Do Romulans have Pon Farr?

[DGCatAniSiri]

I've always considered it a side effect of the suppression of emotions AND the psionic abilities that Vulcans have, that their abilities cause them to have to have that period of unchained emotion after a period of repressing them. This didn't happen overnight, but when they realized what it did, Vulcan society began to look at it as a regular thing, that they could craft a rough timeline of how long they can go before their emotions break up to the surface (I've never considered 'every seven years' to be a 'like clockwork' estimation, just an average that varies from Vulcan to Vulcan). Given that the Romulans don't suppress their emotions and they don't have the telepathy Vulcans do, they don't go through Pon Farr.

Though I admit that there's a flaw in this theory by way of young Spock going through Pon Farr in TSfS...

 

[Myasishchev]

murder, rape, and the potential for being murdered or raped

I never have understood why some fans believe that the pon farr process naturally culminates in rape. If Spock remained in the blood fever, you might have a point, however.

Well, look at Amok Time. Spock comes to Vulcan and finds out T'Pring's taken. In a normal society, Spock is pissed, but bows out, or he kills Stonn, and goes to prison, because violence is frowned upon. In Vulcan society, the same situation generates a duel. Fair enough.

Bow I suppose the duel could have been essentially about revenge--the Vulcan equivalent of shooting your wife's lover when you catch him in your bed, but socially sanctioned. Now revenge and spite are surprisingly selected for in human populations, and that could work.

But it's pretty much explicitly said that T'Pring is going home with the winner--regardless of her choice. She only gets out of it because she chooses a stand-in for Stonn who will either kill Spock and want nothing to do with her, or die and make Spock too sad to screw.

Now maybe this isn't rape in the human, American legal sense--it comes very close--but it certainly degrades female consent in the basest way.

Now I suppose there is an alternative--all or many Vulcan females are cruel, calculating, and above all shallow beings who impute sexual value only to physical prowess (and, surely in many cases, dumb luck), and thus will happily mate with the strongest available male, as "proven" through a fight to the death. This is almost as ugly as the rape scenario.

Spock doesn't enter the blood fever until after T'Pring issues the challenge, up until then he was in at least partial control of himself. The blood fever might not be a common part of pon farr if there is no challenge. After combat the need for the blood fever disappears, Spock might not have been completely freed of the effects of pon farr yet, but he had re-obtained the level of rational thought that he arrived at the arena with and that would have stayed with him if T'Pring had simply accepted the marriage.

I'm not describing the mechanics. If Vulcans like rough sex, that's their business. I'm talking about consent. Gagging and slapping are unto bread and butter if there's consent; the most staid missionary sex in the world is a monstrous thing if either party is refused the right to refuse.

Vulcan could be a dangerous place, especially during primitive times. If two females become pregnant by two (different) males. One male only has a psychological compulsion for sexual activity. The other male has a psychological compulsion to form and maintain a family unit. Of the resulting two children, one with a single parent, one with two parents, which one statistically has a better chance to grow up and pass on it's genes? Easy, the child with the genes to compulsively form a family unit.

But the slutty Vulcan female would be rewarded for polyandry, given the males' reproductive limitations. Of course, there's some thought that says females have the same cycle, but I find it hard to buy, amongst other things because of the synching problems, and childhood bonding is not a magic bullet for that, because of death, disease, splitting up, and so forth.

At the same time, wouldn't marriage or challenge skew the sex ratios a bit? That is, with dead Stonns littering the field, won't there be unmarried females wandering around?

Maybe not. Of the three friends that I have who are in arranged marriages, the intended spouse was always from the same town (in India), and usual a forth cousin. Arranged marriages throughout history tend to be inside of some kind of group, race, religion, money, social. If Spock's family was important (T'Pau), it's likely T'Pring's was too. And they might have been distant cousins as well.

