Straw Vulcan / Star Trek

• Star Trek: The Original Series: Spock flip-flops between playing this straight and averting it.
  • Played straight in a scene of "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Spock and Kirk play 3D chess. Spock is about to win, but Kirk makes an "illogical move" and wins. It'd perhaps be more accurate though to say Kirk used Confusion Fu and made an unexpected move.
  • In "The Galileo Seven", we're shown Spock's first command, as the shuttle he is in charge of crashes on a desolate planet filled with savage aliens. Spock determines that a display of superior force will logically frighten away these aliens while the crew make repairs to the shuttle. Instead, as Dr. McCoy points out, the aliens have an emotional reaction and become angry and attack, something Spock did not anticipate. In the end, Spock's desperate act of igniting the fuel from the shuttle to create a beacon proves to be the correct action since it gets the attention of the Enterprise and allows for a rescue. When called on this "emotional" act, Spock replies that the only logical course of action in that instance was one of desperation. The most irritating part of their razzing on him about it was that, even by the narrow definition of "logic" in said episode, that was in fact the most logical choice. The two options were drift and conserve fuel for as long as possible despite a remote chance of being seen and found ultimately and dying anyway, or ignite the fuel source, which might lead to a quicker death from lack of power but would far increase visibility and the chances of being found. The latter of the two choices is smugly called "emotional" despite still being perfectly logical. The part with the aliens doesn't really make sense either. Everyone, including Spock himself, comes down hard on him when his plan doesn't work, but what did he do that was so wrong? He wanted the aliens to leave them alone and hoped to avoid unnecessary bloodshed in the process. The aliens were enraged rather than frightened, and quickly renewed their attack, but no one could have known that would happen. He made a mistake; it happens.^note Hilariously enough, this is a bit of an Unbuilt Trope in regard to "proper" Straw Vulcan characterization, because Spock's approach to the native aliens was the less ruthless option (tying into Vulcan culture's on-again off-again pacifist ideals); everyone else just wanted to straight-up kill 'em.
  • Averted in "Space Seed", where we see fairly clearly from early on the episode that Kirk, Scotty, and (worst of all) Marla McGivers are looking at Khan through various sorts of romanticized shades, reading things into him that were never really there and deceiving themselves about who and what he really is. Spock, on the other hand, clearly recognizes that Khan is, fundamentally, just a mass murderer and a power-hungry egotistical thug who escaped from the catastrophe he helped create and is now potentially dangerous.
  • Averted in "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In the first, Spock's cold, clear-eyed logic reveals to him what the choices before Kirk and himself in the time-trip into the 1930s are, and that Kirk's love for Edith Keeler is beside the point of those choices. He is not unsympathetic, as we see in his quiet words: "He knows, Doctor." after Kirk prevents McCoy from saving Edith. In "WNMHGB", Spock analyzes the necessary implications of the changes in Kirk's then-best-friend Gary Mitchell, and the trend of where those changes are taking Mitchell, and knows that there is no way out: either Mitchell dies or catastrophe follows, and subsequent events prove him right; Kirk very nearly does wait too long out of sentiment, even after Mitchell himself affirms that Spock is right. In both cases, cold logic is revealing a painful truth that emotion and sentiment can cloud but not change.
  • Subverted in "A Piece of the Action".
    Spock: It would seem that logic does not apply here.
    McCoy: You admit that?
    Spock: To deny the obvious would be illogical.
  • Averted in "Court Martial", when the ship's computer's records make it appear as though Kirk murdered another officer. Despite not being able to (initially) find any evidence of malfunctioning in the computer, Spock steadfastly maintains his confidence in Kirk's innocence, and is ultimately proven right. Spock knows from extensive personal experience that Kirk is a noble man who is consistently able to keep his cool in life-or-death situations; in his view, believing that Kirk killed someone out of panic or spite is as illogical as expecting a hammer not to fall when dropped.
  • Infamously played straight in "The Apple", in which Kirk and McCoy try to destroy the machine that keeps the native civilization of the paradise planet alive, in order to show them the value of love and freedom. Spock points out to them that Starfleet officers are not permitted to interfere in the politics of primitive alien civilizations, that they have no way to predict the consequences of such a drastic interference in the evolution of a species they just discovered earlier that day, and that the natives lead long, happy lives under the existing system, even if a human in the same situation might be less content. Kirk retorts that he owes it to the natives to give them the freedom to choose how to live and think for themselves—even though, so far as is shown, the natives' service to the machine is entirely voluntary. The episode doesn't show us the aftermath of Kirk's decision, but when Spock attempts to discuss them in the final scene using an admittedly bizarre argument, Kirk and McCoy just mock his physical appearance and ignore everything he says.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series: The episode "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" neatly subverts or perhaps averts this. In a parallel universe where magic works, McCoy scoffs at Spock's attempt to perform a magical ritual. His reply? "It must work, Doctor. It is logical—here."
