Was Vulcan originally meant to be in Sol system?

[Christopher]

I'm willing to grant that the hypothetical Vulcan would be a little more likely familiar to science fiction readers than to the general public, but still, not that likely. General relativity had gotten quite well-proved a generation earlier and obliterated any need for the hypothetical planet.

But that's the difference between science and science fiction. SF doesn't have to match up perfectly with reality. It's allowed to fictionalize. As I've already said (though I forgot to provide the link -- here it is), Wikipedia lists several stories ranging from the '30s to the '60s -- as late as 1965 -- that used Vulcan as a setting, even though it was disproven in 1915. In the same way that a lot of SF and space fantasy stories went on writing about Martian canals long after they were debunked. Science obliterated the real-world need for Vulcan and the canals and so forth, but that didn't obliterate the literary need for them as story settings.

After all, sometimes science gets things wrong. Sometimes things are debunked by one set of scientific findings and then revealed to be plausible again by later findings -- such as, say, the presence of liquid water on Mars. So if someone wanted to write a story positing that the debunked planet Vulcan actually did exist after all, that wouldn't be entirely impossible to suspend disbelief about, if the story sold the idea well enough.

The question does make me realize, though, that I can't think of any science fiction stories set on the hypothetical intra-Mercurial Vulcan.

See the link above. Wikipedia lists two 1930s stories from Astounding, the Captain Future pulp novels from the '40s, and a '65 novel called Mission to Mercury. It also suggests that it's ambiguous whether the planet Vulcan from Doctor Who's "The Power of the Daleks" (which aired in late 1966, just two months after "The Man Trap" first established Vulcan as Spock's homeworld) was meant to be a solar or extrasolar planet, since it was said to be humanity's first colony, suggesting a nearby world.

 

[Nebusj]

Yeah, the good folks at rec.arts.sf.written pulled out a couple of Planet Vulcan stories for me and that pretty much shows my skepticism was overblown. Solar Vulcan may have been a footnote in science history by the 30s but at least a couple people were hanging stories on that (should've guessed Ross Rocklynne and Edmond Hamilton, really). More, the Doctor Who example shows that it's plausible a TV writer in the mid-60s would have the idea of a Planet Named Vulcan in mind, even if it isn't necessarily a solar one.

And that still does leave the interesting question of when and how Spock was settled on being a Vulcan, rather than a Martian or a resident of a wholly-made-up planet name. A wholly-made-up name might have worked --- after all, Klingon was one of them --- but that might've been a Gene Coon thing. A lot of the early Trek made-up planet names were nondescript (Delta Vega), or mediocre (Psi 2000), or just plain bad (Planet Q?).

When he was left to name a species all on his own Roddenberry managed to bless us with ``Delta'' and then, given a do-over, came back with ``Beta''. (Of course we also got ``Talos'', which would've worked.)

You know, it would've worked if Roddenberry had gone with ``Alpha''. It'd have vague connotations of Centauri, without committing to anything particular, as well as having vague hints of technophilic superiority.

 

[drt]

Wasn't there a concept at some point that Krypton was orbiting our sun on the opposite side from Earth? Or am I getting this mixed up with something else?

Kor

Yeah, I seem to recall this before they decided on the "red sun" thing, which may have explained how so much kryptonite got to Earth.

You may also be thinking of John Norman's "Gor" series, which was sort of similar to Burrough's Barsoom books, but about the planet Gor.

 

[uniderth]

Theta -sians = Thasians?

 

[FormerLurker]

^^Which was, of course, on the far side of the sun, and the first seven novels in the series were marketed as the "Chronicles of Counter-Earth" on their covers. That changed to the "Saga of Tarl Cabot" when it switched publishers around 1982 or so.

There was even some dialog exchanged between characters about how the planet could even be there, and yet not affect gravitational fields in the rest of the system. Its masters were said to have brought the planet there from some extrasolar location.

 

[Drone]

I'm really not familiar with the arcana that might hold some further hints as to the early creative thoughts in this regard, but if that was the intention, wouldn't it occur to the writers that viewers, while intuiting that Trek isn't meant to be a precise rendering of their own actual future, might be rather questioning, if not negatively critical, of the idea that mankind hadn't seen any evidence of life on such a supposedly relatively close body, even at the then primitive stage of extraplanetary exploration?

At the time, we were only a couple of years past getting the first photos of the Martian surface from Mariner 4. We didn't yet have the ability to rule out life on other solar planets, not in 1966. It was starting to look unlikely by that point, but a great deal of science fiction of the day still presumed there was life on Mars or Venus, or even on the surfaces of the gas giants, which were still believed to have solid surfaces at the time. My Favorite Martian ended just months before TOS premiered. Even hard-SF writer Larry Niven was writing about alien life on Mars in the mid-'60s..

