If memory serves me right, the idea that Pon Farr is a result of emotional control is a common fanon, but not a part of canon.
Romulan mind melds? Romulan nerve pinch?
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
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If memory serves me right, the idea that Pon Farr is a result of emotional control is a common fanon, but not a part of canon.
There's good reason to think that, too. In the Vulcan arc of season 4/ENT, it pretty much showed that there was a covert Romulan infiltration of the Vulcan High Command and may have been in place for a long time. Vulcan culture had been subverted to start rejecting their mystical elements and abilities that Romulans seemingly already lacked. Romulans understood the value of odd phenomena like telepathy, and were willing to enslave those abilities in others if it suited them, ever the pragmatic empire, but they did not want their genetic first cousins having an advantage.
Yes, and remember how they used a telepathic andorian to control drone ships. If they had their own telepaths, why go to the great trouble to kidnap an andorian? I conclude that they did not have Romulan telepaths. On a side note, how come no one talks about telepathic andorians? <we need an andorian emoji>
You are quite right. I was misremembering due to reading several novels and conflated the two.
To address how Romulans survived self-annihilation without the Vulcan gospel of logic - AND why they perhaps abandoned telepathy - one answer could be that telepathy itself was contributing to the extreme violence on Vulcan, and by shutting it off (so to speak), they put a lid on the worst of the violence to be able to move forward as a society. Maybe the violence that Sarek was projecting onto the Enterprise crew in TNG was one example of something that was common centuries ago in their past.
That is an interesting hypothesis. That the Vulcans had to cultivate those mind powers or be destroyed by them (again, weapons) while the Romulans focused on the body and uniting their people together, in this case, against the teachings of Surak. They turned the more violent ways into a martial discipline, driven into the more military machine.
Remans (which I like to think are mutant Vampiric Vulcans from Radioactive Remus) still have telepathy. Perhaps some Romulans do too. I recall a novel (Vulcan's Soul, maybe?) saying that Pon Farr was rare in Romulan women.
Well, To me... IMHO..
Vulcans and Romulans have the same genetic ability for telepathy, but like any muscle, it atrophies, So maybe the non use of telepathy made the romulan people less capable of telepathy..
Or..
When they were united, and generaly nuking each other, that the vulcans with telepathic capablites started towards Suraks teachings, while those who were not or weak telepaths chose to jump planet.. so the Romulans may have the odd telepath, but the genes that create strong telepaths aren't present in the romulan genetic kiddy pool.. So they may keep the finger porn because they are touch telepaths and they may "feel" something but not as good as the Vulcans..
Now for pon farr, maybe the supression of emotions makes the vulcan pon farr more .. life threatening?.. where in the romulans.. they may just " go in to heat" and be a time of matting but not as pronounced as a vulcan.. and not as life threatening..
Vulcans and Romulans have the same genetic ability for telepathy, but like any muscle, it atrophies, So maybe the non use of telepathy made the romulan people less capable of telepathy..
Or..
When they were united, and generaly nuking each other, that the vulcans with telepathic capablites started towards Suraks teachings, while those who were not or weak telepaths chose to jump planet.. so the Romulans may have the odd telepath, but the genes that create strong telepaths aren't present in the romulan genetic kiddy pool.. So they may keep the finger porn because they are touch telepaths and they may "feel" something but not as good as the Vulcans..
Now for pon farr, maybe the supression of emotions makes the vulcan pon farr more .. life threatening?.. where in the romulans.. they may just " go in to heat" and be a time of matting but not as pronounced as a vulcan.. and not as life threatening..
But then why not use a Reman since they were already subjugated under the Romulans?
Might be crucial to the plot by default - it's all about deniability, after all. The Romulan raider ships are supposed to look un-Romulan, and the consequences would be dire if the enemy could actually connect the ships to Romulus. There must be Plans B through Z in case of primary mission failure and enemy boarding of the raiders, and from the stumblings and fumblings of our Romulan antagonists in this episode, we learn what these plans are not.
Yet said Romulans don't appear too distressed when they learn about the boarding. Perhaps even if Starfleet managed to capture one of the droneships intact, Romulus would still be safe? Because, thanks to those forward-thinking Romulans, even the telepathic link would be...
...Not just a dead end, but actually another step of misdirection, pointing the finger at an alien species rather than at Romulus?
Or then the split happened on Vulcan, over millions of years, as isolated enclaves across the desert world found different ways to adapt. And then there were these big wars, with just a few of the subspecies surviving - and eventually the flattest-headed subspecies drove all others either to extinction or then to interstellar exile. And a few of them (along with a handful of their flat-headed sympathizers) ended up on the twin planets Remus and Romulus, but (to avoid the fate of the original homeworld, that is, of being pulled apart by racial strife) carefully segregated.
Timo Saloniemi
Yet said Romulans don't appear too distressed when they learn about the boarding. Perhaps even if Starfleet managed to capture one of the droneships intact, Romulus would still be safe? Because, thanks to those forward-thinking Romulans, even the telepathic link would be...
...Not just a dead end, but actually another step of misdirection, pointing the finger at an alien species rather than at Romulus?
Or then the split happened on Vulcan, over millions of years, as isolated enclaves across the desert world found different ways to adapt. And then there were these big wars, with just a few of the subspecies surviving - and eventually the flattest-headed subspecies drove all others either to extinction or then to interstellar exile. And a few of them (along with a handful of their flat-headed sympathizers) ended up on the twin planets Remus and Romulus, but (to avoid the fate of the original homeworld, that is, of being pulled apart by racial strife) carefully segregated.
Timo Saloniemi
I know tossing around head canon is frowned upon... but... *cracks knuckles*... I've always head canon theorized that a majority of the Romulan population is actually of a mixed ancestry of Vulcan and whatever native species inhabited the planet that became Romulus before those who left Vulcan settled there. The mixed ancestry gave the Romulans their forehead ridges and hindered their ability to do things like the Vulcan nerve pinch and telepathy.
This is great head canon. To tack onto it, the Vulcans seemed to abhor mating with other species maintaining their purity. Sarek and Amanda are the exception, not the norm.
I was always unclear on Romulan attitudes about it (and race in a broader sense). Not sure how well Tasha was accepted. Half-Romulan Sela seemed to be fully accepted, but was that partly because she ratted out her human mom? The Romulan prisoner who needed a transfusion from Worf didn't want his "Klingon filth" in his veins. DeSeve seemed tolerated by them, but not necessarily fully embraced. Donatra seemed pretty willing to do a variety of things with Shinzon. The Romulans seemed to have deep disdain for the Remans. But they didn't seem to want the genocide of Earth. So a lot of different things to try to judge by.