Sarek

: Please see Sarek (AR) his alternate reality counterpart.
Sarek was a Vulcan first introduced in the original series Star Trek episode Journey to Babel. He was the father of Sybok and Spock, and the legal guardian of Michael Burnham.
The original Sarek was portrayed by Mark Lenard and briefly by Jonathan Simpson in a flashback on Star Trek V. He was later portrayed by James Frain in Star Trek: Discovery.
==History==
===Early Life===
Sarek was born on Vulcan to Skon and T'Rama on June 18, 2165. He came from a distinguished Vulcan family, his Grandfather Solkar had been the Captain who made first contact with Earth a century prior to his birth. His father Skon had translated writings of Surak into English. Growing up, Sarek was given a traditional Vulcan upbringing, and was tutored by his father in computer science. At the age of 7 he was bonded with T'Rea.
Sarek grew up to become a diplomat. He worked hard not only on behalf of the Vulcan people, but the larger United Federation of Planets as well. In 2222 he experienced Pon Farr and returned to Vulcan to mate. He and T'Rea conceived a child, but T'Rea kept the pregnancy and birth of his first son Sybok secret from Sarej.
After T'Rea left him to become a high priestess, Sarek met and fell in love with the human woman Amanda Grayson. The two would marry and have their son, who they named Spock.
===Ambassador===
Sarek became a legal guardian to a young human girl named Michael Burnham, and saw to her education in a traditional Vulcan manner. After an attack on the Vulcan learning center by a group of Logic Extremists, Sarek mind-melded with Burnham in order to revive her, resulting in part of his katra remaining with her. Burnham would go on to graduate from the learning center and the Vulcan Science Academy, becoming the first human to do so.
Burnham applied for a position on the Vulcan Expeditionary Fleet. The Fleet informed Sarek they would take either Burnham or Spock, but not both. Sarek decided to sponsor his son, leaving Burnham to believe that she had failed to meet expectations. At Sarek's request Captain Philippa Georgiou took Burnham under her wing in 2249, and Burnham was assigned to duty on the USS Shenzhou.
The following year, Sarek broke off relations with his son Spock due to the latter's choice to enter Starfleet Academy. This breach kept the two from speaking as father and son for 18 years. Amanda briefly left Sarek over this breach but later returned after Sarek's father died.
Before being assigned to the Enterprise, Spock returned to the family home in Shi'Kahr. Sarek still refused to see his son, and would only relay what he wanted to say through Amanda.
During the conflict with the Klingons, Sarek was nearly assassinated by a Vulcan extremist who believed logic demanded the Vulcans withdraw and isolate themselves from the Federation. He was rescued by Burnham, and during the course of this Burnham finally realized the truth - that Sarek had never seen her as a failure. She was upset with Sarek for not simply telling her the truth as to why her application for the Vulcan fleet was rejected.
The 2256-57 war with the Klingon Empire went badly for the Federation, with the Klingons poised to attack Earth and the other homeworlds of the Federation. In desperation, Sarek convinced the Federation Council to approve of Philippa Georgiou's mirror universe counterpart's plan to make the Klingon homeworld Qo'noS uninhabitable with a hydro bomb. Georgiou was stopped from detonating the device by Burnham, who gave the device to T'Kuvma's disciple L'Rell. Using the threat of destroying Qo'noS, L'Rell forced the Empire to acquiesce to her leadership of the Empire. Her first order was for the Klingons to withdraw from Federation space, ending the war.
Afterwards, Sarek admitted to Burnham that he had been wrong to support Georgiou's genocidal plan. Sarek relayed the news to Burnham that the Federation President had pardoned her and restored her to the rank of Commander. He and Amanda watched as their adoptive daughter and her crewmates were all given the Starfleet Medal of Honor. Sarek accompanied Burnham and Discovery as they made their way to Vulcan in order to pick up the ship's new CO, and so that Sarek could return home.
===2260s and 70s===
In 2267 Sarek briefly retired due to his health condition, but returned to the job in order to represent Vulcan at the Babel Conference on the question of admission of Coridan to the Federation. On the journey there Sarek had a heart attack, and Spock saved his life with a blood transfusion. This led to a healing of the rift that had started 18 years earlier when Spock entered Starfleet. Sarek recovered in time to attend the conference on Babel, and the speech he gave in favor of Coridan's admission would go down in Federation history as one of his most famous speeches. Due in large part to Sarek's influence the Federation voted to admit Coridan to the UFP.
Sarek would later become a grandfather when Spock fathered a son named Zar with a Sarpideon woman Zarabeth when Spock had inadvertently travled to Sarpideon's distant past and met Zarabeth.
===Later 23rd Century===
After his son's apparent death in 2285, Sarek went to Earth at the urging of Amanda to see if Spock's katra had survived. Sarek and James T. Kirk discovered Spock's katra was in McCoy's mind. Kirk brought McCoy back to Vulcan where the katra was restored to Spock, restoring him to life. This was at heavy price, the Enterprise was destroyed, Kirk and his crew had all sacrificed their careers to rescue Spock, and Kirk's own son was died on the Genesis Planet at the hands of the Klingons.
While Spock recovered and retrained his mind, Sarek went to Earth to try to talk the United Federation of Planets into not being too hard on Kirk, but Ambassador Kamarag insisted on the extradition of Kirk to face Klingon justice.
