Season 2 episode: Meld

[Thomas.B]

I just watched this and I have to say, it was a pretty intense episode. Tuvok has to solve a murder and then melds with the Betazoid crewman who confesses to the crime.
The episode starts out with Neelix trying to cheer Tuvok up by suggesting they celebrate an ancient Vulcan festival in which Vulcans used to go around half naked and covered in oil.
Neelix thinks it would be good for the crews morale.
Tuvok has to deal with the dangerous after effects of melding with a psychotic person.
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I have to say, the more I see of it the more I think Voyager was soooo under appreciated. I used to stick up for Enterprise when it was struggling, saying at least they were trying to make the characters more interesting, but I think Voyager actually delivered on the drama.

 

[Lord Manitou]

I think in this ep. they tried to shovel Tuvok into a cuckoos nest. After wrecking his quarters he says "I have counted 94 ways to kill a person with a finger, hand or foot." I suppose killing a person is a result of violent thoughts. I'm glad they saved the poor man at the end.

 

[Thomas.B]

Me too. And I liked the Doctor's remark about how the Vulcan way is pretty much abnormal by the end of the episode. It just seems so off the cuff and unexpected.
I don't know if the episode deserves to be singled out like this, but as I re-familiarize myself with Voyager, I'm just struck by how good the stories and acting were.
With TNG, VOY, TOS, and ENT all on Netflix now, I just find myself appreciating Voyager the most.

 

[starlitegirl]

I suspect that they were trying to get to the essence of being a Vulcan. They were barbarians and savages (by their own admittance) who came to rely on logic and repress all their emotions. I think Vulcans were created with Buddha in mind. They have very buddhist tendencies.

They probably wanted to give Tuvok some range and show how barbaric they can be, and also perhaps that they do on some level want those emotions because that is who they were before they evolved - very emotional beings. They do a similar thing with T'pol on Enterprise. She gets addicted to some substance (an alloy I think) that had already caused a ship full of Vulcans to 'lose their minds' and murder each other or kill themselves. Yet, she wants to experience emotions and becomes addicted to that substance and then can no longer repress her emotions because of damage done by her addiction.

Tuvok's mind meld with a psychopath, to me, seemed to be more about experiencing and understanding violent emotions, which he had been taught to repress at a young age. Even when they experience Pon Far they lose that ability to repress. In one episode where they are trying to get space folding technology, Janeway tells Tuvok that Vulcan logic can rationalize anything and that he needs to bring his logic to her. That was a great insight into Vulcans and Tuvok. He uses logic as his reason and justification to meld with a psychopath. LOGIC! The insanity of it is hysterical, and I loved how the Doctor pointed that out. (Can always count on some brilliant sarcasm from the Doctor! One of the reasons I have a huge crush on his character.)

I'm with you on appreciating Voyager the most. It's by far my favorite series of all of them.

 

[Thomas.B]

I suspect that they were trying to get to the essence of being a Vulcan....
I'm with you on appreciating Voyager the most. It's by far my favorite series of all of them.

It's funny because I was really on the edge of my seat watching this episode. I've watched less than a half dozen episodes from Netflix in the past week, and I didn't remember this one.
There was truly a palpable feeling that Tuvok wanted to kill someone.

 

[starlitegirl]

I suspect that they were trying to get to the essence of being a Vulcan....
I'm with you on appreciating Voyager the most. It's by far my favorite series of all of them.

It's funny because I was really on the edge of my seat watching this episode. I've watched less than a half dozen episodes from Netflix in the past week, and I didn't remember this one.
There was truly a palpable feeling that Tuvok wanted to kill someone.

Truly. And I got the impression that's exactly what he wanted to feel. However, I'm not sure that he was consciously aware of it. The way they always meditate makes me suspect that the violence is not that far beneath the surface. It really was a great episode.

 

[Thomas.B]

Truly. And I got the impression that's exactly what he wanted to feel. However, I'm not sure that he was consciously aware of it. The way they always meditate makes me suspect that the violence is not that far beneath the surface. It really was a great episode.

Strictly from a writer's point of view, it's always better to have a character who shows emotions. Going back to Leonard Nimoy's performance in TOS, Spock would have mental breakdowns, get hit with an alien spore, or go through ponfar and you'd see that Spock's human half was always there.
I recall that Tuvok is supposed to be full Vulcan but they have that violent past they always bring up in the shows. That's a good way to leave the door open for these kinds of outbursts and emotional problems that real people have. Otherwise Vulcans would be really dull characters to write for.
...and in this episode, the fact that you see violent emotions in a character who tries to be calm and reserved all the time strikes a cord in all of us. We all get angry. Sometimes we get so angry we can't believe we have that much rage in us. So in episodes like this, Vulcans are really us. We think we have our anger under control but then something unexpected happens and we find out we don't.