“Amok Time”
Written by Theodore Sturgeon
Directed by Joseph Pevney
Season 2, Episode 5
Production episode 60334
Original air date: September 15, 1967
Stardate: 3372.7
Captain’s log. McCoy expresses concern about Spock: he’s been increasingly restive, nervous, and hasn’t eaten in three days. Chapel has also noticed, and is bringing him plomeek soup. He rejects it, throwing her out of his cabin metaphorically and the soup out literally. His response to McCoy’s request for a physical is to threaten violence, and after publicly yelling at Chapel, he irritably asks Kirk for a leave on Vulcan.
Kirk confronts Spock. He’s never asked for leave before, in fact, he’s actively refused it (viz. “Shore Leave“). Kirk wants to know why now. Spock refuses to give specifics, so Kirk says that Altair VI has adequate shore facilities. Spock insists that it be on Vulcan. He is obviously a wreck, and Kirk decides to accede to the request. He does have McCoy put him under medical surveillance, however.
Unfortunately, the inauguration ceremony on Altair VI has been moved up a week, and the Enterprise no longer has time to divert to Vulcan. Spock says he understands, albeit with a very faraway look.
Later, Kirk asks Chekov if it would be at all possible to divert to Vulcan and not be too late for Altair—but Chekov is confused, as Spock has already ordered the ship to divert to Vulcan.
Kirk confronts Spock about the course change, but he has no memory of it. He begs Kirk to lock him away, that he should not be seen in this state. Instead, Kirk sends him to sickbay. McCoy’s examination reveals that Spock has a hormonal and chemical imbalance that will kill him within a week or so. The only solution he has is to get him to Vulcan, where whatever’s doing this can be fixed, at least based on Spock’s vague answers.
McCoy confines Spock to quarters, where Kirk again confronts him, and Spock finally admits to what the problem is, and only then off the record, as it were. It’s something Vulcans don’t even speak of amongst themselves, and never to outsiders except for those few who have been involved. It’s the pon farr, the time of mating, and it rips Vulcans’ veneer of logic and civilization away. Spock had thought he’d be spared this as a halfbreed, but the urges have caught up to him.
Kirk requests of Admiral Komack that they divert to Vulcan, but he won’t say why out of respect for Spock’s privacy. Komack refuses, saying the Altair situation is too important. Kirk, however, owes Spock his life, and he’ll die if he doesn’t get home. Spock’s life is worth Kirk’s career, and so he diverts the Enterprise to Vulcan anyhow. Chapel goes to tell Spock about the diversion, and he comes as close as he can to apologizing to her, and also asks for another bowl of the plomeek soup.
They arrive at Vulcan. Spock requests that Kirk and McCoy stand by his side for the ceremony that precedes the mating. When they reach the bridge, Uhura has Vulcan Space Central on the line. They give permission to enter standard orbit, and then put Spock through to T’Pring, the woman to whom he is to be mated.
They beam down to Vulcan, an arid, desert world. They arrive at a small outdoor arena-like space. In the past, it was used as a place where males fought for their females. Now it’s a bit more ritualized and less savage, though the name of the ceremony, koon-ut-kahlifee, does translate to “mating or challenge.”
Spock bangs a gong (so he can get it on?) and soon the wedding party arrives. The ceremony is led by T’Pau, one of the most impressive personages on Vulcan—Kirk says she’s the only person to turn down a seat on the Federation Council.
After Spock explains why he brought outworlders to the ceremony—they’re his friends—T’Pau starts the ceremony. But then T’Pring stops Spock from ringing the gong again. However, he’s in the plak tow—blood fever—and isn’t really coherent until the fever passes.
T’Pring wishes Spock to fight for her. She may choose a champion, and she will become the property of the victor. To everyone’s surprise—including Stonn, another Vulcan who obviously has the hots for her—she chooses Kirk. Stonn tries to claim his right, but T’Pau shouts him down. She gives Kirk the opportunity to refuse, and Spock also begs that Kirk not be allowed to participate. But Kirk doesn’t like Spock’s chances against Stonn, and he thinks he can handle Spock more humanely. McCoy points out that the thin air and the heat will make it way more difficult for Kirk, but the captain can’t back down in front of T’Pau, nor can he let Spock face Stonn.
So Kirk accepts. The first challenge is with the lirpa, a staff with an axe-like blade on one end and a thick bell weight on the other end. Only then does Kirk realize that the challenge is to the death. Probably shoulda asked that sooner…
They fight with the lirpa. Spock fights wildly, and Kirk holds his own, but he’s winded by the time T’Pau declares the first challenge ended. McCoy approaches T’Pau, asking that he be able to administer tri-ox to allow Kirk to breathe more easily in the thinner atmosphere. T’Pau allows it then brings out the ahn-woon, a strip of cloth with weighted ends. It can be used as a garrotte, a whip, or a bolo.
Spock gets the ahn-woon around Kirk’s neck, strangling him. McCoy declares him dead and calls the Enterprise to stand by to beam them up. Spock, the fever having burned itself out, orders McCoy to beam up with Kirk’s body and have Chekov set course for a starbase where he’ll turn himself in.
After they beam up, Spock confronts T’Pring as to why she challenged. She wanted Stonn and Stonn wanted her. Spock has become rather famous, and T’Pring does not wish to be the consort of a legend. But the only way to divorce was through the kahlifee. If Kirk won, he wouldn’t want her, and she’d get Stonn. If Spock won, he’d probably reject her because she challenged, and so she’d get Stonn. If Spock won and kept her anyhow, he’d still go off to his starship, leaving T’Pring alone on Vulcan as his Army wife, and she could have Stonn on the side. Spock approves of her logic, and gives her to Stonn.
Spock says goodbye to T’Pau, but when she returns the “live long and prosper” greeting, he says he’ll do neither, for he’s killed his friend.
But when he beams back, he is surprised to see that Kirk is alive. He even breaks into a big grin for half a second. Kirk explains that McCoy slipped a neural paralyzer in with the tri-ox, simulating death. On top of that, T’Pau greased the wheels with Starfleet, giving the Enterprise retroactive permission to divert to Vulcan. And so everyone lives happily ever after…
Fascinating. Spock speaks of pon farr as a closely guarded secret among Vulcans, yet future works will treat the must-return-to-Vulcan-to-spawn-every-seven-years thing as common knowledge (though the every-seven-years part won’t be established until “The Cloud Minders” in the third season). Either way, this episode establishes that Vulcans are just like salmon…
We also see the interior of Spock’s quarters in depth for the first time, after a glance in “The Menagerie, Part 1,” where it was obviously a redress of Kirk’s cabin. This time, it looks distinctive, complete with the “bedroom” area filled with art and other stuff. 
I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy basically saves the day, keeping either Kirk or Spock from having to kill each other by slipping the former a neural paralyzer that creates the illusion of death. Thus everybody wins: Spock’s blood fever runs its course, Kirk doesn’t lose his first officer, T’Pring gets her hunka hunka Vulcan love, Stonn gets T’Pring without having to risk being killed, and McCoy gets to see Spock break into a goofy grin that he can’t walk back with logic (though that doesn’t stop Spock from trying) and the doctor gets the last word as well.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu is amused by the constant course changes, and tells Chekov to go ahead and change course again when Kirk asks for the call to be put through to Komack.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura does her usual thing of relaying messages and not much else, though she also gets to state the obvious and say how beautiful T’Pring is.
It’s a Russian invention. Chekov at one point declares he will get space sick from all the course changes. Thankfully, Spock is not present on the bridge at the time to pedantically correct him.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Vulcan marriages are arranged. At the age of seven, the intended touch each other, linking their minds so that when the pon farr hits, they are drawn to each other.
Chapel obviously still has the hots for Spock, bringing him soup and insisting he call her Christine. She’s rather shocked when T’Pring is introduced as Spock’s wife.
Channel open. “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
Spock warning Stonn that the chase is often more fun.
Welcome aboard. Celia Lovsky brings a supreme dignity to the role of T’Pau. While it’s her only appearance in the role, a younger T’Pau will be seen, played by Kara Zediker, in the three-part Enterprise story “The Forge”/”Awakening”/”Kir’Shara.” In addition, a hologram of T’Pau, played by Betty Matsuhita, will be seen in the Voyager episode “Darkling.”
Arlene Martel plays T’Pring, with Mary Rice playing T’Pring as a child in the photograph viewed by Spock. Lawrence Montaigne, having previously played a Romulan in “Balance of Terror,” plays Stonn. Byron Morrow plays Komack; he’ll play a different admiral in the third season’s “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”
Plus we have recurring regulars George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett (marking Chapel’s first second-season appearance), and Walter Koenig.
Trivial matters: Though filmed fifth, this episode was aired first to take advantage of Spock’s popularity. It was originally commissioned for the first season, but Theodore Sturgeon’s notoriously slow writing speed caused it to be bumped to season two and used for the season premiere.
This is the first visit to Vulcan, Spock’s homeworld, the only time we see the world on the series, though there will be a return to it in the animated episode “Yesteryear” and the movies The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, and the 2009 Star Trek. The world is also seen in the TNG episodes “Gambit Part II” and the “Unification” two-parter, several episodes of Voyager (in flashbacks involving Tuvok), and whole bunches of episodes of Enterprise.
We also get our first look at the Vulcan salute and the ritual greeting of “live long and prosper.”
Peculiarly for an episode about his wedding, Spock’s immediate family is nowhere to be found—we won’t meet his parents until “Journey to Babel” later this season.
Onscreen, the pon farr will be seen again on Voyager in the episodes “Blood Fever,” when Ensign Vorik suffered from it, and “Body and Soul,” when Lt. Commander Tuvok suffered from it. It is also seen in several tie-in works; notably both Selar in the New Frontier novels by Peter David and T’Prynn in the Vanguard novels by David Mack, Dayton Ward, and Kevin Dilmore have bad pon farr experiences as part of their backstories.
The intention was for the Enterprise character T’Pol to be T’Pau, but that would have required paying a fee to Theodore Sturgeon’s estate for every use of the character. Instead, they created a new character, eventually using T’Pau herself in a fourth-season three-parter that portrayed an important time in Vulcan history.
A Vulcan ship was named the T’Pau, according to the TNG episode “Unification I.”
In the 1980s, a British rock band took the name T’Pau because the lead singer thought it sounded cool.
Komack was mentioned in “This Side of Paradise.” He also appears in the Vanguard novel What Judgments Come, the short story “First, Do No Harm” in Constellations, and the Starfleet Corps of Engineers eBook Where Time Stands Still, all by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, and the Crucible novel Kirk: The Fire and the Rose by David R. George III.
T’Pring and T’Pau both appear in multiple works of tie-in fiction far too numerous to mention here. Some highlights include The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, Spock’s World by Diane Duane, and the Spock: Reflections comic book by Scott & David Tipton and David Messina.
Plomeek soup will continue to be referenced and seen as a Vulcan food, particularly on Enterprise and Voyager, which both had Vulcan characters in the cast. Bashir on DS9 was also established as being fond of plomeek soup.
The political situation on Altair VI that as of this episode involves sending three ships of the line to attend inaugurations, was spelled out in several different role-playing games from FASA and Last Unicorn, and your humble rewatcher used it as part of Captain Keogh’s backstory in The Brave and the Bold Book 1.
During Kirk and Spock’s duel, Gerald Fried’s iconic “fight music” is played for the first time. That motif will be used again during action scenes in several episodes, and would also be parodied in other places. Both The Simpsons and Futurama used it in spoofs of Trek fights, and Michael Giacchino used it as a partial leitmotif in the climax of Star Trek Into Darkness.
The episode was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1968. It lost to “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
In addition to the usual adaptation by James Blish in Star Trek 3, this episode was adapted into a fotonovel which included a foreword by DeForest Kelley.
To boldly go. “The air is the air.” One of the most iconic and strongest of the original series episodes, and deserving of all its accolades. We get to see Spock’s homeworld, and while the lack of his parents is a bit glaring, the notion that the most powerful person on Vulcan is part of his family—and, naturally, Spock never said anything about it, as gloating would be illogical—is entertaining.
It is mildly disappointing that our first view of this world full of people who value logic and intelligence is an area that looks like Stonehenge in the desert. Yes, it’s firmly established as an ancient area—T’Pau’s words are “since the time of the beginning”—so it would be before the development of technology, but still one would hope for something a little more space-age for our first look at Vulcan.
But then, the point is that even Vulcans are helpless before their reproductive urges. We already know from “Balance of Terror” that Vulcans were once, in Spock’s words, “savage,” and the pon farr is one relic from those days that they still succumb to. Theodore Sturgeon does an excellent job showing us how the ultra-logical Vulcans deal with something so incredibly illogical as sexual desire: they shroud it in ritual and tradition, giving it a veneer of respectability. It shows us that Spock isn’t the only one who has to balance logic with emotion on that planet.
Everything about this episode works. The acting is superb, from Arlene Martel’s cold manipulations as T’Pring to Majel Barrett’s hopeless romanticism toward Spock as Chapel to Celia Lovsky’s matriarchal intensity as T’Pau to Leonard Nimoy’s desperate attempts to keep things in control as the pon farr-riddled Spock. Points also to William Shatner, who is so obviously trying desperately to do what’s right even though he only half-understands what’s happening (mainly because nobody tells him anything—Spock keeps not telling him what’s going on, and nobody mentions that the kahlifee is to the death until it’s too late), and DeForest Kelley who uncharacteristically underplays his concern for Spock, and who beautifully plays his cards close to the vest when he basically cheats in order to get everyone what they want.
Plus the fight choreography is excellent. I particularly like that Kirk actually handles the lirpa better than Spock—the half-crazy Spock is just swinging it wildly, almost as if it’s a sword rather than a quarterstaff with add-ons. Kirk’s handling of the weapon is much more sensible. Joseph Pevney’s direction is magnificent, with nothing overdone, the intensity building slowly.
There are a few minor flaws that cost this from a perfect score. Particularly given how important the two characters would become, the lack of Spock’s parents is glaring. McCoy’s “you just don’t give up, do you?” to Chapel is a horrible thing to say to her, and the fact that ultra-logical Vulcans consider wives to be their husband’s property (the exact word used by T’Pau) is absurd. Yes, those last two are a byproduct of it being 1967, but Jesus…
Warp factor rating: 9
Next week: “The Doomsday Machine”
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The first time we see Spock get a hold of himself again, you see him from the back, in his characteristic pose. Hands clasped behind his back. But you can see the strain with which he’s holding them. Fists shaking as if every muscle is tense. Great acting that shows in small details.
The fact that 1) Vulcans have the Ponn Farr with the person they’re betrothed to, and 2) that this is arranged, does that mean that there is no non-heterosexual relationship on Vulcan? Or is mating purely logical? Which doesn’t really make sense, since this is one part where the logic is stripped away.
And besides: why is the blood fever down after the fight? Suppose a Vulcan in blood fever wins a challenge and marries the woma. Do they then mate? Or does that have to wait for the next Ponn Farr? And doesn’t the woman undergo Ponn Farr? Do these have to be alligned in order for them to mate? Questions, questions.
The fact that his parents were missing don’t really bother me. Their relationship is strained, plus this is not a “please come to my wedding” occasion, rather than a “don’t judge me while I do things that are looked down upon in our culture, but that I can’t stop”.
Great review of a great episode. Some random comments:
Spock as embarrassed teenager: Check out the scene where Spock is forced to discuss Vulcan “biology” with Kirk. Nimoy’s body language is basically that of a teen having the “talk” with his parents.
Smiling Vulcan: Nimoy outdoes himself with his exuberant grin upon seeing the living Kirk. You can practically feel his joy and relief.
Why are we fighting again?: The Kirk vs Spock fight just doesn’t quite work for me. The script provides an effective rationale, but it just feels a bit too fanboyish/comicbooky.
Vulcan dork: Stonn’s haircut says it all
Spock smash: When I was a kid, I just loved watching Spock demolish the computer.
