Awesome / Spock's World

• McCoy introduces the entire planet of Vulcan to a Southern filibuster.
  • While he makes his address, McCoy gets into an argument with a prejudiced Vulcan author, Selv. Towards the end, Selv tells McCoy that Vulcans can deal with their own "wounds" from the secession's impact and the other planets will cope on their own. McCoy promptly shuts him down with Surak's own words.
  • He finishes with this:
  "And you are backing off, you are panicking, you are saying, 'No, we can't cope, Surak can't have meant everything when he taught the philosophy of IDIC, he actually meant everything but the third planet out from Sol. COWARDS!"
  • What's even more awesome is that when he's finished, the good doctor informs Spock that his speech was "every argument with you I've ever had rolled up into one." Spock answers, "Then I should say you won."
• McCoy is also the one who uncovers the villain behind The Conspiracy and thus thwarts said villain's plan for the second time.
• Kirk, Spock, and McCoy all get a quieter CMOA at the end of the story when the Big Bad asks to see them. They, of all people, have the right to be mad at this individual, and yet they are all perfect gentlemen and wish their nemesis well.
• During the historic background stories, Surak makes a choice with his death: he will use his life to teach Vulcans a more logical, peaceful path. And he succeeds.
• When alien pirates make first contact with the Vulcans, they think the planet will be easy pickings because the Vulcans didn't arm their spaceships. They quickly learned that the Vulcans didn't need to arm their ships, as their psionic powers were more than sufficient to rip pirate ships apart with their minds and even mind control the pilots of the pirate ships into deliberately crashing their ships.
• Kirk figures out that the recreation room AI Moira was the on-board Taoist giving him sage advice during the secession debates. And then deciding to let Moira keep her sentience and a pay raise.
  And then he went to bed.