Nothing wrong with fourth cousins. We're all cousins, eventually. Even first cousin pairings are not as deleterious as people make out, though all else being equal they should be avoided as a first option.

T'Pau's comments to Kirk seem to imply that T'Pring could have chosen any of the male's in the arena, in historic times this would have prevented a bride from having to marry a weak groom to whom she had been bonded to as a child. In ancient times there might have been a free for all of combat.

Although it raises a question--why risk life and limb (or commit brutality and murder) for a mate when you're not personally in season? Do they all go at once? If so, the whole planet should be an orgy of destruction, and also a regular orgy.

And to no one in particular I will mention again how utterly boneheaded the Voyager take on pon farr was. Spock was a big enough jerk in Amok Time, but VOY tells us all he needed was an exotic massage. Or maybe Chapel could've worn a T'Pring mask. Totally lame.

Though I admit that there's a flaw in this theory by way of young Spock going through Pon Farr in TSfS...

Oh snap. That's true.

We never saw Sarek in the throes of pon farr when he was married to Amanda or Perrin.

Plus, he totally knocked some Vulcan princess. We can infer 1)he "cheated" on Amanda (because he had to, and she's cool with it because she's a cool old lady); or 2)divorce is a socially and legally acceptable option. Which introduces problems for lifelong bonding theories, etc.

Iirc, there's also some evidence that there's a third son of Sarek that Picard met. Although that could've just been Spock, or yet another frankencreature cobbled together from Vulcan and human parts, there's no particular reason to disbelieve that he had a working arrangement with some unwed or polyandrous Vulcan chick.

I just re-watched Amok Time. McCoy speculated that PonFar was a consequence of emotional suppression but nothing more conclusive than that. So we don't know.

McCoy's also kind of an idiot who'd never heard of pon farr before Spock got sick--which is an annoying plot hole, because I don't think McCoy's an idiot, and he should have known or suspected pretty much immediately. Can you imagine the task of hiding the sexual behavior of a species of billions with a range over dozens or hundreds of planets. This isn't the mating rituals of some rare termite species found only in a hole in the ground somewhere in the deepest Congo, it's the dominant, most visible species on their planet. And humans are curious about such things--"how do you fuck?", I suspect, would be in the top two or three questions we would ask any aliens about their own biology. If they evaded, we would find out by hook or crook. Or even by reading a book.

Also, I think he was being poetic.

 

[Timo]

Now maybe this isn't rape in the human, American legal sense--it comes very close--but it certainly degrades female consent in the basest way.

I can't really see it that way. If the bride on the altar says "yes", and gets the groom, why is her consent being degraded? She could have said "no", just like T'Pring could probably have gone ape in a mirror move of Spock's "I wanna choose" primal rage. That she didn't is just an indication that she got what she wanted, not that she would have had no say.

It's no different from yer usual wedding, except that if tempers happen to flare, they flare hotter than in the average human case. The ceremony itself is just silly costumes and sillier props, just like a human wedding, and doesn't seem to carry any specific legal weight one way or the other. As evidenced by the outcome, the ceremony merely legally affirms whatever the participants chose.

At the same time, wouldn't marriage or challenge skew the sex ratios a bit? That is, with dead Stonns littering the field, won't there be unmarried females wandering around?

If pon farr is biological, then there'd probably be a balance - the society would already have an excess of Stonns. Which probably is good for the society.

And to no one in particular I will mention again how utterly boneheaded the Voyager take on pon farr was. Spock was a big enough jerk in Amok Time, but VOY tells us all he needed was an exotic massage. Or maybe Chapel could've worn a T'Pring mask. Totally lame.

I thought that was a highly consistent take on it, and did away with the pitfalls of many a fan explanation to how pon farr works. VOY says it's merely a time when the Vulcan male wants to find somebody to have sex/family with, and if nobody is around, the male gets anxious and possibly violent. If somebody is sort of halfway there, it's only natural that he gets less anxious and less violent.

