Written 2^nd Sept 2014

Thanks to high speed internet, and a subscription of £80/year I am watching the first series of Star Trek. At the moment, none of the thousands of viewing options available seemed like a good idea. This is fantastic television. The future hasn’t happened yet and soon what I am watching does not look dated. In fact, there is a chance that a great science fiction series could actually shape the future.

I’m going to focus on First Officer Spock, the Vulcan. Or at least the half Vulcan. In all the original series and the movie franchise, Spock battles with his logical side, which predominates and his human emotional side which is regarded as a weakness. The human side is valued by his colleagues, but not as much as his cold logical side. It’s almost as if the crew have outsourced the cold, calculating qualities they don’t want to have. Most of the time their captain operates on guesses and hunches. This is almost a quality we use in modern life. We have security services working on our behalf, doing things that most of us wouldn’t agree with. They are our Spock.

My main point is that could Spock even exist? After all, the Vulcans were an ancient race living on a rocky planet, with nothing but logic and pointy ears to differentiate us from them. They were of course, a different species. And if they were, Spock’s mother could not have given birth to him. This may suggest that Vulcans and humans had a common ancestor and had not been separated for too many centuries.

Spock may find himself as a mule. A mule being the infertile off-spring of a horse and a donkey. So, perhaps biologically Star Trek is correct, as Spock never had any children. At least, not in the first incarnation before the re-boot of the 2010’s.