Star Trek pulchritude: Add Arlene Martel to the list.
Vulcan hair: I miss how Vulcan women used to have really elaborate hairdos. Sure, the switch to giving both sexes matching hairstyles is quite logical, but I enjoyed how the fancy female hair read as another holdover from the pre-Surak era.
My grade: 8
It’s not only that – he also sends her out of the room in the final scene before asking Spock what happened on the planet. And earlier Spock claims that “it is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who is not hers”. They both treat Chapel really badly in this story.
It’s still a great episode.
I didn’t notice that Kirk handles the lirpa better than Spock, but I liked that he obviously has no idea what to do with the ahn-woon – he just stands there wondering until Spock attacks. Or maybe that’s McCoy’s paralyzer already kicking in.
That Spock’s parents didn’t come to his wedding didn’t bother me either. After all, everything had to happen really fast, and they may have been off-planet on some diplomatic mission. Also, why should Vulcans have the same customs concerning marriage as we do? Maybe Vulcan parents never come to their children’s marriages because they’re not supposed to see them during pon farr (too embarrassing for everybody involved or something like that).
By inviting McCoy to accompany him Spock basically tells him that he considers him his friend. That’s why it really annoys me that McCoy keeps mistreating him in episodes like Bread and Circuses or The Tholian Web.
Not my favorite episode, though it’s well done on all counts, so I agree with 9 out of 10. It just seems a bit flat despite all intensity (strange thing to say, I know). Maybe because I’ve first watched TOS after listening to my friends go on and on about it and its greatest series and while City on the Edge and Mirror Mirror comepletely lived up to the hype for me Amok Time was a little underwhelming.
Nevertheless it’s a great episode to watch – the music, the fight choreo, all of Vulcan, and the acting is spot-on all around. I too liked handling of the lipra – when Kirk first takes it he looks surprised but quickly figures how it can be used and then does better than Spock.
@Jana – I completely agree abiut parents. Maybe they are not supposed to be here, after all we can assume T’Pring’s are absent too. And with Sarek’s duties and him not talking to Spock for how many years them not being at Spock’s wedding really fits the general storyline. (Disagree about McCoy mistreating Spock though, especially in Tholians Web so looking forward to discussing it when this episode comes about :)).
Two things about this episode that make me wonder. First, why would McCoy need a neural paralyzer in his – one would assume – first aid kit? Kudos to him for being the only one in the sitaution to think clearly and quickly though, but they were lucky with the timing of Kirk’s collapse. Suppose he just fainted while standing a meter or so apart from Spock?
And the second is Spock’s “I shall do neither” line. We have it established that there are no death penalties in Starfleet except for one offence and, correct me if I’m wrong, if Spock was going to be tried for murder as an officer he would have been tried under Starfleet jurisdiction. It almost sounded as if he expected to get a death sentence or entertained suicidal thoughts.
#3
I never thought of McCoy’s needling of Spock as mistreatment of their friendship but rather a product of that friendship. Spock often gives as good as he gets, in his own logical way. (And in McCoy’s defense, Vulcans can be damn annoying.) Pulaski and Data came off more as mistreatment to me, because Data never threw it back at the doctor, making her look like a bully.
From what I gathered from the ceremony a Vulcan woman only becomes the property of a man if she forces a challenge. T’Pau states that fairly clearly to give T’Pring a chance to reconsider. I guess the Vulcans consider that logical as she is making two people fight to the death over her.
Pon Farr also comes up in a rather disturbing way in The Search for Spock (at least I definitely remember it in the novelization)
Spock’s, and the Vulcans in general, desire to keep pon farr a secret even from human physicians treating them, shows that they are subject to the emotions of pride and embarrassment and, more importantly, will let those emotions drive their decision making to their detriment.
What Spock says to Stonn s one of the classiest “go to hell”s I have heard. What T’Pring did may be logical but letting Kirk fight Spock is so coldly amoral that it is sociopathic. How great your home life is going to be, Stonn!
I like to think that T’Pau saw through McCoy’s ruse and thought it an elegant solution to the fiasco this wedding turned out to be, which is why she greased the skids at the end.
@1/Artsapat: It’s since been established that Vulcans are capable of sex outside of pon farr, so they would be capable of homosexual relationships even if they were betrothed in opposite-sex pairings. Some works of Trek tie-in fiction have addressed this. In Peter David’s New Frontier, Dr. Selar’s brother was gay and this was frowned upon by his parents, on the presumption that he was thus incapable of pon farr (which seems odd to me). Conversely, the Vanguard series has a backstory in which the lesbian T’Prynn fights her own kal-if-fee to free herself from an arranged heterosexual marriage. On the other hand, in my Enterprise novel Uncertain Logic, I established that Sarek’s mother T’Rama released her original bondmate from their betrothal when he grew up to realize he was gay.
The fight scene is commemorated in a Hallmark Christmas ornament.
I remember reading in one of the books, and I’m not sure which, that Sarek refused to attend the ceremony and Amanda was furious with him over it.
I also think that McCoy knew full well that the paralyzer would take a minute or two to kick in before knocking Kirk out. I also have to disagree with #4, I don’t think Spock was contemplating suicide or execution, but that his conscience would never let him get over killing Kirk.
I had a very different reading on Chapel’s scene in Spock’s quarters. He’s totally putting the moves on her. Yes, she’s got this massive unrequited thing, but he keys into that and uses it to his advantage. I didn’t see him “coming close to apologizing” – it felt more like he was coming close to using her for pon farr…
By the way, the worst thing about James Blish’s prose adaptation of “Amok Time” is that he has McCoy administer the neural paralyzer instead of tri-ox by mistake. He doesn’t employ a devious gambit to save the lives of both his friends, he just commits an act of malpractice that accidentally saves the day. And that’s horrible.
Maybe even worse, depending on your priorities, is that the entire story, including the part where everyone thought Kirk was dead, is told from Kirk’s point of view. He’s paralyzed and semiconscious and listening to the other characters react to his apparent death. So there’s never any suspense about whether he’s actually dead. It’s an astonishingly inept way to adapt the story.
T’Pau ensures T’Pring is cognizant that a “fight for me” bride becomes the “property” of the victor. This may be a holdover from the apparently rare challenge option, or the cost like Crusader75 wrote. Normal marriages are certainly not similar.
And I saw no parents from either side. Vulcan marriages ceremonies are going to be different from ours, even regular ones.
And if T’Pring can choose Kirk, a bride could choose a female to fight for her. Dunno how that would work if a groom was more interested in the buff ax-dude than his bride…
Darr @4- “I shall do neither” meant to me that he would die of grief. A death sentence for murder never ocurred to me, especially as it is obviously not a crime in this time and place.
There was, of course, also a Pon Farr story in Enterprise, but I don’t blame anyone for neglecting to mention that. It was unbearably awful.
Never understood how and why the fight and Spock’s conviction that he killed Kirk were supposed to cure him. Also, apparently he never had Pon Farr problems again, despite remaining unmarried? Until his resurrection, that is, and then it was solved by a simple mind-meld with Saavik, IIRC. Which is out of the scope of the TV series, granted.
Oh, and shouldn’t Stonn had been betrothed to somebody else since childhood too? How is it that he was free to marry T’Pring?
Celia Lovsky was married to Peter Lorre from 1934 to 1945 and stayed friends with him till his death in 1964. He would have made a good Ferengi character, I think — but probably not a Vulcan.
@4/Darr, 5/GeorgeKaplan: I would prefer to see McCoy as Spock’s friend too, but when I rewatched all of TOS a couple of months ago, I just couldn’t. Maybe you can convince me when we come to the episodes I mentioned.
@4/Darr, concerning the neural paralyzer: It’s not only that Kirk could have fainted while standing a meter apart from Spock, Spock could also have killed him first, before the paralyzer worked. And I assume that McCoy didn’t know what the second weapon would look like, so he couldn’t have anticipated that it worked as perfect as it did. Sheer good luck.
I imagine that McCoy simply hoped that Spock would injure Kirk when the paralyzer started working, so that he could pass the injury off as being fatal. Which was terribly risky (Spock might have killed Kirk while he was unconscious), but since the only possible outcome at that time was Spock killing Kirk anyway, it would still be a good idea.
@13/sps49: I agree that Spock wasn’t speaking about suicide but about dying from grief.
@11/MeredithP: I think it was both at the same time, showing how messed up he was.
@15/Isilel: We don’t know if Spock never had pon farr problems again. If it happens every seven years, that would put his second pon farr somewhere between TMP and TWOK. If you accept non-canon sources, you can read about that one in Christopher’s novel Forgotten History (maybe there are other versions too, but that’s the only one I know about).
As for Spock’s pon farr in TSFS, they don’t show on screen how it was resolved, but I don’t think it was supposed to be a mind meld.
@17, in Star Trek III, Saavik, I think clearly, had sex with the young Spock, to stop his pon farr, because in Star Trek IV, the reason she stayed on Vulcan was supposed to be she was pregnant with Spock’s child. That, and the idea of stopping it with mediations and meds didn’t come around until Voyager.
@15/Isilel: As for why killing can break the blood fever, presumably the adrenaline rush and the physiological effects are comparable to those involved in mating. (Don’t the French refer to orgasm as “the little death”?) Although really it was just because that was the only resolution that would get past 1967 censors.
And there are plenty of reasons why Vulcans might be free of their childhood bonds, for instance if the bondmate died or if the engagement was broken, or if the parents didn’t believe in the practice (no culture is absolutely monolithic, with every individual marching in lockstep). Sarek was certainly free to marry a human (and ST V would establish that this was because his first marriage had ended).
@17/Jana: There is at least one other professionally published account of Spock’s second pon farr besides mine, a rather lurid version in the 1983 novel Triangle by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath. Also the novel Vulcan’s Heart by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz shows a much later pon farr experienced by Spock in 2344. And the IDW Comics series set in the Abrams movie continuity dealt with the alternate Spock’s pon farr in its “After Darkness” storyline (which, obviously, was set right after Into Darkness).
And you’re right — the filmmakers definitely intended that Spock and Saavik had more than just a mind meld. Initial plans for The Voyage Home called for Saavik to stay behind on Vulcan because she was pregnant.
That part of TSFS has always bugged me for another reason, though. The regenerating Spock on Genesis had his first pon farr when he was still effectively a teenager, but the original Spock didn’t have his until his 30s.
@Christopher: Thanks for the list! I read Triangle when it was new, but I can’t remember anything. That’s probably for the best, given what I do remember about the authors’ other books.
The fact that Spock had his first pon farr as a teenager bothered me too, but then, the whole regeneration business was weird – e.g. why would those microbes have larger and larger descendants? (Because it’s fun to present yucky worms to the viewers, I know.) And how often did he have pon farr during the few hours it took him to grow old again – once, twice, or even more often because he started earlier? Poor Saavik…
While this episode has a few clear drawbacks from a feminist POV, I greatly appreciate the character of T’Pau, as she is brought to life by Celia Lovsky. I am very glad that Sturgeon included this character, with all the indications of her stature on Vulcan and in the Federation. There’s no need for that character to be female. So Sturgeon gets extra “ahead of his time” points for that. Just consider, if the role of ceremonial presider had been filled by a male–we’d be left with a story where the female characters are coldly manipulative or hopelessly lovelorn, and either way emotionally focused on getting their man. The inclusion of T’Pau makes for a very different overall gender picture.
@20/Jana: The Genesis effect accelerated evolution, so the microbes evolved into more advanced life forms. Although the film doesn’t explain why the same effect that crams millions of years of evolution into a matter of days only causes Spock to age a few decades in the same interval. The whole Genesis business is pure fantasy.
(Also, isn’t it convenient that it aged Spock to just about exactly the same age he’d been when he died?)
As for the pon farr, I’d prefer to think that it wasn’t quite as clockwork, that even though Spock’s maturation process was accelerated, the biochemical buildup of whatever causes pon farr would’ve been more gradual, so maybe the threshold was only reached once. After all, it’s not like he was speeded up in time Scalosian-style. His movements and vocalizations and such were going at a normal rate, even though his cell growth and development processes were hyperaccelerated. So it’s not like every process in his body was sped up by the same amount.
Krad, I’m disappointed that this line “… T’Pring, the woman to whom he is to be mated.” didn’t end with a “Wah-Hey!”. And when do they say T’Pau is related to Spock? I missed that, but I watched the episode long ago.
@3 – JanaJansen: We’ve already established that McCoy is a racially insensitive jerk. :)
@@.-@ – Darr: McCoy can have in his medical (not first aid, he’s a doctor) kit a substance that when applied in a certain dose and circumstance, interacting with others, can act as a neural paralyzer. Or it can be some sort of anesthetic, and a larger dose causes the effect he needed. And if Kirk fainted standing apart from Spock, McCoy could just say “the exertion, even with the tri-ox, killed him”.
@17 – JanaJansen: I agree, Saavik didn’t solve that pon farr with a mind meld…
@21 – Chris: Regenerating Spock was special, he was growing up quickly due to the Genesis energies.
Shameless Plug Alert! Since I used the pon farr on the Genesis Planet as a launching point for my story in Strange New Worlds II (still available as an ebook, makes a great gift!), I feel some duty to defend it. I appreciate how it seems disturbing to some people, but, as @20/Jana says above, the circumstances were — extenuating, to say the least. And Saavik is clearly acting out of compassion; there is no hint that this is romantic or erotic for her – it is what logically needs to be done if Spock is to survive. (Also, as @15/Isilel suggests above, there is no necessity for the resolution of this pon farr to have involved sexual intercourse – the minimal physical contact and an accompanying mind meld may have been enough to help young Spock through it. The scene is ambiguous, but at the same time there is no unambiguous clue like Kirk pulling on his boots after the commercial break in “Wink of an Eye”!)
As for its timing, IIRC Saavik says “Vulcan males must endure it every seventh year of their adult life” – so, if we assume the age of adulthood is roughly contemporaneous with the onset of puberty, and puberty happens for Vulcans around the same time it does for humans (and, of course, humans begin puberty at a wide range of ages), then there’s no problem with Spock having his first pon farr as a teen. (I never stopped to think about it, but I guess, growing up the first time around, he was spared it as a teen, since he tells Kirk in this episode he thought it might not affect him, as a hybrid).
My only real problem with the pon farr in ST III is it is ill-defined and not explained sufficiently for a mass movie audience. It’s a weird element for the film’s plot, I grant that; and at the day’s end, I do think it’s just as well the original plan for a pregnant Saavik never came to pass. All the same, it would have been fascinating. I couldn’t “go there” within the constraints of the SNW contest, but I wonder if any licensed, alternate universe/timeline stories out there have? I’m not aware of any, but easily could have missed something.
This is an episode that has only improved with repeated viewings. Initially, as a teenager, I dismissed it as a simple-minded clichéd fight to the death scenario, but watching it later in life made me appreciate this far, far more. Leonard’s performance is downright amazing, giving us the most tortured Spock we’ve seen and the plot is surprisingly devoid of holes.
And it’s brilliantly paced. You never once feel the story is dragging, even during the whole course-correction BS (which gets turned into a clever Sulu/Chekov joke).
Of course, I was well aware of the Gerald Fried fight score before I saw the actual episode. No wonder he and George Duning were the best TOS composers. They created the most recognizable and atmospheric themes back in the day (with Sol Kaplan not far behind).
@23/lordmagnusen: It’s actually ambiguous whether T’Pau is part of Spock’s family. McCoy says, “T’Pau? Officiating at Spock’s wedding?” and Kirk says, “He never mentioned that his family was this important.” That could be taken to mean simply that his family was important enough to have a wedding officiated by such a prominent Vulcan leader, but most fans and tie-in authors have interpreted it to mean that T’Pau is actually a member of Spock’s family.
And yes, of course Spock’s aging was accelerated by the Genesis wave; that’s a given. The contrivances are, one, that his accelerated aging is so much slower than that of the rest of the biosphere (so that he only ages decades while hundreds of millions of years’ worth of evolution goes by around him), and two, that they conveniently get him off the planet when he’s the same age he was before (well, plus a couple of years).
