This is pretty much the one thing I didn't like about this arc, was that the primary villain - even as an agent of the Romulans - spends a lot of time shouting at people, and no one seems to have a problem with it. Brikar99 , Mar 18, I have to say that this really didn't bother me.
Sure, V'Las acts emotionally, no doubt about that. Even Soval, who you credit as acting perfectly logical and unemotional, loses his control in the very first episode.
Archer even flat out calls him on it. I think the point was that Vulcan society had become so corrupted that they were willing to overlook their own emotional shortcomings and hypocritically view themselves as superior even with the flaws which they ignored.
Could Robert Foxworth have toned it down a bit as V'Las? Well, yes, he could, and should, have. But that doesn't negate what they were trying to do. I mean, more than a century of experience would change her in someone more regal. Admiral Shran , Mar 18, Yes, good points, but wouldn't cold, Machiavellian Vulcans make more sense than angry, dodgy ones?
They would also have appeared more charming and attractive, making both die-hard fans and the casual audience happy. As for the experience, I disagree though. Lack of experience for a Vulcan can mean rash, foolhardy actions, but emotional reactions? I mean, they're Vulcans, but they behave like humans. Humans who also happen to be Alpha Males into the bargain.
I, personally, am really bothered by what I've seen. There was no dignity in that acting, and dignity and Vulcans go hand in hand. It was a bit like seeing a horde of effeminate Klingons. I'm also not strictly conservative: Spock and Sarek are the two Vulcans for excellence, sure, but in my opinion so is Tuvok.
Curiously, the three of them all struggled with their emotions for different reasons. Yet, they all were very calm and self-possessed. Imagine pure, straightforward Vulcans, I'd expect them to be even colder and more rational.
Joined: May 22, Location: Noname Given. Rememebr - the whole point of the Arc was to show that Vulcans had mostly forgotten Surak's true teachings; and had staryed from the path of 'logic' more than they cared to admit. Finding the Kishara started a new awakening in Vulcan society the results of which we see in TOS et al. In Journey To Babel - Amanda is the one who tess Kirk that Sarek and Spock had a disagreement about Spock's career choice; and hadn't spoken to each other for 18 years as a result -- emotionless Vulcans my ass.
No Grave Found , Mar 18, It's a fannish misconception that Vulcans lack emotion. Vulcans are very emotional beings they almost destroyed themselves , they just repress and control it as best as they can. Vulcans long ago concluded that emotion was dangerous, set about to repress it and replace it with logic. Century after century, through practice and custom, they repressed emotion until they became almost incapable of it.
Logic became breath, sensation, as uplifting and delightful as the emotion it replaced Because of his Mother's origin, however, Spock does have a human side to his personality. A human side with emotions. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out, what seemed to be the common understanding at the time was that the kolinahr was a ritual where, as Memory Alpha states, "all remaining vestigial emotions were demonstrated as purged.
Spock was going through it because he was purging the emotions from his human side. But later in Star Trek, the story is different.
In Sarek Troi says, "Vulcans have the same basic emotions we do. They've just learned to represse them. We have learned to suppress them. Initially it is characterized by wasting, weakness, fatigue, fever, and a gradual but accelerating loss of emotional control, with victims exhibiting sudden bursts of emotion. There's a shift here, from little to no emotions in the original to intense emotions that they repress.
It's a relatively easy retcon, since most statements, up until then, were more in the line of casual conversation. When did this change happen? Is there any thing to show it was a gradual change, or was it a change that happened within one or two episodes? Note: For once I'm not asking about an in-universe change, since this was clearly changed in terms of writing and was retconned not a hard retcon, honestly so the idea was no longer that they didn't have emotions than that they had intense ones and repressed them.
I know about Surak, but, again look at the quotations from the original series. At that time, in the s, they only had, if anything, vestigial emotions.
