TUVOK and Mind Melds... kinda looseygoosey w/it eh?

[manipulus]

New member -

My understanding about Mind Melds was that they were intensely personal, and establishes a bond forever with the participants. It seemed like Tuvok performed more mind melds during Voyager than any other series/movies combined and with random folks, for random reasons.

- Mind Melding to solve crimes
- Mind Melding to help people hone their telepathy
- Mind Melding crew as a form of attack

Anyone else find Tuvok being loosey goosey with his "super attack"?

 

[Voth commando1]

I forget her name but one Maquis Vulcan used a mild meld on Dukat in DS9 in an attempt to gain information.

Mirror Universe Spock uses it on Prime McCoy to learn of prime universe values.

Also recall Tuvok is a security officer he would a fool to not take advantage of his species telepathic abilities.

 

[Sophie74656]

He used them when they were necessary...or that time he was not in control of his actions

 

[Nyotarules]

Sarek had a mind meld with Kirk, STIII - TSFS, did they establish a bond as a result?
Mind melds are like kisses, some are more intimate than others

 

[manipulus]

Yeah - you share each others memories and vulcans can channel what they send - It used to also exhaust them, but Tuvok did at least 30 mind melds over the course of the series

 

[Finn]

I also was under the impression there were different levels of mind melds.

 

[Idran]

Times where Tuvok used a mind meld: "Ex Post Facto", "Meld", "Flashback", "The Gift", "Random Thoughts", "Infinite Regress", "Gravity", "Unimatrix Zero": 7 Voyager episodes out of 172, for 4% of Voyager episodes.

Times where Spock used a mind meld: "Dagger of the Mind", "Devil in the Dark", "Return of the Archons", "A Taste of Armageddon", "The Changeling", "By Any Other Name", "Spectre of the Gun", "The Paradise Syndrome", "Requiem for Methuselah", "Is There in Truth No Beauty?", "Turnabout Intruder": 11 TOS episodes out of 80, for 13.8% of TOS episodes. 9 out of 80, or 11.25%, if you exclude the questionable ones of "A Taste of Armageddon" and "By Any Other Name". I'd say the first was a mind meld from before the rules had really been firmly narratively established, but the explicit callback in the second when they had been more so is a little strange; still, if they aren't mind melds, I don't know what else they would be, unless Spock just has weird hypnosis abilities for some reason. Even without them, though, that's still both more episodes and a higher percentage. Plus Spock also had The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and "Unification, Part II". And possibly plus The Search For Spock if you count the fal-tor-pan, although I wouldn't myself since he wasn't really melding, just being melded with. There's also "Mirror, Mirror" if you want to count Mirror Spock melding with McCoy.

And the very first time we ever saw a mind meld was essentially to help solve a crime, the crime of when Spock melded with Dr. van Gelder in "Dagger of the Mind". And the mental-suggestion-at-a-distance maybe-a-mind-meld from "A Taste of Armageddon" could certainly be considered as a form of attack.

Edit: Oh, there was also the Vulcan maquis that tried to meld with Dukat to get information in DS9, you can throw that in too as a pre-Voyager purely-utilitarian meld.

 

[manipulus]

I was thinking about this after the episode where he melded with the entire crew, and then some psychotic alien, and the killer, and Tess and hell- everyone. Tuvok was a mind freek, yo.

 

[Idran]

I was thinking about this after the episode where he melded with the entire crew, and then some psychotic alien, and the killer, and Tess and hell- everyone. Tuvok was a mind freek, yo.

It's still the case that Spock mind-melded more often than Tuvok did, and usually for similar reasons; and again, going back to "Dagger of the Mind", literally the first mind meld we ever saw in Star Trek was Spock mind melding with someone with severe mental issues.