Valjiir

[Valjiir1]

Ok, a lot to comment on.

Valka - Ms. Duane's Romulans sound very interesting, though I doubt if I'll check it out.  Wouldn't want to get into another flak over pro novels.

Second - I agree completely that the reboot isn't canon; it's not supposed to be.  It sets up from the get-go that this is an ALTERNATE to Original Trek.  So of course things are WAY different.  For me, I can see the basic  TOS characters in Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban et al, and for, me, that's what's most important.  And likewise, the Khan in Into Darkness wasn't Ricardo Montalban - the character was supposed to be different.  Funny, I don't see many people complaining that Senor Montalban wasn't Indian/Pakistani to begin with, so why should another actor have to be?  But be that as it may.  Into Darkness wasn't, IMO a "rip-off" - Abrams was telling the events from the new universe POV.  That's what alternates do.  I love the reboots precisely BECAUSE they're alternates - and as I mentioned before, I love alternates.  To see the effects changes in the universe have on characters and the world itself is endlessly fascinating to me.  New twists on old story lines are Mardi Gras for me.  Canon?  No.  Enjoyable for the wonderful alternates they are?  Definitely.

But then, you're a Voyager lover.  No accounting for taste    We're in agreement, though that Enterprise SUCKED!  It WAS supposed to be canon, after all.  Vulcans and Velcro.  Who knew? 

And oops! My bad. Yes, I misremembered who wrote the animated novels.  Mea culpa

And BUncle, thanks for the link!

Finally - Spcharliebrownak!  Talk about a blast from the past!

[Buster's Uncle]

Strange thing about Voyager; it was as flawed and disappointing -and dumb- a piece of fake Star Trek as the techno-babble mafia ever put out, but it had a certain energy that all the others lacked, and I therefore found it the most fixable.  First thing I do, given a time machine and some means to impose my will, is put Janeway out the airlock...

[Valka]

Ok, a lot to comment on.

Valka - Ms. Duane's Romulans sound very interesting, though I doubt if I'll check it out.  Wouldn't want to get into another flak over pro novels.

Second - I agree completely that the reboot isn't canon; it's not supposed to be.  It sets up from the get-go that this is an ALTERNATE to Original Trek.  So of course things are WAY different.  For me, I can see the basic  TOS characters in Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban et al, and for, me, that's what's most important.  And likewise, the Khan in Into Darkness wasn't Ricardo Montalban - the character was supposed to be different.  Funny, I don't see many people complaining that Senor Montalban wasn't Indian/Pakistani to begin with, so why should another actor have to be?  But be that as it may.  Into Darkness wasn't, IMO a "rip-off" - Abrams was telling the events from the new universe POV.  That's what alternates do.  I love the reboots precisely BECAUSE they're alternates - and as I mentioned before, I love alternates.  To see the effects changes in the universe have on characters and the world itself is endlessly fascinating to me.  New twists on old story lines are Mardi Gras for me.  Canon?  No.  Enjoyable for the wonderful alternates they are?  Definitely.

But then, you're a Voyager lover.  No accounting for taste    We're in agreement, though that Enterprise SUCKED!  It WAS supposed to be canon, after all.  Vulcans and Velcro.  Who knew? 

And oops! My bad. Yes, I misremembered who wrote the animated novels.  Mea culpa

And BUncle, thanks for the link!

Finally - Spcharliebrownak!  Talk about a blast from the past!

Okay, I'm thinking that the Abrams movies are a topic we should agree to disagree about - I gave them a fair shake and remain unconvinced they're good movies period, never mind good Star Trek.

It's not alternate universes I object to - after all, I've been a Valjiir fan for over 25 years! I remember getting into a 'discussion' with someone in Calgary who found one of the flyers that mentioned issues 15 & 16 of IADR, and started fuming that it just wasn't right that Spock would marry - not anyone! I explained that it was an alternate universe, and she started shouting, "Nope. Nope. NOT RIGHT!" and then stomped off.

I object to alternate universes done badly.

What is it about Voyager you didn't like?

[Buster's Uncle]

I bet it was the whole Janeway was a man's idea of a tough woman, bearing little resemblance to a real one, thing.  Square jaw, in-your-face "mine's bigger" 'tude, and posed when she gave orders.  I clearly recall all the geek girls I knew really hating her when Voyager first came out.

[Valka]

Her whole speech about how Kirk and his crew would have been booted out of Starfleet 'cause that's not how WE do things is pure bulls**t. She's very much like Kirk in a lot of ways.

My favorite Voyager characters are Seven, Tom, the Doctor, and I even like Harry.

