> "Pops Mear" wrote...

>> Uh, it is torture. Look, the salt monster is just doing its thing to
>> live. Spock striking the salt monster repeatedly is hardly different
>> than the group of policemen standing around beating the hell out of
>> Rodney King. Spock tortured the salt monster. Perhaps you are one of
>> those "wide stance" Republicans who define torture as anything that
>> the "other" guy does in response to what you first did to them... Or
>> perhaps you think torture must involve Vincent Price wearing black and
>> controlling a swinging pendulum over someone chained to a slab rising
>> from a pit...is, uh, that how you define torture?

>
> For one thing, torture has to inflict suffering, of either
> a physical or psychological nature. In this case,
> "Nancy's" reaction is to stand there and take it with
> no indication of suffering (IIRC, the actress actually
> smiles at one point), then to backhand Spock and
> send him flying across the room. Spock's intent
> here is not to cause "Nancy" any harm or pain (he
> was previously attacked by the creature when it killed
> Crater, probably went through the full range of useless
> actions starting with the neck pinch and knows what
> he's doing is laughably harmless to the creature), but
> to demonstrate to McCoy through his utter inability to
> cause either that the creature was not who or what
> McCoy thought it was.
>
> GeneK