Are All Vulcans Lack Emotions?

[thompur]

I don't find McCoy comparable to T'Pol because the context of the two are dramatically different.

McCoy fits into a trinity of temperaments that diametrically opposes Spock's, with both characters reflecting elements of Kirk. He's passionate, empathetic, and pushes Kirk to go with his conscience. He also characterizes the viewpoint closest to that of the 60's audience, with a slightly more antiquated view of the world -- which goes into his dislike of things like Transporters. While he has a curmudgeonly approach to Spock and recoils when he feels Spock's logic is in contradiction to humanistic view of the world, there's plenty of occasions when he expresses admiration for him. McCoy works as a character because of basic writing theory essentially, particularly as TOS is very focused on characters ethical arguments.

T'Pol is the second-biggest victim - the first obviously being Archer who is definitely a racist - of a ham-fisted seasons-long attempt by the show-runners to inject a forced, stupid conflict between the Humans and the Vulcans which often made the Vulcans the punching bag so the Humans looked better in contrast. She definitely comes across as the writers wanted her to - arrogant, imperious, and dismissive of humanity with all their stinking emotions - and it was intended to make her fairly unlikable until her arc of accepting Archer as this great leader and trailblazer the writers evidently seemed to believe he was. However, it wasn't just her attitudes here in question, as I said, Archer is a racist tool who uses his authority in the situation to make his stupid arguments and have his human crew-mates back him up in various subtle and not-so-subtle hostility aimed at her and any Vulcan in the general proximity.



McCoy said slurs, sure, but he was Spock's peer and colleague at the end of the day. Enterprise was a cul-de-sac of characters actively making decisions based off of racist beliefs that never goes away, even in the goddamned finale.

Well said, Kitten Champion.

[Reddish Mage]

Exactly, good example! That's the writers acknowledging a silly part of the Trek Universe, everyone wears skintight stretch fabric with no pockets, and then saying "but what if we just gave them pockets, and maybe overall slightly more "normal"/21th century clothing? It's very practical."

The lack of pockets in TNG at least was a very purposeful attempt being futuristic. Everything was supposed to attach to the uniform as if made of “magic cloth.” They used Velcro.

Whether the aesthetic works to give it a future feel is up to you.

I like the practical pockets coming back in Enterprise.

Some of the most interesting technologies in ENT were "preplacements" of future Star Trek tech, like how they had some sort of grappling claws on cables instead of a tractor beam. That's kind of cool. But they were in such a big hurry to tell the story of how Star Trek became Star Trek that most of that stuff was featured maybe twice and the second time is the episode in which they receive the familiar technology as an upgrade. A bit like how in Smallville the first season was about all the Superman powers appearing in quick succession, because this show is about Superman. You're making a prequel because you thought of interesting things to do with a less developed setting, take your time and use that a bit more.

Smallville is a good comparison. They definitely brought in too many powers too fast. You are never made to feel that the meteor freaks are any challenge to Young’s Clark Kent. They should’ve waited to introduce the bullet-time speed until the season finale or something.

However, Smallville always had new powers and other stuff to introduce right up to bringing out flight in the grand finale. They also decided the setting would be lousy with kryptonite so he’d be useless and reliant on his friends at critical times.

Enterprise puts all their toys right up front in season one and doesn’t even bother with playing with the idea for longer than that of what it would be like for the Enterprise to have to deal with problems while lacking technology the later shows had.

Clark certainly had his times way, way down the line when he was too weak, too slow, lacking flight, vulnerable etc and that was part of the fun of the show.

[thompur]

What people forget about the Spock/McCoy(/Kirk) dynamic is that the three are actually close friends, with Spock and McCoy having a slightly adversarial relationship due to their differing viewpoints. This friendship is shown best in Amok Time, where Spock invites both of them to a ceremony that is deeply private and somewhat embarassing for a supposedly non-emotional vulcan. The very last place Spock would want McCoy if he wasn't a close friend.

Yes, they bicker and fight. But they also have each other's backs.

