Fifth Movie

[Mudd]

I don't hate Tuvok. Is Tuvok hate really a thing?
I just found him a bit dull. I'm pretty sure I never said I hate him.

It's hyperbole, or street slang, or something.

Going back to a point Dennis made about T'Pol... saying something like

It looked to me as if the writers of Enterprise just studied how Vulcans were really portrayed on TOS - specifically, "Amok Time" and "Journey To Babel" - and worked from that, ignoring fanon and the conceptual drift that occurred throughout modern Trek.

feels too much like an "original intent" argument. "Well that's the way Gene wanted it - and that's alright by me!"

No.

It's not an argument of any kind.

It's an observation and it's simply "this is what I liked when I watched the original Star Trek, and I was glad to see it again."

I'm the last person to invoke Saint Gene to support any position. In any event, Roddenberry didn't have a whole lot to do with developing the Vulcans beyond his initial idea for Spock. That's mainly on Sturgeon, Fontana and Nimoy. Sturgeon's contribution was characteristically brilliant.

I don't think that anything done with the Vulcans post-TOS (and by "TOS" I always mean the series and only the series) enhanced them in any worthwhile way, until maybe Enterprise did a little bit.

 

[Trekkin]

We found out that they're pretty good at baseball, and can write entire (and apparently respected) dissertations on how emotions sometimes leads to humans making mistakes

And unlike Spock and Sarek, some of them have the ability to not visibly age between TUC and the Berman era...

 

[Norsehound]

My folks and I tuned into Enterpise but abandoned the show sometime around... season 2? With Future Tense. We returned after hearing Season 4 was helmed by manny Coto, who made the show more like a TOS Prequel which we enjoyed (Except for the last episode, which stank). But for most of the Berman-era we tuned out Star Trek, so I'd estimate our opinion matched most audiences out there who were getting tired of the same formula followed since Next Gen.

I don't know if I would have gone to see "TNG Movie 11". If I did, it would be to see what the story was like, but the plots of the TNG movies didn't really interest me anymore. While Generations was nice to give some closure to TNG and First Contact was a fresh look on the new era of the TNG cast, Insurrection was for me forgettable, and Nemesis was a disappointment for not being the definitive Romulan Movie it was said to be during production (at least, I recall hearing that).

So likely for this fan had Trek 11 followed the trend it would have bored me into thinking Star Trek really was dead. The Abrams movie reboot not only brings us back to TOS (which interests me more than the spinoffs) but is a nice breath of fresh air to blow away the dust that built up under Berman's direction of the show.

 

[Jedi_Master]

This is so scary. We're Trekkies talking about Trek on the internet and we're... mildly disagreeing over something while being very civil and relaxed.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Vulcan influence?

The best and most interesting Vulcan characters: Spock, Sarek, Saavik (Kirstie Alley), Valeris, T'Pol--are the ones who are seething with repressed emotions beneath their oh-so-stoic facades.

I can understand the concept that no matter how "alien" a character their purpose is to be yet another way for us to use fiction to examine the human condition but I found that the more the Vulcan character struggled to repress their emotions, the less interesting they became. Understanding the emotion, learning to adapt and accept it, that's fine, but the "seething" bit just got tiresome because it turned a logical, mature, reasonable species into one that more closely resembled well groomed vegetarian Klingons.

I don't think that anything done with the Vulcans post-TOS (and by "TOS" I always mean the series and only the series) enhanced them in any worthwhile way, until maybe Enterprise did a little bit.

I understand this is all your personal preference, blah, blah, etc..

But I can't see how you are able to skip over 7 seasons of Voyager and the only 100% Vulcan to get significant screen time. Through Tuvok's actions we learned about how a full blooded Vulcan would react to a wide variety of situations, we even learned about his past career in Starfleet, his struggles to adapt to life among humans, his prodigious mental and psychic abilities, the benefits of age and maturity, etc.

That's all canon, and it may not be "interesting" to some, but did enhance and understanding of the Vulcan species.