Oh, and to #1/Artsapat, I forgot to answer your question about whether Vulcan females undergo pon farr. Despite Saavik’s line in The Search for Spock about pon farr being for “Vulcan males,” Enterprise canonically established that Vulcan women undergo it too. And a number of works of tie-in fiction before that made the same assumption. Notably — and ironically just before TSFS came out — DC Comics did a storyline in which Saavik herself underwent pon farr.
@17/Jana, re Spock and McCoy, it’ll be interesting to compare points of view. I totally get where you’re coming from, but while I myself think those two tried to learn to tolerate each other mostly for Kirk’s sake I’d say they got to being friends in the course of the series.
Agree about the paralyzer, good point, though the gamble was still risky… By the way, it just occured to me that McCoy probably had no way of knowing if his trick worked or Kirk was really dead as he didn’t use tricoder, or they were extremely lucky that no one bothered to check for life signs or attempt to verify McCoy’s words.
@23/lordmagnusen – good explanation, never occured to me, thanks!
Btw, it’s another instance when Spock gets away with a lot. Cultural taboos or not, his omissions of relevant information could have cost Kirk career and life. It’s not Menagerie-level, of course, and Kirk explicitly states why he goes along with it but just how much of this mess could have been avoided if Spock asked for leave at his first symptoms or explained details of the ritual better…
@26CLB–thanks for explaining the source of the belief that T’Pau is related to Spock. I myself have always assumed the first interpretation of Kirk’s statement: that Spock’s family is important enough to rate such a celebrant. I don’t think the other interpretation makes all that much sense. You’d have to assume that Kirk knew that the officiant had to be a relative, wouldn’t you? And there’s no indication of that requirement, and Kirk certainly isn’t clued in to anything else significant about the ceremony. (I realize you are not personally advocating for that interpretation, only reporting its popularity.)
@26 – Chris: Ah, I never took that to mean they were related, just the other explanation. Has it been established in any tie-in fiction that they’re related?
@27 – Darr: Regarding “Spock getting away with a lot”; the same happens with Data on TNG and Quark on DS9: they’re all in the opening credits.
@21/Saavik – There was a long series of back-and-forth debates in the old Best of Trek books — most of which were published when TOS, TAS and the films were the only canonical source material available — about whether Vulcan was a patriarchy or a matriarchy (or whether planetary leadership was merit-based), and “Amok Time” got used on all sides of the argument. Yes, said some, T’Pau is clearly important, and was asked to serve on the UFP Council; on the other hand, said others, she is presiding over something that’s “just” ceremonial (in an astonishing lack of awareness of how important presiding at ceremonial matters can be…) – I don’t recall all the details, but it was interesting to see how the same character could be interpreted in vastly different ways.
@26/CLB – Whoa. I never once interpreted the line that way. I always took it as your first explanation – that his family is important enough to have her as an officiant. Thank you for the explanation.
Also, I have somehow managed to avoid knowing about the British pop group T’Pau until now…
@29/lordmagnusen: Yes, some tie-ins have treated T’Pau as a member of Spock’s clan/house/whatever, including Spock’s World by Diane Duane — and including my own, because my Enterprise novels carry forward the continuity of the earlier ones in the series, which established that Sarek’s mother T’Rama was part of T’Pau’s clan. (I’d thought that Yesterday’s Son by A.C. Crispin had done so too, but it has T’Pau refer to “your family” when speaking to Spock, not “our family.” And whileVulcan’s Heart has T’Pau officiating at Spock’s later wedding — the one a young Jean-Luc Picard attended — it doesn’t specify whether she’s related. So it’s fewer books than I thought.)
Thansk for the info!
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this. Do they actually say that Vulcans must return to Vulcan for pon farr, or is it simply that Spock knew that T’Pring was on Vulcan, and therefore he needed to go to her?
Future stories involving pon farr show that it is possible to go through it while not on Vulcan, as long as there is someone to go through it with. The later stories Keith mentions (Search for Spock, and the Voyager episodes) all show that pon farr is survivable as long as you have someone to survive it with (or someone to fight with, in Vorik’s case). Given the later evidence (which might be retcons, of course), the salmon analogy doesn’t quite hold up.
I’m sure it’s to where your mate is. Yes it knocks out the salmon analogy, but maybe Spock only intended it as a loose, rather than absolute, analogy.
McCoy and Spock did share mutual respect, and did kid each other sometimes. Spock also had few candidates for friends, anyway, if I recall correctly. The loner bit was part of his appeal.
Spock 1.1 on the Genesis planet- the Genesis effect apparently stopped once he left. So it’s a good thing they didn’t wait too long!
T’Pau could’ve been from T’Pring’s family, or not related to anyone.
Spock not warning his friends about fighting to the death- he gave few details about this very personal time in the first place, and challenges may happen less often that an “yes” response to our “is there anyone here who objects” wedding line.
This remains one of my favorite episodes; the acting, story, setting, and music all excel.
@22/Christopher: That’s a good explanation why resurrected Spock has pon farr only once. I still think the microbes part is nonsense, though. Larger life forms aren’t automatically more advanced. Evolution doesn’t automatically produce more advanced life forms, only better adapted ones. And finally, there can be no such thing as “accelerated evolution”, because evolution is always a reaction to an environment. But I guess getting evolutionary theory wrong is a time-honored Star Trek tradition.
@23/lordmagnusen:
Yup. And sexist too :-)
@27/Darr: In The Tholian Web it seems to me that Spock and McCoy tolerate each other mostly for Kirk’s sake, and it breaks down without him. But in this episode Spock seems to regard McCoy as his friend – he almost says so outright. Maybe it’s just inconsistent writing, but since I prefer to find in-universe explanations when possible, my interpretation is that Spock values McCoy much more than McCoy values Spock. Or at least that McCoy is very inconsistent about Spock – sometimes he seems to respect him, sometimes he’s downright hostile.
As for Spock not explaining the details of the ritual to Kirk, how could he have known that T’Pring would choose the kahlifee? It seems that this option is chosen very rarely. He thought that he invited his friends to a wedding.
@30/Mike: It wouldn’t have occurred to me to see T’Pau as anything less than a serious politician, because after all she was offered a seat on the Federation Council. That doesn’t sound like a symbolic function. On the other hand, one T’Pau doesn’t make a matriarchy – she could be something like the Vulcan Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir.
I take this episode as a Bakhtinian mish-mash of incompatible discourses. You’ve got (1) Vulcans as future people ruled by logic, and (2) a tradition of adventure stories where all “exotic” cultures are barbaric, primitive, ancient, tradition-bound, where the people are seen through a racist and orientalist lens. T’Pau’s accent, her slow speech, and all the half-naked warrior dudes banging giant gongs, that all comes out of the world of pulp adventure fiction that Indiana Jones and Star Wars rework nostalgically (and fail to leave behind the racism and orientalism IMHO). But the interactions of Spock, T’Pring, and Stonn, and the respect that Kirk and McCoy express for T’Pau when they first see her, all support the utopian science-fiction world that Star Trek has by this point established (some of the early Season 1 episodes were not so clear about that, alluding to Earth conquering Vulcan or leaning heavily on an image of Kirk as a Great White Adventurer). At this point it was not established at all that Vulcans were the leaders who helped Earth people develop past the need for war, oppression and so on. (I think it was actually First Contact that made that explicit, and maybe the TOS movies that hinted at it).
So this should have been a disaster of an episode, but somehow they pulled it off and it is one of the best. I don’t know how. 9 seems about right.
@27 Darr, McCoy’s gambit was risky, but I think it was brilliant of him to come up with anything under the circumstances. It also wasn’t that risky. He’s the only expert present on what makes humans dead or how to determine if they’re dead. Even for Vulcans, tricorders are probably odd things to lug to weddings (“Hmm, yes, the groom is alive. Well, that’s a relief.”) Even a regular human might accept a sudden collapse if the doctor present said it was internal injuries or something like that.
About Vulcan hairstyles. The Vulcan defense against emotion actually comes on multiple fronts. One is logic. One of the others is a high regard for ritual and tradition (especially at times like pon farr when heightened emotions need the control).Rituals that require time and patience are especially good for keeping emotions in check. Elaborate hairstyles that require hours to get right fit right into this. It’s like meditation with hairspray.
@39 That’s exactly what I was thinking about the hair. Anyway, it’s a wedding: of course there’s going to be fancy hair! Other times that Vulcan females show up are usually when they’re on duty on a starship, when they’re going to need to be practical about their hair, so there’s no reason for fancy hairstyles.
@40/Reiko: Have you seen the female crew on the TOS Enterprise? Elaborate coifs all around. As I may have mentioned before, I suspect the implicit idea was that there was some kind of high-tech robotic hairdresser technology available that would allow a woman to achieve an elaborate hairstyle in minutes rather than the hours it would take in the present — because people at the time assumed that futurism for women meant finding more efficient ways to do girlie stuff, rather than any actual change in women’s social roles or priorities.
ChristopherLBennet @19:
Well, if fighting and illusion of killing is enough to deal with Pon Farr, why don’t they just use holodeck programs on TNG and Voyager?
And if Vulcan marriages can be dissolved normally, why didn’t T’Pring just end the engagement at some point? Her actions are supposed to be logical, if ruthless. Waiting until Spock showed up for the marriage and the only way out was a duel to the death doesn’t seem so. Or are they obligated to try to make a go at it before a marriage can be ended?
Also, given that it is quite dangerous for Vulcans to remain unengaged/unmarried, would any logical parents forgo the practice? As to Stonn’s betrothed dying young, I imagine that something like that would be very rare in a highly civilized society like the Vulcan one. Really, Stonn’s availability is a plot-hole that should have been explained somehow. IMHO,YMMV.
@42/Isilel:
Maybe holodeck programs don’t feel as real to Vulcans as they do to us, because of Vulcan mental powers, and therefore do not create the same physiological reaction as really killing someone.
As for divorces, maybe they are only allowed under specific conditions, and “I don’t want to be the consort of a legend” doesn’t qualify.
@38 – r_m: When was it alluded that Earth conquered Vulcan. The notion is “elluding” me at the moment. :)
@39 – Ellynne: Just as it makes little sense for Human Starfleet doctors to be so unknowledgeable about Vulcan physiology (Spock joined Starfleet, even if he’s the only one, he’s gone through physicals gallore and all his medical data is on file), it’s equally ridiculous for Vulcan doctors to be unable to determine if a Human is dead or alive.
@41 – Chris: Futurism for women is BOTH, more efficient ways to do girlie stuff and change in social roles. :)
@42 – Isilel: Can holodecks simulate pheromones? Cause Vulcans probably can smell those. :)
@31/Meredith – I had forgotten all about that band! Which is ironic, since my best friend and I at the time made lame jokes about their hit single, “Liver and Katra.” What can I say? It was amusing to two middle school Trek fans.
@37/Jana – No, nor me; I have no doubt of T’Pau’s political importance, but those arguments made me realize it was (somewhat) ambiguous. I think the “symbolic function” people pointed to was presiding at the wedding (especially if the challenge option is very rarely invoked.) Before the spinoff series, there was so little canonical data on Vulcan and Vulcans, speculation went wild in all directions on every related subject. As I say, it’s been a long time since I read the back and forth — and since later series have established more, going back to read it now isn’t a top priority.
@39/Ellyne – Love your point about tradition and ritual as a check on emotion. Great insight.
I actually bought T’Pau’s debut album on cassette tape back in the day. Because nerd.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@44 LordMagnusen McCoy’s ignorance of Spock’s physiology has been a sore point. Why wouldn’t they have any of Spock’s blood type in the blood bank when his dad needed surgery? They’d just been to Vulcan so it’s not like they couldn’t restock.
Although, on Earth, IIRC, only mammals produce red blood that doesn’t have a DNA nucleus. If we did, blood transfusions might be more like organ transplants. If that’s the case with Spock, it might be a matter of McCoy having to clone/regrow enough of Spock’s blood in the lab.
Yeah, I spend way too much time thinking about these things. But, has anyone ever done an SF novel where an alien species at war with humans finds out about blood transfusions? You’re up against an enemy who can face what would be devastating, probably fatal injuries for one of their species and they can just trade out parts of a major organ (I know it’s not that good, but that’s how it might look to someone who has to worry a lot more about troops dying from blood loss).
Anyhow, McCoy got away with it. If anyone had suspicions, they came up with a bunch of logical reasons not to bring it up.
@44/lordmagnusen: It was never implied that Earth had conquered Vulcan, not specifically. But in “The Conscience of the King,” when Spock said “My father’s race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol,” McCoy quipped, “Now I know why they were conquered.”
And what if future men want to do girlie stuff too?
Only after reading these rewatch comments (in particular the discussion that the ponn farr sufferer doesn’t need to go specifically to Vulcan, only to consummate the marriage) did I realize that T’Pring had a much simpler solution at her disposal (pun intended). Knowing Spock was in pon farr, she could have just not showed up. Spock would have died leaving her free to marry Stonn. Would that be heartless and conniving? Of course, but so is making two friends fight to the death.
@44 – Ellynne: About McCoy’s ignorance of Spock’s physiology (and anatomy, remember the inner eyelid), they wanted to shroud Vulcans in a mystery, something that I can understand coming from scifi writers of that time, but unlike many things about TOS, you can’t excuse it for having been written in that era. Not having Spock’s medical data on file (and thoroughly studied by McCoy) clashes completely with the fact that Spock is a fully commissioned Starfleet officer, even if he’s the only Vulcan. Roddenberry (and many of the writers on the show, I bet) had served in the military, and should have written this better.
If they wanted Spock and Vulcans to be a mystery, then Earth’s alliance with the Vulcans should have been something fairly recent, and Spock should be an exchange officer or observer; not a regular commander in Starfleet.
@48 – Chris: I remember that exchange now. And future men can do all the girlie stuff they want, but we were talking about futurism for women. :)
One of the things I liked in Vonda N. McIntyre’s Enterprise: The First Adventure, which was a chronicle of Kirk’s first mission in charge of the Enterprise, was that it established that Spock’s half-human/half-Vulcan physiology meant that he was far from established Vulcan norms, which was a much better explanation for McCoy’s difficulty dealing with his alien-ness. It’s only a band-aid on a bullet wound, but I appreciated it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, it’s not even a band-aid, krad, I’ll have to disagree with you. Spock’s physiology should have been thoroughly studied and documented in his many physicals starting with his admission to the Academy, and McCoy should have spent all of his free time reading up to be ready in case he needs to treat him.
@52/lordmagnusen: Well, the real problem was that the writers were making up what it meant to be Vulcan as they went along, as well as making up the nature of the relationship between Earth and Vulcan. For more than half a season, the Enterprise was an Earth ship, not Federation. It wasn’t until the third-last episode of the season that Vulcan was identified as a Federation member. So they’d never exactly said that Vulcan wasn’t a recent member. It wasn’t until fan reference works in the ’70s that Vulcan was established as a founding member.
And running physicals on Spock wouldn’t necessarily have revealed the fact that he was going to go into pon farr someday. They just would’ve established his physiological and hormonal state at the time of the physicals.
I understand perfectly that they were making stuff about Vulcan, but Spock was established as a commissioned officer from the start. The pon farr might not have been something you could identify, but other issues (such as the inner eyelid) should have.
Can’t the Vulcan desire for secrecy about themselves – established pretty strongly here in “Amok Time” – be a hand-wave or band-aid to account for the fact that other Federation members apparently know so little about them?
Plus, we’ll be coming up on an episode shortly (“A Private Little War”) where Dr. M’Benga’s specialized knowledge of Vulcan medical matters is highlighted. I always took that to be what he’d lead his resume with, because “no one sees the Vulcans, not nobody, now how!” (There’s a similar kind of vibe around Dr. Miranda Jones, who, as a human telepath, had to/got to study on Vulcan.)