[Valjiir1]

BUncle is right - I didn't like Janeway.  At all.  And I agree in the main with his assessment of the show, though I didn't see the energy he speaks of.  I didn't like the whole 'you can never go home' theme.  I didn't like the reversing the polarity of the neutron flow over-done gimmick (Hello?  Neutrons don't have a polarity).  I didn't like all the times Janeway decided that she wasn't going to do - whatever - to get her people back home.  I didn't like the fact that the crew didn't mutiny.  Or that they didn't jump ship en mass when there was a planet available to colonize. Or even jump ship at all.  I mean NOBODY wanted to live out a normal life?  I absolutely HATED 7 of 9.  The doctor made me twitchy.

Shall I go on?

And yes, let's agree to disagree about the reboot.  And, I think we should do the same for Voyager.

[Buster's Uncle]

When they were on their game -which wasn't every week, but sometimes- it was, flat-out, the best fly-around-and-shoot-stuff adventure show of all the fake Star Treks by about an order of magnitude.

-Which is not to say that the show was good, just that I think good scripts and a different lead could have fixed most of the considerable portion that never worked.  (Neelix was going right out the airlock behind Janeway when I took over about mid-run, and Choaky and Tuvok would have been on probation, to see if we could do anything with them hating each other and having to work together...  I actually had some ideas for doing something interesting w/ Pieces of Eight, if I couldn't just keep Kes instead...)

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm only about the millionth person to observe that there has to be a story behind Spock's very existence.

After all, Amanda ought to be more genetically related to an ear of corn than an alien dude from space who only LOOKS a lot like a human.  Sargon's people/the Preservers may, stress may, complicate the issue, but the fact remains that if Dracula bit Sarek, Dracula would be poisoned.  Kissing Sarek would taste like all the times you put pennies in your mouth as a child (we were all under ten for ten years, so don't even front that you never licked a penny and discovered how bitter copper compounds taste).  That green copper-based blood is no trivial difference; it makes Vulcan bio-chemistry profoundly different than Human.  Absent high-tech test tube intervention, Sarek's emissions not only have a chance of making Amanda pregnant that approaches absolute zero (even with Sargon in the background); they'd probably make her sick.  Vulcans may not even have DNA, though that's way over my biochemical pay-grade to say with much confidence, and of course they'd have something pretty similar if Sargon wuz here.  But the biochemical issue does tend to rule out any possibility of coincidental interfertility...

We can agree, can we not, that where Star Trek has not already contradicted natural law, analysis/fanfixes/etc. are bounded by science from the real world as best we can manage, yes?

Something A space person with copper-based blood surely would smell strange.  The pheromonal  cues, as well as the social ones, would tend to be all wrong for marrying Amanda to seem like the logical thing at the time for Sarek to do, absent a reason beyond mere personal attraction.  (It stands to reason that a great deal of each other's very food would be poisonous - dollars to doughnuts that Spock had to medicate against food poisoning off-camera a lot, living among humans and eating the same food; though his vegetarian diet might help that a great deal, too.)  There are a lot of reasons that marrying a human lady wouldn't be a great idea - and the superlatively logical Sarek would  surely have considered many of them in advance.  It stands to reason, then, that Sarek Had A Greater Purpose in his marriage and undergoing a risky medical procedure to make possible a half-earther child who will have to grow up in an insular society even if a viable live child results.  (But I'll grant that unemotional Sarek may not have considered the not-terribly logical, but pretty emotion-based social/identity problems Spock would face growing up and beyond.)

-And of course, Sarek was engaged to a Vulcan girl when he was seven - but ended up married to Amanda when we met him, for some reason (that seemed logical at the time).  Leaving aside that there's an idea for a slash story in there, and even leaving aside that Spock provides ample evidence that human(iod) women are obviously far more attractive to him than Spock admits, (which implies that the same may be true for pure Vulcans) between all the problems I've mentioned just trying to hit the high points and factoring in that Sarek is a Very Important Politician in a Top Level Government Job, Spock could exist for no more reason than you or I do, but I doubt it.


(BTW, I'm not a terrible story writer myself, but my interest in ST fanfic only extends to reading it - Mylochka has been encouraging me in, and of course participating in, this kind of speculation -not least as story fodder- since the beginning of time.  I'm cool with having my speculations mined for story ideas - I'd be delighted, in fact.)

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't recall if it was made explicit that Sarek didn't approve of Starfleet out of Vulcan pacifism; Mylochka suggests that it may have been a line in Yesteryear.

