Unauthorised Review of Star Trek, wrote that "Sarek" "could have simply pressed fanboy buttons", but was actually "a moving story of a great man brought low by old age and illness". They praised Lenard, but thought that Stewart "steals the show with an extraordinary performance". Chris Gregory, in his book Star Trek: Parallel Narratives, suggested that Bendii syndrome as seen in this episode "has echoes of Alzheimer's disease". James Van Hise and Hal Schuster, in The Complete Trek: The Next Generation, compared the plot of "Sarek" to that of The Original Series episode "Day of the Dove". They described "Sarek" as "excellent" and said that it was "exciting and emotional, with real conflicts overcome by real people". They added that "TV doesn't get much better than this." Zack Handlen reviewed the episode in 2010, for The A.V. Club, giving it a rating of an A. He praised the fact that there was no mystery to the episode, and that it was instead explained immediately that Sarek was the cause of the crewmembers' problems. He added that there was a "beautiful simplicity to this concept, an elegance that makes the tragedy at the heart of the episode all the more powerful". Handlen said that the scene in which Picard deals with the emotions of Sarek after the mind meld was a "remarkable work, a level of naked, raw intensity that we rarely get on [The Next Generation], and in the hands of a lesser actor (basically anyone else in the ensemble), this could've been ridiculous". Keith DeCandido, in a 2012 review for Tor.com, gave the episode a score of 7 out of 10. He said that the majority of the guest cast were "pretty nowhere", but that the backbone of the episode was Lenard portraying Sarek, "one of the most beloved recurring roles in the franchise's history, and this episode is a beautiful illustration of why". He called the telepathy plot "dopey sci-fi stuff", but praised the direction of Landau in—among others—the concert scene, which he called a "tour de force". He said, however, that the standout part of the episode was the interaction of Stewart and Lenard, who he referred to as "two great actors at the absolute top of their game". He said that "Stewart simply owns the mind-meld, a turbulent, raw scene that leaves the character of Sarek completely exposed, and Stewart sells it amazingly. At that point,