Spock's "Amok Time" analogy about salmon spawning is good and well for the "must return to home" aspect of pon farr. But he should have been talking about ungulates as regards the "will get violent and possibly even die" aspect, because salmon inevitably die, but elks get the death thing as a side effect of being so damn emotional. Elk duels are an excellent match for what we have seen of pon farr so far: it's a biological drive where there's some synching, it gives mating rights for the future but isn't directly related to the act of copulation, it sometimes fatally detracts the male from the quest for personal survival, and it would pose little or no harm to the contestants if they happened to be fluffy little lambs but may end in bloodshed when two beasts of exceptional inborn strength and aggression are involved.

Plus, he totally knocked some Vulcan princess. We can infer 1)he "cheated" on Amanda (because he had to, and she's cool with it because she's a cool old lady); or 2)divorce is a socially and legally acceptable option. Which introduces problems for lifelong bonding theories, etc.

I don't get the inferences. Wouldn't the cheating be with regards to the princess rather than Amanda in the 50% chance that Sybok is older than Spock? And why would divorce endanger the lifelong bonding theory? "Amok Time" already stands ample proof that the pon farr drive is a beastly quality that can be conquered by sufficiently viciously applied reason (plus a bit of asphyxia play), and doesn't have simplistic Boolean outcomes. In short, it's a fairly realistic phenomenon in all its complexity, and caters both for mundane, loving, vanilla relationships and red-hot affairs of violent passion, and for everything in between.

...Which apparently involves unions where the woman lies meekly under the heel of the man, such as appeared to be the case with Amanda and Sarek. Whether the two practiced their union that way in private is anybody's guess, but that's they way they played it out in public. Feel free to despise them and "Journey to Babel" for it, but apparently they themselves didn't despise each other, or themselves, or the society.

Of course, the general assumption is that Sarek didn't divorce Amanda when taking Perrin. There would probably have been technical differences in divorcing a rotting corpse that can no longer properly hold a pen, I mean. The easy assumption then is that Sybok's mommy also died. Perhaps out of childbirth, perhaps out of lunglock fever, perhaps out of the strain of divorcing Sarek and then going to pon farr and dueling to death with another woman over a hunky piece of Vulcan maledom. Certainly all these options would exist in the simplest and most general theory of pon farr as an analogy to annual ungulate mating rituals.

Can you imagine the task of hiding the sexual behavior of a species of billions with a range over dozens or hundreds of planets.

In a loosely knit society of thousands of planets? Certainly. It's not as if McCoy would ever have been to Vulcan, or to any planet harboring Vulcans (although the Rigel neighborhood he frequented might have come close). And while McCoy would probably be as obsessed about sex as any human male, there's no reason he'd be particularly well versed in the true sex habits of Vulcans even after reading all the human fiction written on the subject.

How likely is it for a doctor today to be unfamiliar with the dietary requirements of a Muslim? Pretty damn likely, really. And that's not even something the Muslim society would try to keep secret, or be embarrassed about. It's definitely something the doctor can look up in a written source with trivial ease - but that doesn't mean a halal diet would be his first guess for the cause of an ailment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

At the same time, wouldn't marriage or challenge skew the sex ratios a bit? That is, with dead Stonns littering the field, won't there be unmarried females wandering around?

There's been a question for years of "what happen to Stonn's bonded wife," my theory is that Vulcan's are polygamists. Star Trek has always pushed the idea that Vulcans are different, different than Humans. I think what T'Pring was aiming for, was to eventual become Stonn's second wife, the junior wife within the marriage, with Stonn's current wife's full consent.

Do they all go at once? If so, the whole planet should be an orgy of destruction, and also a regular orgy.

