Vulcan Breeding Stock

Why? Spock is the first Vulcan in Starfleet, despite Vulcans being a founding member of the Federation. The only person to ever turn down a seat on the Federation council was a vulcan. Yeah, the vulcans were reasonably well disposed in regards to the diplomatic corps, but I doubt there were thousands of vulcan diplomats running around and I don't see them filling very many other governmental positions at all.

 

There's no evidence, I'm aware of, that says Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet.

 

Evidence from "The Immunity Syndrome" would seem to contradict the "first Vulcan in Starfleet" stuff, as we have the Intrepid crewed with 400 Vulcans.

 

Really?

Hmmm. How did I have this idea in my head for years?

That's fairly amusing.

 

It's a well-known fallacy. Just like everyone thinking Kirk always said "Beam me up, Scotty," when no one ever said those exact words.

 

I am sure Vulcans have enough DNA, and possibly katras, on file to breed more people without resorting to other species that are of completely different cultures.

Now, if the Mintakans share enough cultural similarities, I guess some of the few remaining Vulcans might be tempted to do what Worf's brother did on that other planet and have a logical excuse to do it. I also guess that Section 31 were aggressively searching distant quadrants of space, and wouldn't be shy to break the Prime Directive in the process in manners much more blatant than what Kirk did. So an early mess-up at the Mintakan homeworld is not at all unlikely.

I think it could make a wonderful story that I'd love, but it doesn't seem to fit with anything I've heard so far about Star Trek Beyond. For starters, the alien world mentioned seemed to have megapolises, and linking that with a story about Mintakans is not something I am seeing. And has the same potential to be interesting. So... as much as I'd love it, I don't see the point of bringing in the Mintakans... for any purpose that I can think of.

Other than please me, but I think I am not on the list of purposes.

 

Orci and Kurtzman have said that the 10,000 doesn't include offworlders. Besides, how could Spock have known personally how many such Vulcans weren't living on the planet at the time? There's no way he could have kept track of them all.

Possibly, but (and I admit it's been awhile since I've seen the film) is it not possible that the rest of the survivors could have been picked up by another ship or ships? Perhaps Vulcan's own local defense fleet?

And even if it was only the Enterprise - we don't know how many people, at a time, it could evacuate if all of its transporter rooms were running at full tilt. Maybe they really could have done it all themselves. Especially in this timeline with the advanced technology they have.

 

I came to this thread expecting photos.

You guys failed me.

 

I'd argue "evacuation of Vulcan" was a colossal flop, and basically nobody survived. The Enterprise was too worried about a tiny set of heroes and their relatives, her rookie crew too ill-disciplined to act on behalf of the greater good, her commanding officers engaged elsewhere. Other ships, had they existed, would have made short work of Nero's vulnerable drill - but since none did, I assume that the lone aircraft seen on the background when Spock beams down had little or no capacity for such acts, or for planetary evacuation. Attempts at evacuation would not have started until at the very last minute anyway: even the Elders thought that the best course of action was to burrow and wait, being completely unaware of the red matter threat.

Spock would certainly know how many Vulcans are offworld at a given moment, at the accuracy quoted. That's a simple statistic, and Spock is good at irrelevant numerical trivia. And yes, Vulcans are an incredibly secretive, private species, so 10,000 offworlders sounds quite plausible.

But no, it's no cause for alarm. With proper application of discipline and technology, both things the Vulcans excel at, Sadamk and T'Eve alone could probably populate a planet in a genetically viable way; fifty Vulcans would face little problem; and 10,000 would represent healthy stock even when counting in various defects, feuds and accidents coming in the way of ideal breeding schemes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

As Doug Drexler says, "no ape-brain thinking!"

Yeah I doubt the Vulcans would want to interfere with pre-warp Vulcanoids, like the Mintakans. This goes both against the prime directive (which the Vulcans came up with), and they probably would not see logic in it. Mintakans are descended from Vulcans, but maybe the Vulcans don't consider Mintakans "vulcan enough," culturally or physiologically.


Also, I doubt the Romulans would feel much obligation to help the Vulcans, either. From the Romulan point of view, they're ancestors left Vulcan out of disgust for the philosophy of Surak (which in of itself, seems odd...why not just conquer the pacifists?). Be that as it may, Romulan culture is now a separate and different culture, and it is very possible that along the way during their exodus to the Romulus system, the ancestors of the Romulans may have intermarried with other races along the way, so the "modern" Romulans may not even be of a 100% pure Vulcan bloodline, thereby making them either a hybrid species, or even a new, separate species that are simply descended from Vulcans. Given that, and similar to how Vulcans may view Mintakans not being "Vulcan enough,"Romulans may not even consider Vulcans worth bothering with because Romulans may feel that Vulcans are culturally and racially inferior.

