Spock/Uhura: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Part 1: The Good)

Spock/Uhura: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Part 1: The Good.

As you’ve noticed, I am kind of an S/U shipper and unabashedly so. To be honest, I don’t care too much about fanon breakups and whatever one needs to make Kirk/Spock (or Kirk/Uhura or McCoy/Spock) to happen. Hell, I've written McCoy/Uhura, so I have no room to speak (I must admit it's because I haven't gotten my head around Spock as a character yet). I should clarify that my only beef with K/S is in regard to it being made canon in the Reboot universe, because it epically bugged me with the tension between the two and how big of a screw-up they would likely have trying to explain how Uhura deals with it.

Anyway.

I like S/U because, though student/teacher, it isn’t “ick nast” like many others are. It’s pretty obvious that they see each other as intellectual equals and they enjoy each others company. And the way Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto play the two has chemistry all over the place (if you see any premiere pics of them together, this is soooo obvious). The kisses in the film weren’t wooden, and “I’ll be monitoring your frequency” became a pretty heartfelt line.

I guess we can start with that as the beginning of The Good. However surprising that was (though if you thought it was surprising I’m surprised at you) for you, it was nice to see Nyota Uhura have someone appreciate how awesome she is. And being the equally awesome Mr. Spock is really something.

If you are unfamiliar, Spock/Uhura was what people in TOS wanted to make actual canon, but it was the 60’s and there was no way anyone was trying to do an interracial couple then. There’s a few cute stories about it floating around the intertubes, but I won’t be using them for this.

Continuing with the good, there’s been plenty of good fan response (I’ll get to the bad fan response later). Especially with women of color and well…some women in general. To be honest, I don’t hang around a lot of circles with ST fanboys. I’m sure they don’t really care. I was of course happy because…

Excuse my capslock…

OH MY GOD THERE’S A BLACK WOMAN IN A MOVIE DATING SOMEONE WHO ISN’T BLACK AND THERE ISN’T AN “OMG GUURRRLLLL YOU’RE DATING THAT WHITE BOY” SUBTEXT.

Praise the Lord (Raptor Jesus, Cthulu, whathaveyou).

I consider this a pretty big step, especially since Uhura is A: From Africa (Kenya, to clarify) and B: Not a “racially ambiguous” character. Yes, she has bone straight hair, but who knows what kind of hair treatments are available in the 23rd century. Zoe is about my complexion as well, so there’s also that sort of “YAY” moment about it. There are very few minorities in sci-fi, and when one is portrayed in a way that doesn’t make the populace gouge their eyes out, I think we’ve made some progress.

So, the good?

-Uhura isn’t just someone who sits and hails frequency, also bagged the finest Vulcan in Starfleet (yeah he’s the only one, but he’s still smoking)
-Spock is given a love interest that won’t die (she better not |:<)
-A Black female character is portrayed in a non-stereotypical way (though the miniskirt is a bit of a peeve)

…there’s more but I can’t put it in neat little bullet points.

The next part of this will be The Bad, in which we delve a little in S/U backlash before we go deep into the quicksand with The Ugly, where the racism and sexism of fandom shows itself quite happily.

Thanks for reading!

Mini-Blog Uniform #1: Immortality in Star Trek

Shorts:
Immortality in the ST Universe

[Shorts will just be more of a ramble on a point, and less dissecting. A larger post will be posted later this week.]

If time travel is possible in the ST universe, of course immortality can be. In DS9, there was the cellular regeneration and entertainment chamber, which teaches cells new “mitochondrial tricks”. Eight hours a day was enough to make sure you stayed alive for as long as you continued the usage. TNG and VOY both involved members of the Q Continuum, immortal beings that were able to alter the fabric of reality (with one Q in particular, for the lolz). The Companion in the TOS episode “Metamorphosis” kept Cochrane immortal and was immortal itself, until it gave that up to merge with Nancy Hedford. In another TOS episode, the Greek gods continued to be immortal, but let their bodies be taken apart by the wind to the point they could no long reform.

Now, immortality has been a constant staple in sci-fi and fantasy (vampires anyone). Anyone can look at recent shows and tell you this idea isn’t going away anytime soon. You’re probably asking, how is this sociological?

You have to bring in the element of fear humans have of death. Religions state we have eternal live through the soul, or that we are reincarnated into other animals and people. Others think there’s nothing at all when you die, so why worry? Much like space, death is an unknown variable. Even people who die and are brought back have very different experiences. Let alone, recent studies have shown that such experiences could just be a “final dream” of sorts.

Through sci-fi, we calm our fears. There are places where you can go be immortal, or there are beings out there that will live past the lifetimes of all of us. So, there’s no need to worry, as long as we find it.

But...we’ll be dead by then anyway. And unless you get shot to a cool planet, you aren’t coming back in any universe.
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I’ve been sort of swamped with school, so I apologize for the sporadic posting. I have a lot of math homework @_@.
Anyway, feel free to post your thoughts on immortality in sci-fi in the comments. It's always good to have a discussion.