#poor spock

My dash did a thing

Post 1

(I’ve been mulling over this one for several days and I have a lot of ideas rattling around in my head, so bear with me. Once again, ANOTHER verrrrrrrrrrrrry long post, abandon all hope, ye who enter here, etc., etc., but if you are up for EmotionallyHurt!Spock and a very deep dive analysis, you are in the right place.)

Here is my theory: The second-to-last episode of the Original Series, All Our Yesterdays, is meant as a literal journey by Spock and Bones to the Underworld and back, in the long tradition of mythological / allegorical journeys to the Underworld in literature.

Here is the context. I am still convinced that Spock and Kirk’s romantic relationship is in crisis at this point in Season 3. The ice between them is thawing, but things have not been the same since Requiem for Methuselah. Although they love each other deeply, Spock is still very deeply hurt, and he has reached a low point, wondering who he is, where his place is, and how he and Kirk fit together. And it comes to a head in this episode, where Kirk comes very close to losing Spock forever, not just as a lover but altogether. This episode is meant to signify a battle for Spock’s very soul.

I know that there are also a lot of Spones moments in this episode. I am also convinced that Bones is closely involved with both Kirk and Spock. His involvement with them has very deep currents that run romantic, sexual and platonic at the same time, and can be read in a variety of ways. But I do think that Bones loves (romantically, sexually and platonically, requitedly) both Kirk and Spock individually, while he also believes that Kirk and Spock are each other's soulmates and hopes that the two of them will patch things up.

Now, the episode. First, Kirk, Spock and Bones arrive at the library on Sarpeidon. The system’s star will be going nova in the next few hours, and they are making a stop at the planet before it is destroyed. They are confused to find this library, and doubly confused to find a librarian there. They are even more confused to find that there are three versions of the same librarian. It turns out there is one genuine librarian, and the other two are what the librarian refers to as his "replicas," to whom he "had to delegate the simple tasks."

The librarian’s name is Atoz, which is very closely related to Athos, one of the Three Musketeers. The name connection might be a little bit of a stretch, but considering the librarian and his two replicas as a shade of the Three Musketeers is really interesting. Is Atoz a lone Musketeer, missing his other two and replacing them with shadows of himself? And now, instead of Three Musketeers, that is, three individuals working together in battle and in life, there is just one leader and two replicas? Could this be a reflection of how an embittered Spock has started to see himself (and Bones) in Kirk’s shadow? Is this foreshadowing for the way our own Three McSpirk Musketeers are about to be split up?

The librarian repeatedly urges them, “Make your escape before it's too late.” And then, because they don’t understand what the library is or how it works, and because all three of them act fast, without thinking (Kirk hears a scream and runs after it, Bones and Spock run together after Kirk), they end up separated. Kirk is trapped in one time period of the planet’s past, a fairly recent century where witch paranoia is rampant, while Spock and Bones are trapped together in a different time, in the planets long-ago ice age. They are millenia apart. Spock has, in essence, finally made his escape from Kirk, but by no will or power of his own.

Let’s stop to consider Dante’s Inferno for a moment. It begins with Dante wandering through a dark wood at night, meant to signify a dark night of the soul. Dante describes his metaphorical location as a “low place” where “the sun is silent.” He is in a similar headspace to Spock. The poet Virgil (the author of the Aenid, another epic with a journey to the Underworld and back) finds Dante in this low place and begins to lead a hesitant Dante on a visit to the Underworld. In All Our Yesterdays, Bones is Virgil. Bones accidentally chooses their destination by fiddling with the discs in the library. And Bones is Spock’s spirit guide on his journey through the dark night. And also, perhaps most importantly, without Bones, Spock would never have a chance of making it home.

Let’s also talk about the setting for a moment. They are lost in a frozen wilderness at the time of the planet's ice age. The wind howls. The cold is deadly. Bones calls it a “forsaken waste.” Hold that image in your mind for a moment.

And now think about Spock’s home on Vulcan. Hot, red, heavy. Think about how lots of Vulcan things are opposite to human things. (Green is blood. Red is nature. Logic wins over love.)

Ice Age Sarpeidon, where Spock and Bones find themselves, is a metaphorical Vulcan hell. Not the eternal flames described in Dante, which might be a comfort and a home for Spock, but a barren, freezing landscape that will shortly prove deathly dangerous to both the body and the soul.

