I watched the episode featuring Trip and T'Pol's ill-fated Elizabeth. It seems to imply that Vulcans and humans can't reproduce without medical intervention, as apparently happened when Spock was conceived more than a hundred years later. But wasn't there an alternate timeline in Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring Sela, a Romulan-human hybrid who was conceived when the Romulan father assaulted Tasha Yar? I doubt that the Romulan went to the trouble of paying a geneticist to produce a viable human-Romulan embryo when the mother was his slave/captive. Sela would tend to suggest that Romulans and humans (and probably humans and Vulcans) can have kids the old fashioned way in the Star Trek universe.
Elizabeth, Spock, Sela and other hybrids
- Thread starter bookworm8571
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Perhaps it was a fluke
It was a fluke. Phlox was trying to figure out what was causing the problem, and thought it was something to do with Vulcan and Human DNA. However, the final scene between Trip and T'Pol goes like this:
T'POL: Come in.
TUCKER: (trying not to cry) The delegates at the conference, they've asked about the service for, for Elizabeth. They want to attend.
T'POL: She was important.
TUCKER: There's something else. I spoke with Phlox. It turns out there was a flaw in the technique that Paxton's doctors used in the cloning process. Human DNA and Vulcan DNA, Phlox says there's no medical reason why they can't combine. So if a Vulcan and a human ever decided to have a child, it'd probably be okay. And that's sort of comforting.
(T'Pol takes his hand)
(emphasis mine)
T'POL: Come in.
TUCKER: (trying not to cry) The delegates at the conference, they've asked about the service for, for Elizabeth. They want to attend.
T'POL: She was important.
TUCKER: There's something else. I spoke with Phlox. It turns out there was a flaw in the technique that Paxton's doctors used in the cloning process. Human DNA and Vulcan DNA, Phlox says there's no medical reason why they can't combine. So if a Vulcan and a human ever decided to have a child, it'd probably be okay. And that's sort of comforting.
(T'Pol takes his hand)
(emphasis mine)
Which is the fluke, Sela's natural conception or Elizabeth? Was Spock produced naturally too?
M
marlboro
Guest
Elizabeth was produced artificially to prove Paxton's point. The techniques used were flawed and resulted in her death (lawsuit!), so I would speculate the Spock's conception and Sela's conception were both natural and didn't require any assistance.
When Spock was born, Sarek was so disgusted at what he saw, that - with Amanda lying right there, not even a meter away - he gets all sniffy and goes, " ... so Human" and hands the kid back to the 'nurse,' like ... "take this garbage out of my sight." What's it all about? When Vulcans marry Humans, is it some status thing? Have they finally 'made it,' when they have a trophy Human to show off, during the Social Season?
What scene was this?
All of the scenes I've seen depicting Sarek and Amanda would suggest it was a love match. I doubt Sarek got much social mileage out of marrying a human woman when alll his son's classmates were still calling her foul names in elementary school. They probably heard the insults from their parents.
All of the scenes I've seen depicting Sarek and Amanda would suggest it was a love match. I doubt Sarek got much social mileage out of marrying a human woman when alll his son's classmates were still calling her foul names in elementary school. They probably heard the insults from their parents.
This is from Star Trek 5, the movie. When Sybok was showing Spock what he thought Spock's secret pain was. I don't think Sarek actually did this.
And that scene doesn't make much sense anyway. What, Vulcan babies don't cry? 
That movie was so bad I only saw it once and have forgotten most of the details.
Maybe Vulcan babies don't cry. They are aliens. But it does seem unlikely, considering the other similarities between humans and Vulcans and other humanoids.
Maybe Vulcans and humans can conceive naturally but the mothers require special nutrients or drugs to carry a hybrid baby to term.
Maybe Vulcan babies don't cry. They are aliens. But it does seem unlikely, considering the other similarities between humans and Vulcans and other humanoids.
Maybe Vulcans and humans can conceive naturally but the mothers require special nutrients or drugs to carry a hybrid baby to term.
Maybe it's different between male human and female Vulcan/Romulan (Vulcanoid?), and male Vulcan/Romulan and female human. It's possible that a female human can easily have children with a Vulcan father, but a female Vulcan needs help if conceiving with a human father...
I believe Paxton's flawed technique was deliberate they created the poor baby to die....As if 22nd century humanity were so racist, they would scream with horror at the sight of a small baby. But then how were real life mixed race babies treated in our history .....sometimes not very well.