The fact that an esteemed author like Niven had such a plot at that time certainly would substantiate your premise. Aside from what I stated before questioning it from progressing scientific knowledge at the time, which you also addressed by pointing out Vulcan's supposed obscurity, I would add that from a purely perceptual basis, the audience would be more likely to accept, and perhaps to expect, such a sophisticated alien race coming from a distant world rather than a less challenging and expansive origin just around the corner. I don't know that viewers would have been disappointed, but it just wouldn't seem to fit as well in this conception of humanity so advanced that it has the ability to reach the boundary of the galaxy as opposed to say, exploring the Kuiper belt.

As an aside, while Boothby was portrayed as a Martian, I don't think it was because the show creators felt that the vast majority of its potential audience was incontrovertibly excepting of the likelihood of life being present there. Rather, it was more likely an easy conventional determination, that while alien by virtue of his antennae, that Mars simply represented the concept of extraterrestrial life that would go down easily, one that could be more plausibly have a race that looked just like us rather than having to envision and create a vision of a benign visitor from beyond the stars. In the sitcom genre, although not that far off, I don't think that the prevailing zeitgeist would have supported the creation of Mork & Mindy, let alone 3rd Rock.

By the way, what were Roddenberry's science fiction preferences?. I think I've read that he was a quite a fan of Heinlein, but I'm not sure of any other substantive influences he may have had.

 

[Christopher]

And that still does leave the interesting question of when and how Spock was settled on being a Vulcan, rather than a Martian or a resident of a wholly-made-up planet name. A wholly-made-up name might have worked --- after all, Klingon was one of them --- but that might've been a Gene Coon thing. A lot of the early Trek made-up planet names were nondescript (Delta Vega), or mediocre (Psi 2000), or just plain bad (Planet Q?).

He was first referred to as "part-Vulcanian" in "Mudd's Women," so maybe Stephen Kandel coined the name.

Wasn't there a concept at some point that Krypton was orbiting our sun on the opposite side from Earth? Or am I getting this mixed up with something else?

Kor

Yeah, I seem to recall this before they decided on the "red sun" thing, which may have explained how so much kryptonite got to Earth.

I do seem to recall the first episode of the Superman radio series implying that Krypton was another planet of our solar system. Although I think it later posited a different inhabited world in the "counter-Earth" position.

 

[borgboy]

Like when Superman's planet Krypton explodes, rocks from there fall to the Earth, because other planets are all just "up there" in the sky, and loose things fall down.

Wasn't there a concept at some point that Krypton was orbiting our sun on the opposite side from Earth? Or am I getting this mixed up with something else?

Kor

I'd never heard anything about Krypton being a Sol planet, but that's interesting.
In Doctor Who, the planet Mondas was orbiting our sun on the opposite side before some catastrophy drastically altered their orbit and led to the Mondasians altering themselves with tech to survive, leading to the birth of the Cybermen.

This is all really interesting and thought provoking. The hypnosis effect on women sounds kind of rape-y. I think Vulcan telepathy worked better, but I'm loving learning about the development of one of Sci Fi's greatest alien races.

 

[Christopher]

The hypnosis effect on women sounds kind of rape-y.

True. But if that was Roddenberry's original thinking behind Spock, it sheds new light on Nurse Chapel's and Leila Kalomi's obsessive fascination with Spock and his resistance to their advances. Maybe the idea was that they fell prey to his innate "hypnotic" influence and he was trying to resist taking advantage of them. Still, just as well it was never made overt.

 

[Nebusj]

I do seem to recall the first episode of the Superman radio series implying that Krypton was another planet of our solar system. Although I think it later posited a different inhabited world in the "counter-Earth" position.

They say it directly. Its about 7:20 in to the first episode at https://archive.org/details/superman_otr. Shortly after his meeting with Krypton's High Council of Jerkfaces, Jor-El explains to his wife that Earth is a planet on the other side of the sun.

(This seems to me like a shocking lack of knowledge on Lara's part. But the purpose of the line is explaining stuff to the audience, who may be shaky on just what planets there are in our solar system themselves. And I'm a bad judge on what's common knowledge, since when my love and I were driving on our New England Amusement Parks tour this summer I pointed out a town that had a key role in the 19th Century international ice trade as if the name should have any meaning whatsoever to a person who was born and raised in Michigan and in the 20th and 21st centuries when there's refrigeration technology.)

 

[Drone]

The hypnosis effect on women sounds kind of rape-y.