I don’t remember whether ENTERPRISE the series addressed any of this or not but, given the Vulcans’ general stand-offish attitude toward humanity in that show (at least until Surak’s writings were discovered), it surprises me not one bit that Starfleet knows next to nothing about the Vulcans. I would say this is one area where Trek has been remarkably consistent as a franchise.
Another, rather unexpected, place where that music has shown up – when players start fighting during hockey games. I’ve heard the Amok Time fight music several times over the years while watching NHL games on TV. The drawback to there being fewer fights these days is that I don’t get to hear that music as often.
@49–Just not showing would almost certainly have incurred severe consequences for T’Pring. If marriage and sex is necessary to the survival of every Vulcan man, as a society they can’t afford to make it easy for women to back out at the last minute.
@57/Greenygal: Also, as Enterprise confirmed, Vulcan women experience pon farr too. So T’Pring must’ve been just as compelled to be there as Spock was; she just didn’t manifest the symptoms in the same way. (Granted, that’s a retcon and it doesn’t quite fit what’s onscreen in “Amok Time.” But it’s canonical information, so it counts.)
As for why she didn’t just dissolve the bond with Spock beforehand, maybe she didn’t have the chance — didn’t meet Stonn until recently, when Spock was away in Starfleet and not available for whatever melding ceremony was necessary to break the bond. And of course, her contingencies included the one where she married Spock, had access to all his property and lands, and was still sleeping with Stonn while Spock was off boldly going.
And Stonn was boldly coming… over to T’Pring’s and Spock’s place. Wah-hey!
(Sorry, I’m a 13 year old male sometimes.)
“the doctor gets the last word as well”
Nope, that’s in “Journey to Babel.”
The last line of “Amok Time” goes to Kirk, who says, “Come on, Spock, let’s go mind the store.”
:-)
@60/Glenn Greenberg: In fact, I’ve always felt that McCoy’s “I finally get the last word” line in “Journey to Babel” was a direct response on the writers’ part to the way Kirk awkwardly and anticlimactically gave himself the last word here.
Glenn: McCoy got the last word that counted. Kirk’s riposte was a meaningless phrase. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Because I am very childish, I made “pow pow” and “ring ring” noises every time they said “T’Pau” and “T’Pring”
I still think T’Pring should have just married him and then had Stonn on the side — “But if you did not release me, it would be the same, for you would be gone, and I would have your name and your property, and Stonn would still be there.”
I read a Star Trek novel, I can’t remember the title, that followed up on this. Basically, T’Pring was a major villain and I believe leading a Vulcan secessionist movement. Meanwhile Stonn had realized what a bitch she was and was working on the heroes’ side.
@65/Carl: I believe you’re thinking of Diane Duane’s Spock’s World, but it was rather more nuanced than you suggest.
@65/Carl: The bit about the secessionist movement sounds like Spock’s World, but the bit about Stonn doesn’t, because in that novel, Stonn had died due to chemically induced pon farr, T’Pring had decided that it was all Spock’s fault, and then started the secessionist movement as a revenge on Spock.
“Chemically Induced Pon Farr” is my new band name.
I never thought McCoy mistreated Spock (maybe he did in a few instances, but not in general)- he got in his face sometimes, but that’s because he knew a lot of Spock’s behavior was an act, that Spock’s racist comments about humans were motivated by his own insecurity at being half human, that his comments about emotions were a result of his own struggles with them and failings to fully suppress them. Frankly, Spock needed to hear those things, to have someone throw his words back at him and point out to him that not only was he being a jerk, but people saw right through his facade. McCoy was always very perceptive of Spock’s motivations, just not always patient. They were good friends, close enough that McCoy could say those things with Spock not being hurt by it, and McCoy always backed off when he saw that Spock was upset by it. Spock started a lot of it, and Kirk did step in when he thought things were going too far (maybe not often enough, but he probably never knew how many of Spock’s jibes were motivated by insecurity rather than a good-natured joking around). McCoy helped Spock grow as a character. I’d peg their relationship as THE most important one in TOS, even above either of their friendships with Kirk. Kirk rarely confronted Spock on his behavior or challenged him to grow as a person, unlike McCoy, who was relentless in that regard.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of your rewatches, having discovered them during my own TNG rewatch, and through DS9…This is my first reply, and I just want to open with a “thank you”…
The reason I feel the need to reply now:. Why did no one ever ask about the end result of McCoy’s deception? Certainly, someone with T’pau’s connections and influence would quickly learn of the deception. Why was Spock not excommunicated for his involvement? Why was this not a huge diplomatic incident? We are led to believe that these ceremonies are so important, and then told they could be sidestepped by such chicanery…
Sorry to break up the Vulcan mating ritual conversation, but this has bugged me since I was a kid.
Open for input…
@70/Jackanapesink: Well, yeah, their traditions are important to them, but come on, it’s just a wedding. It’s not like it was an affair of state. T’Pau was an important figure in the Vulcan government, but she wasn’t there on official business; it was a family matter. Perhaps McCoy would be subject to a fraud or malpractice suit, I guess.
Once everyone was satisfied with the subsequent arrangements it would not be logical to overturn them due to the interference of outsiders. Plus T’Pau gets some minor blackmail material if she needs it, and keeping that under her Vulcan hat for a rainy day is very logical. Also it was probably freaking embarrassing, and no matter how much they say they don’t care about such things, the Vulcans care very much about the image they present to the galaxy. There is no logic to making a fuss over it and drawing everyone’s attention to it.
Also, Vulcans are supposed to be a pacifistic people who don’t believe in killing, to the point of being vegetarian. So they can’t be happy about maintaining the old custom of a fight to the death. They consider it too closely linked to their biological imperatives to get rid of it, but it’s almost never invoked. So if McCoy managed to find a way around it, a way to fulfill the plak tow without anyone actually having to die, I’d think the Vulcans would actually be grateful for that, at least privately.
I absolutely love this episode – the friendzoning of Nurse Chapel is authentically poignant; Spock’s outburst is shocking; Spock’s request to McCoy in the turbolift is downright sweet – and McCoy’s response “I shall be honored sir” is perfect. I expected some snarky response and he plays it completely straight, which just enhances the power of the moment. Great casting too. Great music. And best Kirk “ripped shirt” moment ever.
All that said, I’m not particularly impressed with the way these screwy Vulcans do things. Where’s the “logic” in allowing T’Pring to manipulate a challenge without T’Pau allowing an obviously unwitting Kirk to fight to the death without telling him, before he accepts, that…. “hey, BTW, human, before you say anything, you know this is a freaking fight to the death, right?”
I suppose that given the fact that Spock brought outsiders to this very private ceremony, claiming them as friends, it was appropriate to presume that he had informed his friends of the ritual first. It would certainly have been the logical thing to do.
Thanks random22 and ChristopherLBennett for the added insight. It certainly makes mich more sense to me now.
Personally I’ve got a lot of sympathy for T’Pring. Spock has basically been ignoring her for something like thirty years which b means she’s stuck in limbo – tied to a man who’s made it abundantly clear he won’t touch her unless its to save his life. I’d be ready to see him dead too. And was picking Kirk really a cold blooded decision? T’Pring wants Stonn bad, is it any surprise that’s she’s unwilling to risk his life? Basically the whole point of the exercise from her pov is to get the man she wants, the man who’s been there for her for the last thirty odd years. The man who doesn’t prefer stay a few hundred light years away and expose her to public humiliation as an unwanted spouse. Seeing Spock dead is just frosting on the cake. Using Kirk was pretty cold and unconscionable but she doesn’t know him from Adam and maybe she’s a bit offended at having an alien witness to her wedding. Maybe she reads it as yet another insult from the fiance who’s made her life miserable for decades?
@76/Roxana: Spock hasn’t been “ignoring” T’Pring. They were betrothed when they were 7 years old with the expectation that they would eventually marry once they finally reached sexual maturity — which, apparently, happens relatively late in Vulcans, since it’s clear that this is Spock’s first pon farr. Vulcan culture would have no expectation that betrothed couples should be together prior to the onset of pon farr, any more than human cultures that arrange marriages in childhood expect the betrothed to be together before the time for marriage arrives — since, after all, they’re just children. Arranged marriages generally have nothing to do with love or the participants’ feelings, just about the economic and social alliance created between the respective families and the securing of both families’ procreative future, which is why they’re arranged so many years in advance. That would surely be the case in a theoretically unemotional culture like Vulcan.
Although you could still make the case that T’Pring was sympathetic because she was trying to get out of a dispassionate arranged marriage so that she could marry for love (or at least “wanting”). But that’s not on Spock. He wasn’t a big fan of the arrangement either. The decision was made by their parents when they were just kids, and they both grew up wanting something different. But the antiquated laws and traditions that Vulcan still illogically retained for some reason left them no easier way to get out of it.
Star Trek – Season 2, Episode 1: Amok Time
Episode 5 was “The Apple”
That Guy: These reviews are in production order, not airdate order. I’ve always preferred production order for the original series, because the alternative is to have “Where No Man Has Gone Before” take place after “The Man Trap” and “The Naked Time,” which is absurd. Also “The Corbomite Maneuver” was very obviously written to be the first episode.
So yes, “Amok Time” goes fifth in the second season for that reason.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
No, because this rewatch is in production order, not air order:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/TOS_Season_2
EDIT: Sorry krad, your comment wasn’t showing when I posted mine, I forgot to refresh.
If T’Pring was really the heartless ambitious bitch she’s so often portrayed as in tie ins and fanfic she would have glommed onto Spock no matter how he treated her. Like she says Spock would continue to be an absentee husband and she could have had his name and his property and Stonn on the side.
Clearly that is not what she wants at all. What she wants is to have Stonn and Stonn alone in a legal and recognized union even if it means accepting the technical status of ‘property’. Whatever we may think of old Foxy-Face is he SO All That to T’Pring and she wants him real bad.
“It is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who isn’t hers.” Sounds to me like Spock is objecting to Chapel demeaning herself and/or trying to claim a relationship that doesn’t exist. Of course Christine is just trying to help but McCoy’s lack of sympathy suggests he sees an element of stalking here.
I never saw McCoy’s comments as being racist. Bones can be insensitive at times but so can be Spock. If Bones is a tad unbearable in Breads and Circus and The Tholian Web, Spock is totally insensitive in The Ultimate Computer when he keeps on taking potshots at Bones. But by large, they enjoy their bantering and so do a majority of us. I wonder whether those who are offended by McCoy, have seen THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING or THE MENAGERIE where Bones defends Spock, all guns blazing. Even in the movie, THE FINAL FRONTIER, it is Bones who shuts up Kirk by defending Spock’s actions.
Also, in this episdoe, do we see Bones teasing Spock about his condition? Had he been a racist jerk as some above have commented, he’d have gone on and on about this sexual urge of the Vulcans. But, the fact is, he doesn’t. Even when he infers what is wrong with Spock, he maintains a respectful silence and is through out concerned about him.
Also I have never seen Bones show disrespect to any other species or even any other Vulcan. He is respectful throughout the ceremony, not even showing rightful indignation against T’Pau or T’Pring. Spock is his friend and he takes certain liberties with him which he doesn’t with others. Spock does the same.
I also didn’t see anything sexist in McCoy’s remarks to Chapel. He teases her about the soup as a colleague and friend would do and as for asking her to step out in the last scene, what’s sexist about that? He is about to ask Spock something that happened at Vulcan and it is something private between the three of them. He is actually giving Spock privacy by not questioning him in front of Chapel.
@82/BK,
Teasing is a rather interesting social phenomena, from a psychological point of view. Why do we do it? Why do we enjoy it? And when does it cross the line into something that is inappropriate, or into something that hurts?
I have a group of friends that I regularly play social “blitz chess” with, and part of our enjoyment consists of finding clever and witty ways to assess the quality of each other’s play. But most of the time we are careful not to offer these kinds of comments when our opponent has played an otherwise fine game and then had it spoiled because of a single little mistake – we know that hurts too much.
In the case of Star Trek, certain boundaries seem usually to be observed: you don’t tease a superior officer, because you are then implying equality; you are being “insubordinate”. Similarly a superior should not tease a subordinate, precisely because the subordinate can’t reply in like kind. True, Kirk and Spock do this with each other a bit, but I’d say that is Kirk and Spock accepting each other as near equals, and trusting that this won’t interfere with their professional relationship.
In the case of Nurse Chapel and Dr. McCoy however, this has at least the potential to be more problematic. Would Dr. McCoy really accept being teased by Nurse Chapel? Might this not be disruptive to their working relationship? Further, I think that in order to accept Dr. McCoy’s teasing remark, Nurse Chapel would have to basically agree – “Yes, that really is silly of me isn’t it?” But if instead she feels that this isn’t silly at all, if instead it is important to her to be able to offer some expression of love and caring that will be accepted and respected, then this kind of teasing remark will just hurt – and if she were not in a subordinate position, it might make her openly angry.
83/ Keleborn
Thanks for your response.
I agree that in a workplace and/or between friends, certain boundaries need to be respected. But I don’t see Bones as crossing the line when he teases Chapel for preparing the soup for Spock. Chapel’s affection for Spock is presented in such a manner through out the series that it makes me grit my teeth. An otherwise intelligent competent nurse (as seen in her interaction with Garrovick in OBSESSION) turns into a wishy-washy puddle in her encounters with Spock. I am sure this is something that they talk and tease her about in the sick bay and there is exasperated indulgence in Bones’ voice when he says that “You never give up, do you?” It does seem as though he has advised her against her pursuit of Spock but finally respecting her personal choice cannot stop her though she might be making a fool of herself. And fool, she makes of herself when she goes back to the room of the man who has thrown her concern in her face and ordered her out of her room.
I fail to understand why Spock could not tell her straight that he was bonded to somebody else. Seems to me he liked her fawning over him despite the protestations to the contrary.
And I still can’t comprehend in what way Bones request for her to step out of the room in the last scene is sexist.
@84/BK,
Well, if I understand you right, you are basically saying it is appropriate to tease Nurse Chapel because she really is being silly and/or delusional and needs to be told to face reality and stop making a fool of herself – in which case a mild teasing might actually be a friendly way to approach doing that, and preferable to getting all serious with an “intervention”.
It seems that how one feels about this depends on which parts of the script one is committed to taking seriously. For example, I do not like the way that Nurse Chapel was teased here, but that is partly because I consider Nurse Chapel’s behavior in the script as written to be a bit over- the-top, and thus not representing the “real” Nurse Chapel. Indeed I would be inclined to say that it is the portrayal of Nurse Chapel as almost “mooning” over Spock to be sexist – except that I also consider charges of sexism and racism to be leveled far too readily.
I also do not find McCoy dismissing Chapel from the room in that final scene to be sexist. I simply find it to be mildly … dismissive. McCoy has a private question he wants to ask. Can it not wait? In the moment, Nurse Chapel is sharing the enjoyment of having Kirk and Spock back safe, and probably enjoying Spock’s moment of emotional expressiveness too. Does McCoy have a medical reason (based on authority) for dismissing Chapel? No, he doesn’t. Because of that, dismissing her has the emotional effect of saying “you’re not one of us”. Of course McCoy is simply eager to find out what happened and can’t do so with Chapel there. But he might gave softened it with “Nurse, would you please excuse us a moment? I have a private question I need to ask Spock.” In fact, in this moment of conviviality it might even have been better to address her as Christine.
My guess is that some see this as sexist for the reason that men tend to be far less forgiving of such dismissive behavior, and thus it is more often women who are being slighted in this way.
Ha, my phone just autocorrected my misspelling of Spock. Star Trek Lives!
Yes, Chapel doesn’t like it one bit as her retreating back shows wonderfully (and all credit to Majel Barrett) and of course, Bones could have called her Christine as he does at time. But there are many such instances in ST as for example in RETURN TO TOMORROW, Kirk and Spock, for some reason keep on reffering to Scott as Engineer, which can be jarring.
