anaM wrote:I agree that Vulcans and all the humanoid aliens we see on Star Trek have too many things in common with us. They are made to mirror us, to show different aspects of humanity and at the end, this endless number of alien species and their characteristics is nothing more than another way to understand what it is to be human.
Well, that's kind of been the point of
Star Trek since Roddenberry created it. It's also one of the reasons sci-fi purists would classify it as "space opera" instead of "science fiction." The core of the stories have always been about what's going on with humanity; you could swap out the spaceships and ray guns for horses and six shooters and be able to tell basically the same story. Gene himself has said as much that this was all window dressing, however the trappings of a futuristic setting allowed him to tell the stories he wanted to tell, because nobody really freaked out about taboo/hot-button topics of the times if it was happening to aliens and humans were the "good guys" serving as the moral compass. And the humans of
Star Trek didn't represent us as we were when the show was written, they were intended to show us what we
could be. The alien races were often used to show us how we really are as a society, or at least different aspects of us.
So while Spock and Sarek are our "baseline" Vulcans, I would have to say that just like with humans, individual mileage varies, so I'm okay with seeing a Vulcan like T'Pol having a bit of an identity crisis. She lands an assignment on a ship full of people who constantly challenge her world view...and remember, Vulcan society was a little different when she was growing up than when Sarek and Spock came along; Sarek and Spock are now I guess what you'd call "post-revolution" Vulcans, so it's not necessarily fair to compare T'Pol or her contemporaries to them--it would be like faulting my Depression-era grandma for not behaving and thinking the way I do, 'cause a lot's changed since she was my age and we're all products of A) what we've been indoctrinated with and B) personal experience. T'Pol wasn't just affected by it, she was partly responsible for bringing it on. In some ways she represents the bra-burners of the 70s--she says no to marriage and the gender roles her society has imposed upon her (Vulcan females are the property of their male mates, right?) in order to pursue her career and fulfill her life the way she wants it. T'Pol herself is a metaphor for what's going on on her planet at the time, because she's from a society that's based on a corrupt government that's lied to its people (P'Jem, anyone?), and used fear and repression to control its population in the guise of religion/philosophy (keeping the masses ignorant of what the
Kir'Shara really says, convincing everyone that melders are a perversion and a threat, etc.).
So that said, I won't accuse her of being "not Vulcan enough," because Vulcan society as a whole seems to be reinventing and finding itself during this time. Now that I've seen every single episode at least once (and at least half of them 2-6 times, depending on the episode), I see a woman who questions everything she once believed and is trying to find out who she really is, and is often in conflict because it isn't who she's "supposed" to be...something I'm sure most of us go through at some point in our lives, and I don't think Vulcans are immune to that necessarily, otherwise you wouldn't have factions that pick up and leave and become Romulans, or go hide out in the desert in search of the truth of what their greatest philosopher really taught, or Vulcans who pack up a ship and smile and eat chicken. T'Pol is just another one who didn't go along with the program, though she spent a lot of time fighting that.