 

[Campe]

My folks and I tuned into Enterpise but abandoned the show sometime around... season 2? With Future Tense. We returned after hearing Season 4 was helmed by manny Coto, who made the show more like a TOS Prequel which we enjoyed (Except for the last episode, which stank). But for most of the Berman-era we tuned out Star Trek, so I'd estimate our opinion matched most audiences out there who were getting tired of the same formula followed since Next Gen.

At the time, season 4 was somewhat interesting to me. It was, however, almost too little, too late. (And I defended Enterprise through much of its original run.) But looking back on it now with all of the throwbacks and constant revisiting tales and characters from yore, I do wonder if much of season 4 wasn't a little too much in that direction.

I think had we gotten more of a mix of the old and new, it might have been a little bit better than we're going to wrap up the overarching story from the last three years in two episodes, then tell a very interesting story ("Home") that lays the groundwork of what is to come, followed by mixing the origins of Khan and Data, bringing the Vulcans to how they "should" be, meeting the founder of the transporter, having the Organians visit, laying the groundwork for the Romulan war, an unnecessary explanation of the Klingon's forehead bumps, having some Orion slave girls onboard, visiting the Mirror Universe, and then seeing the first steps towards the UFP, before blowing it all apart in the finale.

I think all of these tales, on their own, would be wonderful. But as opposed to cramming them into one season, why not spread them out over the four years or more? Might have made things a little bit better and given the show seven seasons.

Maybe.

 

[Jedi_Master]

I will say this - Enterprise enhanced our understanding of Andorians.

 

[BigJake]

I will say this - Enterprise enhanced our understanding of Andorians.

Those antennae were, I'm told, a technical triumph at the time -- but I gotta be honest, they creep me out.

 

[Greg Cox]

Regarding Vulcans, there's room for flexibility here since it stands to reason that, despite sharing a common culture, Vulcans are going to have a range of personality types just like every other species, with some being more naturally "logical, mature, and reasonable" than others.

I mean, just here in my home town, some people are more emotional, rational, conservative, liberal, honest, sneaky, cautious, reckless, whatever than others. So why would we expect every Vulcan to behave identically? You can have your mature and reasonable Vulcans like Tuvok or your somewhat edgier, less conformist Vulcans like T'Pol,

Granted, to humans, all Vulcans can seem cut from the same cloth: stoic, unemotional, dignified, etc. But that's like, say, Europeans thinking that all Americans are the same--or vise versa.

To the Vulcans, Saavik and Sarek surely have their own distinctly different personalities and character traits. Which is why it's a mistake to think it's "wrong" if every Vulcan doesn't act like a clone every earlier Vulcan.

 

[Jedi_Master]

I will say this - Enterprise enhanced our understanding of Andorians.

Those antennae were, I'm told, a technical triumph at the time -- but I gotta be honest, they creep me out.

True.

Where would Trek be without the great Jeffrey Combs?

ETA: I understand your point Greg, but our perception of Vulcan culture has been filtered through just a few individuals:
Spock - half human thus unique
Sarek - small amounts of screen time, almost entirely devoted to his relationship with Spock
Saavik - three movies, two different actresses (also half Romulan)
Sybok -
Valeris - small role, although she did do a nice job of explaining how a Vulcan could logically defend betrayal and deception
Tuvok - the only Vulcan to be able to interact repeatedly on a show with another Vulcan
Vorrik - the other Vulcan
T'Pol - the seething Vulcan

So we are left to take those eight or so performances (plus a few guest roles) and try to extrapolate the dominant personality types of an entire race...That's tough, because we don't have a large sample size.
It is even more complicated because with the exception of perhaps Vorrik, every Vulcan on that list was an outsider even among their own culture. It's like judging all Americans based on our observations of mountain men.

 

[BillJ]

I understand this is all your personal preference, blah, blah, etc..

But I can't see how you are able to skip over 7 seasons of Voyager and the only 100% Vulcan to get significant screen time. Through Tuvok's actions we learned about how a full blooded Vulcan would react to a wide variety of situations, we even learned about his past career in Starfleet, his struggles to adapt to life among humans, his prodigious mental and psychic abilities, the benefits of age and maturity, etc.

That's all canon, and it may not be "interesting" to some, but did enhance and understanding of the Vulcan species.