Given that I think the Vulcan female initiates pon farr, there might be something like the Human female McClintock effect, but in reverse. If pon farr revs up every seven years and lasts several days, then only one-third of one percent of the people in a community will be experiencing it at any given time. Statistically of course. Society goes on, everyone knows what's going on and nobody talks about it.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

There's been a question for years of "what happen to Stonn's bonded wife," my theory is that Vulcan's are polygamists. Star Trek has always pushed the idea that Vulcans are different, different than Humans. I think what T'Pring was aiming for, was to eventual become Stonn's second wife, the junior wife within the marriage, with Stonn's current wife's full consent.

I always thought of it just as it's up to the parents - some bond their kids, others don't. Sarek, being in the upper levels of Vulcan social society, followed tradition in regards to Spock while Stonn's family, being lower and thus less under the proverbial microscope, didn't. Isn't that the generally accepted version of events in fandom as well?

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

If it's the need to 'make a family' regardless of whether the sufferer is involved in that family or not, Vorik's case makes no sense. B'Elanna beat him up. No family, just a beating. That's why I think a physical resolution is needed, but not necessarily a sexual one. We know pent-up emotions and stress in a human can cause health issues, so I imagine it's the same thing with a Vulcan.

 

[lstyer]

^unless it's a byproduct of controlling emotions.

That seems unlikely since Reborn Spock in Star Trek III apparently underwent Pon Farr before his katra was rejoined to his body.

 

[ConRefit79]

This is the strongest evidence that it is a natural physiological process. If true, I doubt ~2000yrs is enough time for the Romulans to lose the drive.

 

[Mr Silver]

This is the strongest evidence that it is a natural physiological process. If true, I doubt ~2000yrs is enough time for the Romulans to lose the drive.

Like another couple of posters mentioned, its possible the Romulans introduced a recurring genetic modification into their DNA, in order to prevent Pon Farr

Its quite possible the Vulcan's refuse to do the same, since they consider Pon Farr to be a "Cultural Tradition", perhaps Surak's philosophy even dictates that Pon Farr should be preserved, in order to remind Vulcans of who they once were and to be in appreciation of what they have accomplished by shedding their animal passions, etc

 

[T'Girl]

^unless it's a byproduct of controlling emotions.

That seems unlikely since Reborn Spock in Star Trek III apparently underwent Pon Farr before his katra was rejoined to his body.

Even after Spock deposited his Katra into McCoy towards the end of TWOK, he was still able to fix the warp drive and have his final talk with Kirk, so perhaps the Katra was twined with Spock still retaining exactly what he gave McCoy. Re-born Spock had Spock's Katra, but it was in a state of confusion.

The movies TWOK, TSFS and TVH all took place back to back. Space Seed was in the first season and Amok Time was in the second. So if (by Khan's statement) TWOK took place fifteen years after Space Seed, then TSFS took place fourteen years after Amok Time. Taking into account the seven year cycle, re-born Spock was in pon farr because back on Vulcan T'Pring was.

Re-born Spock didn't "know" that they were no longer bonded. If Saavik accepted marriage with Spock on the Genesis planet, that would have satisfied his pon farr. And yes they likely had sex. In the TNG episode Sarek it was said that Picard attended Sarek's son's wedding and it has been in novels that that the bride and groom were Saavik and Spock.

A long betrothal.

If T'Pring could exchange her bonded intended (Spock) for a different groom (Stonn) prior to the actual marriage, then perhaps Spock was somehow able the replace T'Pring with Saavik as ultimately the bride.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Where does the idea that the Romulans engaged in genetic engineering come from?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Where does the idea that the Romulans engaged in genetic engineering come from?

Their height and build changed noticeably (more suitable to a temperate world), the mental powers were lost, they may not have Pon Farr anymore, AND they got that ridge. For it to have happened THAT quickly is much faster than I would expect of normal evolution.

(BTW, my personal theory on the forehead ridge is that it was a trait common to a minority that lived in Vulcan's polar regions...which wouldn't be arctic by our standards, but probably just cool, and that when they chose traits for themselves suitable for that sort of climate, the ridge just came with it.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Where does the idea that the Romulans engaged in genetic engineering come from?

