Once I had finished beating out the plots and themes for the McCoy novel, I turned my attention to Spock. I at once found a starting point for his story late in McCoy’s life, at a time when I knew that the two characters would come together in Provenance. I immediately liked that, seeing how I could tie the books together. From the two-part Next Generation episode “Unification,” I knew that Spock’s last canonical appearance had him on Romulus, where he sought to further the cause of reintegrating the Vulcan and Romulan peoples, who had common forebears. I actually wrote a complete outline in relatively short order, putting together a highly complex political tale that employed elements of the first Crucible novel, the TNG episode in which Spock appeared, and the tenth Trek film, Nemesis. From a character point of view, it explored how and why reunification had become so important to Spock.
After sitting on the outline and mulling it over for a few days, though, I decided that I had made a mistake. Too much of the story took place in a time frame far beyond that of the TOS series and movies, and the study of Spock relied on his hopes for uniting the Vulcans and Romulans, an examination far less personal than would satisfy me. Consequently, I scrapped my ideas without ever even submitting the outline to my editor.
And so I began again, this time concentrating once more on the episodes of the Original Series and asking some of the same questions about Spock that I had posed to myself about McCoy. What didn’t I know about the character, and what would be worth discovering? I reviewed Spock’s arc, beginning with the earliest canonical experiences of his life-his birth, as depicted in The Final Frontier, and his near-death ordeal at the age of seven, as seen in the animated episode “Yesteryear”- through to his experiences as a Federation special envoy in the sixth film, The Undiscovered Country. To my satisfaction, I found something that didn’t quite scan for me, though I had never before thought about it. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it is revealed that, after the Enterprise’s five-year mission under Captain Kirk, Spock returned to Vulcan and sought to achieve the Kolinahr-the shedding of all emotion. I wanted to know why he had chosen to do that.
Now, I understood as well as any Trek fan that Spock has always considered himself Vulcan, not human, and that he subscribes to the lifestyle of the former and not the latter. He purports to control his emotions-a claim observably true in most cases-but it also seemed clear to me that he felt friendship for Kirk and McCoy, even if he rarely expressed himself in quite that way. Spock also appeared satisfied with his life. Why then had he elected to leave Starfleet, to leave his friends, and to endeavor to fully purge himself of emotion?
I thought about this for some time. The Motion Picture also revealed that Captain Kirk had been promoted after the end of the five-year mission to admiral, and posted to the position of chief of Starfleet Operations. Could that have motivated Spock to do what he’d done? That seemed unconvincing and not quite right to me. I couldn’t justify Spock’s resigning his commission and wanting to totally rid himself of emotion simply because his friend had moved on in his career.
Perhaps a traumatic event had befallen the first officer, I speculated. Because of their appearances in later films, I knew that both of his parents, Amanda and Sarek, were alive during the time frame in question, though The Next Generation would reveal their later demises. Surely Spock’s own death and then his rebirth in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, respectively, could be considered disturbing, but again, both had occurred after his decision to undergo the Kolinahr.
Since I could see nothing that would have reasonably impelled Spock to go back to Vulcan and try to completely eliminate his emotion, I wondered if I could develop that drive myself. But what form would that drive take? Once more, I looked to “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and again, that episode revealed something to me that I had never before realized.
When Kirk and Spock travel back in time through the Guardian of Forever in an attempt to avert the change McCoy made-or will make-to history, the first officer counsels his captain and friend that it is of paramount importance to restore-or maintain-the timeline. This appears quite clearly to be a core principle to Spock, one that he espoused quite plainly in an earlier first-season episode, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday.” It also seems reasonable: time and events have taken place, people have lived and died, and it would be unethical, perhaps even immoral, to alter those occurrences.
But then I considered the other occasions when Spock had traveled in time, and to my surprise, I saw that he had not always acted in concert with his professed convictions. In the animated episode “Yesteryear,” he intentionally alters the flow of history for the purpose of saving both his mother’s life and his own. And in The Voyage Home, he actually suggests plucking humpback whales from the past and bringing them into the future in order to attempt to save the population of Earth from an attacking alien probe. In both instances, though Spock possessed positive intentions which ultimately bore the fruits of his labors, he nevertheless violated the principle of striving to keep the timeline intact. He never appeared to consider doing so through the course of events in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” nor did he search for any means of sparing Captain Kirk the terrible loss of Edith Keeler. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to find a method of preserving the past without the death of Keeler, but he never even seemed to try.
This amounted to a subtle distinction in behavior, I knew, but one that I thought Spock and his acute, logical mind would discern. I also believed that Spock’s understanding of what he had done-acting in opposition to principle when it suited him, but having failed to do so when it would have most benefited his best friend-could prey on him, particularly when provoked to think about it during extreme circumstances. Such circumstances, I thought, might include Jim Kirk’s death.
It occurred to me then that, though Captain Kirk had passed away-at least as far as the people of the Federation knew-aboard the Enterprise-B, as seen in the film Generations, Spock’s reaction to that loss had never been seen. Faced with his friend’s death, perhaps the recollection of Spock’s failure to even try to save the love of Kirk’s life might resurface and push him to emotional distraction, perhaps even to the point where he would decide that he could no longer live with such intense feelings. And maybe a similar event had taken place at the end of the five-year mission as well, with Kirk believed dead and Spock having to face his guilt for having failed his friend in his time of need with Edith Keeler.
But if I chose to employ such a motivation for Spock at the end of the five-year mission, might that not also hold true when Kirk apparently died aboard the Enterprise-B? I saw then that I could explore Spock’s Kolinahr not by going backward to the time between the Original Series and The Motion Picture, but by sending Spock to Vulcan to attempt a purging of his emotions a second time. In so doing, I could then also explain his first such experience, while at the same time moving the character forward from the continuity of the films.
By choosing this course for my storytelling, I understood that I would have to address Spock’s emotional side, as well as his consistent decision to practice stoicism. I knew that the tale would be difficult to tell; investigating the feelings of a Vulcan, as well as the delicate nature of his guilt with Kirk, would not be easy. Still, I thought it a risk worth taking, in part because I recalled lines from the poem “Little Gidding,” by T. S. Eliot:
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire