Klingons?
oh right. sorry. long week. Klingons should put matched pairs of vulcans on their ships and stations.
Till Discovery…
Those situations only seem to work with people who have intimate connections with each other.
Trip & T'Pol being one obvious pairing due to their close personal relationship.
Michael & Sarek due to Father/Daughter relationship & Mind Meld.
Also, in "The Omega Glory," Spock gives Sirah "a suggestion" to activate one of the captured communicators. And in "The Devil in the Dark," Spock made initial mental contact with the Mother Horta, receiving only the pain of her phaser burn, but giving her enough command of English to etch a message into a rock. Oh, and in "One Of Our Planets Is Missing," he somehow uses the ship's sensors to augment his telepathy, so he can communicate with the planet-eating cloud.
Oh, and as to the suggestion of Klingons using paired Vulcan slaves as living ansibles, I refer you to John M. Ford's novel, The Final Reflection, in which he portrays Klingons as keeping Vulcans as slaves . . . but only if they're tharavul, surgically altered to neutralize their telepathy.
. . . rule or destroy them.
Oh, and as to the suggestion of Klingons using paired Vulcan slaves as living ansibles, I refer you to John M. Ford's novel, The Final Reflection, in which he portrays Klingons as keeping Vulcans as slaves . . . but only if they're tharavul, surgically altered to neutralize their telepathy.
And Spock used a mindmeld on a guard (without direct physical contact to the guard) through the wall of the cell the landing party was held in, in A Taste of Armageddon.
[Room]
"KIRK: Are you sure you can do it, Mister Spock?
SPOCK: Limited telepathic abilities are inherent in Vulcanians, Captain. It may work. It may not.
KIRK: Do your best.
(Spock goes to the door and begins to slowly work his way across it. Outside, the guard starts to blink and shake his head. Spock reaches the place directly behind the guard and looks as if he is doing a mindmeld through the wall. Slowly, the guard opens the door and enters. He is swiftly disarmed and knocked out.)
KIRK: Thank you, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: My pleasure, Captain."
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Not even remotely the same situation & scenarioYeah, 'cause V'ger and Spock were besties.
Decanonize Enterprise and Strange New Worlds.
How's it different?
V'Ger is a very alien being & while Spock detected his immense intelligence at long range via telepathy over light years, it was more of a signal calling for it than a real conversation.
Think of it as the equivalent to a telepathic light house signal. It's very much a one way communication.
When Spock initiated his Mind Meld, he was inside V'Ger's inner chamber, basically right near the sensor that looked like a Plasma Orb, he was fairly close instead of being light years away at that point.
Even though Spock couldn't handle the volume of information being shunted to his mind by V'Ger over telepathy, he tried and was knocked unconcious due to data overload.
Then, somehow V'Ger sent Spock's unconcious body floating back to Kirk.
For Spock, he had to be up close & personal to try to initiate a two way telepathic communication while only being able to receive telepathic communique at long ranges.
When Sarek initiated a Mind-Meld across ~ 1,000 light years with Michael Burnham, there was a previous traditional Mind Meld with Michael when she was a child that left a piece of Sarek's Katra within Michael.
That's how Sarek was able to have a two way communication over such great distances, although it was very taxing on Sarek to perform such a feat. Even then Sarek was only able to converse with Michael for ~ 2 minutes before the connection ended.
Spock had been called by Vger across light years before all that.
I think the difference being pointed out is that it wasn't a "two way" conversation. Spock could sense V'Ger's consciousness, but wasn't in a position to respond or communicate with it. If he had, their entire journey of exploration into V'Ger, including Spock's later mind meld, would have been unnecessary. So it was more that Spock could sense something rather than true communication.
Nevertheless, I do think it qualifies as a post-TOS example of the fact that Vulcans do have some sort of long-range telepathic capabilities. The humans certainly weren't sensing V'Ger the way Spock did.
Quite.
We probably should not overlook Sybok being in contact with the creature trapped at the center of the galaxy, either.
Sybok also manages to do his whiz-bang free your pain stuff without ever touching the people, and I have to assume that involves some form of mind meld-like act going on.
TNG's "Gambit" implied that Vulcans once had much stronger mental abilities than they then they do "now".
Indeed, the original and true Star Trek can be decanonized from the rest of the bloated franchise as the franchise has diverged too far from it, and TOS stands head and shoulders above the rest as its own self-contained, standalone thing on its own merit.
Maybe the period of stigmatization of mind melding referenced in ENT caused their abilities to atrophy.
Kor
All this talk of long distance telepathy reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Time for the Stars, in which it's discovered that some twins and triplets are telepathic with each other, so when spaceships are sent out on long exploration missions. a twin or triplet goes along for the ride so they can communicate instantly with their sibling(s) Earth telepathically. Due to relativistic effects, the ones who stay on Earth age faster, but fortunately sometimes their children are able to continue the telepathic link. This being Heinlein, a character on one of the ships stays in contact with his brother's kid, grandkid, and great-grandkid, the last of whom the main character marries when he returns to Earth.
I had a search around and it appears this deleted section was what I saw: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Threshold_(episode)#Removed_note
Yup. This society puts out one probe, designed for one person, in the entire galaxy****, then self-destructs, all because they want to spread their knowledge throughout the galaxy? Batman66 episodes make more sense than this episode, and that show was a high-campy farce! But I digress as it gets more interesting: Whether or not the space cooties laying dormant on the vacuum-sealed flute there reactivated*** once put into a viable atmosphere also begs other questions, so where the heck was Dr Crusher in all this? I'll stick to "The Paradise Syndrome" for making more sense... Some stories invariably require suspension of disbelief, but this season 5 escape is a good example of crossing that ever-so-arbitrary line when it comes to sci-fi that isn't footed in comedy**. Which takes a lot since I'm also a fan of "Space 1999" and its premise is beyond utterly absurd, so that's saying something*.
* Apart from "arbitrary"
** Red Dwarf is awesome and as "rule of funny" tops all, they will craftily upend or avoid logic for a joke and that's par for the course. Also, my favorite word is "JOZXYQK" - ask Cat about it.....
**** May as well take Douglas Adams' description of space and apply it here...
(Yup, I reversed the footnotes. Nice little shakeup from the usual, logical, and more rational format...)
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