"Krypton" coming to SyFy from David Goyer

[Guy Gardener]

Nero, who has destroyed my home planet.
And most of its six billion inhabitants.
I estimate no more than ten thousand
survived.
(beat)
While the essence of our culture has been
saved, in the elders who now reside upon
this ship... I am now a member of an endangered species.

It's not just Romulans out there.

What the #### is a Proto-Vulcan humanoid?

(Who Watches the Watches?)

There's are aliens out there "close enough" that will not weaken the integrity of the species via crossbreeding.

Which was all Caretaker was after.

 

[RJDiogenes]

So either the destruction of Vulcan killed all those people or nuSpock isn't too bright.

 

[Guy Gardener]

6 Billion is a firm cushion.

The 100,000... What you lot are forgetting is that a component of Pon Farr is an irresistible urge to return home to Vulcan once every 2/3rd's of a decade.

Can they have "successful" colonies outside of the Vulcanian Star System when it means death to be trapped too far from home when the bloodfever strikes?

The numbers of Vulcans off Vulcan during Nero's crusade is a hand full of nothing.



They covered this already in the comics.

Their solution was predictable and you've probably already figured it out.

Oh?

How much does Vulcan security suck, that every Romulan "might" (If Romulans go through Pon Farr?) have to sneak back to Vulcan periodically to woo a suitor, if they don't bring their own with them.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I haven't read the comics. Why was the number of Vulcans off planet during Nero's crusade a handful of nothing? Were they all home Pon Farring?

My brother and I were joking that the reason Nero waited twenty years to do anything was that he was sending out forged invitations to all the millions of Vulcans spread throughout the Federation so they'd all be on the planet when he struck.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The economics of space travel.

Sure to the individual everything is free, but the state has to decide if it wants to pick up the tab to send every single person on a colony world of 5 million, ten million plus Vulcans back and forth continuously. Sure for the governing council & bigwigs this doesn't seem like a big deal, but they also have to send every bottle washer, street cleaner and hobo 20 light years back to planet sex or watch them die.

I can't imagine that predicting when Pon farr is going to strike is exactly forcastable by doctors (think about pregnancy due dates). The Doctors say forthright that one moment in time is the exact day that it will happen, but then admit that the actual occurrence is plus/minus 4 to 6 months of that one moment in time. Which means that every bottle washer and hobo has to spend 6 months to a year on Vulcan waiting for their mood to rear up. And as far as transit goes, I do still believe that it's free, but it still has to be convenient for the state, which means that it'd probably take two to 4 months to get a seat on a ship going that way with room to spare if you are a no one with low priority status, and then there's a question of transit duration, sure a military grade vessel capable of Warp 7 can scoot across 20 light years in four days, but a civilian cargo liner in the 23rd century may not be able to exceed warp 2 or 3, which means that 20 light years suddenly takes 6 months to a year to navigate across instead of 4 days.

Worst case scenario, we're looking at 4 years round trip.

Do you really think after 4 years that that bottle washers job is still there waiting for him to continue with?

If his job isn't waiting for him (that he doesn't get paid for, but they like to be useful, and if you're not useful, you're an asshole.), what the hell is he going back for, unless his visa is temporary and he is not allowed to stay.

But yes, colonies in the Vulcan system, moons, other planets, moons around other planets, asteroids, space stations, star bases... There could still be millions or billions of Vulcans in the Vulcan star System that were not on Vulcan, but if above as I described it is only the worst case scenario, it's still unlikely that any Vulcan colony outside of their home star system would be larger than a hundred of the most essential persons who have to be there, who know the risk of staying so far from home who will be taken to Vulcan immediately if it seems that their libido is getting dodgy and returned "home" just as quick after they are spent.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I don't think it can be that bad. Not all salmon come from the same stream. For a Vulcan on a colony world, home would be that colony world. There has to be some way of resetting the spawning place for an individual-- perhaps marking the territory in some fashion (I'm sure they'd be more embarrassed about that than Pon Farr), or maybe it's as simple as "home is where the heart is." Knowing Vulcans, they have some ancient ritual to go along with it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There is a way of ignoring the salmon sense in the 24th century, otherwise Vorik (an engineer on Voyager) would have died, but not in the 23rd (because Spock almost died. Yes yes, Genesis, what about Genesis?).