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In early episodes of both The Original Series and The Next Generation, humans who have uploaded their minds into android bodies discover that they have lost some ineffable, illogical, human quality in the transfer. Despairing at this loss, they choose to terminate their existence—a strangely emotional reaction for beings which now supposedly have none. Ironically, this is referenced and deconstructed by Data, of all people, in the episode of "The Measure of a Man"; a scientist wants to disassemble him and dump his memory into a computer so he could study him and learn how to create more like him, and Data refuses, fully believing in that same ineffable quality to memory and believing he, himself would lose it in the transfer, despite himself being an android. In an attempt to explain this, he compares it to how learning how to play poker from a book isn't the same as actually playing the game, in person, implying that the "ineffable quality" being lost is the personal importance and significance of those experiences, the context which makes the event special for that individual, which—when read out of that context as a mere descriptive text readout—cannot be fully understood or appreciated—an actually logical argument when you think about it.
  • This is also the episode in which Data claims to have "read and absorbed every treatise and textbook on the subject" of poker, but was completely surprised by the existence of bluffing. What kind of poker textbook doesn't discuss bluffing?
  • Troi beats Data at chess. She then explains to him that chess isn't just a game of logic, but also intuition. As the Nitpicker's Guide puts it, "Try playing 'intuitive' chess against a computer and you'll lose in no time flat" (and then suggests that perhaps she had his Difficulty Level set to "below novice"). Shown for laughs in xkcd #232. Great chess masters can play via intuition (and indeed, when playing speed chess, it's a necessity), however, intuition when playing a game such as chess is merely the player's experience in playing the game allowing them to make strong plays without thinking too much. Ultimately, that intuition comes FROM logic, as the player has enough experience to recognize generally favorable moves and positions on sight. The Troi example is particularly egregious because she really just reverses the correct terms. Her move was unintuitive, but was entirely logical because it immediately led to victory.
  • Although widely used and occasionally subverted or lampshaded in Star Trek, the trope is notably averted in the episode "Redemption, Part II". In an operation involving a large number of ships and not enough captains to go around, a number of senior officers, including Data, are given command of various ships. Data's first officer repeatedly questions Data's orders and the fitness of an android to command a ship, until Data (seemingly) angrily tells him, "Mr. Hobson! You will carry out my orders or I will relieve you of duty!" Data correctly realizes that the emotional response is the logical one, necessary in order to motivate Hobson.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "The Maquis", Sarkona, a Vulcan, joins the Maquis because she agrees with their position and believes their rather crude and barbaric actions to achieve "peace" to be logical... but she's called out by Quark, locked in the brig with her after her plans are exposed, noting that, as the Federation had caught the Cardassians (the Maquis' enemies) supplying their people with weapons to fight against the Maquis, sitting down with them and hammering out an arrangement would bring the peace better and "at a bargain price" compared to continuing the fight.
  • In "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", Captain Solok has been hassling Benjamin Sisko across the known galaxy for the past two decades, all in the name of proving that emotional, illogical humans (like Sisko) are inferior to emotionless, logical Vulcans (like himself). Somewhat subverted by the end of the episode, when the Deep Space Nine crew successfully goad Solok into losing his temper, and it's generally implied that Solok is by no means representative of Vulcans, and is really just kind of a jerk.
  • Deconstructed in the episode "Field of Fire", in which a serial killer is on the loose, killing Starfleet officers seemingly at random. The killer turns out to be a Vulcan suffering from his species' version of PTSD, courtesy of the Dominion War, and was being emotionally triggered by his victims' laughter. When asked why he did it, all he can say is "because logic demanded it".
• Star Trek: Voyager: Tuvok often acts as a Straw Vulcan.
  • Played with in this dialogue (when captured):
    Tuvok: Resistance is illogical.
    Seven: Logic is irrelevant.
  • At least the writers seem to acknowledge that Tuvok is a tightass even by Vulcan standards. From the episode "Flashback":
    Sulu: Mr. Tuvok, if you're going to remain on my ship, you're going to have learn how to appreciate a joke. And don't tell me Vulcans don't have a sense of humor, because I know better.
