#james tv

In Who Mourns For Adonais when uhura has to fix the communications panel he tells her "I can imagine noone, better equipped to handle this, miss uhura."

At first i thought it was a subtle way to show spock and uhura's friendship, especially bc he calls her "miss uhura" and not "lieutenant", which he usually does.

And while i still think that is partially true, he does that same thing in The Tholian Web. When chekov and uhura are released from sickbay and he comes to the bridge he says "I am glad your back" and "your presence has been missed" (or something to those words) to them.

He obviously cares about the enterprise crew and always seems to make sure they hear how important they are. My guess is that he took a psychology class back at the academy but I also believe he knows how it feels like to believe you are never enough due to his half human status on vulcan and his alien status in starfleet. He never wants the people under him to feel like that so he tells them whenever he can. It also helps keep the crew morale up.

This is interesting because in other episodes he isn't afraid to say that he is also half human, for example in Spectre of the Gun, when bones and scotty accuse him of being cold towards chekovs death.

This happens more often in the third season which makes me think that he started accepting his humanity more and more after falling in love becoming friends with kirk, who accepts him completely.

But in this scene he doesn't tell that to surak.

This might be because he sees surak as this perfect vulcan and idolizes him like kirk idolizes lincoln and doesn't want to be seen as a "bad" vulcan by him.

But also we have to keep in mind that this version of surak is one from spock's mind, so it is likely that he projects a lot of vulcan expectations he faces on him. He got bullied for being half human, so surak must think the same as his peers because otherwise they would be illogical.

Spock sees in surak everything he should be as a vulcan but isn't, someone who has overcome his natural emotionality and saved vulcan society from desctruction.

The whole time you get the feeling that something weird is going on but it's only in the end that we understand what happened and how this man killed an entire race for his wife's death.

And what should picard do now? What punishment would even fit the crime?

I mean first we have kirk asking spock if he was trying to tell him something by buying that specific book, quoting "it was the best of times it was the worst of times."

Kirk might have interpreted it the way that spock was talking about their first five years mission together. They meet the first time and are coworkers, then they become friends, and eventually spock leaves in order to undergo kohlinar. All these feelings that kirk forces spock to deal with are so strange and hard to understand and the whole repressing his human side that spock had going on wasn't exactly helping either. In that way those were the worst years. But also, spock finally had a friend, someone he could trust and who would accept hin completely. He doesn't have to be vulcan or human, he can just be spock. And thus, it was the best of times.

But spock dismisses this. He might just be lying but in the end kirk understands what he was actually trying to say.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Spock doesn't want to just tell kirk about how those first years were for him. While it might have been complicated and messy, it still led them exactly where they are now. And spock loving kirk is just "a far far better thing that he does, than he has ever done."

I have not read the book but with it ending with a self sacrifice to save the characters friends is also telling of course. And that is what that quote is about. Knowing that his friends (And kirk specifically) will be safe spock will rest better than he has ever before.

And while spock couldn't have predicted his death when he bought the book for kirk he still knew that he would do what the character does for him.