Damn, I wish this site had "Like" buttons.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I don't think anybody would ever accuse Star Trek of having consistent writing. :smallwink

The funny thing was that when I was doing my fact checking, I found out that Amok Time was written by Theodore Sturgeon - yes, he of Sturgeon's law fame - and that the episode is consistently ranked high in any poll of episodes - even polls covering the entire franchise. The man was truely a genius.

[The New Bruceski]

The man was truely a genius.

10% of the time, anyway.

[LibraryOgre]

10% of the time, anyway.

The trick is making sure everyone only sees your 10%.

[TeChameleon]

Don't forget that by the time the movies rolled around, Spock ended up stuffing his soul-equivalent into McCoy for a while, too. They bickered like siblings, but they were tight. Either one of them would put their life on the line for the other without even thinking about it. So McCoy busting Spock's balls a bit has a very, very different context than T'Pol being all "Pfft, humans." at Archer (sorry, the Spock/McCoy interactions were some of my all-time favourite bits of any Trek. DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy were magnificent actors).

[Peelee]

Don't forget that by the time the movies rolled around, Spock ended up stuffing his soul-equivalent into McCoy for a while, too. They bickered like siblings, but they were tight. Either one of them would put their life on the line for the other without even thinking about it.

T'Pol and Archer (and Trip, for that matter) also got to that point. Are you sayin that the difference is in Enterprise we see the relationship develop, so it is worse?

[Hunter Noventa]

Do we accept STO as some kind of canon? Not that I mind really, but I'm still not gonna care about it if you say yes.

It's in a weird place since I'm pretty sure everything that goes in there has to pass muster at some level through CBS. But it also gets weird. I mostly included for the amusement of anyone who wanted to see it.

[Kitten Champion]

It's in a weird place since I'm pretty sure everything that goes in there has to pass muster at some level through CBS. But it also gets weird. I mostly included for the amusement of anyone who wanted to see it.

Maybe, I've never played STO myself but I know there's some overlap with canon Trek characters appearing in-game with the actors voicing them and whatnot.

The problem is you've got to do a lot to justify fairly core aspects of a MMORPG that don't make sense for Star Trek outside that medium, like providing a narrative that will support endless conflict so your character will always have things to fight.

[Hunter Noventa]

Maybe, I've never played STO myself but I know there's some overlap with canon Trek characters appearing in-game with the actors voicing them and whatnot.

The problem is you've got to do a lot to justify fairly core aspects of a MMORPG that don't make sense for Star Trek outside that medium, like providing a narrative that will support endless conflict so your character will always have things to fight.

Yeah there's a bit of that. Though there's barely any inter-faction conflict now, given how the story has progressed. The whole game, up until the most recent bits was just a "hey remember this thing from an episode of star trek? here's more of it!"

[Friv]

Speaking of which, are Romulans also super strong?

We sort of drifted past this question, but canonically Romulans are quite strong, but not as strong as Vulcans. This is because the planet Vulcan is supposed to have a gravity of 1.4G (something that we basically never see when humans are actually on the planet, but we could handwave that Star Trek tech has adapters for that) and Romulus has a gravity of 1.0G. The combination of two thousand years of living on a lower-gravity world and of individual people being born there makes them not quite as strong as Vulcans.

[Reddish Mage]

T'Pol and Archer (and Trip, for that matter) also got to that point. Are you sayin that the difference is in Enterprise we see the relationship develop, so it is worse?

I don’t think there is much a point regarding the relationships growing close...especially as it says nothing about who is a racist.

Still I see McCoy as less deep in his beliefs than T’Pol from the beginning. They simply both change over time.

[TeChameleon]

I don’t think there is much a point regarding the relationships growing close...especially as it says nothing about who is a racist.

Still I see McCoy as less deep in his beliefs than T’Pol from the beginning. They simply both change over time.

I'm not sure McCoy actually had any deep-seated beliefs about Vulcans. I always got the impression that McCoy's irascible comments about Spock's Vulcan-ness were less an 'I hate Vulcans' thing and more a 'you have pissed me off and happened to be a Vulcan while doing it'. As far as I remember (and it has admittedly been years since I watched ToS), on those rare occasions Bones interacts with non-Spock Vulcans, he's as respectful to them as he is to anybody else, which is admittedly not very

(random aside, if you happen to watch/rewatch Amok Time, the old Vulcan lady who oversees the Pon Farr trials has the most amazing Norwegian accent. I'd love to hear how that happened in-universe...)