I don't have a lot of firm ideas about Spock's "purpose" in being brought into existence.  I will make three observations of which any or all may be relevant factors:

1).  Vulcans are probably extremely weak at creativity and imagination and things of that sort, which would actually be a severe limitation even in the sort of fields like pure science where their logical minds excel.

2.)  Vulcans have trouble getting along with other races, who all seem to be emotional, comparatively irrational, and a little dim by comparison.  It appears that they think poorly of humans, for example, and it stands to reason that they would.

3.)  Most known intelligent races are of a similar physical type (psychologically, too, Vulcans being the result of an extremist cultural adaption from an emotional race; one fancies that, given a common language, a Mongol and pre-Reformation Vulcan would have no trouble finding common ground).  Klingons aren't much of a variation even if you count the movie/TNG, etc. hairy turtle heads.  Andorians have antennae and are blue and otherwise standard.  Tallosians have big bald heads and powerful illusion-casting powers, but otherwise, pretty humanoid.  Even Tellerites could be of the same stock, two fingers and a snout not being much in the way of variation.  We've seen red people and even a black-and-white race of mime-looking bigots with impressive mental powers.  Following the same line of thinking, it may be significant that Organians and Metrons choose to manifest as utterly unexotic stock humanoids (they're more likely doing it for Kirk's sake, but they could be reverting to their natural pre-energy-being-evolution forms for all we know).

As it happens, there's definitely a majority type running around, that just so happens to look exactly like us Earth European-descended types.  (For the purposes of this discussion, we'll ignore how unlikely real world modern anthropological evidence makes it that white folks is th' -whatchcall- base type, and likewise the real world reasons.)  Planet after planet after planet is full of people who looks like their forebears came over on the Space Mayflower.  Even the planet that seems to dominate the interstellar political entity of which Vulcan is part, while enjoying some racial diversity, looks dominated by humanoids completely indistinguishable visually from Landru's people, Emminiarans, Akkarans, Yangs, Space Nazis, Zeons, (it's a really long list, especially if you throw in suspect cases like Plato's Stepchildren, Miri's people and the Greek Gods, and this is no attempt at a complete list) --- Whitey Is Everywhere, and Vulcan has to deal with Whitey.  Incidentally, Amanda is white.

[Buster's Uncle]

...In fact, ignore that I mentioned Whitey - that's too distracting from the real point, which is that humanoids at least superficially identical to Earth Humans are everywhere in our part of the galaxy.  In fact, I suggested to Mylochka when we were talking about a series of Klingon POV adventures, that they consider something like "Klingonoid Pale" the standard alien type, for  comic effect, but also because that's certainly the case on the Federation side of the border...

[Valjiir1]

I'm only about the millionth person to observe that there has to be a story behind Spock's very existence.

After all, Amanda ought to be more genetically related to an ear of corn than an alien dude from space who only LOOKS a lot like a human.  Sargon's people/the Preservers may, stress may, complicate the issue, but the fact remains that if Dracula bit Sarek, Dracula would be poisoned.  Kissing Sarek would taste like all the times you put pennies in your mouth as a child (we were all under ten for ten years, so don't even front that you never licked a penny and discovered how bitter copper compounds taste).  That green copper-based blood is no trivial difference; it makes Vulcan bio-chemistry profoundly different than Human.  Absent high-tech test tube intervention, Sarek's emissions not only have a chance of making Amanda pregnant that approaches absolute zero (even with Sargon in the background); they'd probably make her sick.  Vulcans may not even have DNA, though that's way over my biochemical pay-grade to say with much confidence, and of course they'd have something pretty similar if Sargon wuz here.  But the biochemical issue does tend to rule out any possibility of coincidental interfertility...

Part of the point of any science fiction is to take some current scientific understand and extrapolate from it into a possible future.  The idea that there would be the kind of conception that results in Spock in the 23rd century was, in the 1960's, a perfectly plausible scenario.  As far as ToS canon goes, the idea of the Seeders was postulated, along with the fact that Vulcans are one species who subscribe to this idea.  If this, then, is fact, Vulcans and HUmans (and other species for that matter) would be closer genetically that would at first seem possible.

We can agree, can we not, that where Star Trek has not already contradicted natural law, analysis/fanfixes/etc. are bounded by science from the real world as best we can manage, yes?

Yes - but what is considered extrapolation from what we now think of as possible is up for debate, yes?

