Mr. Spock
Born: 2230 on planet Vulcan
Service Number: S179-276 SP
Mr. Spock is the ship's Science Officer, in charge of all scientific departments aboard the Enterprise. This also makes him the ship's number two ranking officer. His bridge position is at the Library-Computer Station. Which he can operate with uncanny skill. He can extract and interpret complex information with great speed and can even read memory bank "bleeps" direct, without the voice-translation needed by his fellow crew members.
Spock is the product of an interplanetary marriage between his mother, Amanda Grayson, a native of Earth who taught school, and his father, Sarek, a native of the planet Vulcan who was a Vulcan diplomat in the Federation. Marriages like theirs are not unknown, but they are rare for the personalities of Vulcans and Terrans are not normally compatible.
He has inherited characteristics from both parents. His Vulcan side is definitely the stronger. He also thinks of himself as a Vulcan.
The alien influence is most obviously represented by his stoic temperament, upswept eyebrows, mildly slanted eyes, yellowish complexion, and somewhat enlarged, pointed ears. His hair style is in the Vulcan mode. His blood is T-Negative, rare even for a Vulcan, although it contains human factors.
Spock's physical characteristics are the evolutionary result of the environmental conditions on planet Vulcan. It has a hot, dry climate, a relatively small amount of surface water, and an exceptionally thin atmosphere. The enlarged, pointed ears result from the need to "cup" the tenuous sound waves more efficiently in the thin atmosphere.
All of Spock's sensory organs are slightly better-developed than those of Terrans. he can withstand higher temperatures, go for longer periods of time without water, and can tolerate a higher level of pain. He can also exercise complete voluntary control over his consciousness and over pain. Control is so total that, at the extreme level, his physical appearance would closely resemble the cataleptic state.
Vulcan basic belief is nonviolence. Vulcans do not believe in killing in any form. However, even Spock admits, that Vulcans are not totally incapable of killing. If given sufficient reason, a Vulcan will kill quite efficiently, but it must be a very logical reason. Normally, they will kill only in self-defense, and then only after first having expended all other means available to avoid it. It is a matter of record that Vulcans in the Space Service must occasionally be order to kill because they did not think the situation logically justified it.
This doesn't mean that Spock will not resort to physical violence of a lesser degree, again if logical. The "Nerve Pinch" is applied with the fingers of his right to the area on the top of the right shoulder, near the base of the neck, it blocks blood and nerve responses to the brain and produces instant unconsciousness.
They may hunt for the skill involved in tracking but eons ago ceased to kill the animal they are tracking. As a vegetarian, the mere idea of eating animal carcasses, cooked or not, is revolting. Spock's diet is vegetables, though limited to the simplest of vegetable life forms.
Spock's stoic temperament, his refusal to say anything or do anything not based solely on logic, is also a reflection of his Vulcan heritage. Complete adherence to logic is the primary motivating factor in Vulcan metal process. Of necessity, complete suppression of emotions is required, lest logic be influenced in any way.
Over a many centuries, the Vulcans have practiced both total concentration and complete suppression of emotions. From the time of his birth, a Vulcan child is thought that to show emotion is highly improper, that it is considered an extreme breach of good taste. The reason for suppressing emotions should be obvious. Emotions gets in the way of order and tranquility. It is undeniably true that emotion has killed more people on Earth than any other cause. Vulcans long ago concluded that emotion was dangerous, set about to repress it and replace it with logic.
In many ways logic made the planet Vulcan superior to Earth. Its last ten centuries have been much more peaceful than Earth's past eras.
Because of his mother's origin, Spock does have a human side to his personality. A human side with emotions. The results is a continual struggle within himself to suppress his feelings. But his vulcan half is normally in control. Conditioned from childhood not only to deny but also to be ashamed of emotion, Spock thrusts feeling aside and finds a "logical" rationalization to explain it.
All Vulcans pay for their repression of emotions. At certain times in their lives the Vulcan male is overcome with the mating urge. (It is very much like a "rutting season".) Having withheld emotion for so long, they must succumb to a period of time sufficient to get it totally out of their system. Their behavior is based on a combination of Vulcan law, tradition, and instinct. When the time comes, in that time and in that place, it is entirely logical and entirely proper.
The specific time interval between these occurrences varies from male to male and by other circumstances. The average is about once every seven Earth years when a Vulcan is separated from his people as is Spock, more often if living among his own kind. It is possible that Spock might not follow the usual Vulcan pattern, since he has the human half influencing him as well.
Another unique Vulcan ability exhibited by Spock is a type of ESP that the Vulcans refer to as "mind-melding." He can merge his mind with that of another intelligence and read its thoughts. While he will use this ability when circumstances make it absolutely necessary, he dislikes doing so because the process requires emotional contact as well. It robs him of his stoic mask and revealing too much of his inner self. The physical cost of this process is also very high.
Spock is classified as a Vulcan, he is in reality neither Vulcan nor Terran. He is biologically, emotionally, and even intellectually a half-breed.
Mr. Spock's father, Sarek, is a Vulcan ambassador and prior to entering the diplomatic service was a highly esteemed physicist on Vulcan. Sarek's father too, was a Vulcan ambassador, and Spock therefore has a distinguished Vulcan family heritage behind him. Sarek is 102 years old, or about middle-aged, in terms of Vulcan years (the Vulcan life span is about 205 years).
