SPOCK BECOMES A GROWN-UP BY RUNNING WITH THE ANIMALS

 

Name: Star Trek: The New Voyages – Story 6 “The Hunting”

Author: Doris Beetem, with an introduction by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath  

Publication Date: 3/1976

Publisher: Bantam Books

Page Number: 17

Historian’s Note: Sometime after Second Season of the Animated Series   

Cast of Characters:  Captain James T. Kirk         Commander Spock              Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”                           Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          

Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets: Rhinegelt

My Spoiler filled summary and review: Once again it is shore leave time for the crew of the Enterprise.  This time, unlike our last adventure that had Dr. McCoy practically dragging a workaholic Captain Kirk off the bridge, it is the Captain practically dragging a workaholic Dr. McCoy out of sickbay.  Kirk is able to lure McCoy out with one little fact.  Mr. Spock is also taking shore leave.  Typically, the Vulcan Science Officer, likes to spend his down time meditating and conserving his energy in rest.  He has criticized in the past the human need to run around in the grass using energy rather than conserving it. This time Mr. Spock has taken out a hunting license.

Spock needed drugs to allow him to walk in the grass before

                This arouses McCoy’s suspicions and he heads down to Spock’s quarters to see if he would like some company and to his surprise Spock accepts as he is required to have a companion.  For Spock this is more than a simple hunt it is the scared Vulcan ritual called the mok farr.  It is a coming-of-age ritual, meaning that despite having a career in Starfleet where he has risen to become First Officer of the Flag Ship of the Fleet with the rank of commander, he is not by Vulcan standards an adult.  The reason Spock gives is his human half delayed his telepathic abilities and by the time they came to full force he had left Vulcan for Starfleet. His job is not simply to hunt the animal, in fact he brings no weapons with him, but to find an apex predator and perform a mind meld. 

boyhood pet who he didn't mind meld with 

                McCoy and Spock go on their way and McCoy witnesses the hunt for the owl tiger, as it is called. Spock is going to have to defeat this creature with his Vulcan strength in order to perform the mind meld.  Spock is successful in the attempt however the impact of sharing a mind with such a beast programed by nature to kill has serious effect on Spock.  He begins to assume the identity of the animal.  Even as McCoy gets them separated Spock seems lost as the beast.  He runs wild like a wild man who was raised by wolves.

                It gets bad as Spock acts violently towards McCoy and chases another animal into the wilderness.  Things get so bad that McCoy pulls a projector on out of his kit to record his last message to Kirk telling to make Spock forgive himself for what he might do in this state to McCoy.  McCoy says in the message that he brought this all on himself. The noise lures Spock back to him, he attacks but the Vulcan is distracted by the projector and slowly his sense come back to him.  The two officers return to the Enterprise and for Spock its his first time arriving there as an adult. 

Productive end

   

Additional thoughts: This is fun little story.  For all their commitment to logic it is amazing that the Vulcans will have the most outlandish rituals tied to their culture.  Although it is easy to tell the difference between an adult and a child most of the time the actual moment when someone stops being a child and becomes an adult is not so easy.  As someone who works with teenagers, I can attest to that, some of them a very mature almost indistinguishable from an adult, while others are very immature, and others are in the middle.  By “mature” I am referring to both mental and physical traits.  Some societies put as a strict number “you are an adult if you are X-age.”  Currently that age in my society is 18 (sort of).  However, if I have a random mixed group of 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds I would not be able to sort them by age without them telling me.   Yet one is supposed to be an adult while the other is a child. Then there are societies that would have their children complete a rite of passage to become an adult.  Sometimes this is a task the other times it’s just a ceremony. 

Spock in Amok Time

  

                We first learned in the episode “Journey to Babel” that Spock was not on speaking terms with his father because of his career choice.  In addition to that his mother Amanda talks with Spock about his childhood and that he was relentlessly bullied as a young child for not being “Vulcan” enough.  This was also confirmed in the episode “Yesteryear” when Spock journeyed to this past the audience got to see it upfront.  I wrote a while back that Spock joins Starfleet and surrounds himself humans not to embrace his humanity but instead to reconfirm his Vulcan-ness.

Very disappointed in Spock

                Spock says in this story that his telepathic abilities had developed late, he doesn’t mention it but you can see that is something else his bullies would torment him over.  “He is so human he can’t even mind-meld.”  The fact he left Vulcan and couldn’t complete this coming-of-age ceremony, the mok farr, would be even more torment coming in the form Vulcan gossip for him.  His old bullies could at best still see their old and clearly grown classmate as still a child, and at worst view him as a type of adult, a human one.

T'Pring and her chosen

                You would have to wonder if this would also have impacted T’Pring’s decision to abandon Spock to Stonn.  She said it was because she didn’t want to be the consort of a legend, but maybe that was T’Pring’s way of being nice.  Perhaps what she wanted to say is “Sorry Spock, I need a real man one who can mok farr before he can pon farr.”  That would have been cruel.        

This my weird way of being nice!

Should it be canon: Yes, I would love for this story to be added to the Star Trek lore.  For all the reasons I talk about above, especially with T’Pring. 

Cover Art: What I said in the review of the first story: 

“The cover is beautiful.  You have the Enterprise flying in all its glory in the bottom center of the image.  Behind it looks like a space station built on an asteroid.  Flying above in the opposite direction is an unknown starship whose design I don’t recognize.”  

Final Grade: Final Grade 4 of 5