Bruna. 28. Bisexual. Brazil. I've got a film degree.
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I’m gonna go ahead and be a film snob and talk about why this is one of my favorite shots from TOS. (I could also say that it’s one of my favorite scenes, because the entire scene actually consists of a single shot.)
We don’t see a lot of bald expressions of emotion in film and television, especially if that emotion is fear or sadness or vulnerability. Dramas will give us some tears, but they always cut a way after a few seconds because a closeup of someone crying is deeply uncomfortable and most movies and TV shows aren’t in the business of making their audiences uncomfortable. It just doesn’t sell well.
But in this scene the camera never looks away. It follows Spock as he sits down at the table, and it circles him as he cries. But there are no cuts. We don’t even get music to create some distance, make it all a little more palatable; we just hear sobs and mumbled math equations.
It’s absolutely excrutiating. It would be excruciating no matter who we were watching, because we are so unaccustomed to seeing unadulterated emotion. And then there’s the fact that it’s a man. And that it’s Spock.
Fifty years later and this is still one of the most daring filmmaking decisions I’ve ever seen on TV (I of course can’t be exactly sure who made it, but I’m assuming it was the director of the episode, Marc Daniels). This shot lasts 1 minute and 45 seconds. We’re in the middle of space and in the middle of a high-stakes episode where the crew is going crazy and the ship is going to blow up or some shit and everyone’s lives are in danger, but we pause 1 minute and 45 seconds to have an uncomfortably human moment with an alien who doesn’t even want to be human, and it’s so awful and amazing.
If you’ve read I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy discusses this decision in great detail. He talks about how the original script for this episode didn’t include Spock crying in earnest, but rather a hysterical/over-the-top type of crying that was intentionally played up for humor. Leonard asked if they could change the content/motive of the scenes so that the audience could see Spock’s vulnerability and humanity, since they hadn’t gotten any insight about his character like that prior to this episode. The director agreed to give it a go, so the script was rewritten to suit the change in tone.
As for this scene in particular, they pretty much had just ONE chance to get the whole thing on film—due to both physical film/budget and time constraints—and they nailed it.
All those years later, and it was still one of Leonard’s favorite moments of the show.