[JadedDM]

(random aside, if you happen to watch/rewatch Amok Time, the old Vulcan lady who oversees the Pon Farr trials has the most amazing Norwegian accent. I'd love to hear how that happened in-universe...)

Particularly as the actress herself is Austrian.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

the old Vulcan lady who oversees the Pon Farr trials has the most amazing Norwegian accent. I'd love to hear how that happened in-universe...)

Space vikings raiding Vulcan colonies.





With quantum-axes.

[Peelee]

Particularly as the actress herself is Austrian.

Eh, those can vary wildly. My uncle, for example, sounds nothing whatsoever like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and neither of them sound a bit like my cousins boyfriend.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm not sure McCoy actually had any deep-seated beliefs about Vulcans. I always got the impression that McCoy's irascible comments about Spock's Vulcan-ness were less an 'I hate Vulcans' thing and more a 'you have pissed me off and happened to be a Vulcan while doing it'. As far as I remember (and it has admittedly been years since I watched ToS), on those rare occasions Bones interacts with non-Spock Vulcans, he's as respectful to them as he is to anybody else, which is admittedly not very

(random aside, if you happen to watch/rewatch Amok Time, the old Vulcan lady who oversees the Pon Farr trials has the most amazing Norwegian accent. I'd love to hear how that happened in-universe...)

I remember, about the time Voyager came out, there was some discussion about Tim Russ being a black Vulcan (not to be confused with Black Vulcan, who I now want Tim Russ to voice in a TV show/movie, because it would be hilarious for certain values thereof), and his basic response was "Look, Vulcan is a big, hot, planet. You're going to have a lot of people on Vulcan who look different, just like on Earth. This makes no less sense than a Vulcan looking like a white dude."

So, yeah, Norwegian Vulcan? They come from an archipelago in the southern ocean where they learn to speak a different language until they're five, and thus have a weird accent, instead of sounding like Americans, like most Vulcans do, because the normal Vulcan accent is TOTALLY an American accent.

[Hands_Of_Blue]

There were the V'tosh ka'tur (literally 'Vulcans without logic') introduced in Enterprise's first season.

Which is technically a misnomer. They still believed in Surak's teachings, their interpretation was that one could embrace logic and emotional control without going to the extreme of acting like an emotionless robot all the time.

Which reminds me of an episode of Voyager with a bunch of Tuvok flashbacks in which we meet one of Tuvok's teachers. Said teacher has no qualms about expressing, at least verbally, what emotions he was feeling. He didn't let them control his actions, but he didn't just straight up ignore them. Speaking of Tuvok, there was also that episode where he got amnesia and he spent a bunch of the episode in the kitchen cooking desserts and sweets because he loved that the tasted the best and that they made the other crew members happy.

On the old topic of the Klingon society not making sense, there is an Enterprise episode where a Klingon, played by the actor who played General Martok, laments that the warrior culture has permeated all aspects of Klingon society, and that it is a somewhat recent development. He talks about how he is a lawyer, his dad was a teacher, his mom was a biologist, and states that you could earn honor through duty and integrity and not just violence, bloodshed and dying in battle.

[Wardog]

I heard an interesting fan-theory about the Klingons:

That they were engineered as a race of super-soldiers, but a now-extinct and unknown race that they overthrew. This would explain:
* Why they are naturally tougher and better fighters than most other races.
* Why their military tech is pretty advaced, but the restof their society isn't.
* Why their mythology tells that they killed their gods.


Another fan-theory (unfortunately nixed by Enterprise):
* Some time between TOS and TNG, there was a political, social, cultural and ethnic revolution in the Klingon Empire, that resulted in the angry, lumpy-headed sub-race of Klingons overthrowing and suppressing or ethnicly clensing the formerly-dominant smooth-headed sub-race.

[Cikomyr]

I heard an interesting fan-theory about the Klingons:

That they were engineered as a race of super-soldiers, but a now-extinct and unknown race that they overthrew. This would explain:
* Why they are naturally tougher and better fighters than most other races.
* Why their military tech is pretty advaced, but the restof their society isn't.
* Why their mythology tells that they killed their gods.


