from Tattorack@lemmy.world to startrek@startrek.website on 01 Sep 14:21
https://lemmy.world/post/35298873
Consider this a reminder for people currently watching Star Trek, old and new.
Logic and controlled emotion aren’t inherent to being a Vulcan. Somehow gaining Vulcan traits, or biologically transforming into a Vulcan, will not make you logical and emotionless. In fact, quite the opposite would happen.
Vulcans used to be warlike, barbaric (as Spock would describe them) and nearly wiped themselves out. It was the teaching of Surak in the philosophy of pure logic, after centuries of war, that made Vulcans what they are today. Vulcans do this by training logic and emotional control throughout their childhood and teenage years. Ultimately culminating in Kolinahr, the final stage to “purge emotion”. But Vulcans still experience emotion, and their state of control is something that requires constant maintenance through meditation and practice.
Vulcans are far more emotional and passionate than even Humans. If a Human so much as houses a portion of a Vulcan’s Katra (the mind/spirit), said Human would struggle immensely to keep their feeling under control.
I’m writing all this because I’m getting the feeling that this very important part about Vulcans is being forgotten (perhaps more-so by the current writers of Star Trek).
threaded - newest
I haven’t seen the episode yet that I think you’re alluding to, but yes Vulcans have always been presented as having a kind of Buddhist-style philosophy with the important qualification that they would literally destroy themselves as an advanced race without it. The “religion” is an important social technology to enable them to explore the cosmos.
It’s obviously alluding to humans too, if we can’t control our innate animal reactions like tribalism and greed then we too will not be able to harness our own (physical) technology without self-destructing.
Plus yet another data point is the fact (if my memory is correct) that Romulans and Vulcans are the same species except one split off to go war mongering around the galaxy while the other devoted themselves to logic to control their emotions.
Yeah true, I suppose that kind of defeats my whole idea that Vulcans would self-destruct if they allowed emotions to control them.
They very nearly did. Romulans found another way to build their society.
Enterprise explores Vulcans who have rejected the teachings of logic and emotional control, and one of them end up mentally raping T’Pol.
There have been mentioned a huge exodus, or multiple exoduses away from Vulcan, where those that rejected the philosophy of logic wanted to start anew somewhere. Romulus is the only succesful world as a result of that past.
I’ve long seen Vulcans as something of a cautionary example of going to an extreme. Rather than living alongside their emotions and learning their appropriate uses, Vulcans just repress them until it all occasionally explodes in an uncontrolled outburst. In their day to day, Vulcans have valuable logical insights but their lack of connection to emotion in a healthy way is a detriment.
Trek has from the beginning framed the strict adherence to cold logic as a flaw. That’s why Spock got a bunch of people killed on the Galileo 7.
It was acknowledged in the episode that aired this week…
In Strange New Worlds, Spock turns fully human for one episode. Somehow he struggles with human emotions, as if his biologically Vulcan side was responsible for keeping them at bay, and not years of discipline and training.
In Prodigy, the main character is a genetic amalgamation of alpha quadrant species. He undergoes a treatment to “unlock his genetic potential”, causing his various genetic elements to occasionally become dominant. When the Vulcan genes become dominant, the character is logical and emotionless.
Yeah, Vulcans canonically have a brain structure that makes emotional suppression possible.
No, but it helps. They weren’t evolved to suppress emotions.
On what are you basing this? Because it’s not the Voyager episode.
Vulcans have biological psych-suppression systems.
Based on all of Star Trek. You can see the links above that Vulcans have been extremely passionate, emotional, and violent before their teachings of logic and emotional suppression.
Or you could just continue ignoring all that.
Did you know Humans also have brain centres that exist for logic and emotional regulation?
The episode I just referenced demonstrates that this is not true.
If you want to be a canon cop, you can’t be selective.
Speak for yourself.
I asked you for a direct reference, and you provided a vague gesture.
I provided direct references in OP. You decided to ignore them in favour of one selective moment in Voyager.
None of the episodes you cited stated that biology plays no role in the Vulcan capacity for emotional suppression.
So we have one episode that says it fits, and zero that say it doesn’t.
