Spock: “You
are proposing I better balance my Human and Vulcan natures?”
Dr Aspen: “I’m
saying, maybe you’re neither.”
Spock: “That
is nonsensical. If I’m not Human or Vulcan, what am I?”
Dr Aspen: “I
mean, that’s not my question to answer.”
- Star Trek, Strange New Worlds, "The Serene Squall"
In a recent
episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original
1960s Star Trek series, which tells the story of the Enterprise before Captain
James T. Kirk was in command, Spock and Dr. Aspen – a non-binary counsellor at
a starbase on the edge of Federation space – discuss the eternal question of
his nature. Genetically, he is half-Human and half-Vulcan. He was raised on Vulcan.
He’s been brought up to temper his emotions, as per Vulcan custom. Humans are
tempestuous. Vulcans are logical.
Dr. Aspen suggests
that Spock looks beyond the boxes that society puts us in. To find language that
describes what he is to himself and let that be known, rather than trying to
find his place in a binary choice or even at a point on a spectrum.
The core of
this episode – “The Serene Squall” - is about how we define ourselves in
relation to work and personal relationships. And it strikes clearly at the
heart of how our outward appearances aren’t really the key to who we are. Dr. Aspen,
it turns out, is really Captain Angel, a space pirate who is trying to steal
the Enterprise. And yet, even that turn doesn’t undermine a fundamental part of
their nature – they are non-binary. And their pronouns are consistently
throughout the episode.
Though Strange
New Worlds is set in the past of Spock we know, the character continues to
struggle with his identity throughout Star Trek and the films he’s in,
perhaps never entirely coming to terms with who he is but knowing that his complicated
nature can help him see past the confines of the community where he was raised.
Spock was
not originally conceived as analogous to non-binary people, of course. He was
simply created as the “outsider” – a character to remind the audience that this
show was set in space.
In that way,
though, the outsider Spock quickly became a character into which many different
kinds of real-life outsiders poured their hopes, feelings and own emotions. In
a TV series that strived for representation when TV was seriously lacking in
it, Spock became the person who represented a lot of other people who had not see themselves on screen.
*
In an
interview with the Chicago Sun-Times in 2011, Jennifer Beals – star of Flashdance
and The L Word – discussed growing up biracial in America. She endured taunts
of “whitey” from darker-skinned African Americans in her south-side Chicago
neighbourhood. As she grew older, she went looking for images of girls that
looked like her and role-models that spoke to a multi-racial heritage.
“As a
biracial girl growing up in Chicago, there wasn’t a lot there, positive or
otherwise. I mean, I had Spock. And that was kind of it.”
Mr Spock,
the half-Vulcan, half-Human First Officer on the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise, filled in for something that Beals needed growing up in the late
60s and early 70s. He represented her experience of being from two worlds and
not feeling comfortable in either.
The
character, first played by Leonard Nimoy in the first Star Trek pilot “The
Cage” (produced in 1964), has grown a lot in the nearly six decades since he
first appeared on television – and he continues to reflect and represent a
whole range of minority voices, even in a film and TV landscape that is far
more diverse than when TV audiences met him in 1966.
1960s
television was very white, even during the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement
throughout that decade. Films on the big screen were advancing in small steps
that looked like big strides compared to the characters that were invited into
people’s living rooms.
Star
Trek made bold
steps forward for multi-racial casts on television, with African-American actor
Nichelle Nichols and Japanese-American actor George Takei as part of the main crew
of the Enterprise.
Leonard Nimoy
himself was born to Jewish parents who had immigrated from the Ukraine. As an
outsider, raised in Catholic Boston, Nimoy brought a complicated personal
history to the role of Spock. And he imbued his own sense of not-fitting-in to
the role of the alien on board the ship. Mr Spock was the explicit outsider,
with pointed ears, he stood out amongst the rest of the cast and could always
be relied on to raise a quizzical eyebrow when he didn’t understand a
particular human foible.
In fact,
the famous Vulcan salute – a raised hand with separation between the middle and
ring fingers into a “V” shape – was developed by Nimoy based on a Jewish
blessing. In a future in which Gene Roddenberry considered that humanity had
evolved “beyond religion”, the series was still being created by people whose
religion was central to their lives.