If the Vulcans of Enterprise had played the same way as Tuvok, I wouldn't have made it through the first episode. The only interesting Vulcan episode of Voyager was "Blood Fever". That one wasn't even centered on Tuvok.

 

[Greg Cox]

I will say this - Enterprise enhanced our understanding of Andorians.

Those antennae were, I'm told, a technical triumph at the time -- but I gotta be honest, they creep me out.

True.

Where would Trek be without the great Jeffrey Combs?

ETA: I understand your point Greg, but our perception of Vulcan culture has been filtered through just a few individuals:
Spock - half human thus unique
Sarek - small amounts of screen time, almost entirely devoted to his relationship with Spock
Saavik - three movies, two different actresses (also half Romulan)
Sybok -
Valeris - small role, although she did do a nice job of explaining how a Vulcan could logically defend betrayal and deception
Tuvok - the only Vulcan to be able to interact repeatedly on a show with another Vulcan
Vorrik - the other Vulcan
T'Pol - the seething Vulcan

So we are left to take those eight or so performances (plus a few guest roles) and try to extrapolate the dominant personality types of an entire race...That's tough, because we don't have a large sample size.
It is even more complicated because with the exception of perhaps Vorrik, every Vulcan on that list was an outsider even among their own culture. It's like judging all Americans based on our observations of mountain men.

But the point is, we wouldn't expect Kirk and McCoy and Sulu and Uhura to think and behave the same way simply because they're all humans and citizens of the 23rd-century Earth. And we wouldn't complain that, say, it's "wrong" for Dr. Richard Daystrom to have a nervous breakdown because Kirk and McCoy never had nervous breakdowns. Or that Harry Mudd can't be corrupt because Scotty and Chekov aren't corrupt and they're humans too, right? How can one human act so differently from other members of the same species?

So it stands to reason that, as we've seen, you're going to have a range of different behaviors and personalities when it comes to Vulcans--which is a good thing because it gives the writers a wider palette to work with.

And, as another poster noted earlier, the whole Kolinahr business wouldn't exist if the Way of Surak came naturally to all Vulcans. We have to assume that those Vulcan adepts are much better at mastering their emotions than the average Vulcan scientist or diplomat. And, of course, the whole reason the Vulcans embraced logic in the first place is because, deep down inside, they're even more violently emotional than humans.

That's the paradox that makes the Vulcans so fascinating. Not that they're unemotional, but the lengths they've gone to control their "seething" emotions. Makes them a lot more interesting than a bunch of uniformly calm, rational human computers. IMHO.

 

[BigJake]

But the point is, we wouldn't expect Kirk and McCoy and Sulu and Uhura to think and behave the same way simply because they're all humans and citizens of the 23rd-century Earth.

Within certain parameters we expect them to broadly share traits, though. One of the things that makes Vulcan restraint interesting and alien is that with very few exceptions it would look almost like autism in a human -- but for the Vulcans it's a basic social expectation, not an illness. Humans manifest emotions in myriad different ways, but most of us generally manifest them; Vulcans might suppress or deflect their "seething" emotions in myriad different ways, but most generally suppress them. That should produce basic aggregate differences in how they act vs. how we act no matter what suburb of Vulcan they come from.

And what marks most interesting performances of Vulcan restraint for my money is that you don't see behind the curtain. You maybe get glimpses of its movement, you might guess at what's shifting it -- but the "seething" or "roiling" or "bubbling" or "sauteeing" or "steaming" or "deep frying" emotions underneath remain underneath, as things you have to guess at. Unless you're Sarek and have Bandai Syndrome or something. The trouble is, this kind of subtlety not being super-common among humans, it's hard for human actors to perform and even harder to find a balance where it's still interesting to other humans to watch it being performed. Which is precisely why for my purposes Tim Russ is criminally underrated and, say, Jolene Blalock not especially high in my esteem as acting chops go.

 

[Greg Cox]

I agree that Vulcans are tricky to play. The ones who get it right--like Mark Lenard--let you see the powerful emotions beneath the stoic facade without compromising the character's "Vulcan" mannerisms. The worst ones just get all stiff and formal and play the characters as robots without any emotions.

