MovieChat Forums > Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Discussion > Spock's Inability to Lie

Spock's Inability to Lie

posted 10 years ago by Pyrochles
3 replies | jump to latest

Spock's inability to lie leads to some funny moments in The Voyage Home. But I'm watching the Original Series episode "Errand of Mercy" and Spock has absolutely no problem telling the Klingons that he is a traveling merchant. When is it established that Vulcans never lie? Does that come up at some point in the original series? I'm guessing it might be one of the claims Vulcans make about themselves that are not necessarily true, kind of like when they claim to be exempt from emotional responses when they can sometimes be quite irritable.

[–] flowerythethird 10 years ago

I believe it's because Spock is still re-learning alot of things (as we see in the beginning), One of them being the ability to lie, as it's likely not natural to a Vulcan.

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[–] bjlevine 10 years ago

I think that Spock would never personally lie to mislead someone, but would under orders in the performance of his duties.

That said, Spock is something of a living lie, always pretending that he has no feelings, when in fact he just hides them.

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[–] Lokisgodhi 9 years ago

Many of the things we've been told about Vulcan has been disproven in the films and in the TNG and Enterprise timeline shows.

Vulcans can lie if they choose to by rationalizing what they're saying. Like any child who when asked why they smacked their younger sibling answers that their hand slipped.

Vulcans clearly have, feel and express emotions. They just work hard to suppress them. Some clearly do it better than others.