Until they invent the workaround, it's a death sentence.

In the Abrams universe, they are MOTIVATED to invent a workaround, and maybe it takes them a week, or maybe it takes ten years and everyone dies.

Spoiler: What Happened in the Comics

because of the blood fever and no Vulcan Homeworld, the Vulcan's on off world outposts were just getting crazier and crazier, until they were drooling savages without communication running around in ragged clothes killing (and I assume raping?) anyone they ran across (but because they hadn't gone to Vulcan yet, the blood fever had not reached a point that it could be turned off by sex or murder. Arrested development don't chu know?) ...This is going to make you facepalm: They used the Transporter to fake the gravity, envoironmental pressures and atmosphere of Vulcan during rematerializtion. For one second the Vulcan body was tricked into thinking that it was on Vulcan and that was long enough for the Pon far to move onto a stage where sex and violence could switch breeding urge off, and they could go back to logical thinking.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think they're overthinking it. The spawning impulse evolved in a planet-bound species, so it's not an interstellar instinct. Gravity and atmospheric pressure aren't the issues so much as things like scent; potpourri would be more effective than a transporter. The Romulans somehow managed to manage this a thousand years ago.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You've seen Amok Time recently?

It took the Enterprise days at High warp to get Spock back to Vulcan and he would have died if they didn't.

Of course the real test would have been if T'Pring was on Enteprise, and they still both had to go back to Vulcan.



The general feeling is that if four or five days of murderous gymnastic superhuman sex is the equal and opposite reaction to 7 years of chaste logical restraint, then the Romulans who are neither logical nor chaste have no extreme abstinence at work that generates any such blowback like Pon far.

That reminds me of a Joke I heard Amy Poehler tell on the SNL news Desk.

"Statisticians recently revealed that in the average life span, a human being spends 16 years doing house work, but only spends 4 hours having orgasms. Which makes complete sense, since it would totally take 16 years to clean up after a 4 hour orgasm."

 

[Nerys Myk]

I don't think it can be that bad. Not all salmon come from the same stream. For a Vulcan on a colony world, home would be that colony world. There has to be some way of resetting the spawning place for an individual-- perhaps marking the territory in some fashion (I'm sure they'd be more embarrassed about that than Pon Farr), or maybe it's as simple as "home is where the heart is." Knowing Vulcans, they have some ancient ritual to go along with it.

"Home is where you wear your hat," -Ancient Lectroid saying

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Exactly. Home could be down on Lectroid Avenue.

It took the Enterprise days at High warp to get Spock back to Vulcan and he would have died if they didn't.

There was no warp speed or interstellar travel when Pon Farr evolved-- it just meant heading back to the cave or valley where you were born. And the Romulans only left a thousand years ago, not enough time for (natural) evolution to have made any difference. Of course, the bottom line is that they never really thought through the Pon Farr thing.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Time of Enlightenment was 2000 years before Picard in TNG season 6.

If Ponn Far is because of Logic, then that means that Pon farr started with Saurak 2000 years ago during the age of Enlightenment when the Romulans were given the choice to embrace logic or fuck off.

The "Time of Awakening" is accompanied by violence unmatched in Vulcan history, according to the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Awakening" (wherein Surak's mind is resurrected 1,800 years after his death to restore to modern Vulcans an uncorrupted version of his original philosophy.) During the "Time of Awakening" a Vulcan schism of those who "sought a return to savage ways" and "marched beneath the raptor's wings" (later the symbol of the Romulan people) perpetrate a cataclysmic nuclear attack upon Surak and his enlightened society. Soon after Surak's death, these Vulcan recidivists abandon their homeworld to colonize the planets Romulus and Remus. The new society would come to be known as the Romulan Star Empire—where Surak's philosophy of peace and logic survives only as an underground movement within their emotional, warlike society for the next 2,000 years (until further shepherded, in the Next Generation episode "Unification", by the elderly Ambassador Spock in the role of a latter-day successor to Surak), while flourishing on Vulcan to become its predominant philosophy.

Surak was born a Romulan (Just like Jesus was born a Jew.).

They were all Romulans until Saurak suggested otherwise. The Wiki is oddly put together, but it seems that all Vulcans became Logical in Suraks life time, and then after a short period still during Sarek's life time, a large enough faction got sick of logic, or sick of pretending that they were into logic at all, tried to take over the planet using atomic weapons, failed, and ran away.