Something A space person with copper-based blood surely would smell strange.  The pheromonal  cues, as well as the social ones, would tend to be all wrong for marrying Amanda to seem like the logical thing at the time for Sarek to do, absent a reason beyond mere personal attraction.  (It stands to reason that a great deal of each other's very food would be poisonous - dollars to doughnuts that Spock had to medicate against food poisoning off-camera a lot, living among humans and eating the same food; though his vegetarian diet might help that a great deal, too.)  There are a lot of reasons that marrying a human lady wouldn't be a great idea - and the superlatively logical Sarek would  surely have considered many of them in advance.  It stands to reason, then, that Sarek Had A Greater Purpose in his marriage and undergoing a risky medical procedure to make possible a half-earther child who will have to grow up in an insular society even if a viable live child results.  (But I'll grant that unemotional Sarek may not have considered the not-terribly logical, but pretty emotion-based social/identity problems Spock would face growing up and beyond.)

While that is generally true (see my comment about the Seeders), the idea that 23rd Century Starfleet replicators would be unable to be programmed for Vulcan food is rather ridiculous.  As far as pheromones go, the fact that they would be different does NOT automatically equate to repulsive.  Remember, we're dealing with a VERY idealistic future vision; no prejudice, an embrace of difference.  And sure, marrying interspecies may not be  'a great idea' - but in Roddenberry's world, the heart wants what the heart wants - or in Sarek's case, more likely what pon farr wants. 

-And of course, Sarek was engaged to a Vulcan girl when he was seven - but ended up married to Amanda when we met him, for some reason (that seemed logical at the time).  Leaving aside that there's an idea for a slash story in there, and even leaving aside that Spock provides ample evidence that human(iod) women are obviously far more attractive to him than Spock admits, (which implies that the same may be true for pure Vulcans) between all the problems I've mentioned just trying to hit the high points and factoring in that Sarek is a Very Important Politician in a Top Level Government Job, Spock could exist for no more reason than you or I do, but I doubt it.

There would be any number of reasons why Sarek's childhood betrothed wasn't in the picture.  Of course, Valjiir deals with ALL this in its own way.

(BTW, I'm not a terrible story writer myself, but my interest in ST fanfic only extends to reading it - Mylochka has been encouraging me in, and of course participating in, this kind of speculation -not least as story fodder- since the beginning of time.  I'm cool with having my speculations mined for story ideas - I'd be delighted, in fact.)

I'll keep that in mind

[Valjiir1]

I don't recall if it was made explicit that Sarek didn't approve of Starfleet out of Vulcan pacifism; Mylochka suggests that it may have been a line in Yesteryear.

I'll have to check that out, but I think Mylochka is right. 

I don't have a lot of firm ideas about Spock's "purpose" in being brought into existence.  I will make three observations of which any or all may be relevant factors:

1).  Vulcans are probably extremely weak at creativity and imagination and things of that sort, which would actually be a severe limitation even in the sort of fields like pure science where their logical minds excel.

2.)  Vulcans have trouble getting along with other races, who all seem to be emotional, comparatively irrational, and a little dim by comparison.  It appears that they think poorly of humans, for example, and it stands to reason that they would.

3.)  Most known intelligent races are of a similar physical type (psychologically, too, Vulcans being the result of an extremist cultural adaption from an emotional race; one fancies that, given a common language, a Mongol and pre-Reformation Vulcan would have no trouble finding common ground).  Klingons aren't much of a variation even if you count the movie/TNG, etc. hairy turtle heads.  Andorians have antennae and are blue and otherwise standard.  Tallosians have big bald heads and powerful illusion-casting powers, but otherwise, pretty humanoid.  Even Tellerites could be of the same stock, two fingers and a snout not being much in the way of variation.  We've seen red people and even a black-and-white race of mime-looking bigots with impressive mental powers.  Following the same line of thinking, it may be significant that Organians and Metrons choose to manifest as utterly unexotic stock humanoids (they're more likely doing it for Kirk's sake, but they could be reverting to their natural pre-energy-being-evolution forms for all we know).

As it happens, there's definitely a majority type running around, that just so happens to look exactly like us Earth European-descended types.  (For the purposes of this discussion, we'll ignore how unlikely real world modern anthropological evidence makes it that white folks is th' -whatchcall- base type, and likewise the real world reasons.)  Planet after planet after planet is full of people who looks like their forebears came over on the Space Mayflower.  Even the planet that seems to dominate the interstellar political entity of which Vulcan is part, while enjoying some racial diversity, looks dominated by humanoids completely indistinguishable visually from Landru's people, Emminiarans, Akkarans, Yangs, Space Nazis, Zeons, (it's a really long list, especially if you throw in suspect cases like Plato's Stepchildren, Miri's people and the Greek Gods, and this is no attempt at a complete list) --- Whitey Is Everywhere, and Vulcan has to deal with Whitey.  Incidentally, Amanda is white.

