Those Awesome Enterprise Vulcans
Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:24 am
I think my favorite part about Enterprise was how it handled the Vulcans. First, they kept popping in and out of the story, which helped create the idea that there was in fact a whole Vulcan society beyond The Token Vulcan on the Starfleet Ship. The show wasted a lot of great opportunities to do political world building stories in favor of alien of the week and t'pol and someone else in the decon chamber. It could have been a great trek series, if it simply had shown some more balls about inventing Federation history, but it wasn't (until the last minute). Still, I liked how it handled Vulcans.
A lot of folks didn't, evidenced by the sheer amount of fixit fic, including official licensed examples such as Surak's Soul. They complained about how cranky, emotional, snippy, expressive, deceitful and downright violent the depiction was. How it blatantly conflicted with what we saw in TOS and... that was the whole bloody point. It wasn't just Humans who changed in ways that allowed for the coalition; Vulcans did too. But let's start at the beginning.
There was this race of deeply passionate people who acted like ADHD kids with guns. It was a disaster and then Vulcan Jesus invented Ritalin. Sure, it turned you into a mopey sourpuss, but at least you could get stuff done in your life without all that violence. They argued over it and Vulcan Jesus sort of died and the Vulcan bible got lost, though second-hand copies of portions of the text survived. Two thousand shaky, bumpy, years later, Vulcan was a lot like Catholic dominated Medieval Europe, but a lot more technologically advanced and they referred to their religion as a philosophy.
Surak's teachings were fragmented, controlled and parceled out by an elite minority. Dissidents and reformists were referred to as terrorists, cultists and outright deviants. Submission to the ruling elite's interpretation of the surviving quotes was more or less enforced by fatwah. Two thousand year old traditions still existed, but twisted out of context. Like, wedding rings in our society? They evolved from the signet rings landowning men used to mark and identify their property, such as a wife. But now they're a well-entrenched romantic symbol of love and fidelity. It's just one example of how traditions become adultered and perpetuate in altered form. There's no malicious conspiracy, but a simple slide into accepted ignorance.
The big tradition that got twisted out of context for the Vulcans was: melding. Not just the full on, two handed mind-meld, but in all its myriad forms, because Vulcans are touch-telepaths. Just like human touch ranges from brushing fingertips, holding hands, hugging, massage, kissing, fondling, sex...rape, assault, murder, so can melding.
My guess is that, because full on melds are a tricky art form, they were restricted to individuals with appropriate training. Unfortunately, social fragmentation, as occurred on Vulcan, combined with suppression of "dangerous" ideas caused the skill to be largely lost. Many Vulcans were doing melds deliberately or by accident and getting Vulcan Parkinsons, hurt or even dying. Naturally, the practice was discouraged until, over time, it became taboo. Any variation of it was bad, just because a palm is an open fist. So by the end of it, you've got an entire race of touch-telepaths who know they're not supposed to touch unless its strictly necessary... but don't know why. Sure, melds still happen during pon farr, over the course of a happy marriage, in secret amongst the religious elite, amongst individual families who passed on the tradition in defiance, but you don't talk about it. You don't want to be one of those filthy deviants, after all.
Blind tradition can be a horrible thing. Think about what pon farr must have been like without a preparatory bond between mates. *cringes* Shoot, I'd have joined an alien spaceship heading off in the opposite direction, for an undetermined period of time, too. At least no one will hassle you if you take the opportunity to try and figure out why touching people makes you feel funny in the head. It's not like therapeutic massage is some form of melding foreplay. That would be ridiculous, right? Besides, you're sort of ostracized as being one of those filthy deviants even though the guy lied to you and you felt horrible afterward, but no one seemed to care. Folks back home just blamed you and the worst part is, you're not even sure what happened. But let's quit reviewing the episode "Stigma".
You'll notice I use physical touch as an analogy to melding. It's one of the basic humans senses, one you can't avoid using. It's also absolutely crucial to normal human pathology. Amongst the many inhumane experiments the Nazis performed, one concerned sensory deprivation on infants. The children were fed, cleaned, kept warm and treated for routine illness, but they weren't touched any more than strictly necessary. The majority of the infants systematically, spontaneously died. Over the years, more humane and restricted experiments were done with adult volunteers, in other countries and though the exact conditions cannot be ethically replicated one thing remains clear: the human mind goes fubar without physical touch.
So imagine you're a Vulcan living in this pre-Kir'Shara (vulcan bible) land where you are not permitted to do such a basic, instinctive, normal, healthy thing as meld. You're not even told the capacity exists. Because even most your elders don't know about it. And the few filthy deviants who do know about melding don't really know what they're doing, either. Of course the Vulcans living in that society were angry, repressed in the wrong way, fearful of stepping out of line and otherwise on a straight track to becoming Romulus 2.0. They were following the same traditions they always had. How could there be anything wrong?
Fortunately, because they made the effort to help out those silly Humans, the Vulcans rediscovered the Kir'shara, learned that all Vulcans were filthy mind-melding deviants, and that "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" was not some useful way to justify border wars, espionage and using other species as buffers against the Andorians and Romulans. It was apparently some lesson about personal humility, samaritan behavior, embracing diversity and asking "why not?" instead of demanding a reason "why?" (Who knew). Then, being logical if nothing else, they accepted the new information and adjusted accordingly, within a single generation. Voila! Spock!