So when did the shift or retcon happen? I think it was in the episode Sarek , but I'm not sure and I'm wondering if I missed something along the way. I would have to say that the shift, in terms of Vulcans generally, was implied in The Motion Picture , in which Spock is attempting Kohlinahr as a last-ditch attempt to become more like "full Vulcans" As if you could cut a psyche in half! From where I sit, it is implied that not all Vulcans master this level.
It was not until the episodes in TNG that this was specifically written into anything. I think, as others have stated, that writers by this time had decided that Vulcans needed to be more complex than simple "walking computers". At this point in history, people are beginning to be more in the belief that we are a lot more alike as humans than not.
So why shouldn't hominid aliens we are familiar with be similar? I don't think there was a shift at all. The original series mentions that Vulcans were once a violent people, and then consciously chose the path of logic. This would indicate that their lack of emotions is a cultural trait rather than a biological one. The Episode This Side of Paradise episode 1. Amok Time Episode 2. Journey to Babel Episode 2. There is a small but subtle hint in Sarek's reason for marrying Amanda: "At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do.
All Our Yesterdays Episode 3. All this shows that it was clear in TOS that emotions were suppressed. It's not so clear that This Side of Paradise wasn't a change; the series "bible" makes it fairly clear that Spock was supposed to be emotionless.
Therefore, the change point is somewhere during season 1; Seasons 2 and 3 both continue to show Vulcans as emotionless in action, but with a buried emotional state. Over the centuries since Surak's time, followers of his teachings have split into a few interpretations, because the original writings were lost. The predominant one, that the Vulcan High Command supports, is that all emotions are to be suppressed and purged completely, just as it was described in The Original Series.
The only group that had believed the Kir'Shara - the original writings - actually existed was the one that turned out to be following Surak's teachings most closely. Probably because they were actually in possession of Surak's katra.
Surak taught that emotions should be understood and controlled , not suppressed. Now, while this may make it appear as if the Vulcans would have shifted their teachings by the time of The Original Series, consider both how long-lived they are, and how stubborn they are, not to mention the fact that the Kir'Shara had to be studied, to be sure they understood what Surak meant.
Oh, and now the High Command is now siding with the group they were, days previous, preparing to exterminate? Yeah, of course that's going to be a good recipe for an immediate change of the foundations of their entire culture I don't see the exposure of the Vulcan's emotional side as a retcon, so much as a delving deeper into the society. Vulcans pride themselves on being able to control their emotions, and showing emotion, especially in public is full of negative connotations to them.
To a Vulcan one who cannot control their emotions is a throwback to the darkest recesses of their violent past. Their society negatively responds to such behavior through shaming and shunning the offender. To outsiders, this gives the impression that Vulcans have no emotions because they don't show them. And the Vulcans are loath to correct this impression since they treat emotions like some humans treat their left hand, feet, or genitals, as something dirty or shameful.
They probably take it as a matter of pride only internally though that outsiders think they have no emotions because it means they are succeeding at repressing them, which is a virtue. It is to a point that even if a non-vulcan is told that Vulcans are emotional beings they often dismiss the idea out of hand because it flies contrary to their own experience.
It is a rare few, Kirk, McCoy, Amanda, Picard, Archer, who understand what it truly means to be an emotionless Vulcan and what it costs. As mentioned, for the most part Spock does his best to give the impression that he doesn't have emotion. Even neglecting to correct McCoy's "insults", since Spock sees them as compliments towards his control.
In the second season episodes Amok Time 2. First with the barely covered rage of Stonn, and later with Sarek's behavior and Amanda's insight from raising a child in a Vulcan society. Later incarnations of Trek have used Vulcan society as a way to shine a lamp on the hypocrisy of cultural oppression, the dangers of repression, the value of of attachment and conversely the dangers of attachment. I don't have any examples or quotes to paste, but I don't think there has been any conflicting story lines.
In other words no point where there was a change. Spock is half-human and has a harder time controlling his emotions but he does have them. As did his father and other Vulcans they just used logic from an early stage and as a culture to exorcise almost all emotions from them. So if the felt they had an emotion they would use logic to explain it away. People do this even now. There are three episodes I can think of that I believe show this.