When you cross a tiger and a lion, there's a difference in size depending on whether the lion or tiger is the mother or the father. A tigon is the offspring of a male tiger and female lioness. A liger is the offspring of a male lion and female tigress. The liger is bigger than a tigon. The tigon apparently inherits growth inhibiting genes from its lioness mother that makes it a bit smaller. It would make sense that there might be some differences depending on whether the mother is Vulcan or human.
One species has copper-based blood and the other has iron-based blood, so there would probably have to be some sort of medication given so the mother doesn't reject the fetus. Spock seems to be largely Vulcan (appearance is Vulcan, blood is green, organs are in the same position as a Vulcan's, the predilection for pon farr, etc..) Vulcan genes seem to be dominant in his case. If anything, I would think it would be harder for a human woman to carry a Vulcan-human hybrid than for a Vulcan to carry a hybrid child that resembled her in the same way. But then you go back to Tasha Yar and the apparently natural conception and pregnancy with Sela. It's too bad that the writers didn't come up with a cohesive explanation for how it all works.
Years ago I read some fan fiction that speculated that a female Vulcan had the ability to change an alien male's blood chemistry so it more closely resembled that of a Vulcan male. That way, in a desperate situation when all available Vulcan males were absent, she could still bond with the alien male and reproduce. It makes as much sense as what I saw the show come up with.
One species has copper-based blood and the other has iron-based blood, so there would probably have to be some sort of medication given so the mother doesn't reject the fetus. Spock seems to be largely Vulcan (appearance is Vulcan, blood is green, organs are in the same position as a Vulcan's, the predilection for pon farr, etc..) Vulcan genes seem to be dominant in his case. If anything, I would think it would be harder for a human woman to carry a Vulcan-human hybrid than for a Vulcan to carry a hybrid child that resembled her in the same way. But then you go back to Tasha Yar and the apparently natural conception and pregnancy with Sela. It's too bad that the writers didn't come up with a cohesive explanation for how it all works.
Years ago I read some fan fiction that speculated that a female Vulcan had the ability to change an alien male's blood chemistry so it more closely resembled that of a Vulcan male. That way, in a desperate situation when all available Vulcan males were absent, she could still bond with the alien male and reproduce. It makes as much sense as what I saw the show come up with.
Two ways to look at this. One: Vulcan male, human female, no problem. Human male, Vulcan female, problem. Two, a century or two can turn extraordinary measures into routine treatment pretty easily and it may be that whatever steps might have been necessary to produce a viable hybrid had become known and weren't really ll that much.
Sela is still a problem for me, since she was supposedly conceived when the Romulan assaulted her mother, Tasha Yar. Probably a natural conception, under prison camp conditions without top quality medical care. Maybe the Romulan commander was enamored of Yar or wanted to save any child he fathered, regardless of whether she was half human and made sure Yar got the appropriate medical care during her pregnancy. But I doubt he would have actually paid for a geneticist to create Sela in the lab.
I'd probably agree that the scientists who created Elizabeth deliberately screwed things up to serve their political purpose. According to the novelizations, T'Pol and Trip had two more children later.
I'd probably agree that the scientists who created Elizabeth deliberately screwed things up to serve their political purpose. According to the novelizations, T'Pol and Trip had two more children later.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Enterprise crew actually scanned Sela and determined that she really is Tasha's daughter, didn't they?
Meaning, it isn't possible that she was lying about her parentage?
Meaning, it isn't possible that she was lying about her parentage?
Yeah, as I recall, they did a DNA test and confirmed she at least had the same DNA.
Now, after Nemesis when it was proved that they also had the DNA of Picard to create Shinzon, I wonder if Picard and crew questioned if Sela wasn't just a clone after all.
Alas, we will never know!!!
Of course one can explain anything away, but two thoughts on that:
First, it's possible that Romulans are not of 100% Vulcan blood. You have both genetic drift, as well as the possibility that Romulans intermarried with other species over the millennia, some of which may have been human/near human, which caused Romulans to be more compatible than Vulcans.
Second, maybe the Enterprise episode had it wrong and that the compatibility problem between Vulcans and humans was overstated, and further research revealed humans and Vulcans are more compatible than originally thought. Which thereby opens the door for human/romulan hybrids to be easier to conceive than Enterprise thought, too.
Romulans may have acquired some biochemical differences due to centuries in a different biosphere. For some reason, Worf was the closest match on the Ent-D to a wounded Romulan and we KNOW the ship has Vulcan crewmembers. Also, Romulans don't suppress their emotions, so possibly their blood typically contains more hormones like adrenaline, etc than Vulcans (who may limit these via biofeedback control)?