But I think time was running out for the episode and Bones had to ask that pertinent question. For all he knew, Spock in that grip of the blood-fever might have ravished T’Pring then and there once he had won her and she had become his property. Obviously these things are not to be asked in front of Chapel and so he asks her to step out. He was brusque but he had just seen his two friends duelling to death and so I am sure quite shaken up too.
And yes long live Star Trek:)
Personally, I would have sold T’Pring to the Ferengi. Serve her right.
“Look, I don’t mean to be a sore loser, but if he wins … kill him.” (Butch Cassidy) :)
88/ Keleborn
Oh, I quite like T’Pring. Admire her for not wanting to become the property wife of a legend. Instead she would most probably make Stonn her property. Tied to a man she doesn’t like, she has few options before her and it is a master-stroke that she changes her plan of letting Stonn and Spock fight it out to have her the moment she sees Kirk. Whatever way it turns out, she will have the man she desires. It is all very cold-blooded but compared to the wishy-washy Chapel and the Romulan Commander who does all things wrong, it is refreshing to see a woman so much in command of the situation.
Ruthless to the end with not a hair out of place (all credit to the actress who plays her) this episode was totally hers and Bones’.
@88/BK,
I was mostly exaggerating for the sake of being able to make what I at least considered to be a humorous remark. I agree the actress presents with a formidable sense of presence. But was it really logical to expect Spock to just let her get what she wanted, at the price of personal tragedy for him? Well, maybe being stuck with being the property of a guy from a Vulcan Boy Band is punishment enough …
Really taking the situation seriously, it seems like the first thing T’Pring should have done upon seeing Captain Kirk was to ask to be beamed up to the Enterprise and request political asylum. Theodore Sturgeon’s ideas about Vulcan culture certainly made for interesting drama, but sheesh, what a bunch of losers!
OK, I lied when I said I was going to take the situation seriously. But I can definitely agree that T’Pring comported herself with more dignity than the Romulan Commander did. And, it all made for great drama, with some wonderful lines, especially:
Spock: Explain.
T’Pring: Specify.
How Vulcan is that?!
@88/bk: In the Fontana interview I read (and mentioned in the “Enterprise Incident” comment thread), she also said that T’Pring’s cold-blooded attitude had been written by her.
@89/Keleborn: Why shouldn’t Spock let T’Pring get what she wanted? Punishing her wouldn’t bring Kirk back. That’s one of the things I love about Star Trek – these guys are not out for revenge.
@90/JanaJansen,
For the most part I agree with you, of course. But is there a place for justice also? Do we imagine that Vulcan is a crime free society, because crime is illogical? In any human society, what would happen if all transgressions were forgiven? Would not some feel “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?” Or maybe the opposite is the case: if Jesus’ recommendation to “turn the other cheek” were truly and consistently followed, maybe an incredible transformation of society would be accomplished. I certainly don’t know. What I do know is that the Vulcan society that is shown to us is not one that has reached the promised land when T’Pring is offered Hobson’s choice and she chooses a Machiavellian solution.
I would describe revenge as an action based on emotion without thought for trying to achieve a beneficial outcome. Justice I would describe as an attempt to arrange for logical consequences that are necessary for the healthy functioning of society. Now given that I consider an arranged marriage to be unjust, it would seem unjust to then punish T’ Spring for her choice. But let’s at least acknowledge that she did have a better choice. She could have said “This is bullshit. I’m not marrying Spock, and I’m not participating in this silly ritual.”
True, once the deed was done, Spock would not benefit from punishing T’Pring. But it is also true that Vulcan has been left with an unhealthy society.
@91/Keleborn: I agree, she had a better choice, and she is not a good person. But as you say, the real problem is Vulcan marriage law. Punishing her wouldn’t change that. Who knows? If Kirk really had been dead, perhaps Spock would have spent the next years lobbying for a law reform.
Punishing T’Pring would presumably create a deterrent for anyone thinking of following T’Pring’s example, and might shame the rest of Vulcan into changing its practices. The problem of course is that would be sacrificing T’Pring for the good of society – or rather, for the intended good of society, since one can never be sure of the outcome.
These kinds of choices are being made by people attempting to create social change all the time, and advocates on either side usually present the choice as being a lot more clear than it actually is.
@93/Keleborn: I had the impression that the kahlifee is only rarely invoked, so presumably the benefit wouldn’t be large. And it would also mean sacrificing Stonn’s happiness, and he didn’t do anything wrong. But yes, these decisions can be complicated.
On a storytelling level, I think the writers made the best possible decision. Traditionally the villain has to be punished – just look at any fairy tale. I absolutely love that this does not happen here.
If you ask me rigid Vulcan custom is the real villain here. T’Pring is trapped in a relationship she doesn’t want and can’t get rid of without somebody dying. She doesn’t want it to be Stonn.
@95–Well, unfair Vulcan biology is also part of the problem. I don’t think the marital customs we are shown in this episode are a good idea–are there any options for dissolving the betrothal before the last minute?–but they probably wouldn’t have evolved to be so drastic if half the population’s lives weren’t on the line. I enjoy this episode partly because it has all those angles–the unfair situation T’Pring is in, the ruthlessness of the choice she’s made to deal with it, and the larger biological/social issues that are why the situation exists to begin with.
@96/Greenygal: Not just half the population. Despite The Search for Spock‘s claim that only Vulcan males underwent pon farr, there’s nothing to that effect in “Amok Time,” and Spock specifically says in “The Cloud Minders” that “the seven-year cycle is biologically inherent in all Vulcans.” Enterprise eventually confirmed that Vulcan women went through pon farr as well (though this had been non-canonically depicted in earlier tie-in works including the Saavik pon farr storyline that DC Comics coincidentally did around the same time TSFS came out.)
I just rewatched this tonight (6/9/19) as it aired on H&I.
While I enjoy the episode, and I really liked making the correlation to the 2 Twilight Zone episodes Arlene Martel appeared in ( she was quite a beauty in her day), a few things irked me that made me think of all the criticism that Discovery gets.
1. The mention that Spock has a wife. Even though he explains it is more than a betrothal and less than a marriage, it could not help me think of how Star Trek fans that love this episode as it is classic, won’t be even the slightest forgiving to Spock never mentioning that he had a sister.
2. Of course the injection McCoy gives Kirk is kind of silly, Spock choked him, that would not have prevented him from being choked. Though perhaps one can argue he passed out first.
3. The fact that T’Pau was deceived by McCoy and believed that Kirk was dead. Kirk is supposed to be (one of) the greatest captains of the time and T’Pau is supposed to be an extremely high ranking official of Vulcan. And of course Vulcan, Earth’s closest federation ally. I can’t see it feasible that Vulcan would accept the deception once learned and the disrespect for its traditions. There is no way high members of Vulcan would not know Kirk was alive going forward.
4. I did think the rather barbaric traditions of Vulcan was not suiting to its culture and the idea that Vulcans supposedly are the most civilized , logical beings in command of the primal barbaric traits.
5. At the end Spock just frees T’Pring from their marriage to Stonn. I thought he could not do this. Why not just to this in the beginning.?
Overall I accept its fiction and I am ok with my irks , I just think people should be more forgiving to other spinoffs such as Enterprise and Discovery.
@98. Regarding #4, it’s important to remember the Vulcans are also an extremely hypocritical culture.
@99/Spike: Aren’t we all?
@98/jmsnyc: Personally, I dislike Discovery because it has turned the optimistic Star Trek future into a terrible place (first the devastating war, then the Section 31/Control stuff), and because of its lack of meaningful stories. Enterprise was a little better, but I still find the genocide in “Dear Doctor” and Archer’s incompetence in “A Night in Sickbay” hard to forgive. Plot holes I can live with.
@101/Jana: TOS’s future was kind of a terrible place too — entire planets holding billions of people were destroyed in “The Immunity Syndrome” and “The Changeling” alone, something like half a dozen Constitution-class starships had their entire crews killed, war broke out with the Klingons and nearly with the Romulans, etc. Optimistic storytelling doesn’t mean nothing bad happens, it means the characters rise above it and stand for something better. And that’s what happens in Discovery. Do you hate Deep Space Nine for the way it tears down the Federation’s ideals in the face of war? DSC season 1’s arc is basically a rehash of the Dominion War arc, with basically the same outcome, the protagonists reaffirming Federation values and thereby saving the day. I agree it didn’t do it as well as DS9, but that doesn’t mean it was somehow more pessimistic. If anything, it was just the opposite, because all the “moral ambiguity” turned out to be just manipulation by a few evil characters.
@102
See, this is why raising your kids on a spaceship is way safer than being planetbound. At least in a ship you have a chance to fly away from the giant space flea from Dimension X!
I know I do. Especially that bullshit Section 31 shite. Lazy storytelling and it has come to dominate everything since. I bet S31 is the reason Janeway got an Admiralship too. She seems like she would be a good fit for that sort of crap.
@102/Christopher: So… you want me to dislike all Star Trek? ;) That’s not going to happen. There’s too much that’s really, really nice in TOS and TNG, and not nearly enough in DSC.
The TOS universe wasn’t safe. It had natural disasters and out-of-control alien machinery. But it also had a likeable, if imperfect, society, and the characters usually managed to avoid war or end it quickly – sometimes by skill, and sometimes through good luck. (Yes, there was a Klingon war in “Errand of Mercy”, but it lasted only a day or so. That one was good luck.) Many TOS episodes were about war, but with a few exeptions (which I dislike) they told us two things: 1. War is terrible. 2. Peace is possible. Whereas DSC basically presented its all-out war as unavoidable (we never saw any attempts at diplomacy, we just jumped six months into the future between the second and third episode), but not so bad after all (in the second season, everything’s back to normal. Apparently recovering from a major war is a breeze).
Concerning DS9, I liked the first half; I haven’t watched the second half, mostly because I fear that I wouldn’t like it. I’m not sure how I feel about having one unavoidable, devastating war in Star Trek. I guess you can point to WWII to argue that peace isn’t always possible. But I do know how I feel about having two, or three, or many wars: At some point, the message becomes “War is a fact of life”, and that message is terrible, harmful, and contrary to almost all of TOS.
@clb
Speaking of Voyager (and off-topic):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/life-beyond-star-trek-kate-mulgrews-poignant-sometimes-shocking-family-story/2019/06/06/3478e358-518a-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html
@104/Jana: No, I’m saying I think you’re too hard on Discovery. It’s actually a very optimistic show at its core, because the characters always prevail over the darkness by refusing to compromise their values. People see it as dark because the characters face dark situations, but the TOS crew faced plenty of really dark situations too. Optimism isn’t about the absence of darkness, it’s about the ability to withstand and overcome darkness. So plenty of optimistic stories start out very dark. The problem is that DSC is serialized so it’s just one single story per season, and a lot of people judged it before waiting to see how it played out.
And that one story is always about some huge galaxy spanning crisis to which our protagonist holds the key.
In order of my most like to least liked:
TOS
TNG
DISCO
VOY
ENT
TAS
DS9
DS9, the personalities of the cast , Sisko’s mellowness, Quarks antics, Odo’s creepiness, the Dominion arc, the priestess, Sisko being the chosen one – was just not a fan of that storyline
Not a huge fan of the “comedic” character…. ie Neelix ( though I like Neelix) – not sure if Enterprise had one, Quark, and now to a lesser degree the saurian on Disco , going off topic – sorry
@106/Christopher: Believe me, I wasn’t bent on disliking Discovery from the start. I looked forward to it, and subscribed to Netflix because of it, and tried to like it throughout the first season, and failed. The TOS characters faced dark situations too, but there are degrees of darkness, and Discovery is too dark for my taste. Granted, it has idealistic main characters, and that’s nice. But I miss the peaceful, progressive society in the background.
DSC’s 1st season was one episode’s worth of plot dragged out over an entire season. You couldn’t even have filled a regular old series two parter with it. That is a problem. It needs to go back to episodic stories, a mini movie each week. At least then I’d try to put up with the whole dumbass “Michael” thing. Ugh. That name might even be more off putting than the space fungus.
@110/random22: There are more than a few real women named Michael, including well-known actresses Michael Learned and Michael Michele, and musician Michael Steele of the Bangles. I know a woman of that name myself; she spells it “Michaele,” but it’s pronounced “Michael.” So correct your ignorance before you go around calling other people dumb.
Anyway, because of sexism and parents who wanted boys instead, there’s a long tradition of originally male names ending up assigned to girls, and eventually becoming exclusively female because of more sexism (parents not wanting their boys to have “girly” names). 150 years ago, Beverly was exclusively a man’s name. So was Hilary. And many more.
@@@@@110 random22
I know this wont be viewed as politically correct but I agree with you, I wish she had a different name , even if it was a more feminine variation – ie Michel (french) – and why cant she have a less boyish hairdue like T’Pring, lol?
Yeah, TOS, with a such peaceful and progressive society, were a professional physician and commissioned officer of a scientific exploration organization takes any opportunity he finds to throw racist insults at one of his colleagues.
I have a female cousin named “Michael” who eventually changed her name to “Anna” because in her profession a “boy’s name” would drive off prospective clients.
@108/jmsnyc: My list:
TOS with TAS (I can’t see that as a separate show)
TNG
VOY and the first half of DS9 (haven’t watched the rest, probably would like it less)
ENT
DISCO
@111 (1) Don’t care, still sounds stupid. And: (2) For reasons, I wouldn’t want a male character named that as lead either.
@100. The bureaucratic mentality isn’t the only constant in the universe. There’s also hypocrisy. :)
@113. Come now, Spock is just as insulting to humans, albeit in a more cold and analytical way.
And the fact that McCoy and Spock are able to throw such cutting insults at one another and remain on relatively friendly terms, at least in the way of sparring partners, suggests to me a progressive society. Far more mature than the hateful, trollish, fashionably offense driven one we see before us now.
As for Discovery, I don’t think the problem is optimism or lack thereof. It’s the smothering melodrama that’s the problem. It’s the exaggerated space opera, the blockbuster mentality that has gradually worked its way into television. There’s so much muchness it’s hard for me to care about what happens. Or as my design teacher once told me, “When everything is emphasized, nothing is.”
@119/Spike: I think those are related problems. The blockbuster mentality forbids small-scale stories, which means that it is always the universe, the galaxy, or at least the Federation that has to be at stake, which in turn means that they have to ramp up the nastiness by introducing wars and conspiracies and such.
@120/Jana: I still think the only real difference is that TOS had its wars and corrupt officers (e.g. Tracey or Merik) in single episodes, while modern serial storytelling stretches things out over entire seasons. Also, serial storytelling tends to lend itself to conspiracy narratives, because of the need for an ongoing succession of startling revelations and plot twists to provide climaxes to individual installments.
@120. Right, and I think it’s telling that in all the Star Trek movies, where you’d expect big bombastic stories, not one of them has dealt explicitly with the fate of the multiverse or all sentient life in the galaxy. It’s always been about the fate of the Enterprise, Earth, or the Federation. Or in the case of Insurrection, one alien planet.
It’s hard for me to take Discovery seriously as another Star Trek series when it so often has all the nuance of a Paul Bunyan tall tale.
@118 Kirk should still have shut them both down for that in public though. You and your friends (or even “friends”) can talk smack about each other in private, but in public as officers both of them should have been more professional. They set an example of the ship, and you can’t have senior officers giving junior officers the illusion that that talk of smack talk is acceptable. It leads to more malicious racists being emboldened. As Captain, Kirk ought to have told them both to keep it off the bridge (and out of Sickbay, which by its nature has to be a supportive and nurturing space) and behind closed doors.
And that is a lesson that leaders in our contemporary workplaces ought to take to heart and stop making excuses for their buddies. Even Prince Harry got in trouble over that one, a few years back, when it was revealed he and one of his army buddies were calling each other slurs as a “blokey” type of friendship, and it was explained why that wasn’t something appropriate to use in public.
