Spock's Blood...

[Timo]

I really don't get this anti-cave sentiment. Why would a rectangularly shaped room be better than a cave-shaped one?

Caves are very good as habitats, storage spaces and other functional environments. They are nicely thermally regulated, they are radiation-protected, they are armored. They can be expanded in three dimensions relatively easily. They pose no aesthetic problems as regards outside appearance. For a civilization with access to tools like phasers, they are probably loads cheaper and easier to create than buildings erected on the surface.

What possible downside could a cave have as a health care or birthing facility? Lack of hygiene? But that's bullshit - hygiene does not depend on surface contours. White ceramic walls are a 19th century misconception about what might be hygienic, because blood stains or algae growth are visible on such walls - but removal of blood stains or algae is not a sufficient step towards hygiene.

Caves are just fine for giving birth - especially hot and dry ones, as would be found on Vulcan.

As for Amanda giving birth, I'd think that would be a minor detail to be decided a few weeks before Spock's maturation: does Amanda want to give birth utereally, or does she not? If she does, then Spock can be inserted to the womb trivially easily. If not, he won't be.

Giving birth could be important for Amanda, or Sarek, or the society around them, for reasons varying from personal whims to social taboos to a really inflexible legislation. The actual mechanics of it would be irrelevant in comparison with this importance, easily arranged with the help of modern medicine.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anticitizen]

The cave scene is in keeping with the 'vulcan style' we'd been treated to up to that point, anyway. In the previous movie, Spock's computer-pop-quiz was in a cave, was it not?

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

This has been a fascinating thread about Spock's blood and the blurb from the script about the blood transfusion. It may not be scientific but neither is the swish as the ship flies by!! LOL

I remember listening to Sarek explain Spock's birth many times on the Inside Star trek album as a kid. I also remember going WTF when the cave scene showed up in ST V but it was obviously a writer's oversight (like Sybok being Spock's brother) but what's done is done. If they can explain it away as a high-tech birthing chamber in Vulcan's hot climate, then like the swishing ship in space, I'll buy it if it's presented even half way right. After all, it's only fiction that can be retconned by any future writer with a vivid imagination!

 

[Myasishchev]

What's wrong with Sybok being Spock's brother? I've never gotten the problem with that. It's like complaining about George Kirk or Demora Sulu. It also makes sense given what we know of Vulcans from "Amok Time"--Sarek is unlikely to have been betrothed at childhood to some human girl that wasn't even born yet.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

^Oh, I've come to peace about Sybok being Spock's brother.
In the beginning, I just thought that it kind of undercut the loneliness and the burden to follow in Sarek's footsteps that Spock originally had built into him back in the day ("Journey to babel"). But now I look at it as if Sybok has already gone astray of Sarek's footsteps so maybe that would make the pressure on Spock even greater to follow in them and "be Vulcan."

 

[Captain Robert April]

The long-lost-crazy-brother shtick just smacks of bad soap opera writing, and it takes too much effort to justify, especially for such a lousy movie.

I'm sticking with the "it's a drunken ghost story told around the campfire" angle.

 

[Jeri]

Well, I notice we don't really see a lot of posters using STV as source material for backing up their arguments.

 

[T'Girl]

If the Vulcans were truely advanced in the medical and biological arts, it possible that Amanda, during her pregnacy, had a unusual and some what large placentia, it would permit oxygen, fluids, wastes and nutrients to pass through, act as a filter. But it would also isolate Amanda and Spock from endangering each other, act as a barrier.

 

[Myasishchev]

Well, I notice we don't really see a lot of posters using STV as source material for backing up their arguments.

I rather like the film, but, yeah, I'm not going to argue that the E-A has seventy decks anytime soon.

But the "secret pain" of Sarek's reaction at Amanda delivering Spock can be (probably ought to be) considered metaphorical for how Spock's felt about his dad all his life. To be sure, taken as a concrete memory, it's ludicrous on at least three levels--one, Amanda carrying a trilobite in her womb; two, Sarek being a dick; three, Spock remembering his own birth--but as a metaphor I think it's kind of compelling. Spock feels like he's been looked down on by his old man from day one.

I even like the source. Sybok, also a son of Sarek, is telling his brother, "You know what? Screw that guy. It wouldn't have mattered if you were fully Vulcan, he's an asshole to any species. Also, your mother is a father-stealing, red-blooded tramp--sorry, emotional transference is a side-effect of the mind meld."

 

[Captain Robert April]

Okay, that works.

Still a stupid movie.

 

[Myasishchev]

Needed a few more drafts, for sure.

 

[Timo]

Yeah. Drafting a good effects house would have helped.

The rest I feel boils down to editing problems. I like the story, and I like Sybok's character and portrayal. I like the sets and props and locations. I don't like all of the photography: whole-body images of our aging heroes are less flattering than imaginative close-ups. But I do like the campfire "framing story" angle, even if it's somewhat top-heavy, slowing down the story at the beginning.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stompy]

Something I never noticed till I got my BRPlayer for xmas...

Spock in TMT had both green and red blood

Pretty kewl!

 

[Captain Robert April]

Merely one of the more curious side effects of being half human.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, red blood is seen gushing through the veins of full Vulcans, too - in their eyes, their lips, and other such semi-transparent parts of the body.

Perhaps all Vulcans have a double circulation system, of which only one half need interface through Amanda's placenta during pregnancy?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[KobayashiMaru13]

^ Or its just that Trek-Making oversight, or perhaps they decided they would look silly with green lips.

 

[Captain Robert April]

They didn't seem to have that problem on the series.

Are we saying that the makeup department on TOS was better than JJ's bunch, with about a hundred times the operating budget?

 

[Timo]

"That problem"? What problem?

In all incarnations of Trek, Vulcans have had red lips and eyes. All future incarnations of Trek are likely to share this feature, unless they wish to seriously revamp the appearance of the Vulcans (the way Klingons were revamped for TMP). And it will take considerable resources, because turning red eyes green is not a trivial makeup effect. Probably it will only become practical (or even possible) when Vulcans go all CGI, Avatar style...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

...Of course, red blood is seen gushing through the veins of full Vulcans, too - in their eyes, their lips, and other such semi-transparent parts of the body.

Perhaps all Vulcans have a double circulation system, of which only one half need interface through Amanda's placenta during pregnancy?

Timo Saloniemi

VFX error. A persistent, pernicious, persnickety VFX error!

Like you said, green tongues and caruncles are not reasonably possible without major effort. If we believe in dual blood for Vulcans, we must believe in dual blood for Andorians as well.

Of course, copper blood is crap for oxygen capacity, so it's questionable how it ever makes evolutionary sense. A possible handwave: a significant, if transient, carbon monoxide content in the Vulcan atmosphere (from vulcanism, of course) would make the CO-immune hemocyanin prosthetic group much more attractive. There's also some indication oxygen carriage could be increased with hemocyanin at the expense of extraordinarily viscous blood, since copper blood doesn't require corpuscles.

 

[Zeppster]

^ Or its just that Trek-Making oversight, or perhaps they decided they would look silly with green lips.

The color of your lips and blood don't really have anything to do with each other. Look at most animals in the world right now. Do their lip and blood color always match?