A question of phrasing

In "The Enterprise Incident" the Romulan Commander says:

So I have always wondered whether she meant that Romulans were warrior and often savage. "But we are also many other pleasant things", thus including being savage warriors among the many pleasant things that Romulans were.

Or did she mean that Romulans were warriors and often savage "But we are also many, other, pleasant things.", thus NOT countng beng savage warriors among the many pleasant things which Romulans were?

 

...Also, which part sets the Romulan women apart from their Vulcan counterparts - the savagery or the pleasantness? Perhaps the Commander sees Vulcans as representing the very same warrior stock as Romulans, by sheer birthright. In which case it would be likely that she also inserts the comma there, after the big but, declaring that Romulans can be more that the mere warriors any Vulcanoid necessarily is.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The conjunction "But" in this instance is pretty clear. You're trying too hard to find a meaning that isn't there.

 

...And it's too bad the Romulans aren't obsessed with logic and semantics, or the but would strongly suggest Vulcans are warriors and savages, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

If TOS were a comedy, it would mean "We're savage, and the good news doesn't stop there."

But Joan Linville didn't hit the word "other" hard enough to give it that interpretation.

 

I think your latter interpretation. Yes, they are savage warriors, but they also have other pleasant things. I don't really see how it could be interpreted anyway else

 

Same here.
Romulans are savage but also are willing to enjoy intimacy more than once every 7 years.
And probably a great deal of naughty but nice stuff.
Which makes them superior to Vulcans in her eyes.

 

Right. That's a simply awful episode but it did bring home what ruthless tools the Romulans were. And indeed the franchise carried that right into the TNG/DS9 era.

 

Are we arguing something about butts between Romulan and Vulcan women? If so, then I'm in.

 

Except the commander would know Spock would not be up for it. "Amok Time" shows fairly conclusively how he keeps it under control. Now if this happened in TOS season 8, then I might actually worry Spock is actually more interested in going "oink" out of uniform rather than being a representative of it.

 

If there is any imprecision in the Commander's phrasing, it can be attributed to the human English language having always been most difficult for her, as she told Kirk.

Kor

 

Along with V-shaped foreheads and silly wigs and wearing over-thick jackets to possibly brave the icy coldness of outer space!!! Why they took away their individuality as characters I'll never know? The TOS versions were so much more realistic to me!
JB

 

Intimacy for Vulcans is not likely to be restricted to only every seven years. They are are thinking and feeling beings capable of “other things” beyond being restrained by a cyclical biological drive that might not even apply to all Vulcans but only those who have been bonded. Sarek’s relationship with Amanda was not likely born out of pon farr but out of genuine feeling. And it’s possible that once a Vulcan has experienced pon farr later instances of it are less intense and tempered by already being mated.

Spock evidently had had feelings for Leila Kelomi at one time likely unrelated to pon farr. Years later he also appeared to feel some genuine attraction to the Romulan Commander and later Droxine of Stratos and expressed it in his own way. If one accepts DC Fontana’s novel Vulcan’s Glory then Spock had a full blown love affair during his early time aboard the Enterprise and he wasn’t experiencing pon farr at the time.

The fact that pon farr is little discussed publicly and apparently kept largely secret from most non Vulcans easily leads to all manner of misconceptions about it.

 

Well, I for one appreciate their discretion. I don't want Star Trek to be about sex. And I HATE the way JJTrek turned Spock into a public horn-dog.

 

Okay, but I'm here to tell you: Nimoy-Spock would never act like Quinto-Spock unless he were under the influence of alien spores or something.

'Shipper Spock, Having an Affair with a Fellow Officer Spock, Stealing Passionate Kisses in the Turbolift Spock? That's not Spock in TOS. That's a whole different character.

 

All that lovey dovey stuff is well beneath Nimoy Spock's interest unless he lets it as told to us by one Harcourt Fenton Mudd in Mudd's Women! Although he did notice that Spock was only part Vulcanian, so we're back to the old subject of 'Do the original full blooded Vulcans look like Balok again!!!'
JB

 

Every time I stumble into a thread now I am finding new reasons to destroy all copies of the JJTrilogy. In another five years no one will remember it ever happened.

 

After our recent rewatches of TOS, I came away from Amok Time thinking Pon Farr really only happens to male Vulcans and only once in their lives around the age of 30.

 

Is that because they usually die soon after like on Starships out in space defending the Federation? No, the Vulcan male had it every seven years or so we learned in The Cloud Minders, although that line was cut in the BBC screened episodes of the seventies and eighties!
JB