The part of the episode that hits the hardest is the end credits. Seeing names like Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, and Rene Auberjonois listed as part of the cast, as though they just walked into the studio and recorded their lines like everyone else, that hurt my heart.
The Spock sound clips are arranged somewhat chronologically, so as the the scene continues, we get an older, more tempered Spock. (And a Nimoy who matches the viewer's more recent memories.)
I'm sorry... I don't think Spock would demand perfection. He more than perhaps any other Vulcan understood that humans were imperfect. He might suggest finding one's personal strengths and operating with those. Demanding perfection from imperfect beings would be... illogical.
These are lines Spock actually spoke. In any case, it's not illogical to demand perfection. It is merely illogical to actually expect perfection is possible. There's a difference, and that is the point being made. A Captain must place the well-being and safety of the crew above themselves, and they must always be perfectly in control, perfectly aware and with perfect decision making....even if they have no idea what to do or say. Think that's too much for a person to handle? Can't even reassure your crew that everything is going to be alright, or inspire them to action? There's a reason Starfleet has officers who have been lieutenant for decades with no promotion, no need to automatically ladder them up for service time when you have the best leader material from over 150 worlds to climb the ranks with real leadership ability. And honestly, don't be a strawberry. The world moves past people who interpret a call to action like Spock's in terms of what they can't do than what they can do. You say he should instead suggest finding one's own strengths. HE IS. Your interpretation says more about you than it says about him.
One of the better scene's in an otherwise mid movie happens in U-571 (a fictionalized telling of the capturing of an enigma machine during ww2, which grossly stretched the 'based on a true story' line passed the breaking point. U-571 was a real ship, but the enigma was captured by the british 10 months before the US entered the war, so its basically a still fictionalized re-telling of what should be a british story with an american white washing, but that's besides the point here). The capitan is killed, and the first mate has to take over the partly disabled german sub with a skeleton crew after their sub was destroyed. This is the cheif officer after the new captain tells the crew he doesn't know what they'll do (after taking him aside): "Don't you dare say what you said to the boys back there again, 'I don't know.' Those three words will kill a crew, dead as a depth charge. You're the skipper now, and the skipper always knows what to do whether he does or not." This is what spock was getting at. It's not that they have to be perfect, they have to appear perfect. It's not even because they have to live under his command, but they have to trust his judgement for the times when he might not just ask them to risk their lives to do something, but to actively die to accomplish something (as happens in the movie, as a smaller engineer has to swim down in a cramped space to re-open the bilge so the sub doesn't sink, but they know going in he won't make it back out).
I do love the sentiment behind this scene, but what ruins it for me is that it's obviously made by patching together various sound bytes from other scenes. That's why there's no organic flow from one line to the next. It almost would've been better if they had Ethan Peck perform original dialogue instead.
