A T'Pol and Trip body difference

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A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby PoweredByCoffee » Sun Jul 08, 2012 3:54 pm

Hey, I'm new. I haven't read each and every thread so if this was answered I'm sorry for a double post.

Vulcan body temperature is about 91F, humans are at 98.6F.

So my question is why do people in fic and debates always claim T'Pol would be warm to the touch for Trip? Her people evolved to stand the heat so they are cooler to compensate. If anything it would be the other way round and he would feel warmer to her. Right?

If I'm wrong and missing something can someone please point it out. This had been bugging me since I started reading TnT fic.

Thank you all in advance. :)
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Hummingbird2 » Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:53 pm

Actually, this has been a part of Star Trek fanlore for a long time, from The Original Series onward (novels and fanfic referring to Spock having a higher body temp.). The only problem is, I'm not sure it's canon. :dunno:

Her people evolved to stand the heat so they are cooler to compensate. If anything it would be the other way round and he would feel warmer to her. Right?


And I believe you're right about that.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Distracted » Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:57 pm

Your source, Memory Beta, derives its Vulcan biology data from print sources, not screen sources. It's therefore not canon. Even the officially recognized books were not considered canon by Roddenberry. Only what was onscreen is "official". So we can pick and choose what we want to use from print sources. For some reason unknown to me the TnT fandom has always chosen to portray Vulcans with a higher body temp than humans. I'm not sure why. It's fanon, I guess, like the four gender thing for Andorians. You can take it or leave it.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Alelou » Sun Jul 08, 2012 9:45 pm

Hello and welcome, PoweredByCoffee. The higher body temperature for Vulcans thing has appeared for so long in fanfic and even the published novels that I honestly just assumed it WAS canon and could have sworn it's mentioned in TOS somewhere, although since Memory Alpha doesn't have it I must be wrong.

However, does it makes sense to have a lower body temperature if you live in extreme heat? Wouldn't evolution try to avoid a situation in which the environment is frequently going to raise one's body temperatures far above normal (sort of like what the current heat waves are doing to some people)? We run fevers to kill off pathogens, after all, but if they run too high we can also kill off or damage ourselves.

I don't see the four genders for Andorians as quite so common an idea, though it definitely crops up repeatedly. Does anyone know where it comes from originally? I see Ent episodes as suggesting something much more conventional for Shran and Talla (and Shran and Jhamel).
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby PoweredByCoffee » Sun Jul 08, 2012 9:51 pm

Thank you for all of your thoughts on this. I never remember it being talked about in a canon way before so I wanted to check.

I am not a biologist so I'm not even sure how you would figure out or come to think of what the Vulcan temp was.

Sometimes the little things annoy us. It's like sand to oysters.

Thanks again guys.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Distracted » Sun Jul 08, 2012 11:52 pm

I agree about the body temp thing, Alelou. It takes energy to maintain temperature homeostasis. It would make sense for a being which evolved at constantly high temperature to have a normal body temp which is higher than a being which evolved at lower temperatures. At least it does to me.

I think the four Andorian genders thing might be from a book.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Silverbullet » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:48 am

Hi, powered by Coffee. Your user name is familiar but not sure where I came across it. different though.

I just go with the flow. since most Fanfics have T'pol's body heat higher than Trip's that is the way I go and I don't think about it one way or the other. TnT have other things to overcome.

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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby PoweredByCoffee » Mon Jul 09, 2012 4:26 am

Silverbullet wrote:Hi, powered by Coffee. Your user name is familiar but not sure where I came across it. different though.


I am a fanfic writer for other fandoms. In fact I'm writing my first T'Pol and Trip fic as we speak. Or trying to. I still haven't found a beta that knows enough about the fandom and has the time to really guide me. Hoping to find one soon so my fic can shine.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby putaro » Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:04 am

It looks like the body temperature thing is just one of those things that has entered the collective unconsciousness and taken on a life of its own. I've seen it so many times in fics by this time that it never occurred to me to look it up.

Trek in general is such a large and sprawling universe with so many different authors that it's very hard to get everything in line with canon and there are certainly areas of canon that contradict each other. Personally, I follow along with the broad strokes, I try to get the timelines correct and I toss a lot of stuff that just doesn't make sense to me, especially scientific mumbo jumbo that's off.

I started writing for Enterprise about a year ago and so far every one has been pretty kind either ignoring any violations of canon I may be making or very gently pointing them out. Early on someone pointed out that my story idea seemed to be ignoring the Romulan War, which it was, but that led me to come up with a whole different spin on the Romulan War which I think will be very interesting. And, in my defense, Enterprise completely ignored the Romulan War in *the_abomination* since you'd think the characters would have had some mention of it after five years of fighting (yet another reason to ignore The Episode Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken).

So welcome, jump in, don't stress!
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby putaro » Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:10 am

Oh, and BTW Powered By Coffee, please introduce yourself in the New Members thread!
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Alelou » Mon Jul 09, 2012 10:51 am

And somewhere in the index there's a thread for asking for a beta... usually it's a good idea to give people an idea of length and type of story.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby lfvoy » Tue Jul 10, 2012 12:53 am

Distracted wrote:I think the four Andorian genders thing might be from a book.


It started with the TNG episode "Data's Day" which contains a comment that Andorians marry in groups of four, so a four-person marriage actually can be considered canonical (even if the Aenar trilogy later seemed to contradict the idea by showing Shran and Talas in a two-person relationship).

Now, a four-person marriage doesn't necessarily mean there are four genders, but the folks who did the DS9 relaunch series decided to take that approach to it and it has become a fairly significant plot point in those books. I think it entered fanon from there.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Alelou » Tue Jul 10, 2012 1:27 am

Ah, thanks.

I was crazy for TNG in its day, but I remember very little from it now. (Or at least very little that wasn't related to Picard and Crusher's relationship... :oops: )

I think "Data's Day" and can only remember Spot the cat, and I'm not even certain I've got THAT right. Is that also the one when Crusher teaches Data to dance? I do remember thinking it was a charming episode, and I'm not a big Data fan.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby lfvoy » Tue Jul 10, 2012 1:43 am

It's the one where Keiko and Miles O'Brien (almost don't) get married. But we're getting a little off topic. :)

I took a quick peek at the Wikipedia page for camels and it turns out that, despite them being mammals, their body temperatures fluctuate pretty wildly depending on their environment. At night, they're often cooler than humans, and during the day, they're often hotter. Another click to the body temperature article told me that lower body temperatures often mean that a mammal is slightly longer-lived.

Extrapolating this out to Vulcans, who are presumably desert-adapted mammals, it seems that it would make more scientific sense for them to be somewhat cooler than humans under most circumstances -- but definitely not all (and a love scene would qualify as an exception given that our own body temperatures rise when that's going on). It'd also partially explain their longer life spans.

This being said, this is science fiction where, if it comes down to plot vs. accuracy, plot's gonna win every time. I tend to be a bit agnostic on the issue of whether or not Vulcans are warmer than humans; it seems the only safe assumption is that the body temperatures likely aren't going to be the same.
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Re: A T'Pol and Trip body difference

Postby Transwarp » Tue Jul 10, 2012 3:11 am

The four sexes thing for andorians comes from the DS9 novel 'Avatar.'

It is canon (from the Data's Day episode) that 4 Andorians are required for a marriage, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they all end up married to each other. There is room in canon for many interpretations. I personally favor the two sex interpretation.
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