Bones is the first to succumb to the cold, in body. He collapses on the ground, and Spock holds him in his arms, a beautifully awkward and intimate Pietà. Silly self-sacrificing Bones implores Spock to leave him behind. But Spock, even in the underworld, still remembers who he really is. He tells Bones, “We go together or not at all.” He pulls Bones up from the ground, and then they are met by this place’s lone inhabitant, Zarabeth, who leads them to shelter in a cave.

While Bones is unconscious, Spock is left to his own devices in the underworld. And, of course, his main device, as always, is logic. He tries so hard, starting by asserting to himself and to Zarabeth that he is real. When the long-lonely Zarabeth starts to wonder if she is imagining the visitors, he firmly takes her two hands in his and asserts that he does, in fact, exist. He continues to cling to reason like a liferaft (“I shall attempt to find the Captain.” “If I am to find him, there is only one possible avenue.” “It should be an equation; I should be able to resolve this problem logically.”). But the more he talks to Zarabeth, he realizes the gravity of their situation, and he starts to lose hope and become metaphorically lost. When Bones finally recovers and rouses, Spock is already very far gone.

The fact that Spock has to assert to Zarabeth that he exists is quite interesting. Spock is, first and foremost, still struggling with the question of who he is. This question has been a part of his identity all his life, but now that he has stepped over his own boundaries enough to allow himself to love Kirk, and then been so hurt by him, this question is still an open wound. The fact that he is is the only thing he is still holding onto at this point. Lost in the Underworld, he quickly forgets everything else he knows about himself, as an individual, as a Vulcan, and as a friend and lover of Bones and Kirk. Continuing with the theme of the Inferno, Spock’s descent into madness is a direct descent through all of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Consider first this scene, a scene in which Spock spends much of the time with his back to McCoy. Bones (along with us) spends much of the time staring at the back of Spock’s head, symbolizing the way he has turned away from who he truly is and those he loves.

1

SLOTH

Spock, right away, shows that he has taken Zarabeth’s understanding of the situation at face value and completely given up hope of finding Kirk and getting home.

MCCOY: I wonder where Jim is. SPOCK: Who knows. We can only hope that he is well, wherever he is. MCCOY: What do you mean, we can only hope? Haven't you done anything about it? SPOCK: What was there to do? … MCCOY: I don't believe it, Spock. It's just not like you to give up trying.

Contrast this with Spock’s behavior in Bread and Circuses, where he continued to calculate their means of escape, even grabbing the bars of their cell and wringing them with his hands, long after Bones gives up hope of escape and urges him to do the same.

2

ENVY

When McCoy rouses, he turns on the flirty Southern Gentleman charm for Zarabeth, gently poking fun at Spock in the process. Spock counters with a “Really?” and glares at him.

A moment later, Spock makes a pointed comment about Bones’ interest in the girl, shutting him down.

MCCOY: Yes, I understand. I never thought I'd hear it, but I understand. You want to stay here. As a matter of fact, you're highly motivated to stay in this forsaken waste. SPOCK: The prospect appeared quite attractive to you a moment ago.

(Also, notice how Bones’ Southern accent comes out a bit on “you wanna stay heah. As a mattah-fact, y'highly motivated”. Bones’ Southern-ness peeks out any time he is vulnerable or losing control. He is also, in some ways, affected by the gravity of their situation and losing his grip on himself, but to a lesser extent than Spock.)

Also, later, when Spock pins Bones to the wall, Bones specifically asks him if what he’s feeling is jealousy.

3

PRIDE

For once, Spock takes one of Bones’ insults (“You listen to me, you pointed-eared Vulcan”) personally. He grabs him by the collar and snarls, "I don't like that. I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure."

Bones is shocked.

MCCOY: What's happening to you, Spock? SPOCK: Nothing that shouldn't have happened long ago.

Spock flees the room. Meanwhile, back at the B-plot, Kirk finds his way back to the library.

When we return to the ice age, Spock is alone with Zarabeth. Bones is elsewhere, and without his spirit guide, Spock is descending further into madness.

Zarabeth, who has been marooned in this time and is completely alone, is a kindred spirit offering a balm to the desperately lonely and hurting Spock.

"Do you know what it’s like to be alone?" she asks. "Really alone?"

His answer is pained, barely above a whisper.

"Yes. I know what it is like."

4

GLUTTONY

Zarabeth urges Spock to eat something, and he answers, “If it pleases you.”