It isn't that Vulcans are physically incapable of emotion. It's that their culture prizes logic over emotion to a possibly excessive degree. And, as with most cultures, there can be a gaping chasm between the highest ideals of a culture and how well people are able to actually live up to them.

Vulcans certainly like to think that they're motivated only by logic. In practice . . . well, that's harder than it sounds, even for Vulcans.

And as for humans "broadly" sharing the same traits, I think it's pretty easy to tell apart, say, Christopher Pike and Cyrano Jones. Or Nurse Chapel and Lenore Karidian!

 

[Mudd]

This is so scary. We're Trekkies talking about Trek on the internet and we're... mildly disagreeing over something while being very civil and relaxed.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Vulcan influence?

The best and most interesting Vulcan characters: Spock, Sarek, Saavik (Kirstie Alley), Valeris, T'Pol--are the ones who are seething with repressed emotions beneath their oh-so-stoic facades.

I can understand the concept that no matter how "alien" a character their purpose is to be yet another way for us to use fiction to examine the human condition but I found that the more the Vulcan character struggled to repress their emotions, the less interesting they became. Understanding the emotion, learning to adapt and accept it, that's fine, but the "seething" bit just got tiresome because it turned a logical, mature, reasonable species into one that more closely resembled well groomed vegetarian Klingons.

I don't think that anything done with the Vulcans post-TOS (and by "TOS" I always mean the series and only the series) enhanced them in any worthwhile way, until maybe Enterprise did a little bit.

I understand this is all your personal preference, blah, blah, etc..

But I can't see how you are able to skip over 7 seasons of Voyager and the only 100% Vulcan to get significant screen time. Through Tuvok's actions we learned about how a full blooded Vulcan would react to a wide variety of situations, we even learned about his past career in Starfleet, his struggles to adapt to life among humans, his prodigious mental and psychic abilities, the benefits of age and maturity, etc.

That's all canon, and it may not be "interesting" to some, but did enhance and understanding of the Vulcan species.

Because I found the character and Russ's portrayal monotonous.

I mean, I guess it's nice that lots of things happened to Tuvok. Given seven seasons to fill out, that's fairly likely. That doesn't make it memorable or worthwhile.

 

[Gepard]

Which is precisely why for my purposes Tim Russ is criminally underrated and, say, Jolene Blalock not especially high in my esteem as acting chops go.

+1 on Tim Russ. He had an understated sarcasm about his performance that, on the best of times, suggested a thinly veiled exasperation beneath the stoic exterior. Always suggested, always implied, but never shown that the wild emotions of humans amused him on some level. That's certainly a much more pleasant and engaging type of Vulcan to watch week in and week out than the perpetually pissed-off screen presence of Blalock. Fuck fidelity to TOS.

 

[Trekkin]

Well, he did outwardly show his 'wild emotions' just the once...and it was glorious.

 

[Dukhat]

+1 on Tim Russ. He had an understated sarcasm about his performance that, on the best of times, suggested a thinly veiled exasperation beneath the stoic exterior. Always suggested, always implied, but never shown that the wild emotions of humans amused him on some level. That's certainly a much more pleasant and engaging type of Vulcan to watch week in and week out than the perpetually pissed-off screen presence of Blalock. Fuck fidelity to TOS.

QFT.

 

[BigJake]

Yep. Well said.

 

[Marsden]

Which is precisely why for my purposes Tim Russ is criminally underrated and, say, Jolene Blalock not especially high in my esteem as acting chops go.

+1 on Tim Russ. He had an understated sarcasm about his performance that, on the best of times, suggested a thinly veiled exasperation beneath the stoic exterior. Always suggested, always implied, but never shown that the wild emotions of humans amused him on some level. That's certainly a much more pleasant and engaging type of Vulcan to watch week in and week out than the perpetually pissed-off screen presence of Blalock. Fuck fidelity to TOS.

+1

I also wonder what logic there is in breast implants, T'pol?

 

[Squiggy]

Tuvok at his best (go to :41 seconds).

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6blwzfcdKk[/yt]