Also, once news reached Romulus that Nero was a Romulan of an alternate timeline (relative to them), it's possible that the Romulans are expecting a retaliatory attack from the UFP, so they would be more likely double down on their isolationism, and probably ramp up their military to prepare for an attack. With the events of Admiral Marcus in STID, that would only confirm Romulan fears of a UFP attack. So, I doubt the Romulans would help Vulcan.

So, I think as alluded to in STID, Vulcans would simply work on rebuilding their culture on New Vulcan. I think we have reason to believe that the "10,000 Vulcans left" cited in Star Trek 2009, may be referring to residents of Vulcan Proper. Let's not forget that Vulcan had an unspecified number of colonies according to Star Trek Enterprise, like P'Jem for example, which may add to the total population of Vulcans still living. So I like to think that maybe the number is much higher.

But even if there were only 10,000 Vulcan left, that is a lot of Vulcans. First, don't forget that 23rd century Vulcans have technology we can't conceive of, so they can either clone or produce many test-tube babies in incubators. In a single generation, they could possibly turn 10,000 into millions (think Kamino from Star Wars). Second, Vulcan physiology is much tougher than human physiology, so if Vulcan wanted to do it the old fashioned way, maybe Vulcan females can bear many more children, both during a single pregnancy, and during a lifetime. If Vulcans encouraged their population to multiply and used both methods, I think by the 24 century it's VERY possible to have a population of a billion or more Vulcans, especially if cloning or other fertility methods were instituted (EG: ensure each pregnancy had 6 children, if not more), given Vulcans' long lifespans.

 

I'd think that the Romulans would be far more likely to want to absorb the surviving Vulcans into their own society in hopes of getting the secrets of Vulcan telepathic abilities than to help them out for altruistic reasons.
10000 sounds like plenty of breeding stock without resorting to violating the Prime Directive.
I think it's possible if not likely that Sarek and Spock Prime would father more children. I'd love to see more of what's going on with the Vulcan survivors.

 

One wonders how many Vulcans there were to begin with... After all, Vulcan is a hostile world (even without all those hostile Vulcans!), a hellhole even in Vulcan terms. Possibly the few oases on that world only harbored a few million people at any point of Vulcan history, this being the number originally transplanted by Sargon's people?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Spock says six billion in the film.

 

Yeah, the "first Vulcan in Starfleet" business is a bit of fanon that was NEVER established onscreen.

It's a myth.

 

Might still be true for all we know, though. Spock was there before the Intrepid crew showed up - and we have no real proof that this crew was Starfleet, either.

But one would think this would have come up at some point of the adventures if it were true...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Was where? On the show? Does that mean Pike was the first human in Starfleet?

The ships called the Intrepid and I think we can connect the dots here.

 

Sure, we can connect the dots with a straight line. But that would be lazy. Why should we assume there isn't a Vulcan organization interested in investigating exciting space phenomena? We already know Vulcans conduct research on their own, wholly separate from Starfleet - Spock was a traitor for not joining the Vulcan Science Academy.

Making Spock The First takes some doing, but there's so much groundwork already done on making him vewy, vewy special that it might be worth the effort. It is only with this in mind that we may further consider that the Intrepid really is no obstacle.

Indeed, it might be fun to make Spock The First. All the others in the crew are pronouncedly mundane - a farmboy at the center chair, nobodies at secondary positions, a former civilian engineer at the boilers, a country doctor patching them up. Contrast this to the E-D where everybody is a celebrity, save perhaps for the skipper himself!

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Picard Maneuver.

 

I suppose in-vitro or cloning might be an option too, if they don't want to do the sex thing that much.

Is 10,000 is a big enough number to prevent inbreeding without scientific help? 10,000 might include a lot of children and those that are already related. Might be an even smaller number.

Maybe people are remembering the Aliotta, Haynes & Jerimiah song.

 

Hmm. IMHO, being a Starfleet-internal celebrity after the fact doesn't count - there's also a Kirk Maneuver and arguably a Riker Maneuver as well. That's just doing the job well. But Worf is the Only Klingon in Starfleet, Data is the Only Sentient Android in the Federation, Troi is the daughter of the Ambassador, and even Riker started out "special", as he graduated close to the top of his class and quickly rose in rank and prestige...

...Which is another thing about TOS that remains on rumor and myth stage - the idea that Kirk would have been a particularly young skipper and an especially rapid rank-climber.

I recall numbers as low as fifty being quoted... Wikipedia refers to research estimating 500-1000 individuals for terrestrial mammals including us.

Timo Saloniemi