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Anybody know how the Vulcan Neck Pinch works.

Vulcan Neck Pinch? Excuse me for asking, but: My ViewMaster version of "The Omega Glory" that I had as a kid (of all the episodes they might have chosen! - maybe Roddenberry, who wrote it, insisted) refers to the "FSNP (Famous Spock Neck Pinch)," which may have been taken from the original script for all I know. Seriously, has any Vulcan character in any Trek episode or movie - other than Spock - used the pinch? Do we know that he didn't develop it himself?
 
Vulcan Neck Pinch? Excuse me for asking, but: My ViewMaster version of "The Omega Glory" that I had as a kid (of all the episodes they might have chosen! - maybe Roddenberry, who wrote it, insisted) refers to the "FSNP (Famous Spock Neck Pinch)," which may have been taken from the original script for all I know. Seriously, has any Vulcan character in any Trek episode or movie - other than Spock - used the pinch? Do we know that he didn't develop it himself?

Tuvok and T'Pol have used it many times. Hell, we've even seen non-Vulcans like Data and Odo do it.
 
Vulcan Neck Pinch? Excuse me for asking, but: My ViewMaster version of "The Omega Glory" that I had as a kid (of all the episodes they might have chosen! - maybe Roddenberry, who wrote it, insisted) refers to the "FSNP (Famous Spock Neck Pinch)," which may have been taken from the original script for all I know. Seriously, has any Vulcan character in any Trek episode or movie - other than Spock - used the pinch? Do we know that he didn't develop it himself?

Tuvok and T'Pol have used it many times. Hell, we've even seen non-Vulcans like Data and Odo do it.

Don't forget Archer used it too.
 
Vulcan Neck Pinch? Excuse me for asking, but: My ViewMaster version of "The Omega Glory" that I had as a kid (of all the episodes they might have chosen! - maybe Roddenberry, who wrote it, insisted) refers to the "FSNP (Famous Spock Neck Pinch)," which may have been taken from the original script for all I know. Seriously, has any Vulcan character in any Trek episode or movie - other than Spock - used the pinch? Do we know that he didn't develop it himself?

Tuvok and T'Pol have used it many times. Hell, we've even seen non-Vulcans like Data and Odo do it.

Don't forget Archer used it too.

I do keep forgetting that. Worth noting, that was when he had Surak's katra in his head, implying it's been around since those days.
 
The way Nimoy, who invented it, describes it in his autobiography, it involves telepathy. That is, through the neck pinch some telepathic command (he refers to Vulcans as 'touch-telepaths') is transmitted to the target's central nervous system causing loss of conciousness.
 
I always assumed it had something to do with touch telepathy, but then Data did it in the Spock episode, which ruined that theory.
 
The times I've seen it mentioned in print, mentioned a nerve at the junction between neck and shoulder, such that pressing on this nerve induces unconsciousness. Although, I'm fairly sure it doesn't work IRL.
 
Ah. Sorry, I'd forgotten about Data - and now I seem to recall another katra instance: Didn't McCoy (carrying Spock's katra) try it in ST III? As for Tuvok and T'Pol: My success in blotting out all memory of Voyager and Enterprise is greater than I had imagined - although we do have in our house a Voyager-era "Star Trek Cookbook" with Ethan Phillips in full makeup on the cover; a few hours ago I held it next to the TV so my girls could compare the photo to Phillips-as-human in tonight's Pushing Daisies.
 
Leonard Nimoy said on The Twenty-Five Year Mission Tour video that in the episode "The Enemy Within" that Spock was scripted to hit the evil Kirk with the butt of his phaser and when he said there could be another way the director asked him what and Nimoy said and I quote:

Well, Spock is a graduate of the Vulcan Institute of Technology, where he took a number of courses in human anatomy. And Vulcans have a kind of energy which comes off their fingertips which, if properly applied to the appropriate pressure points on the human anatomy, will render the person unconscious.
Nimoy then said that after explaining that that the director had no idea what Nimoy was talking about, but then he went and told William Shatner and Shatner got it immediately and Nimoy has said that it was Shatner's reaction to it that is what ultimately sold everyone on the idea of the neck pinch.

I always assumed it had something to do with touch telepathy, but then Data did it in the Spock episode, which ruined that theory.

Picard did it too in that one episode where the Enterprise is in dock for the Baryon sweep. Presumably he either was trained to do it from someone or he learned it from his mind meld with Sarek.

And Odo did it too in one episode of DS9 and I can't remember which one right off the top of my head unfortunately.
 
And Odo did it too in one episode of DS9 and I can't remember which one right off the top of my head unfortunately.

"Paradise Lost", supposedly? When freeing Sisko from the Starfleet gaol.

One might say that the technique involves no telepathy, but does require extremely precise control of one's fingers, and great muscular strength. It thus only works for trained Vulcans, or for people who are under the illusion that they are trained Vulcans and can muster superhuman strength for a short while, or for perfect mimics like Data or Odo.

As for how it works, it could be that if you wiggle your fingers just right against the nerve bundles in the shoulder, they not only cause those particular nerves to go numb - they send flashes of extreme agony everywhere in the body, shutting the victim down for a while. A bit like punching a guy in the mouth in such a fashion that every nerve in his teeth is pinched simultaneously...

Timo Saloniemi
 
I performed the neck "pinch" on a friend in high school. put him right out. Corse I used a baseball bat. :)
 
It works the exact same way as the famed Kirk "karate chop to the neck" works... fictionally.
 
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