Miscellaneous Things About The First Half Of Amok Time That I Love:

Miscellaneous things about the first half of Amok Time that I love:

Initially, Spock won’t tell Jim what’s wrong. He asks Jim for leave, that he needs rest and needs it on Vulcan. He asks Jim to accept that’s all he will say. Jim does and alters course to Vulcan. At this point the Altair ceremony is still over a week away, and a 2.8 day delay is not a problem at all, but I love how respectful Jim is of Spock’s privacy. He pries at first and even has a little angry outburst, but calms himself down almost immediately and stops asking when Spock explicitly asks him to.

The ceremony has been advanced 7 days. They don’t have time to go to Vulcan. Jim obviously doesn’t like it much, and takes the time to comfort Spock about it: he offers sympathy, he jokes, he reassures Spock he’ll get his leave ASAP. It’s palpable how much he cares.

That night, Jim can’t sleep. He comms the bridge to ask how late they’ll be if they do divert to Vulcan real quick: this thing Spock won’t even really tell him about is more important to him than obeying direct orders. Remember he has no idea it’s life or death here yet. He just knows that Spock wouldn’t have asked like that and been so secretive if it wasn’t really important.

Jim here finds out that Spock has already ordered a change of course. Jim’s obviously pissed, it’s all over his body language, but he’s uncharacteristically calm when he confronts Spock about it. He knows something is very wrong here. Spock tells him he doesn’t remember changing course, but believes Jim when Jim tells him he’s done it. Jim believes Spock doesn’t remember without a second thought. Again he asks what’s going on once, and no more after Spock tells him to stop asking. 

Jim does order Spock to go to sickbay, but can you blame him? Memory loss? Really? Something is clearly very wrong with Spock’s health. He makes it an order in order to get Spock’s cooperation, but his wish for Spock to get a physical comes from a place of concern. If Spock won’t take care of himself, Jim will force him to.

Bones does his physical. Jim now knows Spock will die in 8 days if they don’t get to Vulcan. He immediately goes to ask again what’s happening, and he justifies it by saying, after the smallest hesitation, that it’s because Spock is an enormous asset to him. He doesn’t know Spock’s logic is impaired, and he thinks this might be the easiest way to get through to him: it’s unemotional, practical reasoning, to appeal to Spock’s logical side.

Spock replies that’s it’s too personal. Jim orders him to explain. This is the second angle that would normally work with Spock: if not logic, then duty. Spock refuses, says some things transcend duty. Jim changes tactic, he says he will keep it completely confidential: this is a different angle, based on trust and friendship. Spock finally caves here, and tells him everything. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that Spock won’t answer to logic or duty, but he will answer to a personal request from Jim, to the promise this secret stays between the two of them.

Jim asks Komack permission to go to Vulcan, but refuses to explain or even hint at why, keeping the promise he made to Spock. The word is no: Jim is therefore doing it anyway. When they hear the no, Bones is like “welp, that’s it then” but Jim immediately replies “no it’s not.” Immediately. He has his motives: there’s two other ships going to altair, nothing will really happen if they’re one day late, but Bones is adamant that Jim will get fired if he disobeys. Jim doesn’t care. He knows, he didn’t need Bones to tell him, he’d already made up his mind.

Basically, just Jim caring for Spock an insane amount already, to the point that the first half of the episode to me is almost more homoerotic than the second. Jim’s big sacrifice of the Enterprise in SFS is already here in “Lay in a course for Vulcan. Tell Engineering I want warp eight or better. Push her for all she’ll take.” and “I owe him my life a dozen times over. Isn’t that worth a career?”