Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Amanda Grayson, a recurring character from the Star Trek films as well as the Original Series.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp182
Amanda Grayson is the mother of Spock and the source of his human side, which does indeed exist despite his Vulcan way of life. She was a schoolteacher when she met Sarek, who was serving as Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, and they fell in love. Her name was chosen because Amanda means "worthy of being loved."
Although she is an emotional and caring mother and woman, she represses some of this in deference to the culture of Sarek while living with him on Vulcan and while raising Spock. She does share her culture and emotion with Spock while raising him, by reading various novels from Earth novelists like Lewis Carroll and by encouraging his human side. That is most prevalent in her movie appearance, where she helps the resurrected Spock discover his human side in the movie Star Trek IV.
Outside that movie, this character's one live appearance in the prime timeline is in the TOS episode Journey to Babel, where she interacts with Captain Kirk and helps Spock and Sarek reconcile some differences on a trip aboard the Enterprise to the Babel Conference.
QUOTE
Spock: Sarek understands my reason.
Amanda: Well, I don't. It's not human. Oh, that's not a dirty word. You're human, too. Let that part of you come through. You're father's dying.
What's interesting about Amanda is the fact that half of her four appearances on Star Trek involve alternate timelines. In the Animated Series episode Yesteryear, she dies in a shuttle accident after returning to Earth following her separation from Sarek and the death of her son Spock at a young age. The other alternative reality is of course the Abrams Timeline, in which she dies during the destruction of the planet Vulcan.
While Amanda plays an important role in the background for defining the character of Spock, the use of her as central story point in two different alternative realities make it difficult to evaluate her importance as a character. On the other hand, maybe this use of the character Amanda shows infinite diversity in infinite combinations, the well-known Vulcan ideology. However, this more likely proves that it is illogical to overuse alternate realities to the extent Star Trek often does.
Amanda has been played by Jane Wyatt and Winona Rider, although Majel Barrett voiced this character in TAS. Wyatt was a three-time Emmy Award winner and she passed away in 2006 at the age of 96. Rider has been nominated for two Oscars, and has well-known movies roles over the past three decades including in Edward Scissorhands and Girl Interrupted. So everyone who plays this character has found great life and prosperity in the acting profession.
------------
Feedback can be sent to me with future segment suggestions on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy.
No comments:
Post a Comment