classic Trek fan to have opinions on the matter, care to share them? I'll also consider fanfic recommendations, though I'll warn you I'm damned picky where this particular fandom is concerned. If you just want to commiserate on having your personal head-canon contradicted by something you should have been aware of in the first place, that's welcome, too. :-)
This is highly relevant to a later story in the series starting with that Star Trek story I'm not writing. ;-)
(Note: This is purely a classic Trek question. I'm vaguely aware that some of the reboots/retcons/new series have done things with Spock's backstory, particularly ST:Discovery, but I'm not looking for that here. If you enjoy them, great, fine, I hope you continue to do so; but for purposes of this discussion, they do not exist.)
It's long been my personal head-canon that Spock first met Leila Kalomi when he was a cadet, and part of the reason they attached so strongly was that he was homesick on what was to him a very alien world.
However: In "This Side of Paradise", Leila says that she knew Spock on Earth six years ago. The six years is mentioned a couple of times, and in a way that's not really compatible with there having been a previous meeting. But in "The Menagerie", Spock says he served under Pike for eleven years, four months, five days.
I can make the chronology work, no problem. The Enterprise could have put into Earth for repairs or upgrades; Spock could have been detached for a special assignment or done a brief teaching stint at the Academy. That's not even a challenge. But the initial relationship takes on a very different quality if Spock was already established as a serving officer under the Captain he was willing to risk the death penalty for. Not necessarily a worse quality, just different.
And I'm having the devil of a time wrapping my head around it.
So: If you're enough of a classic Trek fan to have opinions on the matter, care to share them? I'll also consider fanfic recommendations, though I'll warn you I'm damned picky where this particular fandom is concerned. If you just want to commiserate on having your personal head-canon contradicted by something you should have been aware of in the first place, that's welcome, too. :-)
This is highly relevant to a later story in the series starting with that Star Trek story I'm not writing. ;-)
(Note: This is purely a classic Trek question. I'm vaguely aware that some of the reboots/retcons/new series have done things with Spock's backstory, particularly ST:Discovery, but I'm not looking for that here. If you enjoy them, great, fine, I hope you continue to do so; but for purposes of this discussion, they do not exist.)
