He makes a joke at Janice's expense after she's nearly raped by evil Kirk in "The Enemy Within" -- I mean what a total asshole. I don't know whether to contribute this to bad writing or Nimoy or both. I'm just happy Spock got better because the series wouldn't be the same without him.
shareToday, we think of Spock as this deep character with a rich back story, but in the early episodes he had just been created. They were still figuring out what they wanted to do with the character.
shareThat's exactly right. if you read Nimoy's book and stuff by Shatner, it mentions how the character began and how it evolved.
From day one he was always a huge hit with the ladies, as evidenced by receiving more fan mail than Shatner, and even making Shatner a little jealous, and Roddenberry milking Spock's popularity and using it to the point it pissed off Nimoy.
Tastes were different back then, I guess.
share At first Spock was written as totally devoid of emotions. If he had said something hurtful to Yeoman Rand, he was not making a "joke". Supposedly Vulcans had no emotions, so how could they display humor?
Spock was just being logical. It was only later on that he was written as struggling with his emotional human half and trying to suppress it all the time.
He did grow tremendously as a character, he didn't start out perfect. I don't know how much of that was intentional.
Nimoy's acting also improved tremendously, he was was kind of tense and loud in the first few episodes. He said himself he learned how to underplay as he went along, and got damn good at it.