So apparently I missed the part where in all of the Star Trek: Discovery news they mentioned that Sarek, Spock’s father, will be a recurring character on the show.
I thought about that a bit…
And it now bothers me.
Why Sarek?
Sarek feels like a poor choice for a recurring character in the series.
Throughout the previous Star Trek series Sarek has always been seen through the lens of Spock. We’ve only ever seen him as Spock’s father, a secondary character, and we were able to identify with that relationship.
Sarek was distant and hard on his son.
Sarek didn’t make an active effort to be in Spock’s life.
Sarek and Spock walked away from each other.
Spock’s heart was conflicted for decades.
Sarek was the father that many people experienced in their real lives.
That’s the lens we’ve seen him through.
And I can’t help but think that kind of emotional turmoil, that’s inherent to the conflicted father / son relationship of Sarek and Spock, will be destroyed by the sort of mundane portrayal that’ll occur in Star Trek: Discovery.
And I think that’ll be a sad thing to lose.
It’s one of the more honest relationship developments that occurred in the earlier Star Trek series.
Nothing has been well-written since Voyager and that show has the worst example of Star Trek writing of all-time (Tuvix).