3 ms·

Turns Out, Spock Is Kinda Bad at Logic

3 points by kvee 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Yeah, but Vulcans were supposed to be kinda good at logic. And Spock was supposed to be half Vulcan/half human.
- Bluestein 6y ago
  And therein, the rub: Spock is "built" as a character on the struggle between his human and vulcan sides ... ... were his logic to be "flawed" that'd be par for the course.-
cjlqkjrih 6y ago
I think it's quite obvious that Spock was sometimes very good at sarcasm, and sometimes nerdy, but the rest of the crew couldn't really see it (or didn't want to expose it). He would often use logic as a mean to an end. It's adamant in the pilot story ("the Menagerie"), where he had to use somewhat specious logic to explain his behaviour, which was clearly driven by his will to save the captain. Trying to understand him by compiling statistics on the scripts is very "Dataesque".
jfengel 6y ago
Well, yeah. Stereotypes exist on Star Trek to demonstrate the flaws in the stereotypes. Worf existed to take punches because that's how you show how bad the enemy is, and how you need a solution other than punching. Spock exists to show the weaknesses of logic and the need for intuition and emotion. That was often written super badly, because the writers aren't very good at logic themselves. The very first time we meet Spock he's declaring that Kirk is about to lose a chess match, and Kirk immediately checkmates him. There is no possible way for that to be logical. But it sets up the idea that they would revisit: that Kirk's way of fusing Spock's logic and McCoy's emotions are better than either alone. Writers are often really bad at writing smart characters, because they don't actually know what the smart character knows. That's how you get the worst of TNG episodes: "Oh no, the [TECH] is broke. Yay, Wesley fixed the [TECH]". That doesn't really tell you how smart Wesley is, and it's not very interesting. So Spock couldn't not be bad at logic, because the writers couldn't and wouldn't even if they could. At its best, it worked because Nimoy and Shatner and Kelly had good chemistry and were interesting to watch being in conflict. The technical point of their conflict was irrelevant and any resolution that depended on it would suck. It worked when they succeeded because they cared about and trusted each other.

3 points by kvee 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

Yeah, but Vulcans were supposed to be kinda good at logic. And Spock was supposed to be half Vulcan/half human.

Bluestein 6y ago
And therein, the rub: Spock is "built" as a character on the struggle between his human and vulcan sides ... ... were his logic to be "flawed" that'd be par for the course.-

cjlqkjrih 6y ago

I think it's quite obvious that Spock was sometimes very good at sarcasm, and sometimes nerdy, but the rest of the crew couldn't really see it (or didn't want to expose it). He would often use logic as a mean to an end. It's adamant in the pilot story ("the Menagerie"), where he had to use somewhat specious logic to explain his behaviour, which was clearly driven by his will to save the captain. Trying to understand him by compiling statistics on the scripts is very "Dataesque".

jfengel 6y ago

Well, yeah. Stereotypes exist on Star Trek to demonstrate the flaws in the stereotypes. Worf existed to take punches because that's how you show how bad the enemy is, and how you need a solution other than punching. Spock exists to show the weaknesses of logic and the need for intuition and emotion. That was often written super badly, because the writers aren't very good at logic themselves. The very first time we meet Spock he's declaring that Kirk is about to lose a chess match, and Kirk immediately checkmates him. There is no possible way for that to be logical. But it sets up the idea that they would revisit: that Kirk's way of fusing Spock's logic and McCoy's emotions are better than either alone. Writers are often really bad at writing smart characters, because they don't actually know what the smart character knows. That's how you get the worst of TNG episodes: "Oh no, the [TECH] is broke. Yay, Wesley fixed the [TECH]". That doesn't really tell you how smart Wesley is, and it's not very interesting. So Spock couldn't not be bad at logic, because the writers couldn't and wouldn't even if they could. At its best, it worked because Nimoy and Shatner and Kelly had good chemistry and were interesting to watch being in conflict. The technical point of their conflict was irrelevant and any resolution that depended on it would suck. It worked when they succeeded because they cared about and trusted each other.