Does that mean that Spock in Amok Time was wrong about how long this homing instinct had been incorporated into their DNA? He could have been Orwelled or he could have just been talking in simple terms that even the idiot humans could digest? That is the point of the Shikara episode of Enterprise. Even the blokes in charge on Vulcan were drinking their own Kool aide because the lie was so pallatable.



In Deep Space Nine when the Romulan Hospital wouldn't take Vulcan patients Julian said Vulcans and Romulans were "similar" not identical.

Point is if Pon far is about logic, then it is exactly 2000 years old and it did not evolve, it was installed, but then why did mindless Spock on Genesis have multiple Pon farrs if he had no concept of Logic? Well obviously becuase his body was repeating it's previous growth experiences and this was a replay more than a do over? Maybe?

Radiation levels on Vulcan after the war might explain why Vulcans are telepathic and Romulans are not. Completely different envoronments, becuase the Romulans would have been looking for a new homeworld that looked like Vulcan before they bombed it to ####, equals askew evolutionary paths, but all they really had to do to avoid pon farr was to have sex twice a week like any one else in the galaxy to keep their brain chemistry balanced.

 

[RJDiogenes]

It seems unlikely that Pon Farr would be deliberately engineered-- more likely the Romulans deliberately de-engineered it. Unless it's another post-nuclear mutation that successfully bred true after they left; but a seven-year mating cycle does not seem like a useful trait in a bombed-out population. Most likely it has nothing to do with Surak and has been around for millions of years. And, as with any species that has such a homing drive, there is a flexibility that would allow splinter populations to settle in new territories.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Halal and Kosher at their most orthodox were designed for two obvious reasons if you think God is a fairytale.

1. The population cannot spread further than the limits of their politicoreligious territory which guarantees taxation and the ability to assemble a conscription army.
2. General health since refrigeration had not been invented.

...

Before the war, consider the population control issues if a female Vulcan who lives for 300 years, has the capability to issue almost 200 offspring, if there's some twins and triplets in there.

Either by evolution, or engineering, without a massive effort at violent depopulation if tribbles are anything to go by, and Moties if you have read those books, and maybe why Spock was able to so easily work out tribble birthrates, the population for Vulcan could expand from 1 billion to 6 billion in less than a few decades since we managed to go from one billion to 7 billion in just 200 years.



And humanity grew from 3 billion to 7 billion in only the last 50 years.

Romulans getting rid of Pon far, is exactly how they would have the population to fill up an empire measured in the 100's of trillions (if it's comparable to the Federation) when the Vulcans on Vulcan are keeping it real with just 6 billion on the homeworld and bugger all else.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Even so, we're talking about a founding member of the Federation. Before the Federation, they had military and exploratory ships, and those off-world retreats and/or observation posts like the one in "The Andorian Incident." Once the Federation came into existence, there were more ambassadors and traders and other travelers. If the US has six million random people abroad on Earth, Vulcan will have at least that many abroad in a Federation with a population of trillions, even if they didn't have a single colony (and I'm pretty sure they did).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Vulcans think humans stink.

T'Pol had to have routine injections.

A nasal numbing agent.

If humans stink, what about Klingons?

The rest of the universe to a Vulcan sense of smell is intolerable to all but a few who like to live on the edge.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The "Krypton" series will indeed be set in the MoS universe, 200 years before Krypton explodes.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Superman's grandfather? Depending on what continuity they draw on, that could be either Jor-El I (pre-Crisis) or Seyg-El (post-Crisis). What they're doing sounds kind of like Byrne and Mignola's World of Krypton miniseries, where Seyg-El was introduced.

Though actually it sounds a lot like Caprica -- a drama set on a doomed alien world a generation or two before its destruction. I guess we'll have to get used to the idea of Kryptonian architecture looking uncannily like Vancouver...

Since it'll be like the Man of Steel Krypton, it will look alien and not stupid-that's great news.

 

[Commander Richard]

^ Hopefully the CGI will be good.

 

[davejames]

Given that this is for Syfy, it will almost have to be a much simpler and more scaled down version of Krypton than we saw in MOS. Which would be a little strange considering this is supposedly Krypton at it's "height"...