Star Trek

What episodes (or books, etc) have you been looking at?

The TNG episode "The Perfect Mate" where the lady said she couldn't stop being attractive anymore than Vulcans could stop being logical.

That's less "this is a biological element of the Vulcan species" and more "this is a stereotype of the Vulcan species". Especially since a big part of Vulcan culture is being logical.

Since it's like, a thing that is ingrained in all Vulcan children, "all Vulcans are logical" is kind of a statement along the lines of "All German people speak German." It's probably not literally true, but it applies to enough of the population that it might as well be true.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 3rd 2021 at 7:58:33 AM

Vulcans commitment to logic is part cultural, part biological. They have incredible mental capabilities but also very powerful emotions, it was recognizing the danger of those emotions that lead them to logic but they would not have been successful if it wasn't for their mental discipline. That's why Spock is frequently questioned on his human side and commitment to logic, if it was just cultural there would be little to debate.

I feel like there are examples in Enterprise of people being treated as correct to say that Vulcans are physically incapable of emotions.

In Enterprise though, the Vulcans are portrayed as incredibly arrogant and it's made really obvious that they look down on humans. They're also pretty consistently portrayed as an extremely private people.

We see very little of what life on Vulcan is actually like, with the bulk of that through Burnham's eyes in Discovery with it being made super obvious that Sarek absolutely has emotions and makes illogical decisions from those feelings, he's just able to package it in a way that looks outwardly logical.

In addition, we literally know that the Vulcan focus on logic isn't inherently biological. I mean, the Romulans split off from the Vulcans in 370 AD. That's nowhere near enough time for a genetic element like that to enter the picture, especially since the Vulcans can live for over 200 years, and the Romulans don't have that emphasis on logic at all. (Yes, this creates a bizarre wrinkle with the Pon Farr thing, but we've never had a Romulan character around long enough for it to come up).

The emphasis on logic is primarily cultural. They just want it to look like a species-inherent thing, at least around the time of Enterprise.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 3rd 2021 at 1:14:31 PM

I suspect that Romulans just don't wait to go into heat to have sex, therefore it's not as big of a deal, and they don't have to get life and death dramatic when they're at peak hornt.

I would have thought that Pon Farr was a side effect of Vulcans' repression, which is why Romulans don't have it.

I am not sure I agree with "I, Borg". A Hive Mind isn't the same thing as individual soldiers and civilians.

In the case of Hugh, the big surprise of the episode was when he started to develop independence and the capacity to NOT always refer to himself as "we." Unlike Picard, this was a longtime member of the Hive Mind who didn't have his Borg components removed to let him regain autonomy. The dilemma of the episode was that they believed they had a plausible trojan horse virus that would decimate the Collective, but they accidentally humanized one of those drones in the process to make them realize they were plotting the annihilation of a species.

The cyclical nature of Pon Farr and the somatic symptoms seem to be building on something physical. I suspect that Vulcan... Biology reaches a peak in fertility every seven years but it wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if they didn't refuse to use the release valve the rest of the time.

Also like, it seems highly unlikely, even with arranged marriages, that your spouse is going to have exactly the same cycle that you do, so logic would dictate that performance when not in the blood fever would have to be an option. (Which was strongly implied with Saavik helping reborn Spock through it.)

I always assumed that only males experience the pon farr and females respond to it, much like female cats go into heat and male cats respond to their pheromones.

Yes, I believe it was intended to be something that only the males got... until Berman and Braga wrote the ENT episode "Bounty", where T'Pol suddenly ends up getting it.

Ah, it's been a while since I watched any ENT.

Given that Vulcans had arranged marriages I'd assumed that they were telepathically bonded at a young age, hence why they would both go into Pon Farr at the same time. It wasn't made especially clear if T'Pring was suffering similar effects, as Spock himself was a lot more in control by the time the ceremony was underway. The Voyager episode "Blood Fever" had Torres get "infected" with Pon Farr because of Vorik. I never thought that Vulcan females wouldn't go into Pon Farr, as it's implied that the emotionally reserved Vulcans needed something to get that kind of enthusiasm (although not an absolute, given Saavik and Spock on the Genesis Planet). The alternative, that only males need to be sexually aggressive, is not a pleasant line of thought to follow...

Unfortunately we're dealing lore written 55 years ago. You either have to accept some Broad Strokes or Retcons, or accept that Vulcans reflect the same sexism as the 1960s USA.

T'Pring agreed to be the "property" of the winner of the fight to the death. Now, you can argue she's just reading an ancient script and it's not meant that way... but that's retconning it.

I wonder how much of what we saw in Amok Time is normal for all Vulcans and how much is Spock's family being extra traditional because they're kind of Vulcan aristocracy.

Still don't understand how starfleet abandoned romulus yet the fans insist it was Picard who's character got assinated cause he had the balls to leave in protest

Also I have a feeling the trek boomers will somehow find a way to argue that SNW is "franchise asasination" when it comes out for whatever contrived reason even though it it has the optimistic tone, focus on exploration and traditional "cast is all chief officers" cast structure that they claimed they wanted all along.

Also f you, Thatstarwarsgirl and your band of Nerd Reactionists who make five videos a day with all-caps titles about how 7 of 9's hair being different in PIC ruins the franchise. I can't go anywhere on a star trek message board cause of you

Edited by The_MJP on Mar 8th 2021 at 7:59:53 AM

I unfollowed the official Star Trek page on Facebook despite them sometimes having good articles because even though I know better than to go in the comments, the Top Comment would invariably be someone moaning about how new Trek is a personal insult to themselves and to St. Roddenberry.

Edited by TParadox on Mar 7th 2021 at 11:44:07 AM

It's like, if you don't like the new shows or the direction they've gone in, that's fine.

Doesn't mean they're irredeemably awful garbage. Especially considering that Gene Roddenberry wasn't actually at all responsible for a lot of the most beloved stuff in the franchise. I mean, the movie he kept trying to pitch sounds terrible (the TOS crew goes back in time and either ensures or prevents the JFK assassination, he apparently couldn't keep it straight and pitched it at least once a year) and TNG didn't actually get good until he got kicked upstairs and his lawyer got forced out of the writer's room.

The thing that bothers me the most about those channels is that they'll make stuff up on a crazy scale and too many people will just be like "oh, they said Discovery got cancelled before season 2 but they're currently filming season 4? This channel seems legit, I'll believe everything else they say because constantly making bad predictions isn't a red flag."

Was the Red Dwarf episode specifically a send-up of those failed pitches?

Edited by Ayasugi on Mar 7th 2021 at 12:56:42 PM

Possibly. Wouldn't surprise me, at least.

The dumbest part of Roddenberry's JFK pitch (which usually revolved around using the Guardian of Forever) is that when Voyage Home was a success, his response was "well, I told them to do time travel! Look what happens when they listen to me!"

Tikka To Ride is a fantastic episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmlVGVKcoxg (massive spoilers just in the video description, but if you don't think you'll ever watch the actual show, it's a nice little chunk of sci-fi weirdness/drama in the middle of what is otherwise a comedy show)

Edited by Unsung on Mar 7th 2021 at 11:57:41 AM

It is VERY out of character for Picard to quit and just go live on a vineyard. The TNG Picard would have found another way or be rescuing people right up to the last minute.

Leaving in protest was giving up and sealing the fate of millions to die.

Edited by Memers on Mar 7th 2021 at 11:06:27 AM