Unfortunately, there were a lot of pointless alien-of-the-week episodes in between those silly decon scenes, before the show got canceled, so we never got to see that social revolution play out. :\
A lot of folks didn't, evidenced by the sheer amount of fixit fic, including official licensed examples such as Surak's Soul. They complained about how cranky, emotional, snippy, expressive, deceitful and downright violent the depiction was. How it blatantly conflicted with what we saw in TOS and... that was the whole bloody point. It wasn't just Humans who changed in ways that allowed for the coalition; Vulcans did too. But let's start at the beginning.
There was this race of deeply passionate people who acted like ADHD kids with guns. It was a disaster and then Vulcan Jesus invented Ritalin. Sure, it turned you into a mopey sourpuss, but at least you could get stuff done in your life without all that violence. They argued over it and Vulcan Jesus sort of died and the Vulcan bible got lost, though second-hand copies of portions of the text survived. Two thousand shaky, bumpy, years later, Vulcan was a lot like Catholic dominated Medieval Europe, but a lot more technologically advanced and they referred to their religion as a philosophy.
Surak's teachings were fragmented, controlled and parceled out by an elite minority. Dissidents and reformists were referred to as terrorists, cultists and outright deviants. Submission to the ruling elite's interpretation of the surviving quotes was more or less enforced by fatwah. Two thousand year old traditions still existed, but twisted out of context. Like, wedding rings in our society? They evolved from the signet rings landowning men used to mark and identify their property, such as a wife. But now they're a well-entrenched romantic symbol of love and fidelity. It's just one example of how traditions become adultered and perpetuate in altered form. There's no malicious conspiracy, but a simple slide into accepted ignorance.
The big tradition that got twisted out of context for the Vulcans was: melding. Not just the full on, two handed mind-meld, but in all its myriad forms, because Vulcans are touch-telepaths. Just like human touch ranges from brushing fingertips, holding hands, hugging, massage, kissing, fondling, sex...rape, assault, murder, so can melding.
My guess is that, because full on melds are a tricky art form, they were restricted to individuals with appropriate training. Unfortunately, social fragmentation, as occurred on Vulcan, combined with suppression of "dangerous" ideas caused the skill to be largely lost. Many Vulcans were doing melds deliberately or by accident and getting Vulcan Parkinsons, hurt or even dying. Naturally, the practice was discouraged until, over time, it became taboo. Any variation of it was bad, just because a palm is an open fist. So by the end of it, you've got an entire race of touch-telepaths who know they're not supposed to touch unless its strictly necessary... but don't know why. Sure, melds still happen during pon farr, over the course of a happy marriage, in secret amongst the religious elite, amongst individual families who passed on the tradition in defiance, but you don't talk about it. You don't want to be one of those filthy deviants, after all.
Blind tradition can be a horrible thing. Think about what pon farr must have been like without a preparatory bond between mates. *cringes* Shoot, I'd have joined an alien spaceship heading off in the opposite direction, for an undetermined period of time, too. At least no one will hassle you if you take the opportunity to try and figure out why touching people makes you feel funny in the head. It's not like therapeutic massage is some form of melding foreplay. That would be ridiculous, right? Besides, you're sort of ostracized as being one of those filthy deviants even though the guy lied to you and you felt horrible afterward, but no one seemed to care. Folks back home just blamed you and the worst part is, you're not even sure what happened. But let's quit reviewing the episode "Stigma".
You'll notice I use physical touch as an analogy to melding. It's one of the basic humans senses, one you can't avoid using. It's also absolutely crucial to normal human pathology. Amongst the many inhumane experiments the Nazis performed, one concerned sensory deprivation on infants. The children were fed, cleaned, kept warm and treated for routine illness, but they weren't touched any more than strictly necessary. The majority of the infants systematically, spontaneously died. Over the years, more humane and restricted experiments were done with adult volunteers, in other countries and though the exact conditions cannot be ethically replicated one thing remains clear: the human mind goes fubar without physical touch.
So imagine you're a Vulcan living in this pre-Kir'Shara (vulcan bible) land where you are not permitted to do such a basic, instinctive, normal, healthy thing as meld. You're not even told the capacity exists. Because even most your elders don't know about it. And the few filthy deviants who do know about melding don't really know what they're doing, either. Of course the Vulcans living in that society were angry, repressed in the wrong way, fearful of stepping out of line and otherwise on a straight track to becoming Romulus 2.0. They were following the same traditions they always had. How could there be anything wrong?
Fortunately, because they made the effort to help out those silly Humans, the Vulcans rediscovered the Kir'shara, learned that all Vulcans were filthy mind-melding deviants, and that "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" was not some useful way to justify border wars, espionage and using other species as buffers against the Andorians and Romulans. It was apparently some lesson about personal humility, samaritan behavior, embracing diversity and asking "why not?" instead of demanding a reason "why?" (Who knew). Then, being logical if nothing else, they accepted the new information and adjusted accordingly, within a single generation. Voila! Spock!
Unfortunately, there were a lot of pointless alien-of-the-week episodes in between those silly decon scenes, before the show got canceled, so we never got to see that social revolution play out. :\