Zarabeth offers him a tray of meat, and the sworn vegetarian hesitates, “This is animal flesh.” She apologetically explains there is little else to eat in this climate, and he acquiesces and eats the meat. He closely watches her watching him eat it.

The trouble is not that he is starving and seeking nourishment; the trouble is that he does it for her, and she rewards him by beaming at him as he eats.

Zarabeth continues talking about her predicament and her loneliness: “To send me here alone, if that is not death, what is?” Spock knows, from Dagger of the Mind and from Requiem for Methuselah. From his own experience. Loneliness kills.

And then he accidentally calls her beautiful. He grasps at his understanding of himself one last time: “The cold must have affected me more than I realized. Please pay no attention; I am not myself. I’m behaving disgracefully. I have eaten animal flesh and I’ve enjoyed it. What is wrong with me? I tell you you’re beautiful…. But you are beautiful. Is it so wrong to tell you so?”

He leans in to kiss her, and his head snaps back just once. It is one last punch he throws in his fight to stay who he is.

And then he plunges headlong into...

5

LUST

First let me just say wow. What I wouldn’t give to see him kiss Jim like that instead Everybody deserves to be kissed the way that Spock kisses this girl (if they want to be) especially Bones. But let’s not get distracted.

So why is this acespec gay man we know and love suddenly so eager to fuck a cavewoman? This whole affair with Zarabeth is, of course, first of all, a bad case of dubcon. Spock is not in his right mind. (If you need proof, remember how he smiles after kissing her. In his own words, he is not himself.) As Bones later points out, due to their current Time Travel Shenanigans TM, Spock is reverting to the Vulcan behavior patterns of 5,000 years prior, when Vulcans were barbaric and warlike and propelled by their basest instincts.

(There has been lots of discussion about how and why this is happening to Spock, and the best explanation I’ve seen relates to a weak telepathic network between all Vulcans. This network is demonstrated when a nearby Vulcan starship is destroyed at the beginning of The Immunity Syndrome, and Spock feels the deaths of 400 Vulcans at once and has a visceral reaction to that feeling.

Essentially, all Vulcans are always connected through the telepathic network in their minds, which provides a sort of groupthink inner monologue to every Vulcan. So when Spock returns to 5,000 years prior, the groupthink monologue is more of a mob mentality. The pre-Surak Vulcans in his head are urging him to all kinds of animalistic barbarities – “Eat meat! Attack your rival! Continue the species by fucking a girl!” And these urges are driving him to this uncharacteristic madness.)

But my argument is that Spock’s heartbreak over his troubles with Kirk is also driving him to madness. He is lost. He is flailing. He is journeying through hell and he picked a fight with his spirit guide, who has now left him alone. He just tried meat and liked it, which was shocking to him. He is thinking that perhaps he should also try pussy; maybe he would also like that? It would be equally shocking, but apparently it's possible. If Kirk is so into women that he can’t give them up for his love of Spock, maybe there is something to it? So he picks up the girl and lays her on the bed.

6

RAGE

Now we come to the episode’s most famous scene. Bones is fully recovered and puts his foot down. They must go home, and they are leaving now or never. Bones gets desperate and gets in Zarabeth’s space, accusing her of leading Spock astray. And Spock, his body visibly thrumming with both rage and lust, throws all of his weight at McCoy, grabbing him by the neck and pinning him to the cave wall, one hip between McCoy’s legs. McCoy’s arms are around Spock, one wrist pinned under his arm and one hand wrapped desperately around Spock’s other arm. It is both violent and intensely erotic. They stare into each other’s eyes, breathe each other’s air for a long moment. (And all the Spones shippers are on the floor screaming.)

But Bones’ voice is small, incredulous, weak, as he asks, “Are you trying to kill me, Spock?” The Southern accent ("tryin' t'kill me") is poking through again. He is terrified. Contrast this with the cool, collected, badass Bones who faced Khan without flinching as Khan threatened him with a knife to the neck in Space Seed.

This is not just danger. This is not just lust. This rage is also a betrayal. Spock’s betrayal of who he and Bones are to each other, and Spock’s betrayal of himself.

Bones fights his fear, regains his wits, and continues, mirroring some of Spock's anger:

MCCOY: Is that what you really want? Think. What are you feeling? Rage? Jealousy? Have you ever had those feelings before?

Spock loosens his grip on Bones’ throat, but keeps his hand on his neck.