Amanda Grayson, Spock's mother, was a schoolteacher when she met and married Sarek. She is 58, also about middle-aged, in terms of Earth years, and had been married to a Vulcan princess with whom he had a son named Sybok.
When he was five years old, Spock came home upset because Vulcan boys had tormented him, saying he wasn't really Vulcan. As a child, Spock had a pet sehlat, (sort of a live Vulcan teddy bear). As a child, Spock was raised with an older half-brother, Sybok, until Sybok was ostracized from Vulcan society because he rejected the Vulcan dogma of pure logic. Spock himself endured condsiderable anti-human rejudice on the part of many Vulcans, an experience that may have later made it easier for Spock to find a home in the interstellar community of Starfleet. At the age of seven. Spock was telepathically bonded with a young Vulcan girl named T'Pring. Less than a marriage, but more than a betrothal, the telepathic touch would draw the two together when the time was right after both came of age.
Tradition bound, Sarek had logically expected Spock to follow in his footsteps, first by going to the Vulcan Science Academy, and after that, by serving his race as a scientist. Spock also wanted to be a Vulcan scientist, but as he grew older, he had begun to realize the full impact of his mixed background. A half-Vulcan half-Terran was out of place on either Vulcan or Earth (something his father, a full Vulcan, could not understand). The struggle to reconcile his two halves would torment him for much of his life. This realization was what led him into the Space Service. Because of its makeup, the Service was likely to accept him on the basis of his talent and ability and ignore his mixed parentage. Thus, within his own frame of reference, Spock's decision was logical.
Spock was the first Vulcan to enrolled in the Space Academy
and after his graduation eight years later, entered the Space Service. In
doing so, he ran completely counter to his father's sense of logic and to
Vulcan tradition, this act alienated Sarek and Spock, and for 18 years they
did not speak as father and son. The heavy weight of Vulcan tradition had
created a barrier through which neither could pass. Until father and son
were thrown together in a desperate situation involving the life or death
of Sarek that the barrier was broken. There is at last a measure of understanding
between them and Sarek now comprehends the terrible loneliness of the world
in which his half-Vulcan son must dwell.
As of 2267, Spock had earned the Vulcanian Scientific Legion of Honor, had been twice decorated by Starfleet Command, also has a A7 computer expert classification.
Mr. Spock has served aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise for 13 years, the first 9 to to 11 of them under Captain Christopher Pike, (Spock said he worked with Pike for 11 years, 4 months, which suggests he was young enough when he first came on board the Enterprise that he was probably still attending Starfleet Academy. Because of this, we speculate that Spock's first year on the Enterprise was as a cadet.), the last four under Captain James Kirk. Spock is intensely loyal to Kirk and friendship exists between them, although the Science Officer would be quick to deny any "affection." He "logically" contends that his interest in Kirk is based solely on the fact that Kirk is an unusually good commander and the odds are against getting a better replacement. Spock distinguished himself greatly as science officer aboard this ship.
As with all of Mr. Spock's relationships, they are strictly formal. He never calls the Captian by his first name, except when placed under extreme emotionalstress. He usually addresses Kirk as "Captain" or "Sir". He never calls the Doctor anthing but "Doctor", or "Dr. McCoy." Even the Doctor's nurse, Miss Christine Chapel (whom he knows to be in love with him), is always addressed as "Nurse" or Miss Chapel."
Something akin to a feud exists, on the surface, between Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock. Superficially, Spock regards McCoy as an archaic, bumbling country doctor, usually achieving cures through sheer luck rather than applied skill. In return, McCoy regards Spock as little more than a sometimes useful piece of computer equipment. There is a continuing verbal exchange between them in which Spock attempts to penetrate the Doctor's mask of cynicism with sword strokes of logic, while McCoy attempts to reach Spock's emotional inner self with the surgically sharp barbs of a master cynic. Both are often successful in their efforts. Underneath it all, each respects the other for the talent he possesses, but there seems to be some sort of unspoken agreement between them that neither will ever openly admit this mutual respect.
Dr. McCoy regards Spock as somewhat of a medical phenomenon and is continually worried about treating him should be become ill. This concern stems from Spock's internal physiology, which is quite different from that of Terrans. His heart is located in the lower right area of his chest, approximatelywhere the human liver would be. He has green blood, of a different composition from human blood, and a pulse rate of 242 beats per minute. (Spock blood is green because of traces of copper and nickel.)
Mr. Spock is by nature extremely precise in everything he does. Even if he is forced by circumstance to state an approximation, he will try to locate any data at all that will increase the accuracy of his statement.
There are no other Vulcans aboard the Enterprise, And Spock's loneliness is increased by the fact that a Vulcan does not make the most interesting social company for humans. He engages in three-dimensional chess, using the ship's computer as his opponent. Sometimes he plays an unusual Vulcan harp. Being an computer expert, his primary interest lies in logic and avstract mathematics, and he spends a great deal of his lleisure time engaged in pure research. This may be a form of escape for Spock, but it is also unquestionably a source of genuine enojoyment.
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