@122/Spike: I’d say that First Contact dealt with a threat to all life in the galaxy, because if the Borg got 300 years’ headstart assimilating the Federation, they’d be much further along in assimilating the whole galaxy and minus one of the major obstacles to that goal. (Although the film raises the question: If they had time travel all along, why hadn’t they already gone back and assimilated the whole galaxy?)
We live in a much different world than we did in the 60s, campy banter that would be considered politically incorrect today was not so in the late 60s….. Still TOS was ahead of its time
My point is that you have so many “true” and “devoted” ST fans , canon sticklers , who rip Disco (and Ent) anyway they can in social media , especially youtube about inconsistencies – but if you look at TOS, it was never perfect yet these same sticklers would never think to criticize or find fault with such a “classic” hallmark episode such as Amok Time.
@121/Christopher: True, but I think that’s a case where quantity becomes quality. You can have an almost-war, a one-day war, or a war between alien planets and still say that the galaxy is at peace, but a devastating interstellar war that lasts for many months is a different thing altogether. Likewise, an occasional corrupt officer in a decent organisation only makes the decent organisation more believable, but a big conspiracy makes it less decent, and a big conspiracy that exists throughout the centuries makes it less believable.
@124. True, though they don’t explicitly make the case it’s going to be a threat to the entire galaxy. It’s implied maybe. To the Borg Queen’s credit, she says watch your future’s end, not the galaxy’s. She doesn’t go into some James Bond villain speech about what they’re going to do.
I think Discovery’s problem is that it’s like something written by McCoy. So far both seasons have been threatened by “Universal Armageddon!” Maybe they could ease back on that in the future. I mean the far future.
@123. Kirk did play referee from time to time. I guess it’s personal preference, but I couldn’t care less about where they do their petty sniping. As long as it’s on my television.
@126/Jana: “and a big conspiracy that exists throughout the centuries makes it less believable.”
Absolutely, but I’ve had that same objection since DS9 first introduced Section 31. In a way, I kinda liked Discovery‘s version better, because it threw out the implausible secrecy angle and treated S31 as something well-known.
@127/Spike: “True, though they don’t explicitly make the case it’s going to be a threat to the entire galaxy. It’s implied maybe.”
I think it naturally follows from what we know about the Borg. Even if a casual viewer had only seen the movie and not the show, the Borg Queen’s dialogue establishes that the Collective has assimilated “countless millions” and that their ravenous drive to assimilate would not have any reason to end at Earth or the Federation.
@@@@@121,CLB, does it seem to you that that apparent need for multiple climaxes is a weaknesses of the serial style? I sure used to think so with classic Doctor Who.
@@@@@ 118, Spike, As Uhura tells Lincoln the 23rd century doesn’t fear words.
@130/roxana: No more so than needing multiple climaxes is a weakness of hourlong commercial television. Any story that’s told in segments needs to have some kind of peak in each one. That’s just the nature of the structure, and some stories handle it better than others.
The problem with modern audiences experiencing classic Doctor Who and other such things is that we usually watch a serial straight through, when they were designed to be seen at the pace of one episode per week. So they feel more repetitive to us than they would have to their original audience.
@125 – jmsnyc: TOS was ahead of its time, but there’s still some “banter” that is not acceptable in the future they were trying to paint.
I do agree that many fans give leeway to stuff they watched when they were younger (usually children) and don’t criticize in those things the same flaws they rip about in newer productions.
Do you mean it was wrong for Kirk to call Spock a half breed ??? Michael called him that again to make an easter egg in Disco.
But in “What little girls are made of?” it was meant to alert Spock that something was wrong because Kirk normally would not be so derogatory towards him.
The thing is as being discussed in the news/media , a lot of people feel we have become to politically correct. Respect is whats important.
There’s a difference between private and public, and friendly and professional. And of course, a difference between doing it because you think it’s funny, or to alert someone that something’s wrong.
@133/jmsnyc: “Half-breed” is an ugly insult, and that’s why Kirk used it in “What Are Little Girls Made of?” (as you said, to alert Spock that this wasn’t him) and in “This Side of Paradise” (to make him angry). The only other one who ever used it was Scotty in “Day of the Dove” (under the influence of the alien entity).
Why did Michael use it?
@124/CLB: Because your biological and technological distinctiveness is less appealing when it’s primitive/ below what the Borg have already achieved.
@130/roxana: Dr. Who didn’t have multiple climaxes, it had cliffhangers. Climax needs a denouement, cliffhanger needs to be resolved.
@136/SaraB: You mean, the Borg wait for a civilisation to achieve something new and distinctive before “harvesting” them? That’s an interesting thought. It could also explain why they haven’t assimilated the whole Delta Quadrant yet.
@136/SaraB: That doesn’t make sense, because not all civilizations in the galaxy are at the same technological level. Look at all the Trek races that are thousands or millions of years more advanced than humans, like the Metrons, the Organians, the Tkon, the Iconians, etc. In any era, the Borg would find advanced civilizations worth assimilating.
And a cliffhanger is a form of climax. If a story is made up of multiple smaller installments, then each one needs its own climax, a peak event or decision point within the story arc, so that each installment has its own logical endpoint rather than just randomly stopping somewhere once time runs out. The only difference between a cliffhanger and another type of episodic climax is whether the break comes at the peak (saving the local denouement for the start of the next installment) or just after. Modern serialized TV tends to go for the latter approach, resolving each immediate crisis within the episode but escalating the larger crisis spanning the season.
@135 Burnham uses “half-breed” in a flashback to their childhood when she is running away to protect the family from logic extremists. She doesnt want Spock to follow her (and also to be an easter egg). (S2e8)
@74, heck, where’s the logic in trapping two seven year old in a relationship that, as they grow up, neither wants – with somebody’s death the only way out.
@137,138: In early Borg episodes, it was stated clearly that the Borg advance by absorbing advanced societies for their higher tech. There was even an episode (I swear) where the planet’s peoples pretended to be less advanced to avoid attention from nearby Borg activity.
And I know better than to argue with the writer who tells me cliffhangers are a form of climax even if my heart tells me they feel different.
@138 The Borg exist in the narrow band of “has technology worth assimilating” and “is not technologically/magically advanced so much as to be able to wipe them out of existence with a thought”; with the caveat that the Borg version of the Overton Window is always inexorably shifting the band towards the latter. They’re gameplan (mad queens and accidental assimilations of Talaxians aside) is a long one and they can patiently grind their way up that tech tree.
@139/jmsnyc: Dangerous logic extremists? Logic sure isn’t what it used to be.
@140, I just reread 74 since your referenced it. It just made me realize even more how illogical Amok Time was. The fact that Kirk doesnt find out thats its to the death until he after he accepts does not seem very Vulcan. This amongst many things about the episode pointed out earlier in this discussion.
I still consider it a hallmark episode of classic Trek. Great enjoyable episode if you are willing to be forgiving to the lack of logic and accepting that it is fiction.
@143 Throughout Trek, we know that Spock was discriminated against by Vulcans because of his human half. I think the Vulcan discrimination conflicts with the idea that Vulcans are supposed to be a superior and logical race. But yeah, though illogical , the logic extremists were like a terrorist group – https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Logic_extremist
@143/Jana: Violent logic extremists are no more contradictory than billionaire “Christians” wanting to imprison refugees and cut services to the poor. For every belief system, there are some who truly embrace it and let it inspire them to improve, and others who merely use it as an excuse for their own awfulness.
Logic is only a metaphor.
Where’s the logic in trapping two seven year olds in a relationship that, as they grow up, neither wants – with somebody’s death the only way out? Vulcans aren’t logical, they are just very good at rationalizing.
@147,
Agreed. The question I would ask is: Is it reasonable to seek to be logical? Is logic something we should aspire to? What does that even mean?
I am making an allusion here to Elijah Bailey (Caves of Steel et al) who described Robots as being “logical but not reasonable” when hearing Daneel’s definition of justice as “that which exists when the laws are enforced”. That is an elegant, mathematician’s definition of justice, and one which from a human point of view is not at all what we have in mind. But of course, when it comes to the things that really matter, they never CAN be defined.
Yet there is something we admire in Spock, and in my case something I admire in Daneel. If it isn’t logic, what is it?
@147/Roxana: See comment #77 above. The idea that marriage exists for the purpose of an emotional relationship rather than a pragmatic economic, reproductive, or political purpose is historically fairly recent in human society, and presumably absent in Vulcan society.
@148: Spock is thoughtful instead of impulsive. He’s reasonable instead of emotional. He can be kind, even if his kindness sometimes becomes patronizing. These are all things we wish in others, and to a degree, in ourselves.
Logic is a tool, like a hammer. Nobody aspires to be a hammer. Nobody wants to be a tool.
@150/ SaraB,
Yes, I’d agree with that.
I’d just add something Kirk said: “The Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity”. Because in order to think of a quick insult, he just took what was one of Spock’s defining qualities, and then negated it.
@144/jmsnyc: “Throughout Trek, we know that Spock was discriminated against by Vulcans because of his human half. I think the Vulcan discrimination conflicts with the idea that Vulcans are supposed to be a superior and logical race.”
I like the way Vulcans were portrayed in TOS. They had their good traits (rationality, peacefulness, IDIC) and their bad traits (arrogance, uppishness, hypocrisy). IMO introducing Vulcan terrorism is a bad idea. It takes away from the peacefulness and IDIC and thus upends the balance. Intentional or not, it feels like a vilification of rationality.
@152/Jana: But it’s unrealistic to expect a whole planet of billions of people to have a single monolithic personality. Even if 99.9% of those billions of people are peaceful and tolerant, it only takes a handful of violent extremists to do real damage. And fiction doesn’t focus on the ordinary and safe, it focuses on the dangerous and difficult exceptions. It’s not meant to reflect general, everyday life.
@147, CLB, I am aware of that. But the fact that Spock is literally stating off planet to avoid T’Pring should have set off a red flag or two.
@154/roxana: Again, I already corrected that misconception of yours in comment #77 over two years ago. It’s not avoidance, because the partners in an arranged betrothal of this type are not expected to live together or interact closely until the time comes for their marriage. Sometimes they never even meet until their wedding day.
@153/Christopher: Not “have a single monolithic personality”, only “follow a single monolithic philosophy”. As in Spock’s “I, too, am a Vulcan, bred to peace” in “The Savage Curtain”.
Unrealistic? I guess the whole Vulcan reform is unrealistic, but these are aliens. “You’re not a fish, Mister Spock.” – “Nor am I a man.” And the pros and cons of the Vulcan way used to be great fodder for philosophising. Leonard Nimoy did some of that in his delightful little book I Am Not Spock, which really should have been reissued for Star Trek’s 50th anniversary.
“And fiction doesn’t focus on the ordinary and safe, it focuses on the dangerous and difficult exceptions. It’s not meant to reflect general, everyday life.”
Yes and no. A lot of people rejoice when Star Trek does “slice of life” scenes in between the more adventurous stuff. Vulcan everyday life would have been interesting to see, and could have counterbalanced the nasty stuff, if the writers had been interested in counterbalancing it.
@156/Jana: You’re talking about whether you find it desirable to see violent logic extremists on Vulcan. I’m just talking about whether it’s credible that they could exist.
@157/Christopher: Yes, that’s what I’ve been talking about since comment #152.
I agree that it’s credible. We know so little about Vulcan that anything’s credible.
@15, CLB, and that information can be found where? I don’t think we’re ever told what’s normal for a betrothed couple. Total avoidance seems like hind of a Bad Sign. Especially as the marital relationship is vital to the survival of at least one party. T’Pring is definitely unhappy with her arrange marriage and has no out but to challenge and risk the man she wants in single combat against the one she doesn’t.
@159/roxana: It can be found by studying cultures beyond your own and not ethnocentrically assuming that your own modern Western assumptions about marriage are universal norms. I’m really surprised that you’re so unfamiliar with the concept of prearranged marriages and how they work. There are plenty of precedents in real life; you just have to read and learn more about cultures beyond your own.
Ooh, necro-threading.
@Gary7: ” Sisko’s mellowness” I think mostly just the first couple seasons and later when he’s being a tender dad. Definitely doesn’t apply to War Sisko. But I was initially disappointed too. When I heard the casting news, I thought we’d get a true badass captain, basically Hawk in Space.
Michael as a name just followed Fuller’s affectation of naming female characters after mostly male associated names. Then somebody in production thought it was a powerful name, associated with the archangel. Then they made her a literal angel in the second season, achieving apotheosis in the finale.
Not interested in rehashing any Disc particulars, but I thought as time passed it would settle a bit and rankle less. Nope. For me, it gets substantially worse the more I think about it.
Climax and cliffhanger are not the same thing. Think of the metaphor they are based on: one is resolution, the other is a pause. In other words, I’d rather have a satisfactory climax instead of a pause or cutaway in the action.
(text-editor ate it)
Climax is a build-up leading to a culmination. Cliffhanger is the suspension of action: will the character make it thru this perilous situation? The character may literally be hanging from a cliff, but we don’t get resolution when the cut happens.
@162/Sunspear: But the story builds up to the cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is the culmination of tension within that specific installment. So there’s no difference between the two things you’re talking about.
This is how episodic or chapter-based storytelling works — each piece has its own subordinate arc that builds up to a peak moment for that specific installment. That’s what makes it a meaningful episodic structure rather than just one long thing randomly chopped apart. The only difference between a climax and a cliffhanger is where you insert the break in the action. Just compare season 1-2 Batman ’66 episodes where the break came in the middle of the deathtrap to season 3 episodes where the break came after they escaped the deathtrap. They could’ve put the break a minute or two sooner, at the peak of the deathtrap like they used to, and it would’ve otherwise been the exact same story overall. So it seems a spurious distinction.
@CLB: Still no. The cliffhanger is part of the build-up. It is not the climax. It excites, it doesn’t release.
I don’t have immediate access (book in storage) but Italo Calvino wrote a wonderful essay on cliffhangers and their origins in Victorian episodic novels. One chapter literally ended in a man hanging off a cliff (tension, build-up of suspense), which wasn’t resolved till the hand reached out to save him in the next chapter (resolution, taking a breath).
I used to hate T’Pring in this episode, becasue “Boo! Vulcan lady mean to Spock”. Having watched it again a few times, I’ve developed something of a respect for her. It was still a cold and cruel choice on her part–but only to the exact extent necessary for her to exercise choice in a society that seemed to offer her none. And so what Spock said in bitterness, I recognize in admiration–flawlessly logical.
Exactly. T’Pring is not a nice lady, but she’s not in a nice position either.
She and Spock had a major commitment made for them at age seven ‘less than a marriage but more than a betrothal’. Spock doesn’t look her up until he biologically has to – pretty unflattering. In the intervening thirty years she formed an attachment to Stonn. She wants him, not the persistently absent Spock and she wants him in a publicly recognized union otherwise she’d have just gone through with the marriage to Spock. And there is apparently no way for her to get Stonn without challenging Spock. He it seems can dissolve the connection at a word but she has to resort to murder to get her freedom.
So what’s a girl to do?
@167/roxana: I still don’t understand why you’re so hell-bent on condemning Spock for failing to “look up” the person he was arranged to marry. That’s not a personal failing, it’s a routine thing for cultures with arranged marriages. T’Pol had only met her betrothed, Koss, four times before, and she’d spent decades putting off the marriage. Heck, at least Spock and T’Pring met in childhood when they were bonded — in TNG: “Haven,” Deanna and Wyatt had their marriage arranged without ever meeting until he came aboard to marry her. He didn’t even know what his bride-to-be looked like!
I was wrong in my earlier comment: the author I was thinking of wasn’t Calvino (although he did write about the elements of fiction). It was David Lodge and the book is The Art of Fiction. The issue is discussed in the third chapter, “Suspense,” featuring Thomas Hardy.
#168 – It’s not that Spock’s morally in the wrong for it, it just affects who she’s interested in sharing her life with. She made a connection to someone else and prefers that one.
