By animated Spock, I meant the Spock of the Animated series. It’s been awhile since I watched it, and I don’t think I’ve seen every episode. But we do see more of Spock’s childhood in one episode. IIRC, a time travel one with future Spock interacting with his younger self. And there’s some wilderness rite of passage, that in retrospect is probably CA-questionable, and we see his pet sehlat.

http://www.treksf.com/podcast/yesteryear.jpg

I would agree that in OldTrek, Saarek pushed Spock to Go Vulcan, and Amanda did the 1960s good-wife thing and let her husband’s wishes dominate, albeit with caveats. I’m not sure NewTrek Spock is more advanced in mastering his ancestry and emotions, though. I think he’s doing it differently to OldTrek Spock, but will still have to face the same issues as time goes by. Bigger problems, really. For example, this Kirk’s a bigger dick, and this Spock has less patience. This McCoy’s still a bigot; it was played for laughs in the old days, but NewTrek Spock has already shown himself to react very badly — violently — to bigotry. So I forsee shitstorms. Also, there’s the pressure of the Vulcans suddenly being endangered. I imagine they’ll react in a logical manner, by implementing measures to breed their population back up to healthy levels — and for genetic diversity’s sake, I can’t imagine they’d be happy with Spock, himself “diluted” in their eyes, frittering away more precious Vulcan DNA on another human chick. So we may see T’Pring again, and this time I can’t see Spock being allowed to just say no. Or they may go the other “logical” route, and forbid Spock from making any genetic contribution to the resurgent Vulcan race, since now that contribution would have a much greater impact on the population as a whole. I imagine this situation will cause Vulcan bigotry to increase, as they will now have to discourage breeding outside the race if they want to rebuild a “pure” Vulcan strain. We could see Spock storylines about forced sterilization, citizenship tests (maybe now he *has* to get through the Kohlinar, or be disinherited), maybe strained relations between Vulcans and humans because those humans keep macking on their best and brightest…

So we might get Spock dealing with his internal Vulcan/human conflict amid a broader context of societal conflict. Which IMO would be deliciously realistic and very apropos to 21st century Trek. Enough of the simplistic “can’t we all get along” stuff of yesteryear; let’s have some Trek that actually reflects the complexity of the human experience. (Still optimistically, though, so it doesn’t turn into BSG.)

And then Spock joins Starfleet and he’s the first Vulcan ever, living amongst a bunch of humans, something he’s never done before, something even his body isn’t fully adapted too. The temperature and oxygen content and I think even the gravity all being slightly off. All of that constantly reminding him that he’s not fully human. And then of course McCoy goding him, which doesn’t encourage him to embrace his human half, but makes him more strongly cling to being Vulcan.

But still and all, he lives with humans, and Romulans, for a good long time. So we get Ambassador Spock, who’s rather emotional for a Vulcan. Not that he doesn’t have plenty of reason to be emotional when we meet him in this movie. He’s matured and grown to accept that sticking strictly to logic doesn’t work for him. That that’s not how he wants to live his life.

Now we get this new Spock, and his history is different. It’s hard to say just where his history starts to diverge, but it’s clear that the death of Amanda is a big, big part of it. Now that his human mother is gone, a very good way for him to honor her memory is to remember that he’s half-human and that his human mother had a lot of good, non-Vulcan qualities. And then his father, so rocked by the death himself, actually admits that he loved Amanda. So now even his father isn’t bearing down on him to be all Vulcan, like Spock 1.0 had to deal with.

Throw in Uhura, who certainly seems like a very good match for him, at just the right time, and we get a Spock who can handle emotions without mastering them. Who can be more human without utterly falling apart.

In either case, I think Spock was moving towards embracing both halves of his ancestry. But Spock 2.0 gets to arrive at that point much sooner.

Though he may not yet have it fully sorted out, and we may see more of this human/Vulcan conflict coming into play in future movies.