Vulcan endangered question

[nyc12182]

Relatively new to this forum so i am srry if this was discussed, BUT...

How are the vulcans endangered with only 10k members left after there home worlds is destroyed?

For a race that has been on space for over 3k years and has multiple off shoot races, the only colony they ever set up was pa"jem?

Just find it odd... i know it was probably stated for dramatic flare than continuity, but still its odd for such an old space faring race to not even have one reasonably sized colony.

anyone hear/read anything on that, might have a reasonable explanation?

 

[horatio83]

In Enterprise it was mentioned that the Vulcans stay close to home and don't colonize the galaxy like humans.
A potential explanation for this is their rigid culture which also implies a suppression of natural curiosity. Other reasons to colonize deep space, a sense of adventure or the desire to start somewhere from scratch, are also absent in Vulcan culture respectively channeled into something else.

Note that their distant relatives are the very opposite, their mechanism to cope with their emotions is not inward but outward bound, unlimited expansion

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Most of the survivors are of the obscure Shak'r sect.

 

[Trekkie2]

The problem could lie with the frequency that Vulcans mate. We know they have to mate every seven years of their adult life. Would this be the only time they did it? The younger set would probably mate more often, but the older set might only mate during Pon Farr, and be quite resistant to it, otherwise.

 

[controlfreak]

Most of the survivors are of the obscure Shak'r sect.

They could make a sturdy desk.

 

[22 Stars]

I also think it was a bit of hyperbole by Spock, not a typical Vulcan trait I know, but don't take that line literally. What a concept, Trek fans not taking everything ever said literally.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Relatively new to this forum so i am srry if this was discussed, BUT...

How are the vulcans endangered with only 10k members left after there home worlds is destroyed?

For a race that has been on space for over 3k years and has multiple off shoot races, the only colony they ever set up was pa"jem?

Just find it odd... i know it was probably stated for dramatic flare than continuity, but still its odd for such an old space faring race to not even have one reasonably sized colony.

anyone hear/read anything on that, might have a reasonable explanation?

He could have meant that only 10,000 Vulcans escaped the planet's destruction. Spock orders an evacuation before beaming down.

But whatever the exact number, the repeated references ("There are so few Vulcans left" etc, Spock planning on resigning to repopulate the species) make it clear that they're boned.

 

[Timo]

He could have meant that only 10,000 Vulcans escaped the planet's destruction. Spock orders an evacuation before beaming down.

...But essentially the only means of evacuating would be the Enterprise herself. Apparently, Nero was capable of keeping the Vulcans from attacking his vulnerable drill, which basically means he had the ability to shoot down anybody and everybody. And that in turn means that Vulcan had little or nothing spaceworthy left during the final minutes before doom.

The "ten thousand Vulcans left" estimate probably includes all the Vulcans who weren't on the planet when it died, plus the tiny handful of Vulcans (a dozen? a hundred?) that were brought aboard the Enterprise. And that works just fine if we assume none of Vulcan's colonies was a population center as such - that all of them were founded for a functional reason, such as the spy station on P'Jem, and that Vulcans saw no point in actually populating any planet other than their homeworld.

That's not really at odds with anything we have seen or heard in Trek so far. We know Vulcans partake in Starfleet, but apparently not much in the 2250s yet. We know they trade (in kivas and trillium at least), but a few hundred offworld sales reps might be all they need. Apart from that, all they have offworld might be their diplomats.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekkie2]

I also think it was a bit of hyperbole by Spock, not a typical Vulcan trait I know, but don't take that line literally. What a concept, Trek fans not taking everything ever said literally.

Spock is only guilty of using hyperbole when under the control of alien meglomaniacs with super powers, and in slash fanfiction when confessing his undying love for Kirk or McCoy or both, and wanting to have their babies.

 

[F. King Daniel]

...But essentially the only means of evacuating would be the Enterprise herself. Apparently, Nero was capable of keeping the Vulcans from attacking his vulnerable drill,which basically means he had the ability to shoot down anybody and everybody. And that in turn means that Vulcan had little or nothing spaceworthy left during the final minutes before doom.

Except for the ships we see buzzing about in the Shi'Kahr establishing shot early in the film. And the ship we see flying away when Spock beams down to the Katric Ark, shortly after a planetwide evacuation was signalled. I think that with 6 billion Vulcans worldwide, enough ships could have escaped to account for 10,000.

 

[Timo]

Ships from "early in the film" would be among the casualties when Nero starts drilling. And when Spock beams down, we see things flying across the sky, drawing straight contrails or smoke trails - but those would probably be Starfleet ships falling out of the sky. It just wouldn't do for Nero to allow anything to keep on flying, or to allow anything to escape the immediate vicinity of Vulcan and inform Starfleet of what was really going on there.

Arguably, Nero had limited means of stopping the Vulcans. He was sitting on low "orbit" most of the time, and his impromptu weapons didn't appear to possess much range. But story logic dictates that people didn't escape Vulcan before Pike arrived, and story logic further dictates that people didn't fly anywhere near Nero's ship until the drill was retracted and Nero withdrew. That leaves a narrow time window (although a wide spatial window) for the characteristically slow-moving Vulcans to act...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

You think Nero shot down EVERY warp-capable shuttle on the entire planet?? I can buy him destroying (off-screen) any Vulcan starships, but there would be thousands of smaller craft. It would take days even if they lined up for him.

