Spock! Spock!

It’s clearly the wrong Spock.

The whole point of the right Spock

was that he was right,

Nimoy slightly stooped, the long face

impassive not with lack of emotion

but with the contained quiet of competence.

You could trust him to jettison the fuel,

to identify the imposter and brave the radiation,

to boldly go with raised eyebrow and without fuss

into the plot holes and out of them,

like a tricorder tracking the moral law.

He said, “it is logical,” but he meant, “It is good.”

And then along comes Ethan Peck

with a beard and a tragic backstory

babbling about child development

as if the only character worth having is trauma.

If you want a character defined by trauma

why make him Spock?

If you want a character who is Spock

why define him by trauma?

What is the logic of an identity

that is not an identity?

Maybe there is no logic to identity.

There is no Spock. Spock is just an image

you watch because you are you.

He is behind you like a tragic backstory

and before you like a tragic backstory.

You cannot escape him

as you cannot escape your own beard

which grows like narrative out in space

a rough fuzz on the viewscreen.

It makes a brittle sound like the teeth of a comb

which says, “Spock! Spock!”

Both of them turn.