On the contrary; none of the episodes in all of Trek, up until your Voyager episode, states that a Vulcan’s logic and emotional suppression comes from biology. They do the opposite; Vulcans are biologically incredibly emotional and passionate. The Voyager episode doesn’t even go into detail what that biology is either.
It’s just a brain centre, like any other brain centre, that regulates emotion (humans have one too), and through training the Vulcans use to it suppress their emotions. Unless you explicitly choose to ignore all canon that comes before it.
Even within Voyager it is clear that a Vulcan achieves logic and emotional control through years of training, and that before logic and emotional control became part of Vulcan culture, Vulcans were passionate and violent. Do you deny this well established canon?
I see no reason that both things cannot be true.
Vulcans do go through extensive training to achieve kolinar; they also possess unique genetic traits that make it possible.
Building on that VS, DNA was barely discovered by Watson and Crick when TOS fan, so we should be able to work the implications of the growing body of knowledge of genetics into what we have done before.
We don’t hold Star Trek back from incorporating advances in real life scientific and technological knowledge.
For example, growing understanding in nanotechnology informed many elements of 1990s Trek. We didn’t say that nanotechnology shouldn’t be referenced just because it wasn’t referenced in TOS.
In fact, Roddenberry insisted that Star Trek always be a possible future for the viewers and insisted on changes and corrections to address changes in knowledge.
In the case of what we saw in this episode, knowledge of epigenetics, an entire domain of understanding that has developed in this century, informed the situation.
Epigenetics can be defined as “The study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.”
We were told by Una that, because the Karkovian serum was derived from Spock’s DNA it reflected Spock’s experience. This means certain Vulcan genetic traits were already ‘switched on’ by environmental factors, that could include experiences like meditation, that would lead to ‘switching on’ the genes that enable functioning of the specific Vulcan brain structures noted in Voyager.
One episode having bad writing doesn’t magically erase every other entire series where Vulcans are as OP said…
Actually there is an episode of VOY that proves they did evolve a special brian region that enables them to learn how to supress emotions
Yeah, it didn’t really make any sense that they turned into Vulcans and somehow also acquired a Vulcan education.
Also vulcan hair style.
Isn't there an episode in the original series where Spock has to like go full monka in ritualistic combat? Pretty sure he drinks something or does a ritual to suppress his mental fortitude against his inner rage
That was the pon farr, basically when even Spock’s half-Vulcan mating urge couldn’t be repressed anymore.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amok_Time
If you raise a Vulcan without the mental training, you basically get a Romulan.
Spock in the original series goes into his mating season, which is a time where Vulcan emotions become too uncontrollable to repress. Vulcans are ashamed of this loss of control and try to hide it away.
Spock had to fight Kirk because Spock’s arranged marriage wife-to-be was allowed to chose anyone as her champion against Spock when she decided she didn’t want to him. Spock was out of control in full ragemode and only regained his senses when he thought he’d killed Kirk.
Vulcan society has, to my eye, always been one that acts like it has everything figured out but its repression has created just as many bizarre rituals as any other culture.
Yea when he has to fight rivals for T’pal’s hand in marriage. Don’t remember an emotion enhancing (in effect) drink, but he does fight. He also still has logic, as he stops and makes an appeal to end the ceremony before he kills Kirk.
He’s lost his control in a few episodes, but the season of love is cannonically the only time it “naturally” happens. (I forget the name they have for it)
Pon Farr.
That’s the ticket! Thanks.
Since it’s such an intimate affair, I wonder why they didn’t call it Pon Closs.
Spock himself explicitly states as much. I forget the episode, and I’m not having luck searching for quotes, but good ol’ Leonard Nimoy straight up says, (paraphrasing from memory because I can’t find the exact quote) “… quite the contrary. Vulcans feel emotion, stronger than humans. They must be repressed and controlled lest they become overpowering.” or such similar direct statements.
It doesn’t explicitly jive with some of the other writing for the character, where he outright says things like, “I am incapable of that emotion”, or otherwise acts like a stone wall in some scenes. Though he’s not written so poorly that it’s impossible to reconcile, either. Pretty easy to assume he’s simply on top of his emotions in those scenes and doesn’t want to give in nor wants to explain.