@170/tjareth: Yes, that’s my point. Roxana keeps making it sound like Spock is a jerk for “ignoring” T’Pring, but he’s not doing anything that isn’t normal and expected in his culture. The whole point of arranged marriage is that it’s got nothing to do with the participants’ personal feelings or acquaintanceship, but is a contract made by their families for pragmatic reasons like economic advantage and improved social standing, plus of course the need to produce heirs. So whatever dissatisfaction T’Pring has with the arrangement, it’s not Spock’s fault. It’s the institution as a whole that should be blamed.
We don’t know that CLB. As it happens I minored in anthropology, and majored in history and know quite a lot about marriage customs. None of which has any applicability to Vulcan, an imaginary culture. We do not know what is normal for a Vulcan marriage. The closest we have to info on the point is Dorothy Fontana’s Vulcan’s Heart novel. In which Spock is in trouble with his parents for delaying consummation of the marriage.
But perhaps it is better not to belabor the point. Even if Spock is behaving with total correctness T’Pring wants another man and apparently the only way she can get him is by challenge.
And IMO T’Pol behaved pretty badly too. However Koss wanted the marriage and accepted her delays.
@172/roxana: If you don’t know the facts, then surely that is a reason to give someone the benefit of the doubt, not to assume the worst about them. Everyone deserves to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. To assume Spock is being a jerk on a personal level when you admit you have no evidence to base that assumption on is completely unfair to him.
I admit I am following Ms. Fontana’s novel in my interpretation of Spock’s behavior.
@174/roxana: I still don’t see how Spock delaying the marriage was unfair to T’Pring, when she didn’t want it any more than he did. They were both stuck with an arrangement made by their parents when they were children, and it turned out that they both grew up wanting something different. At least Spock just tried to avoid it rather than trying to arrange a homicide.
What would have been fair to T’Pring is dissolving the connection, which apparently (from the episode) he has the power to do at a word. T’Pring expects Spock to release her even if he does survive the challenge. Could he have done so before it came to this?
@176/roxana: Okay, that’s a fair point; but on the other hand, if it was that easy, why didn’t T’Pring just send Spock a subspace message and ask him to dissolve the bond? It’s not like he would’ve had any reason to say no. The problem is that the episode itself is unclear about how easy it is to break the engagement. I mean, given that Spock didn’t want to be married, it stands to reason that if it were that easy for him to break the bond, he would’ve done so already. So the ease with which he did it at the end of the episode seems a bit like a copout to rush the ending.
From T’Pring’s dialogue, it sounds as if the only time either of them could act to break the bond was in the kal-if-fee. She could only reject the marriage at that point, and he could only choose to release her after she challenged and he prevailed (“If you were victor than you would free me because I had dared to challenge”). It really doesn’t have a lot of logic to it, since it was just slapped together to set up the whole fight-to-the-death thing and then reset to status quo at the end.
@176/Roxana: I assume that Spock was willing to marry T’Pring, even if he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. T’Pring didn’t ask him to free her earlier because he might have refused, so she created a situation where he would no longer want her instead.
@178/Jana: “T’Pring didn’t ask him to free her earlier because he might have refused, so she created a situation where he would no longer want her instead.”
“Might have refused” is hardly a good enough reason to jump right to “force him to kill his best friend.” It’s a reason to ask and actually find out how he’d respond rather than just assuming the worst.
The more we parse this, the more I realize how nonsensical the whole premise is. After a whole season establishing Vulcans as a logical, enlightened culture, they jumped right to the stock ’60 cliches of exotic foreign cultures with savage, inflexible ancient traditions. I mean, granted there’s some sense in the idea that if the pon farr is an innate, inescapable drive, then the traditions worked out over millennia to manage it are worth keeping, up to a point. But it’s hardly logical to keep all their most rigid and inflexible and sexist and violent aspects just because it was done that way in ancient times. This is a culture that consciously rejected its violent past in every other way, so it was a pretty bizarre idea to show them embracing it in this respect. We’re all so fond of this episode, but if you really think about it in context of everything else TOS established about Vulcans, it just doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.
Very true, CLB. and the Kahs wahn Ordeal is the same thing all over. Vulcans don’t seem to apply much logic to their ancient traditions.
@179/Christopher: Oh, I agree. I’m not defending T’Pring. Talking to Spock would have been the right thing to do. Instead she is perfectly fine with getting someone killed as long as it isn’t Stonn.
Vulcans have some weird archaic traditions, not just in this episode. The “survival test traditional for young males” in “Yesteryear” isn’t really any better.
@180 & 181: I dunno, I think learning desert survival is a pretty valuable skill on a desert planet. And it fits in with the general Vulcan trend toward asceticism and rigid self-discipline in a way that fighting to the death over a mate does not.
But at age seven??
@182/Christopher: But surely it would be possible to teach desert survival skills without demanding of seven-year-old children to survive alone “for ten days without food, water or weapon”. That’s pretty harsh. And why is it only for males?
At least the fights to the death over a mate seem to be the exception, not the rule.
@184/Jana: I presume the ten-day trial is the “final exam” of the teaching process. And remember, Vulcans are innately a lot stronger and tougher than humans, so a 7-year-old Vulcan would probably be on a par with an adolescent human.
I assume that “without food, water, or weapon” meant that they didn’t get to take anything with them and had to find or make their own food, water, or weapons from desert materials — not that they literally had to go ten days without eating or drinking. Also, I imagine that the actual ritual is probably supervised so that those who fail are rescued; after all, young Spock was out on his own before the test, so we didn’t see the actual test itself.
And it was said to be for males because “Yesteryear” was written in 1973. ENT: “The Catwalk” retconned that by establishing that T’Pol had taken the kahs-wan.
KRAD, wonderful article! This is not one of my favorite TOS episodes. I have always had difficulty with its whole “false jeopardy” angle. We all know that the combatants, being stars of the show, will not be killed off–at least permanently.
@185/Christopher: “Also, I imagine that the actual ritual is probably supervised so that those who fail are rescued […].”
That’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of that. But it isn’t in the episode. Of course, neither is my belief that the fight option in the Vulcan marriage ritual is only rarely taken.
I agree that the origin of the wole “fight to the death” thing is a cliché about exotic foreign cultures, but it still works for me. For the proud, super-smart, logical Vulcans, Pon Farr must be a cosmic insult. They’re ashamed of it, they keep it secret, and as Spock said, they shield it with ritual. When logic breaks down, use ritual. I don’t find that inconsistent, I think it adds a layer to the Vulcan psyche. They don’t cope with everything intellectually; when it gets really bad, they turn to dissociation and ritual instead. The kahs-wan ordeal bothers me more, because here there’s no shame involved, and it seems cruel to me. It’s probably because I’m a mother.
@186/Paladin Burke: You could say that about the whole show. Personally, I prefer it that way. If you get into the characters’ heads you can still be afraid for them, because they are afraid. Kirk doesn’t know that he will be alive at the end of the episode, and neither do Spock or McCoy.
@187/Jana: “But it isn’t in the episode. Of course, neither is my belief that the fight option in the Vulcan marriage ritual is only rarely taken.”
I could’ve sworn that was stated in the episode, but apparently it wasn’t. Maybe it’s fan lore. Or maybe I’m confusing it with the fal-tor-pan from ST III, where they said it hadn’t been tried in ages.
It’s been a while since I have watched Amok Time but I did get the impression that Challenge was almost unheard of. T’Pring is taking a desperation option.
@187/ Good point.
Spock says that their minds were locked together so that they would both be drawn to the ceremony. This implies that they’re committed to marriage, and a challenge would be rare. On the other hand, the weapons were there, ready for use.
I wonder, is the pon farr based on chronological or biological age? “Every seven years” would be different for every Vulcan based on their ages, would it not? Otherwise everyone at the ceremony would have been in heat (literally and otherwise). Also how would another full-blooded Vulcan serving in Starfleet explain the need to return home, and what if they couldn’t?
McCoy’s solution to the thin air was Bones at his best. He knew that Spock, in his state, could have killed Kirk and so saved him-and Spock’s honor in the contest-by faking his death.
I also wonder, how other Vulcan women get out of arranged marriages that they might no longer want when they’re older. Logically, they ought to have an option in a more civilized society, and are all marriages arranged? Sarek and Amanda’s wasn’t.
@192/mspence: “Also how would another full-blooded Vulcan serving in Starfleet explain the need to return home, and what if they couldn’t?”
I always thought that was the reason behind the all-Vulcan starship Intrepid. If Vulcans in Starfleet serve on Vulcan ships, leave arrangements can factor in Pon Farr without anyone else knowing.
@193/mspence: “Logically, they ought to have an option in a more civilized society […]”
Perhaps the Vulcans would say that logically, your elders know best ;)
“[…] are all marriages arranged? Sarek and Amanda’s wasn’t.”
We learn in TFF that Amanda wasn’t Sarek’s first wife, so I imagine that only first marriages are arranged. That’s how it’s done in many Earth cultures.
Wow, so many comments…
@Krad/Trivial matters: Komack is also seen very briefly in Star Trek 09. At the inquiry regarding Kirk’s cheating on the Kobayashi Maru, one of the admirals on the board is identified as Komack on his nameplate.
@Krad/To boldly go…: Hmm, I actually never took the idea of Spock’s family being “this important” to mean that T’Pau was part of his family (or he a part of hers I guess would be more accurate?). But I guess in hindsight, it makes sense.
@3/JanaJansen: Haha, I loved that part when Kirk is handed the ahn-woon. The look on his face is perfect, he’s like: “Wtf am I supposed to do with this?!”
@13/sps49: Agreed, I didn’t think for one moment Spock meant it literally he was not going to live long and prosper for killing his captain. Ironically, Vulcans being like fantasy elfs in appearance, the idea of dying of grief is a trait of Tolkien elfs. They cannot die of disease or old age, only from being slain in battle or from grief. Obviously it’s a loose parallel, but it got me thinking of that in any case, haha.
@144/jmsync:
To be fair, Vulcans aren’t born logical, it takes years of training. Uncontrollable emotional outbursts are inevitable, especially considering how powerful their emotions can be. Discrimination isn’t logical, but it can definitely be emotional. In that context, I can certainly accept “Vulcan Bullies”, like we see in Star Trek 09. Although I’m not sure I like the almost comical depiction of that scene. Vulcan teenagers hurling insults with perfect grammar and in monotone was a bit over the top…
The insulting teenagers made great sense to me! I could easily see it as a purported “game” they play, where they “test” each others’ control of emotions by presenting insults. The person who retains their temper “wins”. Being youths, they don’t realize how much of this is just rationalizing an excuse to let aggression out on each other, and pick on those considered “weak” in Vulcan culture. They probably tell themselves they’re helping him.
@196/tjareth: Haha, that’s a creative way to look at it! I certainly prefer that compared to JJ and Co.’s tendency to make some of the original Series references as parody. Although some of them I do like such as Chekov (god bless Anton Yelchin) struggling to pronounce his V’s!
Didnt read all comments but, we also see an instance of pon farr in Star Trek III, when reborn Spock is rapidly aging, I think?
Yes, we do.
We also see the pon farr in Star Trek III: Search for Spock.
I also read somewhere on the net, someone’s belief this is the only time Spock called Kirk “Jim”, but I just heard him say it in the Catspaw episode as a warning (just as mind-controlled McCoy was about to whack him).
cecrow: Spock called him “Jim” in the very first episode they appeared in together, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wonderful episode and exceptional acting by Leonard Nimoy. All of the “Big Three” do well here playing off one another. The constant ship course corrections and the Sulu-Chekov banter about it is amusing. Great guest stars. And of course so much about Vulcan lore is revealed in this story. The sexist stuff with Nurse Chapel and Vulcan women being property of men is unfortunate of course. And yes, it’s an alien society not beholden to human ideals, but Vulcans are a logical species and an enlightened race so any sexist stuff doesn’t track with them. I’m not bothered by Spock’s family not being there given his relationship with his parents at this time, which will be revealed later. It’s sweet when Spock requests McCoy to be with him at the ceremony as his “friend.” But my absolute favorite part is Spock breaking his Vulcan resolve and smiling and exclaiming with joy when he sees Kirk again having been duped into thinking he killed his friend. It was his human side momentarily peaking through and also amusing watching Spock trying to rationalize his excitement. Just great stuff all-around.
It seems pretty clear that becoming the property of the victor is a consequence of making the challenge. T’Pau would scarcely feel the need to make sure T’Pring was prepared if she’d have become Spock’s property anyway. It’s reasonable that there should be consequences for the women since her challenge puts two men’s lives in danger.
@203/roxana: Even so, a law or custom that allows placing women in chattel slavery for any reason whatsoever is still a sexist one. I’ve always preferred just to ignore that line, to assume it was a mistranslation, or maybe a symbolic ritual utterance that no longer literally applies in modern times. Like how we still have “Till death do us part” in wedding ceremonies even though divorce is entirely legal and common.
@203/Roxana: “It’s reasonable that there should be consequences for the women since her challenge puts two men’s lives in danger.”
And kills one of them for sure. And the men have no choice in the matter. It seems harsher on the men than on the woman.
Of course we don’t know what happens if it’s the man who rejects the marriage. Do they gender-swap the whole thing?
@Jana: I wonder what Sturgeon could’ve done with this script if he’d been truly unleashed:
“And then there was Theodore Sturgeon, who, just as Kinsey’s work was being released and gaining notoriety, published one story after another that portrayed love as a many-varied thing, and offered compassionate (if sometimes simplistic or condescending) portrayals of characters who did not fit into rigid stereotypes of sexuality or gender.”
kinsey-sturgeon-and-sex-opposite
Another tidbit about Sturgeon’s possible influence on Trek:
“Q: Could you explain the significance of your personal trademark, which is the letter Q with an arrow through it pointing to the right?
TS: It means “Ask the next question.” Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It’s the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, “Why can’t man fly?” Well, that’s the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked.
The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We’ve found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it’s technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.”
Sturgeon interview
I read once that Roddenberry did give Q that name because he intended him to be the questioner, the inquisitor putting humanity to the test. That sounds rather different from that Sturgeon quote, though — it was a judge questioning us critically, rather than humans asking questions to inspire ourselves to grow.
More from that same interview:
“…look at the phenomenon of Star Trek. Star Trek was founded by a guy, Gene Roddenberry, who had some fine Mom and apple pie values. He believed in equality of the sexes, equality of the races, and in the American ideal of freedom and justice. He really and truly believed in these things, and still does to this day. Every episode of Star Trek bears out these particular convictions of Gene Roddenberry. You’ll find some of these things in all of them. That’s what Star Trek is about and this is why it has endured.
Some of the episodes were a little bit on the hokey side. George Jessel used to wrap an American flag around himself and dance across the stage in order to get applause. If people didn’t applaud him, they were going to applaud the flag. Once in a while, Gene was guilty of that and I won’t deny it.
Nobody ever said that he was an equitable, even-handed liberal human being. He isn’t. By no means, he isn’t. He’s an autocrat. Nevertheless, his convictions are real. And that’s the one secret that Hollywood has still not understood – the matter of conviction, of believing in something.”
And:
“Q: Which episodes of Star Trek did you write?
TS: As a matter of fact, I wrote six. I sold four, and two were aired, which was pretty well par for the course in those days. The two that were aired were Amok Time and Shore Leave. Shore Leave was the one that begins with the big rabbit. That was a gas because anything could happen. Any wild idea you could possibly have could be stuck into that script. Everybody had a good time with that one.”
He doesn’t mention injecting a possible gay subtext (which he did on occasion in his stories) in “Shore Leave” involving the back rub.
There’s also mention of his concept for Optimum Marriage (3 women, 4 men), which possibly influenced James SA Corey in their portrayal of Michio Pa and her family in The Expanse. Imagine doing that with Vulcan rituals thrown in.
@206/Sunspear: Ah, the stories we could have gotten!
But the episode we did get is already pretty cool and had a lasting impact. With it Sturgeon gave fanfiction the Fuck or Die trope. Who else can claim such a legacy?
