Pon Farr in Trek lit

I feel a little bit like Jake and Nog with a copy of Vulcan Slave The Revenge here, but I wondered about what we've seen of pon farr in the novels.
I remember that the slash-tastic novel Killing Time has an alternate universe Spock mating with the Romulan Commander during what I think should be his next pon farr after the tv series. That is something I had thought about recently, what happened with Spock's pon farr between the tv series and STII TSFS. I think after that, his next pon farr would be his marriage to Saavik. Did any of the other novels ever acknowledge the Spock/Saavik marriage outside of the Vulcan's Forge/Heart/Soul series?
I remember that Selar goes thru pon farr in New Frontier starting at the very beginning, and interestingly, Selar has a homosexual brother, and the novel all but says that homosexual Vulcans dont' go thru pon farr. I was shocked by that, but apparently Peter David has established that. I remember that Selar's father had serious issues with her brother having a relationship since he didn't got thru pon farr. I found that really strange, since surely there are logical benefits to a relationship besides pon farr arrangements, and it felt too much like homophobia getting worked into Vulcan, which definitely didn't feel very Vulcan to me. Still, it seemed to follow the pattern of Sarek and Spock where Vulcan fathers are controlling and even illogical in the demands on the son's lives.
I remember there was a pon farr flashback in Vanguard. I'm not sure if T'Prynn did go thru pon farr or if it was just her unwanted fiancee who did. Some excellent stuff was done there with T'Prynn.
Are there any other pon farr stories I've forgotten or not read.

 

My Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History covers Spock's second pon farr, during the post-TMP period.

And I suppose I have to mention that a very -- VERY -- different version of that same event was portrayed much earlier in Triangle by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath. And probably about ten thousand fanfics.

 

Thanks for the info! I have your DoTI:FH book in my stack of to be read books. Looking forward to it
I figured there'd be more out there about Spock's pon farr cycle. We know something had to happen.

 

It is mentioned in the very first Titan book, "Taking Wing".

Spoiler: Taking Wing

When Tuvok first meets Spock's agents, he tells them that Captain Saavik sends her greetings in hopes that "...mention of the ambassador's wife..." will prove he (Tuvok) isn't a spy so that he can speak with Spock himself.

This was actually how I learned of the marriage, as I haven't yet read the Forge/Heart/Soul series as of yet.

 

I think there's something about it in Sarek.

From memory:

Spoiler: Sarek

Sarek screws up his pon farr timing when on a diplomatic mission, but his first wife is some high gol muckety-muck and can surpress its effects to some extent so he survives the trip back.

 

Personally I dislike the idea that gay Vulcans don't experience Pon Farr, as it is a base instinct so all Vulcans should experience--regardless of their orientation.

 

I've always wondered what would happen if, say, a vulcan kid was raised by humans/romulans/etc and never suppressed their emotions. Would they still experience pon farr if they experienced emotions like non vulcans did? Its just that from what I've read I don't think that the pre Surak vulcans experienced pon farr (and romulans don't), so I'm wondering if at this point its caused by the emotional suppression. The vulcan's minds are so powerful that the physical side effects like possible death could be an unavoidable mental thing, not something that is a predetermined biological function, so maybe a modern vulcan who doesn't surpress emotions wouldn't experience pon farr. I know I've read in books a few vulcan/half vulcans who didn't do any emotional suppression (although I can't quote specific examples), but I don't think it ever came up. Its just something I think about whenever the pon farr is brought up.

 

...Also, there's:

 

I think pon farr would still happen to a human raised non repressed Vulcan. I always thought it was biological. I assumed it was just an evolutionary difference, just like Romulans don't have the mental abilities. I think it's not really established firmly though and could go either way if anyone ever wanted to tell that story.
This makes me think that eventually nuSpock will go thru pon farr. I'm assuming he's ganging Uhura anyways, so it should be a non issue. Is there anything out there establishing that Spock and Uhura are having sex or not. For that matter, do we know if they bother to keep seperate quarters?
I didn't really care for the gay Vulcan not going thru pon farr either. It seemed like it was just a way for Selar's father to disaprove of his gay son's relationship without it being homophobic. He didn't care presumably what gender his son's partner was, just that he was having any kind of relationship without pon farr being a consideration. It was weird and awkward I thought, but it was also a very brief thing in the book. I was thrilled to see an actual gay Vulcan in the book, Selar was already at least non heteronormative with her relationship with a hermaphrodite alien.
IIRC T'Prynn who is a lesbian Vulcan in Vanguard does go thru pon farr, but that could be explained away that only gay male Vulcans don't go thru pon farr, so it doesn't have to be a continuity difference. I'd be willing to accept that it was just Selar's brother who was a medical oddity without a pon farr cycle if a gay Vulcan goes thru pon farr (somebody make that happen!). For what it's worth iirc, Selar's brother was a fairly relaxed Vulcan who was quite a bit less reserved than most Vulcans, which actually could lend weight to the theory about pon farr being a mostly emotional issue.

