Star Trek: 10 CORE Spock Moments
4. I Am Not Our Father
Time-travel stories and multiversal arcs offer audiences a fun trope, which is to see two or more actors playing the same role in the same scene. Such was the case in Star Trek, where Zachary Quinto's Spock came face-to-face with Leonard Nimoy's. The scene, short though it is, offered the baton from one essential Vulcan to another.
The line 'I am not our father' may have been a nod to another long-running Sci-Fi franchise, though Nimoy delivers it in such a tongue-in-cheek fashion that it is hard not to smile at Quinto's perplexed expression in reply. At the time of production, this may have served as the great handover between old Star Trek and new, so the scene takes on extra resonance in that context.
As the younger Spock embarks on his career as the first officer aboard the Enterprise, the older Spock becomes a part of New Vulcan's future. There is a playful logic in their interactions:
You can be in two places at once.
Ambassador Spock finds a new life in the Kelvin universe, even as his old life in the Prime universe saw the end of Romulus. His efforts there were not in vain, though he would not live to see the fruit of them. At this great meeting of the mind, both men face a new future of possibility and change.