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Spock: A Bridge Between Two Worlds (Character Spotlight)
A bridge belongs to neither shore. Its purpose is to connect two places without ever becoming either of them. No character in Star Trek embodies that better than Spock.
Look at the moment in “Amok Time” when he turns and sees Kirk alive. Seconds earlier he believed he had killed his captain with his own hands, in ritual combat, on the soil of his homeworld. Then Kirk walks back into the room, and the most disciplined officer in Starfleet breaks into a grin and shouts his name before he can stop himself. “Jim!” Then comes the recovery, the face reassembling itself. The grin is the man. The recovery is the officer he has trained himself to be.
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The Gorn: People or Monster’s? (Race Spotlight)
Kirk has the thing beaten. He has spent the back half of “Arena” turning a barren rock and a handful of raw minerals into a working cannon, sulphur and charcoal and a few rough diamonds packed into a length of bamboo, and now the Gorn captain is down in front of him, wounded and waiting for the killing blow. The Metrons have all but invited it. And Kirk lowers the weapon.