Sarek was on Earth when the Whale Probe attacked Earth when it couldn't find any humpback whales on the planet. He suggested to President Roth that they should send a distress call, this call reached Kirk, who successfully took the Bounty back in time to recover two whales. Bringing them to the 23rd century they were able to convince the Probe to leave. In gratitude the Federation dropped all but one of the charges against the Enterprise senior staff, but retained the charge of disobeying a senior officer against James T. Kirk, who was demoted to Captain in punishment.
Spock returned to active duty in Starfleet soon after, after telling Sarek to tell his mother that he felt fine, and after the two wished each other to live long and prosper.
During this time a Trill named Curzon Dax became a student of Sarek. Curzon working closely with Sarek as relations between the Federation and Klingon began to thaw. He attended talks at the Korvat Colony, and was injured
After the Klingon moon Praxis exploded, Sarek asked his son Spock to help him with the diplomatic response to the crisis the Empire now faced. Spock was able to cultivate a relationship with Chancellor Gorkon and was in the process of Gorkon to Earth when Gorkon was assassinated by a conspiracy that was working to defeat the peace process. Sarek watched as Kirk and McCoy were forced to endure a show trial. He attended the resumed peace conference at Camp Khitomer.
At about the same time Sarek began reaching out to the Legarans. He acknowledged that it was slow going with them, and that it would take some time to get them to sign a treaty.
===Early to Mid 24th Century===
After many years of marriage, Sarek lost his first wife Amanda. Even though he did not show it outwardly, he was at a loss emotionally on how to live without his wife. He would eventually remarry to another human woman named Perrin.
During the Cardassian debates Sarek and Spock had a public disagreement over how to respond to respond to this aggressive species. Perrin demanded that Spock apologize or no longer be considered welcome in their home. Spock refused to back down, stating that he would no longer trouble them with any further visits. This caused a rift to develop between Sarek and Spock that would last the rest of Sarek's life.
Sarek continued his work as an Ambassador for Vulcan and the Federation people through the 2360s. Having contracted Bendii syndrome in the 2360s, he began losing emotional control. His aide Sakkath began telepathically bolstering Sarek's emotional control, hoping to give Sarek enough control over his emotions to finish one last mission and then retire.
===Final Years===
In 2367 he boarded the Enterprise-D to travel to Legara IV so that he could finally conclude a treaty with the Legarans. During the trip the strain caused Sarek's emotional control to slip to the point that even with Sakkath helping he could not maintain control. He unintentionally projected his own more violent emotions on to the crew of the Enterprise, causing a number of arguments and violence - including a full blown riot in Ten-Forward - to break out. Sarek performed a mind meld with Jean-Luc Picard to reestablish emotional control long enough to finally conclude a treaty with the Legarans.
Following the signing of the treaty with the Legarans Sarek returned home to Vulcan, hoping that medical research would be able to help him. Sakkath was able to help Sarek maintain emotional control until they got home. 
Unfortunately, no treatments became available to help Sarek. By 2368 Sarek had lost all emotional control due to his disease, and was bedridden at his home on Vulcan. Owing to his earlier mind meld with her husban Perrin allowed Jean-Luc Picard to visit Sarek one final time to learn why Spock would've gone to Romulus. Sarek was able to give him the name Pardek as a person Spock might have gone to see. Picard knew that Sarek loved his son, despite all the pain Spock had caused him, and Sarek begged Picard to tell Spock when he found Spock. The two ended their conversation with the traditional Vulcan farewell, but Sarek was unable to maintain his composure long enough to finish the farewell.
Sarek died not too long after Picard's final visit. Upon reaching Romulus Picard informed Spock that Sarek was gone, and later allowed Spock to mind meld with him to touch what Sarek had shared with him earlier.
===Legacy===
The Federation Starfleet would honor Sarek by naming the USS Sarek after him in 2374. In 2380 the Sarek School of Diplomacy and Ambassadorial Studies was established in his honor on Vulcan. The opening ceremony was attended by his son Spock, his widow Perrin, and Captain Picard.
==Shatner Novels==
In the series of Star Trek novels written by William Shatner, Sarek did not actually have Bendii Syndrome. He had been murdered by a group of extremists who had used a poison that mimicked Bendii Syndrome. This was uncovered six years after his death when these same extremists made the mistake of administering the poison on Spock, even though Spock was far too young to contract the disease.
==Alternate Timelines==
In a timeline where Spock died at the age of seven Sarek and Amanda divorced after Spock's death. Never having remarried he served as ambassador to 17 different worlds by the 2260s. This timeline was prevented from forming when an older Spock transported himself back in time to 2237 and saved his younger self's life. 
Another alternate timeline formed when Q interfered in human history in 2024. Instead of helping to form a benevolent Federation, humanity formed a totalitarian empire called the Confederation of Earth. In this timeline Sarek had been the director of the Vulcan Science Academy before he was beheaded by the Jean-Luc Picard native to that timeline on the steps of the Academy in front of his family. Picard subsequently took Sarek's skull back to Earth and put it on display in his chateau near the skulls of Gul Dukat, General Martok, and several other individuals Picard had killed. 
==Trivia==
* Original Sarek actor was only six years older than , who originally portrayed Spock. Lenard was cast as Sarek largely due to the positive impression he had made when he appeared as the Romulan Commander in Balance of Terror. When first cast he was only 43 years old. Lenard later recalled that that he required some makeup to age his appearance; namely some grey hair along with putting a few wrinkles around his eyes. 
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