IDW Star Trek Ongoing...

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by serenitytrek1, Nov 21, 2012.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Like I said, his hormonal chemistry would be different if he were sexually active, and that might "prime" his system for an earlier onset of pon farr.
     
  2. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Amok time, STIII, and Voyager also suggest that there is a telepathic component to Pon Farr. Sex with non-Vulcans may throw a monkey wrench into the cycle.
     
  3. indianatrekker26

    indianatrekker26 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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  4. DarKush

    DarKush Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Don't appreciate the tone Christopher.

    What I was getting at was that I was thinking Pon Farr occurred because Vulcans didn't have sex regularly. So if alternate Spock is having sex regularly with Uhura-which I am assuming is happening-why would he go through Pon Farr?
     
  5. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    I seem to recall DC Fontana reassuring us that Vulcans do have sex more regularly that once every seven years.
     
  6. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This seems to be a common misconception. The first pon farr seems to be largely hormonal but after that the telepathic component comes into play. Maybe Vulcan women become fertile every 7 years and the telepathic link triggers pon farr. If the Vulcan male is not linked, or is not fully Vulcan, maybe the cycle becomes more irregular for both parties.

    The fact that Tuvok could not suppress his pon farr by having sex with his holographic wife adds credence to the telepathic component.

    The whole process is a bit nebulous though. Vulcans don't like to discuss it after all! :vulcan:
     
  7. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ponn farr is more a result of repressing emotions than it is not having sex. Spock could be banging Uhura every night, but as long as he's still repressing emotions in the proper Vulcan manner, he's still going to get the seven year itch.

    Of course, Spock has already shown more emotion in the two Abrams movies than he did in all TOS combined without alien influence, so who knows?
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That's not a known fact, it's just an opinion McCoy expressed at one point in "Amok Time." And it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. Think about it: the episode also claimed that the rituals surrounding pon farr had been unchanged since the distant past -- but Vulcans only adopted logic and emotional repression a couple of millennia ago. This is the one part of their intrinsic emotional nature that they couldn't eliminate with logic, so they left it as it had always been. It's possible that the madness of the plak tow is more intense with the emotions pent up the rest of the time, but the actual periodic mating drive has been with them all along.

    Of course, that does raise the question of whether the Romulans go through pon farr as well. I don't think we have any solid evidence one way or the other.


    These movies are set in the late 2250s, between the time frames of "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before." In both of those pilots, Spock was more emotional than he was later in life -- even smiling openly at the chiming plants on Talos IV. So I see no inconsistency in the level of emotion expressed by Spock at this age.
     
  9. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Having read the issue,
    the rest of the issue seems to ignore the one-year gap; it implies that it's shortly after Kirk's resurrection, as well as the Enterprise's prior visit to New Vulcan in the video game.

    It's not explicitly stated and it can be danced around, though.
     
  10. Enterpriserules

    Enterpriserules Commodore Commodore

    I got the feeling, personally, that these are all things that are happening a year later. In CTD Kirk was told to drop April off and that he would not get any answers. Now a year later, after all that has happened with Marcus and who Kirk has become, he has been granted the opportunity to talk to April. That is how I was reading it.
     
  11. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Issue #21 was really underwhelming. Back to waiting til a month after release because these books sure aren't worth $3.99 a piece.
     
  12. I am not Spock

    I am not Spock Commodore Commodore

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    Funny, because JJ's universe is already an alternate timeline (or an alternate universe altogether, depending on who you listen to), so we now have at least four universes.

    The Prime universe
    The Mirror Mirror universe
    The Abramsverse
    The Abrams Mirror verse

    Not to mention the countless universes we've seen in other episodes, notably Parallels in TNG. Perhaps in one Mirror universe, the Klingon/Cardassian alliance has cloaking devices (Crossover), and in another, they do not (The Emperors New Cloak)
     
  13. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Actually we've gotten dozens of stories featuring explicitly alternate universes over the years.
     
  14. mattman8907

    mattman8907 Commodore Commodore

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    i'm interested to see how Section 31 screws things up even more.
     
  15. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    I just caught up on issues 14 to 20. The character one-offs were well written and very touching. They were some of the best comics book issues I've read. "Mirrored" was good too, but I wasn't too keen on the good Spock Prime somehow ending up back in the mirror universe. Might have been better if Goatee Spock Prime made that trip. I also had doubts that Kirk would succeed in destroying Vulcan. That would have been a big enough stain to tarnish Good Kirk, so I'm not surprised that it didn't happen.

    Now onto After Darkness.

    Gotta get through this thread too.
     
  16. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    I saw some discussion upthread about Christine Chapel. I haven't seen the entire run of the original series in about two decades, but I seem to remember her being a major supporting character along with Sulu, Chekov and Uhura. Maybe I'm mistaken and she wasn't, but that's what I remember. I always wondered why she wasn't part of a "big 8". As for her not being included in the comics or the reboot, I figured it was because they may want to include her in a future movie.
     
  17. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'd like to see them taken down. Permanently. Much earlier than in the prime timeline. Perhaps there'll be a purge?

    Everyone knows about Section 31 now, so whoever succeeds Admiral Marcus as head of Starfleet will be motivated to prove he (or she) is not one of them.
     
  18. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    According to IMDB, she was in 25 episodes [8.3 per season]; Sulu/Chekov/Uhura were in 51 [17 per season]/36 [18 per season]/68 [22.67 per season] respectively.

    So while she was recurring, the others all appeared on the show more than twice as frequently as she did.
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    She was a bit more secondary. She made 25 appearances in TOS, versus 35 for Chekov, 51 for Sulu, 64 for Scott, 65 for Uhura, etc. Even if you throw in the 9 animated episodes she was in, she still comes in last among the recurring characters (well, second-last if you count Rand).

    Still, I suppose it's the movies that solidified a lot of the public perceptions about the characters and their prominence. There's no reason the movies couldn't have given Chapel a significant ongoing role, but after TMP, they didn't. Really, once she became a doctor, having both her and McCoy would've been a bit redundant.


    Do we know that? We know that Kirk knows about them. I'm sure he reported what Marcus told him about them, that there were investigations in the wake of the Vengeance crash, and hopefully the organization was exposed and dismantled by the final scene of the movie a year later. But there was never actually a line in the movie confirming that S31's existence had become common knowledge. Maybe it depends on how good they are at hiding and concealing evidence. Although I'm skeptical of stories about conspiracies that are unbeatable and impossible to unearth; in reality, unless one lives in a totalitarian state, secrets aren't that easy to keep once people start looking.
     
  20. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Majel Barrett's billing in ST:TMP secured her place as a member of "the big eight", and she was scheduled to be written into ST II (in fact, her white TMP scrubs were adapted to match the changes made to McCoy's white scrubs for ST II and her nametag was already on them, in anticipation), but she decided to release a press statement to all the fan clubs that the Roddenberrys had corresponded with since the early 70s, stating that due to Gene being relegated to the rather toothless position of "Executive Consultant" on ST II (he got to comment on every script, contractually, but no one had to act on his opinions), she was refusing to participate as Chapel.

    Her appearance in ST IV was by invitation from Leonard Nimoy.