Besides, they draw attention to the Vulcan ship escaping on the commentary track.

 

[7thsealord]

Noting that Nero had only one (big) ship and could only overlook or dominate most of one hemisphere of Vulcan at a time. He had no fighters or other ships to expand his coverage.

Yeah, it had those missile-thingies. But I question how effective they would have been for indirect shots at smallish dodging objects on the other side of a planetary mass. As seeking weapons go, they didn't seem especially "smart".

In short, there could have been a number of ships and shuttles fleeing Vulcan on the far side of the planet. We just never got to see them. But, yeah, I think most of Spock's "ten thousand" estimate related to Vulcans who were simply not on Vulcan when it all started happening - diplomats, traders, exchange students, scientists, etc..

 

[Jeyl]

Yeah, it had those missile-thingies. But I question how effective they would have been for indirect shots at smallish dodging objects on the other side of a planetary mass. As seeking weapons go, they didn't seem especially "smart".

And let's not forget that all it takes to beat them is to... shoot at them.

 

[Timo]

Although apparently it helps if you can shoot at them from the side, without being shot at yourself...

One wonders if the Enterprise had some super-duper novel fire control system that gave her better defenses than the average, older Starfleet vessel. Didn't seem so, really - or else deflecting Nero's first attack against the Enterprise should have been a lot easier, or alternately negating his much bigger attack against Spock's ship a lot harder. The difference seemed to lie in the tactical setup, not in the hardware.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[7thsealord]

Although apparently it helps if you can shoot at them from the side, without being shot at yourself...

One wonders if the Enterprise had some super-duper novel fire control system that gave her better defenses than the average, older Starfleet vessel. Didn't seem so, really - or else deflecting Nero's first attack against the Enterprise should have been a lot easier, or alternately negating his much bigger attack against Spock's ship a lot harder. The difference seemed to lie in the tactical setup, not in the hardware.

Timo Saloniemi

And, in all likelihood, experience.

In the Kelvin's encounter, Nero had the dual advantages of surprise AND superior technology (and USS Kelvin was STILL able to kamikaze him quite effectively).

Kelvin's survivors would have had at least limited data to pass on to Star Fleet. Add to that twenty-odd years of subsequent tech R&D - and presumably running some tacsims about what happened.

This obviously wasn't enough to help the fleet sent to Vulcan. Then, Nero did have the advantage of surprise - again. I like to think Star Fleet's post-Kelvin improvements counted for something, but given the speed with which Nero apparently put most of those ships down, maybe not much.

Hmm, thinking about it, the advantages of surprise and higher-tech were all Nero ever had. Besides being crazier than a ####house rat, that is. Not a tactical genius, for sure. If oldKirk had lured HIM into the Mutara Nebula, his @$$ woud have been grass.

 

[Phily B]

Doesn't seem logical for Vulcan to have no off-world colonies. Though I wouldn't want any colonies to have more than a few hudred thousand at most.

 

[7thsealord]

Doesn't seem logical for Vulcan to have no off-world colonies. Though I wouldn't want any colonies to have more than a few hudred thousand at most.

Agreement, but it has been established that Vulcans tend to be VERY stay-at-home.

And, to be fair, whilst a lot of Earth humans are evidently out and about in the Galaxy, clearly there are still a great many who stay home.

All things considered, most Vulcans probably had a number of "logical" reasons for them not visiting other worlds or for Vulcan NOT having any sizable off-world colonies. Bet they feel like a right bunch of idiots now.

 

[Timo]

There are quite a few ancient starfaring civilizations in Trek that are supposed to have succumbed to the loss of their homeworld - mostly in TOS, but also in TNG. We don't always know if the crumbling of their civilization after the loss of the planet is fast or slow, but it does happen often enough in the Trek universe.

We don't know the actual mechanism of that, either. But Vulcans might; perhaps they feel it's not worth the hassle to try and outlive one's homeworld, since nothing good will ever come out of it anyway.

Diane Duane in her novels casually mentions the idea of a "geobond" where loss of the planet somehow weakens the very biology or spirit of the native species, no matter where they are. Sounds rather Ursula LeGuin to me, but we do know Vulcans have to return to Vulcan to spawn. Or at least there never was the slightest mention of the possibility of having T'Pring come to Spock in "Amok Time" rather than vice versa. Perhaps it's almost prohibitively difficult for the Vulcans to breed anywhere outside planet Vulcan?

Or, considering that Vulcans have been suggested to be a transplanted species on their own planet, perhaps they'll "geobond" with any world if given enough time - but the first generations will suffer a lot, which discourages Vulcan colonization. Perhaps Romulans are so bitchy because the couple of dozen generations since their separation from Vulcans and Vulcan have not yet been enough to alleviate the effects?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Phily B]

I think the Vulcan's will be fine really. Like I say, it isn't logical to have your entire species contained to one planet when you're an advanced civilization. I'd like to maybe see or hear of a New Vulcan, did the Vulcan system have any other habited planets? People live on Earth's Moon and its just a rock.