Character Analysis
If you've watched Star Trek before, you already know what conflict Spock faces in The Voyage Home. That's right—our favorite half-Vulcan spends the film struggling with emotions versus logic.
Fancy that.
Baby Spock
Spock's conflict here is especially intense due to the events of the previous two films. In The Wrath of Khan, he sacrificed his life to save the crew of Enterprise from certain doom. In the subsequent film, The Search for Spock, the crew repaid the favor by bringing him back to life.
The details aren't important, but just know that Spock is actually only a few months old at this point.
With this in mind, we gain a new perspective on his character. Because he was resurrected on planet Vulcan, Spock has been leaning super hard on the Vulcan side of his personality, which values logic above all else. This overvaluation of logic is depicted hilariously when he easily answers a series of rapid-fire science and math questions only to be stumped by the simplest of them all: "how do you feel?"
Seeing his difficulties, Spock's human mom, Amanda, has a few words for her son:
AMANDA: Spock, the retraining of your mind has been in the Vulcan way, so you may not understand feelings. But as my son, you have them. They will surface.
This sets the stage perfectly. Though we've seen Spock struggle with logic versus emotion before, we've never seen him rebuild his personality from the ground up. That's going to be a serious challenge.
You've Got a Friend in Me
Like the teacher's pet he is, however, Spock passes the test with flying colors. He does this by focusing on the concept of friendship. After all, his friends' decision to bring him back to life was anything but logical—it hurt them a great deal. But Spock would be lying if he said he didn't like being alive. So would he rather his friends were "logical" and left him to die?
Eventually, the dam breaks, and Spock's emotions pour through. An early indication of this comes soon after the crew locates Chekov in the hospital:
SPOCK: Admiral, may I suggest that Dr. McCoy is correct. We must help Chekov.
KIRK: Is that the logical thing to do, Spock?
SPOCK: No, but it is the human thing to do.
Similarly, Spock volunteers to accept punishment alongside his compatriots at the end of the film despite not being charged himself—he's mirroring the sacrifice the crew made for him. While we doubt that Spock will be chatting about his feelings on the reg any time soon, he'll at least walk away from The Voyage Home with a lot more respect for that illogical human enterprise known as friendship.
Spock's Timeline