Another fan-theory (unfortunately nixed by Enterprise):
* Some time between TOS and TNG, there was a political, social, cultural and ethnic revolution in the Klingon Empire, that resulted in the angry, lumpy-headed sub-race of Klingons overthrowing and suppressing or ethnicly clensing the formerly-dominant smooth-headed sub-race.

Well, the idea that the Klingon didn't actually develop their tech is not an entirely new one. It's canon the Klingons were once conquered by a race called the Hurq, who were eventually driven off by the Klingons. It's more than possible the Klingons reverse engineered their tech in their uprising.

[Brother Oni]

I heard an interesting fan-theory about the Klingons:

That they were engineered as a race of super-soldiers, but a now-extinct and unknown race that they overthrew. This would explain:
* Why they are naturally tougher and better fighters than most other races.
* Why their military tech is pretty advaced, but the restof their society isn't.
* Why their mythology tells that they killed their gods.

Wasn't there a TNG episode that indicated the whole Alpha Quadrant was seeded by an alien race and they left clues for each of the races to come together and find their message of harmony?

[Ebon_Drake]

Another fan-theory (unfortunately nixed by Enterprise):
* Some time between TOS and TNG, there was a political, social, cultural and ethnic revolution in the Klingon Empire, that resulted in the angry, lumpy-headed sub-race of Klingons overthrowing and suppressing or ethnicly clensing the formerly-dominant smooth-headed sub-race.

Isn't that basically the plot of Nemesis with the Romulans and Remans? I've never made it far past the dune buggy scene, but that's essentially what I remember of it.

It would have made a much better explanation for the change in the Klingons than what Enterprise actually gave us.

[Peelee]

Wasn't there a TNG episode that indicated the whole Alpha Quadrant was seeded by an alien race and they left clues for each of the races to come together and find their message of harmony?

Not just a humanoid seed race, but the coolest humanoid seed race.

[Ebon_Drake]

Not just a humanoid seed race, but the coolest humanoid seed race.

Pfft, clearly just The Founders playing a long con!

The actor playing the ancient humanoid was the same woman who played the Female Changeling

[Cikomyr]

Another fan-theory (unfortunately nixed by Enterprise):
* Some time between TOS and TNG, there was a political, social, cultural and ethnic revolution in the Klingon Empire, that resulted in the angry, lumpy-headed sub-race of Klingons overthrowing and suppressing or ethnicly clensing the formerly-dominant smooth-headed sub-race.

That theory was kinda canonically nixed by the DS9 Episode Blood Oath, where TOS Klingons appeared with bumpy foreheads

[TeChameleon]

That theory was kinda canonically nixed by the DS9 Episode Blood Oath, where TOS Klingons appeared with bumpy foreheads

Except that the question got raised right back up again in "Trials and Tribble-ations", also DS9, where the DS9 cast ended up in "The Trouble with Tribbles" ToS episode- quoth O'Brien, upon seeing the Klingons in the DS K7 bar:

O'Brien: "Those are Klingons?"
Worf: "We... do not speak of it."

So... uhm... yeah.

[JadedDM]

Didn't ENT put that all to bed with the whole 'augment virus' thing?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Technically.

Then again, Discovery put it to bed as well, but completely the other way. By having another style and makeup change for the Klingons without an in universe reason or acknowledgement for the change they confirmed that there can just be random visual updates in the Star Trek series. So it follows that the ridged look introduced in the TOS movies were an art upgrade and we can all safely ignore it.

Or we go with the confirmed augment theory, or we just keep whatever headcanon we like. But we certainly don't need another official explanation.

[Cikomyr]

Except that the question got raised right back up again in "Trials and Tribble-ations", also DS9, where the DS9 cast ended up in "The Trouble with Tribbles" ToS episode- quoth O'Brien, upon seeing the Klingons in the DS K7 bar:

O'Brien: "Those are Klingons?"
Worf: "We... do not speak of it."

So... uhm... yeah.

That episode did nothing for or against the theory of a social revolution.