Amok Time repercussions?

When my toddler was chucking a tanty and throwing stuff I said to her, "Where there's no emotion, there's no motive for violence."

 

I once attempted a mind-meld with the kid trying to understand why he was throwing a tantrum.

It didn't work.

 

And then there was the day my teenager wasn't allowed to engage in debauchery and screamed at me I HATE YOU!!! And I replied, "Ah yes, one of your earth emotions."

 

I'm afraid in that instance I could not resist the temptation to jump franchise, and answer "Good, good. Let the hate flow through you".

But then I would have to repent and make penance, and carve Spock's unpronounceable secret name into the flesh of my forearm.

 

That brings up another thought. Sarek was socially prominent, but since Spock was only half human, would he have been acceptable to many Vulcan parents as a mate for their daughter? Spock and Amanda may have had to go down pretty far on the marriage list to get T'Pring.

 

Probably the real reason T'Pring wanted out was that she didn't want to be married to a half human

James Blish novelisation says T'Pring says she wants Stonn because he is a dufus -easy to control
It also says that T'Pau didn't give Kirk the out at challenge. She allowed Spock to decide and Spock said No. If they had actually done it that way I wonder what we would have thought of their friendship 45 years later

 

T'Pring is a bitch any way you consider it. The bigotry angle is also present in the novel Spock's World, so I wonder if Diane Duane also read the Blish version of the episode? Mind you, Blish often had to work with unfinished scripts or scripts that were changed at the last minute, so in quite a few instances his endings differ from what is actually shown on TV.

 

Vulcans are supposed to be a logical species. Racial prejudice of this sort is hardly logical.

Then again, the head of the Vulcan science council in ST XI is similarly bigoted, so I guess they found a way to explain it.

 

Hardly the first time Vulcans looked down their noses at humans. Even T'Pau seems a bit put off by Spock's human friends.

Vulcans are smarter, stronger and longer lived than humans. Thinking they are superior is eminently logical.

 

Hm, I'm trying to imagine what a Vulcan dufus would be like .. maybe Stonn's IQ was only 180? Or, because of a learning disability, he only speaks five languages, and didn't master particle physics until the ripe old age of 12?

 

Wouldn't be the first time a 'superior' group of people failed to live up to their own PR.

 

^
Since Spock was free after his marriage to T'Pring fell through, presumably he would have been free to choose another woman. After all, Sarek had been free to choose Amanda. What if Spock had chosen to marry a human? Would Sarek have welcomed her into the family, or would he have snubbed her and Spock? Logic or no logic, Vulcans can look down on people and can hold grudges. Look at the way Sarek held a grudge against Spock for eighteen years just because Spock had joined Starfleet. Imagine if he married a human. Never mind that Sarek had married a human himself. "Do as I say, not as I do" seems to apply to Vulcans as well as humans.

 

I guess we all know that the real reason why pon farr was mentioned in "The Cloud Minders" is because the people who were rewriting scripts to make them consistent in Seasons 1 and 2 had left the show by Season 3. In his second autobiography, Leonard Nimoy reports that the initial script for "All Our Yesterdays" had Spock eating meat and falling in love with Zarabeth with no explanation whatsoever, and when he pointed out to Fred Freiberger that Spock wouldn't DO such things, this was news to Freiberger. So an awful lot of things happened that shouldn't have happened if the show's producers were being consistent ... or if they actually knew anything about the show that they were supposed to be in charge of.

Miss Manners says that the proper response to someone farting in public is to simply pretend that it didn't happen. I know that the usual fan idea is that anything that happens on-screen is canon, but I think that certain elements of Season 3 should probably be ... delicately overlooked. Pon farr mention in "The Cloud Minders"? What pon farr mention in "The Cloud Minders?" I didn't see that, noooooo.


As for why Vulcan mating is violent and messy, it's because Roddenberry wanted it that way. In his second autobiography, Leonard Nimoy quotes from a memo that Roddenberry sent around in May of 1966:

[Emotional repression on Vulcan] probably led to a need for hypnosis as a part of the sex act, and we may gather from time to time that love on Spock's planet has a somewhat more violent quality than Earth's aesthetics permit mankind to enjoy. (Unless NBC changes its policies somewhat, we will probably not do an episode dealing directly with this subject.)

(Italicized quote taken from "I Am Spock," by Leonard Nimoy, first hardcover edition, page 66.)

I suppose plak tow could be considered similar to that hypnosis that Roddenberry thought Vulcans would need to be able to get it on -- it's an altered state of consciousness that leads Vulcans to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily do.

 

Sarek would never have disdained Spock for falling in love with a human. Sarek's obvious love for Amanda would override everything. Sarek would have no reason to hold a grudge against Spock for his choice of mate.

 

I realize this is a very old thread but a cA couple of notes.
Don't

T'Pau had to recognize exactly what T'Pring was doing. She knew that once T'Pring issued the challenge a death was going to occur. She also knows that T'Pring chose Kirk deliberately instead of Stonn . The ramifications of that were that T'Pring wanted Stonn but saw this as a way to avoid becoming his property. Kirk wouldn't want her obviously. Spock wouldn't either and she expected to be freed if he did. That way she could have her cake and eat tit too. And even if he did win he would be with Starfleet and he would have his property. T'Pau knew Kirk had been had and that the repercussions would be severe. I suspect nobody on Vulcan - especially T'Pau - was particularly upset as to how it turned out. Stonn killing Spock would have had serious repercussions. A major Starfleet officer would have been killed in what the Federation would have seen as a "Duel" over a woman. And if Kirk had actually been killed here would have been no way to protect Spock. He could probably not have been court-martialed but his career would be over. After all he killed his CO.
One more thing for those wondering why Kirk accepted the challenge. Part of it was of course that he didn't want to back down in front of T'Pring. But remember- he and McCoy talked and neither though Spock could take Stonn. That's the real reason he accepted the challenge. For Spock.