  • The above (obviously a reference to Spock) might also be a specific nod to a scene in the original series episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", which Sulu himself witnessed (and was quite amused by):
    Bailey: Raising my voice back there doesn't mean I was scared or couldn't do my job. It means I happen to have a human thing called an adrenaline gland.
    Spock: It does sound most inconvenient, however. Have you considered having it removed? [Spock leaves]
    Bailey: [to Sulu, who is grinning] Very funny.
    Sulu: You try to cross brains with Spock, he'll cut you to pieces every time.
  • Played with when Janeway replicates a cupcake for Tuvok on his birthday, complete with a single birthday candle. He initially refuses to play along with such a silly ritual, but when Janeway turns her back, he blows out the candle. He replies that it was a fire hazard, but it's implied that he did it to make Janeway happy, which is a perfectly logical decision, since while he saw no point in the ritual, he knew it would please his friend and captain, and so did it anyway.
  • Tuvok had occasionally had the opportunity to avert this, as in one episode where a seemingly unstoppable energy field is slowly enveloping the ship, and after all their attempts to prevent it fail, he suggests simply waiting for it to consume them and seeing what happens. The rest of the crew objects, but he counters that they don't actually know what the energy field is, and given that all their other options have been exhausted, inaction is the only logical choice left to make, even if the odds of survival are low.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • Over the course of four years T'Pol undergoes a Mind Rape that brings up traumatic memories of losing her emotional control in a jazz nightclub, remembers repressed memories of a line-of-duty killing (that also led to a loss of emotional control), suffers from Pa'nar Syndrome that degrades her neural pathways (leading to a loss of emotional control), becomes addicted to Trellium-D (which causes a loss of emotional control), and is infected by a microbe that makes her undergo a premature pon farr (leading to a loss of emotional control and clothing). It seems that the writers believed that the only way T'Pol's character could develop was to take away the characteristics that made her different from humans.
  • While T'Pol is probably the queen of all Straw Vulcans, she's also often proven completely right for all of the wrong reasons. For example, in an early episode, the crew discovers an uncharted Earth-like planet. T'Pol mentions that standard Vulcan protocol for such an event is to scan the planet from orbit for a week before sending people down in person. Archer basically ignores her, because he wants to go down and explore in person, and immediately sends a team down that isn't equipped with any kind of protective suits. The entire conflict of the episode (which almost results in deaths) comes from the fact that the air contains hallucinogens, which is something that would have been discovered if they spent time scanning the planet first.
  • That said, in the episode "Fusion" the crew met an offshoot culture of Vulcans who ate meat and believed that emotion in moderation was not harmful in the slightest; as long as you had control over your emotions, there was no reason you couldn't allow yourself to feel and express that emotion. They were sort of an exploration of what would happen if you had Vulcans who weren't straw.
  • One of the plans for the fifth season (had there been one), was to reveal that T'Pol's father was a Romulan spy, which would go a long way towards explaining her Straw Vulcan tendencies in the earlier seasons.
• Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham's insistence that her viewpoint is logical (she was raised by Vulcans despite being human), when in reality she tends to badly misread situations, results in her becoming one of these on many occasions, and a large part of her arc in the first season revolves around her trying to overcome this tendency. For example, she insisted in the pilot episodes "The Vulcan Hello/Battle at the Binary Stars" that the only logical opening communication to the Klingons was a show of force instead of the standard Starfleet "we come in peace" line. Whether it would have worked or not is up for debate, but the way she tried to enforce that view (try to convince Captain Georgiou, then nerve-pinch her into unconsciousness when that failed and try to convince the rest of the crew before she woke up) backfired dramatically, resulting in a Federation/Klingon war and Michael being court-martialed and sent to prison.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: Taken to its logical extreme in the Season 2 episode wej Duj. The crew of the Vulcan ship Sh'vhal are very rigid. So rigid that T'Lyn, a crewmember onboard the ship, is looked down upon by the crew because she uses intuition and instinct in her reasoning. Later, Captain Sokel "thanks" T'Lyn for saving the Sh'Vhal and U.S.S. Cerritos by transfering her to a Starfleet ship (later known to be the U.S.S. Cerritos) because of her supposedly emotional "outbursts".
  • The illogic of T'Lyn's "punishment" is called out by Lt. Jg. Mariner in the T'Lyn-centered Season 4 episode Empathalogical Fallacies.

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