Oh PLEASE!  You're basing this on the limits of 1960's special effects and the constraints of 1960's mentality?  Roddenberry, by most accounts, chafed at those limitations, he wanted MUCH more diversity.  But network execs were worried that viewers wouldn't be able to relate to REALLY alien species - it's well known that they FREAKED at Spock's green blood!  Chekov didn't appear until the second season because network execs FREAKED at the thought of a Russian (gasp!) in what was clearly an 'American' crew.  It was silly 1960's worries and fears.  Roddenberry had to fight to include an Asian and an African American woman.

Ok, taking this as a serious question about the ToS universe, and not strictly on a "this was a TV show" POV - I say again: Seeders.

[Valka]

Ok, taking this as a serious question about the ToS universe, and not strictly on a "this was a TV show" POV - I say again: Seeders.

I can't help but recall "Return to Tomorrow" when Dr. Mulhall basically says that all the evidence she (and presumably most other Terran scientists) says that human life on Earth evolved independently.

How far back in the evolutionary timeline did the Seeders go? 'Cause we've got the fossil record to show that if the Seeders were responsible for humans, it had to have been many millions of years ago.

[Valjiir1]

I can't help but recall "Return to Tomorrow" when Dr. Mulhall basically says that all the evidence she (and presumably most other Terran scientists) says that human life on Earth evolved independently.

How far back in the evolutionary timeline did the Seeders go? 'Cause we've got the fossil record to show that if the Seeders were responsible for humans, it had to have been many millions of years ago.

Yes, millions and millions of years.  They've been guiding evolution throughout the galaxy all along.  And no, there's nothing in canon that would support this - but there's nothing that contradicts it, either, Dr. Mulhall notwithstanding.  After all, our understanding of science is ever evolving.  And again, this was from the 1960's, so the words put into character's mouths were based on 1960's understandings.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ninja'd]

 And as I followed up:

...In fact, ignore that I mentioned Whitey - that's too distracting from the real point, which is that humanoids at least superficially identical to Earth Humans are everywhere in our part of the galaxy.

Seeders, of course - this is so self-evidently the reason for humanoids everywhere that I felt no need to get into it more than I did with mentions of Sargon/Preservers, my purpose having nothing to do with WHY humanoids everywhere, but with this being a fact of galactic reality someone like Sarek could have felt the need to react to.  I think I covered observation 3.) sufficient depth already, but I want to elaborate on 1.) and 2.) later this evening when I get caught up on some unrelated things I'm working on.

Roddenberry had to fight to include an Asian and an African American woman.

If you really want, I can point you at some pretty credible research that tends to indicate a more complex reality.  It took me years on forums to grow out of wanting to win arguments on the internet, but Gene was capable of some self-serving stories.

Yes - but what is considered extrapolation from what we now think of as possible is up for debate, yes?

I'm not sure I follow.

the idea that 23rd Century Starfleet replicators would be unable to be programmed for Vulcan food is rather ridiculous.

Well, it appeared that they were all eating little cubes of foam rubber, so who can say?  Spock did eat what everyone else was having on a few alien planets (of earth-looking humanoids) a time or two...

As far as pheromones go, the fact that they would be different does NOT automatically equate to repulsive.

But it IS almost certainly different than what turns me on.  My dog is far more biochemically compatible, is a good-looking beast IMO, and mostly even smells good to me - but the sexual chemistry just isn't there.  Different isn't bad or anything, but is a problem for the biochemistry.

Remember, we're dealing with a VERY idealistic future vision; no prejudice, an embrace of difference.

This is precisely what I dislike about a lot of fanfic, pro and amateur, and even the latter half of the run of DS9; where's my optimistic future?  We already have Star Wars (and now SkylarTrek) for constant battles and ship porn.

-But if no one has flaws, and there's no conflict, we're left with a very boring Picard speech.  SOME balance is called for.  I'm just sayin'.

or in Sarek's case, more likely what pon farr wants. 

As I said, it's an idea for some sexy fun  - if you haven't already, which I tend to doubt.   

There would be any number of reasons why Sarek's childhood betrothed wasn't in the picture.  Of course, Valjiir deals with ALL this in its own way.

But of course.  -Though I'll bet this isn't all so finally and completely contradicted as to preclude the possibility that Sarek Had A Plan, if not in regard to the specific bits I'm speculating about.  [shrugs]  All I'm really at here is trying to look at everything we know about Spock the Vulcans and everything and make more sense of the whole kibosh.

More later...