The entire
original run of Star Trek in the 1960s was plagued by possible
cancellation. The original pilot was deemed “too cerebral” and even as the
first season aired, the network wanted to keep Spock in the background for fear
of, excuse the pun, alienating viewers.
The opposite
was true. Viewers of the show started to claim Spock as their favourite.
Leonard Nimoy was receiving more fan mail than William Shatner, who played lead
character, Captain Kirk. When contract negotiations came around for the second
season, Nimoy was in a position to demand more because so much of the audience
were big fans of his character in particular.
*
The series
was cancelled after two seasons and a massive letter-writing campaign from fans
brought the show back for a third and final season. In some ways, this act –
changing the minds of a network – fanned the nascent flames of future fandom.
After this, fan conventions would begin, and Star Trek actors made appearances
across the United States in those fallow years between the TV show and the film
franchise.
Also in this period, fanzines started to crop up – sharing their love of the show through artwork and fan fiction – stories based on the show and characters. Most notably in fan fiction history was a story called “A Fragment Out of Time” by Australian fan Diane Marchant, the first example of slash fiction, pairing Kirk and Spock in a scene of homosexual intimacy.
Notating stories
of this queer relationship as “Kirk/Spock” – with a slash between their names -
is where the phrase “slash” fiction comes from. And while writers of the
original series denied there was any such relationship between the characters,
that never stopped fan fiction writers before or since.
Queering
these two characters in slash fiction is both a tool of female fantasy, as well
as an explicit example of LGBTQI+ fans looking for representation they couldn’t
find elsewhere. If Spock is the outsider, the character could easily stand in
for the person with a secret or the person whose community shuns him. As
Half-Human, other Vulcans aren’t always trustworthy of Spock.
And while a
non-binary interpretation of Spock was decades away, perhaps the combination of
the “canon” stories of the TV series with the K/S fiction might suggest the
character is bisexual rather than just homosexual. Though later series in the Star
Trek franchise would explore sexuality and gender diversity in a more
explicit way, and creator Gene Roddenberry suggested his future was more
sexually liberated than modern-day earth, it still required audiences to read
into these things until many years later.
*
The outsider
character continues to be a staple on Star Trek shows even now, with
Spock being the blue print for all those who would come later. The Next
Generation had both Data (an android looking for humanity) and Worf (a
Klingon, whose people were long at war with the Human- and Vulcan-dominated
Federation). Deep Space Nine had Odo, who begins the series alone in the
universe, not knowing where he has even come from and who his people are. The
character of Dax is not played as an outsider but their species – the Trill – does
change gender presentation over their very long lifespans. More recently, Discovery
includes First Officer Saru, whose species can sense fear when approaching – but
he also hides the secret that he has left his homeworld behind without anyone
else on his planet knowing.
The multiple
Star Trek shows that exist now don’t have to hold back when it comes to representing
diverse genders or sexualities. Blu del Barrio, a non-binary actor, plays Adira,
a human character bonded with a Trill symbiont. Ian Alexander, a trans non-binary
actor, plays Gray, a Trill host. Together, these two actors explore all the possibilities
of the Trill species that had traditionally been performed by cis actors.
On Strange
New Worlds, Spock continues to shine as a beacon for all those looking for representation
that is not there. But as the character has become iconic, it’s tough to see
Spock as the “outsider” anymore. The name is known across the world, even to
people who don’t watch the series. But the series also has the character of
Hemmer, an alien whose species are born blind but navigate the world through
different senses. The character is played by Bruce Horak, a blind actor – boldly
going where no Star Trek series has gone before, having a blind actor as
a regular cast member.
*
Nearly 60
years after the original series was created, the franchise continues to expand its
core ideal of looking at the human condition through multiple viewpoints. As
progressive as the original series strived to be, the show in 1966 couldn’t be
what its multiple progenies could be in the 1990s or can be in 2022 and beyond.
The basis of Vulcan philosophy is “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination” – a celebration of the vast array of variables and diversity across the universe. Spock, regardless of how he defines himself, is a character that has been used as a stand-in for countless marginalised people over the decades.
The fictional universe may have expanded greatly and representation may be light years ahead of tis original conception, but one of its original ingredients continues to stand in when viewers can't see themselves in the Star Trek that is on their screens right now. Spock may be one person but he contains multitudes. He's infinite diversity in infinite combinations, all by himself.
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