SPOCK: This is impossible. Impossible. I am a Vulcan.

Spock straightens up and drops his hand. McCoy holds him tighter, attempting to moor him to reality. MCCOY: The Vulcan you knew won't exist for another five thousand years. Think, man. What's happening on your planet right now, this very moment? SPOCK: My ancestors are barbarians. Warlike barbarians. MCCOY: Who nearly killed themselves off with their own passions. Spock, you're reverting into your ancestors five thousand years before you were born!

Spirit Guide Bones, in his own way, is trying desperately to save Spock by reminding him of who he really is.

SPOCK: I've lost myself. I do not know who I am. (He turns to Zarabeth.) Can we go back? ZARABETH: I don't know. I only know that I can't go back. MCCOY: I know I'm going to try, Spock, because my life is back there, and I want that life.

Bones departs the cave, into the frozen wilderness, and Spock and Zarabeth follow. They return to the place from which they entered, but they are unable to find the portal.

And then, finally, Spock is overtaken by the seventh Deadly Sin:

7

GREED

Greed, in this sense, is not just about possessions; it is about being too attached to the things of this world. And in this case, Spock is too attached to the frozen world itself. Even though he could never make a home here, even though he will die if he stays here, even though the star is minutes from going nova and Kirk and the ship are in grave danger, even as they are so close to finding the portal and going home, Spock makes one last vain attempt to stay behind. Although he is out there trying to help McCoy, his heart isn't in it, and he doesn't let go of Zarabeth's hand. He urges McCoy to come back to the cave.

When Kirk first calls out to them, Bones is the first to answer. Spock hesitates. He turns to Zarabeth. He urges the doctor to go ahead. Bones repeatedly urges him to come along and Spock ignores him.

He then tries to shove Bones through the door without him, but the door will not work if they don’t go together. As Spock had said when they first arrived there, before he had lost sight of who he was: “We go together or not at all.”

In the end, the thing that brings Spock home is the love of both Bones and Kirk. Bones, his spirit guide, will not, literally cannot, leave without him, and Spock must choose to go home with Bones because that is what Bones wants. And the only way they can find their way is that Kirk calls to them both repeatedly through the portal.

To the sound of Kirk's voice repeatedly calling out, Zarabeth lets go of Spock's hand and walks away from him. Spock watches her like Orpheus taking a glance at Eurydice, losing her by watching her. Spock realizes that there is no place for him in the Underworld and she will never join him outside of it.

I read a post once about how Spock and Bones share a mind, Kirk and Bones share a heart, and Kirk and Spock share a soul. It is interesting that Spock and Bones cannot make it back to their world on their own, with just a mind between them. They cannot find the portal when they are missing a part of their heart and a part of their soul. And so Kirk calls out to them from their own world, and they must follow the sound of his voice back home. Bones has been pulled home, since the beginning, by the other half of his heart. Spock, in turn, must choose to answer the call of the other half of his soul.

And so Spock and Bones step over the threshold and return from the Underworld, together.

Kirk is overjoyed to see them. He caresses both of their backs lovingly, possessively. But Spock and Bones hardly react at all to being reunited with Kirk. They reenter their world stoically, their heads bowed. Their shared experience weighs heavily on their shared mind.

Kirk turns away for a moment to communicate with the ship. Bones stares intently at Spock, and Spock shakes his head. "There's no further need to observe me, Doctor. As you can see, I've returned to the present in every sense."

“But it did happen, Spock” Bones says. There is so much love and sympathy in his voice as he says it.

“Yes, it happened,” Spock says. “But that was 5,000 years ago.”

Like Dante, who discovers upon reaching purgatory that every sin is, somehow, a sin of love (too much love for the wrong things, not enough love for the right things), Spock sets his face like flint and tries to remember that, for Vulcans, logic wins over love. As he well knows, to know love is to know pain.

Spock has found his way back to where he belongs. (“At his side, as if you've always been there and always will.") But his heart is still broken. Kirk is still an open wound in his soul. He still does not know who he is. Although he has escaped the frozen Underworld, coming home is not the Eden paradise he dreamed of with the space hippies in The Way to Eden. Here, by Kirk’s side; this is one of the “self-made purgatories” (for which my blog is named) that Spock mentioned in This Side of Paradise.

To Spock; heartbroken, tortured Spock, being back at Kirk’s side might just be a different kind of hell.