@208/Christopher: At least both times Q is for Question. I never thought of that! It means they could have translated it into German as F. “Das F-Kontinuum”.
@209/Sunspear: Very nice quote. He makes good points about Roddenberry and conviction.
The marriage in Joan D. Vinge’s The Outcasts of Heaven Belt (1978) is also three women, four men, although five of them die at the beginning of the book. Sounds like she was influenced by Sturgeon, too.
In case anyone is interested, the original story outline for “Amok Time” is available here.
Why three women to four men? Why not three or four of each or a majority of women? Did Sturgeon ever say?
Not in that interview and I didn’t follow that particular rabbit hole. Also, forgot to add that James Holden in The Expanse also has multiple Moms and Dads, though I think it’s eight in his case.
As a counterpoint, such multiple relationships can be problematic if the participants are in a confined space for an extended period, like a spaceship. Joe Haldeman had such a situation where a woman with two husbands on an extended voyage (think it was the novel “Starbound”) began sleeping with another woman’s husband. The original two husbands weren’t happy, but went along with the alpha (oblivious to feelings) female. The third man lost his mind, quite literally.
@Jana: interesting that subsequent instances of pon farr ignored that Spock’s salmon-like “explanation emphasized that pon farr makes you go home.” Also, would’ve been interesting if they had veered into a queerer exploration of the phenomenon. Sex can emulate reproductive activity without leading to reproduction. Don’t know if such angles were pursued in K/S fan fic (I’m guessing they were). This particular episode ends with Spock beaming (incandescent smile?) that Kirk is still alive. What was that meme about finding someone who looks at you like that?
Was going to go into Saavik functioning as a sex surrogate therapist for young resurrected Spock on the Genesis planet, but not sure where that slots into this particular discussion..
A book I read once started with a scenario where a group of spacefarers crash landed on a livable planet, but with little hope of rescue. They begin planning their survival and someone points out that there are more men than women, and suggests it may lead to conflict.
The author must have been very bitter about an ex, or about women in general, because one of the female passengers then proposed that rival suitors should fight each other to the death until there were no more unattached men. It became very clear that she intended that a particular burly crew member take on her rather startled husband, who (as I recall) was a scientist rather than any kind of fighter.
I quit reading when her suggestion was taken with any seriousness instead of saying “No, you’re not allowed to have your husband murdered.”
@213, it’s a stupid solution anyway, you need all your manpower in such a situation. The obvious solution is polyandry and perhaps husband swapping to increase genetic variation.
@Sunspear: It’s a shame that they dropped the part that Pon Farr makes you go home. It was its most alien and most fascinating aspect.
I imagine that Spock’s inner compass for “home” changed after his resurrection and became the Genesis planet, so it makes sense that he could have his Pon Farr right there. But what would that mean for his future? Would he need to return to the broken-up planet every seven years and spend some time in a spaceship with his current partner? I like that idea.
I’m not really an expert on K/S fanfic (I tend to think they were just friends), but I’ve read at least one story where Spock was lying when he said that the fight had erased the mating urge, and Kirk noticed that Spock was lying. So that gives quite a different meaning to “Let’s go mind the store.” His next Pon Farr is also a plausible starting point for a relationship, either with Kirk or Chapel.
By the way, the initial story outline I linked to in comment #210 does not contain the notion that started this discussion – that T’Pring would become the property of the victor. There, she had planned for Spock to die, and “she would then have the choice of accepting or refusing her champion; she would of course refuse him, or be refused by him, and could go back to her true love.” So no consequences for the woman.
I was just rewatching the episode recently on the H&I Channel and something that I really appreciated for the first time were a couple of minor scenes: Sulu and Chekhov’s eye-rolling and bantering over having to plot and re-plot the Enterprise’s course. It was so relatable–a couple of lower-ranked workers snarking about the bosses not knowing what they’re doing. And in just a few lines, it gives us a good idea their working relationship–they both feel comfortable enough together to make those kinds of remarks.
@215/Jana: I don’t think pon farr compels returning to the physical location — I think it compels returning to one’s bondmate, wherever they may be at the time. It’s just that most of the time, they’re on Vulcan, as was T’Pring, so that was the way Spock described it.
Not one of my favorite episodes, but the moment when Spock pounds that computer in his quarters into mulch while screaming “Leave me alone!” is an all-time comedic highlight! What were those monitors made out of? Wet cardboard?
I know ‘Amok Time’ is one of the most popular episodes of TOS because it focuses on the personal life of the most popular character – but I have long considered it goofy and in some cases, rather incomprehensible. Some of my gripes with this episode have already been noted by other commenters here, so I may mention some of them. (1) The absence of Spock’s parents at their son’s wedding (which they helped arrange!) was indeed jarring, but I’m guessing there wasn’t enough money in the budget for two more significant guest stars. Plus, Sarek and Amanda’s presence would make an already absurd plot even more complicated. (2) It is incomprehensible that neither Kirk nor McCoy (nor any other human, apparently) know ANYTHING about Vulcan culture, one of the most prominent members of the Federation. In a later episode Kirk didn’t know who Surak – a figure comparable to Jesus or Buddha on earth – was! (3) Why would a peaceful, advanced society like Vulcan still adhere to some of the customs of their brutal, primitive past?? Wasn’t the whole point of embracing logic and peace to rid themselves of such barbarism? (4) Why didn’t Spock just request shore leave on Vulcan beforehand – when he knew the “ancient drives” would likely kick in – and spare everyone a lot of grief? (5) T’Pring’s machinations made absolutely no sense to me. Ok, I get that she didn’t want Spock and wanted Stonn instead. But surely she had no idea that humans Kirk-McCoy would show up at this bizarre wedding – then, if Kirk didn’t happen to be there, who would she have picked as a “challenger” to Spock? Any random Vulcan male standing around? Surely, there was some other logical way to get out of marrying Spock without risking innocent lives?? (6) McCoy’s ruse to save the day was clever: make Kirk appear to be dead. But eventually the fact that Kirk was still alive would become well known and T’Pau-Vulcan would’ve been angered by the deceit and subterfuge. Indeed, McCoy has essentially committed an act of fraud – if Vulcans are devoted so honor, transparency and duty, they couldn’t possibly overlook such a malfeasance that made them look so foolish. Would not they force the very alive Kirk to complete the “battle to the death” with Spock? (7) Finally, T’Pau, instead of being angered, smooths over everything with Starfleet!!! Phew!!!
@218/Gooch: “What were those monitors made out of? Wet cardboard?”
Remember, Vulcans are superhumanly strong. Establishing that Spock was strong enough to crush a (presumably) metal computer with his bare fists served to establish the danger Kirk was in when facing an enraged Spock in hand-to-hand combat.
@219: “The absence of Spock’s parents at their son’s wedding (which they helped arrange!) was indeed jarring, but I’m guessing there wasn’t enough money in the budget for two more significant guest stars. Plus, Sarek and Amanda’s presence would make an already absurd plot even more complicated.”
Sarek and Amanda had not yet been created when this episode was written and filmed. Perhaps that’s why Spock’s parents weren’t introduced here — to leave the writers’ options open for later. (Although D.C. Fontana’s initial story outline for “Journey to Babel” is dated just four days after “Amok Time” completed filming, so maybe their absence here inspired her to fill in the gap.)
“Why would a peaceful, advanced society like Vulcan still adhere to some of the customs of their brutal, primitive past?? Wasn’t the whole point of embracing logic and peace to rid themselves of such barbarism?”
The pon farr is a biological drive they can’t avoid experiencing. It can’t be dealt with through logic because it overrides their logic and control. It’s the one time they have no choice but to be emotional, so they keep the ritual forms of the past that were designed to manage and regulate the expression of that emotion. As for “barbarism,” keep in mind that the actual combat is virtually never practiced (except in TV episodes where fight scenes are expected). Usually the marriage goes routinely, but T’Pring had her own motives for embracing the rarely-used loophole.
“Why didn’t Spock just request shore leave on Vulcan beforehand – when he knew the “ancient drives” would likely kick in – and spare everyone a lot of grief?”
As he said, “I’d hoped I would be spared this.” Presumably since he’s half-human, he hoped it wouldn’t happen. Vulcans aspire to logic, but they’re just as capable of denial as any human.
“if Kirk didn’t happen to be there, who would she have picked as a “challenger” to Spock? Any random Vulcan male standing around?”
It was supposed to be Stonn. When T’Pring picked Kirk, Stonn protested, “No! I am to be the one. It was agreed.”
“Surely, there was some other logical way to get out of marrying Spock without risking innocent lives??”
Of course there was, but T’Pring didn’t bother to find one. That’s why she’s the villain of the piece. Again, logic is Vulcans’ aspiration, not something they achieve perfectly.
“Would not they force the very alive Kirk to complete the “battle to the death” with Spock?”
I think I already said this earlier in the thread, but it’s not like the Vulcans are all that attached to the fight-to-the-death aspect. It’s an archaism that they rarely resort to and probably feel ashamed of, as they feel ashamed of anything to do with strong emotion. It was very irregular and probably quite scandalous for T’Pring to invoke it the way she did. And it would’ve been a major diplomatic incident if she’d gotten an important Starfleet captain killed in the process. So the Vulcans were probably stoically relieved that Kirk’s death turned out to be fake and were satisfied to sweep the whole thing under the rug and forget it.
@218 You point out that it seems odd that neither Kirk or McCoy seem to know much about Vulcan culture, neither about Pon Farr, or about Surak. It makes sense to me, though. From all we see about Vulcans, they’re a private people, who are ashamed of their emotions and their ancient past. Something like Pon Farr wouldn’t be shared with outsiders, and while they honor Surak, any to discussion of him wouldn’t be possible without a discussion of Vulcan society at that time, something they’re reluctant to discuss.
@221/JustMe: The mysteriousness of Vulcan culture to Earth people is something that made more sense in TOS, when it was left vague just how the Federation was organized, so there was room for the idea that it was a fairly loose alliance, or that Vulcan was a relatively recent member. But in context of what’s been established in later Trek, it makes no sense. We now know that the Vulcans were Earth’s first alien contact, that they served in a mentor capacity to us for nearly a century, that 22nd-century children learned about Vulcans in school and sometimes had Vulcan lecturers, that Vulcan was one of the founding members of the Federation, and that they spoke openly to Earth people about Surak and their culture and history (except for the embarrassing sex stuff). Jonathan Archer even hosted Surak’s katra. In the context of that worldbuilding, it makes no sense that Earthlings a century later aren’t learning Vulcan history routinely in school from childhood onward.
The idea also made more sense in the ’60s, when there was relatively less travel and interaction between different countries and you couldn’t just look up anything about another culture on the Internet. Just look at how ignorant ’60s American TV was in its portrayal of Asian cultures, treating them as an interchangeable mass of exoticism, not even knowing the difference between China and Japan sometimes. But it doesn’t feel as credible anymore.
@222/Christopher: “But in context of what’s been established in later Trek, it makes no sense.”
It was sweet when the good guy aliens in First Contact turned out to be Vulcans, but I remember thinking right away that worldbuilding-wise, it was a bad move. And Enterprise built on that. On the other hand, missionary work and secretiveness don’t have to be contradictory. It’s still possible that the Vulcans revealed only carefully selected parts of their culture and history to outsiders (unless they had to, in which case they could always swear the outsider in question to secrecy).
@223/Jana: I see it as a correction, not a mistake. The only reason these things were treated as unknown in TOS is because the writers hadn’t thought of them before and needed to explain them to the audience. It makes no objective sense for so little to be known about a major culture like the Vulcans. I can buy them being extremely private about their mating drive, but Surak is literally the foundation of their entire civilization, so he’s the last thing they’d be secretive about.
Not to mention that, despite the conceits of conspiracy fiction, it isn’t really possible to keep a secret that big for that long. Information wants to be free, and there are always people trying to seek it out. Generally the only way a secret that big would stay secret is if everyone who finds out about it agrees to respect the secret, which could plausibly happen with pon farr (although it shouldn’t realistically be secret from medical professionals like McCoy), but not with the very identity of the cultural founder of the entire civilization and everything they hold dear.
In my novel Forgotten History, I had Kirk reflect with embarrassment on how the importance of the name “Surak” had briefly slipped his mind because he’d never paid enough attention to non-Terran history. So it’s common knowledge that he just blanked on for a minute. No need for a massive, species-wide conspiracy; simple human forgetfulness is enough.
@219, Gooch, Stonn was intended to challenge Spock in the traditional manner. Fingering Kirk was an impulsive last minute move of T’Pring’s because she couldn’t risk Stonn. She loves him. She rationalized it very prettily afterwards but the key phrase is ‘Stonn would still be here.” She wants old Foxy face badly and she won’t risk losing him. She’ll take him anyway she can get him but it’s clear that what she really wants is an openly recognized union with Stonn and Spock gone. Since she doesn’t want to risk Stonn’s life it seems obvious that there was no logical way for her to get out of the marriage except by challenge.
@225/roxana: I don’t think T’Pring’s choice was impulsive. I think she just let Stonn believe she intended to pick him in order to mollify him, while secretly having her own plan. A devious, calculating sort like her wouldn’t leave anything to chance or whim. She’d have multiple contingencies meticulously plotted out in advance — both the ones she enumerated to Spock and a number of others in case he’d come alone or brought someone different with him. Or even if he’d been unable to reach Vulcan and had died in space.
Re: The iconic fight music, it never ceases to amaze me how and where it can be parodied in media or real life.
Case in point: Contemporary Trek novelist Dayton Ward just came up with a very novel remix. XD
In James Blish’s story version of ‘Amok Time,’ Spock refers to Vulcan having seven moons! Not one, not two, but SEVEN moons! Not only does this contradict what Spock told Uhura in ‘Mantrap’ (“Vulcan has no moon”), but Vulcan must be Jupiter-sized to have that many moons!
@228/Palash: They could be small asteroidal moons, like Phobos and Deimos.
Palash@228 & CLB@229: I can’t really be arsed to go check it out, but if I recall correctly, the scenes on Vulcan depicted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (I think that’s the right one — or maybe it’s Star Trek IV … or V … ah, well, whatever) showed a big old moon up in the sky. I could be wrong about that, but if I’m right, then I’m also sure there’s some sort of retcon explanation for it. I do prefer Spock’s statement in ‘The Man Trap’, however; it’s such a brilliant exchange, and so perfectly delivered by both actors, that I just consider it to be The Way It Is. Vulcan has no moon.
@230/NomadUK: That problematical matte painting (which was oddly a night scene despite the shot of Spock shading his eyes from the sun) was replaced with one closer to the original intent in the TMP Director’s Edition. However, the animated episode “Yesteryear” had previously depicted a giant moon in Vulcan’s sky, beating TMP to it by six years.
The traditional non-canon reconciliation of the inconsistency is that it’s not a moon, it’s a companion planet, variously called T’Kuht, T’Khut, and T’Rukh in different novels. Spock is precise enough that he would not refer to a full-sized planet as a moon, even if it meant missing Uhura’s point about the romantic light of a full Moon, which would presumably be even more impressive for a companion planet.
But what I meant about the Blish reference is that it could be physically possible for a terrestrial-sized planet to host seven moons if they were small ones.
The reference to Vulcan plomeek soup in this episode was (I think) the only reference to any alien food. This has always baffled me – I would think that by the 23rd century in outer space, us hu-mans would have access to an incredible variety of foods made of alien ingredients! But we never heard of any. In fact, the few times food was ever mentioned on the show, it was usually some mundane 20th century standard (like chicken soup, chicken sandwich, coffee, etc.) We’re still drinking and eating the same stuff thousands of light years away? How depressing!
@232/Palash: The second pilot depicted Kaferian apples, which looked more like striped pears. Various alien potables were mentioned including Saurian and Antarean brandy. And when food was seen on the show, e.g. in the reception in “Journey to Babel,” it often consisted of brightly colored cubes of some unidentified substance.
There’s also the “protoplasmic and poisonous” alien meat found in the stasis box in “The Slaver Weapon.”