Anybody know how the Vulcan Neck Pinch works.

[jgdst]

It works the exact same way as the famed Kirk "karate chop to the neck" works... fictionally.

Does that work along the same principal of the "flashlight to the back" manoeuvre favoured by Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet?

 

[voyagerfan]

Tuvok does more hand on the shoulder rather than the neck from what I can see

 

[S'kai]

I had a theory that only Vulcans could do the neck pinch because of a subtle difference in the anatomy of their hands that allowed them to exert the pressure in a way that humans could not.

I had evidence when Odo used the neck pinch. In the very next scene, the rests his hand vertically on the corner of a junction box or somesuch. Rather than put his palm on the box with the thumb on the other side, he separates his middle and ring finger, Vulcan salute style, and puts them on either side of the corner. This indicates to me that he had taken on Vulcan anatomy to do this.

OTOH, its just a TV show.

 

[M'Sharak]

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.

As it happens, there's an av contest currently running in the TOS forum with a Vulcan neck pinch theme. One of the entries has what I believe is the pinch described above.

Hope orac doesn't mind if I borrow it for a bit.

(The McCoy attempted pinch is entered in the same contest.)