Their height and build changed noticeably (more suitable to a temperate world), the mental powers were lost, they may not have Pon Farr anymore, AND they got that ridge. For it to have happened THAT quickly is much faster than I would expect of normal evolution.

(BTW, my personal theory on the forehead ridge is that it was a trait common to a minority that lived in Vulcan's polar regions...which wouldn't be arctic by our standards, but probably just cool, and that when they chose traits for themselves suitable for that sort of climate, the ridge just came with it.)

Did they? I'm not seeing to much diffrence in height or build between Vulcans and Romulans. We've seen tall ones, short one, fat ones and skinny ones. Some that were "pumped up" and some that were kinda scrawny. I'm not even sure all Vulcans have those mental powers. At least not at the level we've seen our heroes use.

 

[T'Girl]

Their height and build changed noticeably (more suitable to a temperate world), the mental powers were lost, they may not have Pon Farr anymore, AND they got that ridge. For it to have happened THAT quickly is much faster than I would expect of normal evolution.

(BTW, my personal theory on the forehead ridge is that it was a trait common to a minority that lived in Vulcan's polar regions...which wouldn't be arctic by our standards, but probably just cool, and that when they chose traits for themselves suitable for that sort of climate, the ridge just came with it.)

A stocky build is characteristic of people from a cooler climate, a slim build of people from a warmer climate. The planet Vulcan might have cold, even arctic regions, Antarctica in spite of the ice, is considered to be a desert because of the lack of aIR moisture. Romulan could have been the name of a small but powerful Vulcan nation/state located in the colder regions, isolation by encircling mountain ranges lead to unique racial features, facial ridges and a tendency to be ... well, pudgy.

Prior to their departure from Vulcan there was the century long war between the Romulans (and some allies) and others on Vulcan, the war that Tuvok spoke of to Q . When it came time for them to depart, in addition to the Romulans, many of their non-Romulan allies left with them. Through the years on Romulus, the two group stayed largely racially distinct, maybe because of cultural or religious reasons.

This explains the look of two different types of "Romulans." The slim female Romulans commander from TOS and the barrow-bodied, broad-shouldered, thick-armed officers from TNG/DS9.

The slim Romulans persisted in experiencing Pon Farr (one of the reasons they stayed distinct), the thick Romulans, even back on Vulcan, because of their isolation for tens of thousands of years from the main group, only experience Pon Farr to a mild degree.

The Remans could have been a third, even smaller distinctive group, who backed the wrong side in the war, left Vulcan, fell into disfavor with the other two groups on Romulus and became outcasts.

But we all have days like that, don't we?

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

^I like your theory, especially the explanation of the ridges.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I recently saw the Enterprise episode when T'Pol had premature Pon Farr, first hitting up Dr. Phlox in the deconaminator thing. Phlox couldn't do her. That's three divorces.

Then T'Pol escapes. The people chasing her in the starship in environmental suits. T'Pol hits up on Reed. If I was Reed, I would of torn off that suit in a heartbeat. Come to my place. I have wine, ketarel white, and Al Green on the radio. Archer can court martial me and send me wherever.

I'd like to ask Conner Trinneer at a convention, "Did you get wood when Jolene Blalock took off her clothes?" I guess one could ask Kim Hunter if her nipples got hard when Charlton heston showed his nads in the original "Planet of the Apes".

The series cannon does not really mention it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

On Romulas its called "J'Mee Farr" and involves crossdressing.

 

[Myasishchev]

Now maybe this isn't rape in the human, American legal sense--it comes very close--but it certainly degrades female consent in the basest way.

I can't really see it that way. If the bride on the altar says "yes", and gets the groom, why is her consent being degraded? She could have said "no", just like T'Pring could probably have gone ape in a mirror move of Spock's "I wanna choose" primal rage. That she didn't is just an indication that she got what she wanted, not that she would have had no say.