There is the episode where Spock's father and mother visit. The episode where Spock has to fight Kirk which I think also shows the Vulcan seven year itch for the first time. Vulcans definitely have emotions during that time and I would say it works the same as repressing their feelings until they can't control them. Also in Next Generation the episodes where Picard finds the ancient Vulcan device that caused them to forsake emotions.
I agree with those who say that the view of Vulcan emotion did not need to change -- from the original series it is clear that they are not simply an alien species completely lacking in emotion.
Their response was to develop, and train their children from a young age, techniques to manage their emotions. They also have to learn how to make decisions without involving any emotions they may still feel. It sounds like more than just repressing emotion -- they change their view of situations and the world so that they feel all or most emotions far less often and far less intensely when they do.
This does require control of emotion as well, but it is more than that. Balance of Terror:. I am capable of no other feelings in such matters. In these examples, he is not just faking, or repressing, because his decision-making process and his actions show that he is not reacting in a way influenced by such feelings.
It is from scenes such as these that some get the impression that Vulcans have no emotions whatsoever. But this is learned and practiced. In The Savage Curtain , we see that Surak himself well, sort of accepts that there are situations which are unusually evocative and thus are considered sufficient cause to display and, clearly, to feel emotion. Stonn in Amok Time is not emotionless. I think it changed overtly in TNG, specifically the Sarek episode referenced above.
Subsequent to that, specifically in Voyager and Enterprise, Vulcans were portrayed not as having no emotions, but repressing their emotions to achieve the ideal of logic. In one Voyager episode, the Vulcan character is detimentally affected by denying his emotions outright, and coached that acknowledging them is the key to controlling them, and Enterprise has an episode where a group of Vulcans rejects emotional suppression and freely expresses them. Prior to that, the scenes in Star Trek where Spock has an emotional reaction rage, grief, etc.
It does seem that the emotional suppression movement was a life-or-death drastic response to the conclusion that Vulcan passions and violence would ultimately destroy them. I don't think every pre-Surak Vulcan was a raving berserker, but I guess enough Vulcans were dangerous enough to incite such an extreme rejection of emotions.
Joke's on Surak, though, as seemingly survival with emotions was possible--the Romulans proved that. And then, yes, we have Vulcans like Sybok and those ENT fellows, who live with emotions and are not raving madmen or violently destructive. Millenia later, I think it is possible that logical, emotionally-suppressed Vulcan is a philosophy, a long-held cultural tradition deeply ingrained and widely accepted, not necessarily a biological imperative although yeah, Pon Farr.
SchwEnt , Mar 5, I think inherently Vulcan emotions are far more destructive than Human emotions. The Romulans developed their own sense of emotional control by developing an apparently oppressive society that discourages the populace from getting too out of hand. Different solutions to the same problem? Evans , Mar 5, Oh wow.
That's a really interesting idea I never considered. Vulcan solution, suppress the individual. Romulan solution, suppress the society. Kinda obvious I guess but it didn't occur to me in those terms. I like it a lot. From what I've seen on screen, I definitely have to echo C.
Evans point about there being biological aspects to their violent streak, in spite of the Romulan's presentation. To reconcile the two, I have always been of the belief that imperialism is a distinct idiosyncrasy of the Romulans as a people, relating primarily to their chosen way of life and of organizing their society. But there is nothing on-screen stating that this confers any behavioral condition upon them individually. They could very well have embraced some form of emotional control albeit obviously less strident , and it would be the rational course of action if indeed their race Vulcans writ large is beset with abnormally erratic emotions.
Rather than reject emotional control, we've only ever seen that the Romulans reject logic specifically, and especially where it regards how they govern their society and their lives.
However, the two states of existence emotional suppression and violent imperialism are not mutually exclusive. The coexistence of these approaches can, IMO, entirely explain the way the Romulans we've seen have been depicted.
0コメント