True. But if that was Roddenberry's original thinking behind Spock, it sheds new light on Nurse Chapel's and Leila Kalomi's obsessive fascination with Spock and his resistance to their advances. Maybe the idea was that they fell prey to his innate "hypnotic" influence and he was trying to resist taking advantage of them. Still, just as well it was never made overt.

As crass as it is, I can't resist. Spock, the Bill Cosby of deep space.

 

[Christopher]

As crass as it is, I can't resist. Spock, the Bill Cosby of deep space.

The difference being that Spock would've been trying not to take advantage of his power over women.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ironically, the role K'Ehleyr was originally to go to Vulcan actor Robin Curtis - Saavik in STIII: TSFS...

Of course, Worf's girlfriend was originally planned, by Tracy Tormé, to be hinted at over several episodes... until we realize that Worf was romancing Dr Selar, the woman who was patching him up in sickbay every few days. The studio wasn't so keen on matching Worf to a Vulcan, but they agreed that Suzie Plakson had the right chemistry.

 

[Long Syntax]

I know we're talking about Gene's intentions here, but in universe what is the explanation for the name Vulcan?

Upon first contact of Spock's people with earth or earthlings, would "Vulcan's" translate their own home-world's name to something that our in our language and history would most closely describe their planet - in this case Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire (due to the relative intense heat of the planet)? Or is the term Vulcan (or a similar sounding name) in their lexicon, and just happened to be something from our history?

 

[Christopher]

I know we're talking about Gene's intentions here, but in universe what is the explanation for the name Vulcan?

Upon first contact of Spock's people with earth or earthlings, would "Vulcan's" translate their own home-world's name to something that our in our language and history would most closely describe their planet - in this case Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire (due to the relative intense heat of the planet)? Or is the term Vulcan (or a similar sounding name) in their lexicon, and just happened to be something from our history?

The original intent was probably the former, that it was a human-assigned name. But later productions have implied that it was their own name for themselves. For instance, "Carbon Creek" has the Vulcan scouts who crashed secretly on Earth in the 1950s refer to themselves and their planet as "Vulcan," though I suppose we could be hearing a translation from their own language.

 

[Long Syntax]

I know we're talking about Gene's intentions here, but in universe what is the explanation for the name Vulcan?

Upon first contact of Spock's people with earth or earthlings, would "Vulcan's" translate their own home-world's name to something that our in our language and history would most closely describe their planet - in this case Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire (due to the relative intense heat of the planet)? Or is the term Vulcan (or a similar sounding name) in their lexicon, and just happened to be something from our history?

The original intent was probably the former, that it was a human-assigned name. But later productions have implied that it was their own name for themselves. For instance, "Carbon Creek" has the Vulcan scouts who crashed secretly on Earth in the 1950s refer to themselves and their planet as "Vulcan," though I suppose we could be hearing a translation from their own language.

In most cases I agree with you Chris, and I tend to lean towards it being a human-assigned name, but for some reason I keep wondering if we've heard native Vulcan language spoken on screen saying something to the effect We are from Vulcan or We are Vulcan's? I believe there have been instances where the native tongue was spoken and it would be interesting if it had been spoken.

 

[Mudd]

The hypnosis effect on women sounds kind of rape-y.

Doesn't it just?

 

[uniderth]

It would be interesting if he had a hypnosis effect on men. He could turn even the most Chuck Norris manly man in to a dreamy eyed school boy, just raring for a bromance with this intriguing alien stranger.

 

[Kor]

I do seem to recall the first episode of the Superman radio series implying that Krypton was another planet of our solar system. Although I think it later posited a different inhabited world in the "counter-Earth" position.

They say it directly. Its about 7:20 in to the first episode at https://archive.org/details/superman_otr. Shortly after his meeting with Krypton's High Council of Jerkfaces, Jor-El explains to his wife that Earth is a planet on the other side of the sun.

Yes, that's it. I was thinking of the Superman radio show.

In most cases I agree with you Chris, and I tend to lean towards it being a human-assigned name, but for some reason I keep wondering if we've heard native Vulcan language spoken on screen saying something to the effect We are from Vulcan or We are Vulcan's? I believe there have been instances where the native tongue was spoken and it would be interesting if it had been spoken.

The only Vulcan-language dialog I can think of at the moment is from The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. Neither of these dialog sequences actually mention the name of the planet Vulcan or the Vulcan people, though.

Kor

 

[Ronald Held]

I do not recall reading any comic book that had Krypton in the Sol system.
Without doing the calculations or doing a web search, the Vulcan needed to account for the GR effects would be massive enough to retain an atmosphere much less an ocean of water?
I always thought Vulcan was the Standard translation for what the inhabitants called that world.