Why fight if there's a choice? Just take your boytoys and go home.

It's no different from yer usual wedding, except that if tempers happen to flare, they flare hotter than in the average human case.

No, usually both parties want to be there. Well, both parties have acquiesced to be there, and agreed to cause no more trouble.

I thought that was a highly consistent take on it, and did away with the pitfalls of many a fan explanation to how pon farr works. VOY says it's merely a time when the Vulcan male wants to find somebody to have sex/family with, and if nobody is around, the male gets anxious and possibly violent. If somebody is sort of halfway there, it's only natural that he gets less anxious and less violent.

So Spock is a dick, and ought to have been court-martialed. I mean, he probably should have been anyway, but this makes it somewhat worse.

Elk duels are an excellent match for what we have seen of pon farr so far: it's a biological drive where there's some synching, it gives mating rights for the future but isn't directly related to the act of copulation, it sometimes fatally detracts the male from the quest for personal survival, and it would pose little or no harm to the contestants if they happened to be fluffy little lambs but may end in bloodshed when two beasts of exceptional inborn strength and aggression are involved.

I agree this an apt analogy. The elk fight to control access to reproductive machinery of a female. Just as Vulcans apparently do.

"Control over reproductive machinery" is ordinarily considered not just unpleasant, but vile (caution: does not apply to anyone living east of the Urals, west of Japan, and south of Gibraltar).

If there is no compulsion mechanism the marriage process, why bother showing up at all?

I don't get the inferences. Wouldn't the cheating be with regards to the princess rather than Amanda in the 50% chance that Sybok is older than Spock?

Okay, this is actually true. My chronologic was faulty on the first inference.

And why would divorce endanger the lifelong bonding theory?

Not divorce as much as remarriage. If it were impossible (for some reason) to mate with someone you weren't betrothed to as a child, remarriage wouldn't have much zing to it. But then again T'Pring and Stonn sort of prove that trivially, so nevermind. I think I was tired when I wrote that, but I'm tired now... : /

Can you imagine the task of hiding the sexual behavior of a species of billions with a range over dozens or hundreds of planets.

In a loosely knit society of thousands of planets? Certainly. It's not as if McCoy would ever have been to Vulcan, or to any planet harboring Vulcans (although the Rigel neighborhood he frequented might have come close). And while McCoy would probably be as obsessed about sex as any human male, there's no reason he'd be particularly well versed in the true sex habits of Vulcans even after reading all the human fiction written on the subject.

He could read the 23d century Wikipedia article on Vulcans and grok that.

How likely is it for a doctor today to be unfamiliar with the dietary requirements of a Muslim? Pretty damn likely, really. And that's not even something the Muslim society would try to keep secret, or be embarrassed about. It's definitely something the doctor can look up in a written source with trivial ease - but that doesn't mean a halal diet would be his first guess for the cause of an ailment.

How many diseases do you get from not eating pork? In any event, the doctor would know how the Muslim's stomach worked.Whereas McCoy is apparently totally clueless about Spock's boner (also, his endocrine system).

There's been a question for years of "what happen to Stonn's bonded wife," my theory is that Vulcan's are polygamists. Star Trek has always pushed the idea that Vulcans are different, different than Humans. I think what T'Pring was aiming for, was to eventual become Stonn's second wife, the junior wife within the marriage, with Stonn's current wife's full consent.

Well, if that were true, no wonder there are fights to the death. I would go as far to say that serious, Mormon/Muslim-style polygyny in a 1:1 ratio society is likely to be an unsustainable phenomenon. But if the seven-year thing is a virility cycle, as I've often said, polyamory could work very well.

 

[T'Girl]

if the seven-year thing is a virility cycle

What if the female counter-parts fertility cycle is tied to the males virility cycle?

 

[Myasishchev]

The all those tampon advertisements we're beaming to 40 Eridani A are for naught.