 

Pon Farr is not for you. Stick with what you can understand. -- Vulcan fortune cookie.

"Rule 1: You do not speak of Pon Farr. Rule 2: You DO NOT speak of Pon Farr. Rule 3: Even if one of the participants goes limp or says 'STOP,' Pon Farr is not over . . ."
-- bad round-trip English-Vulcan-English translation of Fight Club.

Seriously, though, it shows up in Spock's World. And it shows up in The Vulcan Academy Murders, as I recall.

 

Cool. I'm doing a massive reread of my old Trek books, and Vulcan Academy Murders is in there. I read Spock's World years ago but no longer have it. I was already thinking I was going to pick up a used copy of it anyways, this just makes me want to read it more.

 

The Vulcan idea of not talking about pon farr always makes me chuckle, as everyone seems to know about it. It could very well be the worst kept secret in the Alpha Quadrant.

Whenever I work with Vulcans my standpoint is: all Vulcans, of all genders, of all orientations under go pon farr every seven years--however, that is just the mating drive to ensure the continuation of the species, outside of that they are capable of engaging in sexual relations (Saavik in TSFS shows that, unless Genesis was speeding up her cycles too).

 

This is a tiresome trope of television generally -- something is treated as a massive revelation when it's first mentioned, something nobody knows about, this deep dark secret.

And then from that point forward, everyone treats it as common knowledge. This happens regularly in serialized drama, sadly. (To give another Trek example, it was a big revelation that Data was created by Noonien Soong in "Datalore," but subsequent episodes like "The Measure of a Man" acted as if everyone knew who created Data all along.)

 

And even worse, they then cast Brent Spiner as Noonien Soong, so it should've been even more obvious that he created the android who looked exactly like him.

Another example is holodecks: in "Encounter at Farpoint" Riker reacted as if he'd never seen one before, but VGR established that Janeway -- who's the same age as Riker -- had grown up with Flotter & Treevis holoprograms.

Then there's the similar problem with warp core breaches, which were introduced in "Contagion" as an incredibly unlikely, unprecedented malfunction, but which soon became so commonplace that it seemed all you had to do was cough in the direction of a warp reactor and it'd blow up.

 

That is a good question, and wondered if that was so. If they could have sexual relations even though they weren't going through pon far? Especially if they were married to a human or ther emotionally driven species.

Cause seriously, who in their right mind wants to have sex only once every seven years? lol

 

I think the implication of pon farr suggests that Vulcans don't have sex outside of pon farr, but it's vague and open to interpretation. I prefer to think that's not the case, and there's plenty of Trek lit that suggests otherwise, although off the top of my head, the examples I can think of are female Vulcans with alien lovers (T'Prynn, Selar) and those are with another woman and a hermaphrodite. Not that that means anything.
As has been mentioned in another thread, Selar's brother is condemned by their father for having a male partner when he doesn't go thru pon farr, which both suggests Vulcans can have sex without pon farr upon them, and that at least some Vulcans condemn those that do.

 

There was a short documentary thing on it I saw which suggested it was the direct result of emotional suppression. To me, that suggests that if they did not suppress their emotions, they would be having sex for the same reasons and with the same regularity as other species.

I don't like the idea of homosexual Vulcans not going through pon farr, either, that makes no sense to me. From other sources I don't think it's just about mating, but also a sort of resurgence of all the repressed emotions from the previous seven years. The whole point of the emotional suppression stuff, as I understand it, was because Vulcans had such strong emotions to begin with so they had to control them, so I imagine that, in some way, it'd be extremely difficult to suppress them and they would be bound to override all the mental disciplines here and there, and pon farr allows for that.

But now I realize I haven't read much on the subject and feel like buying more books.

Edited to add that this topic actually did just cause me to buy a few used books on amazon. ^_^

 

Well, a short video thingy, anyway:
http://www.startrek.com/watch_video/pon-farr-an-exclusive-video-documentary

I watched TSFS again recently and decided I didn't totally understand pon farr and spent an evening researching.