Was Vulcan originally meant to be in Sol system?

[Christopher]

This is indirect, but the Klingon word for "Vulcan" is vulqangan, and ENT established that the Klingons met Vulcans before they met humans. So presumably the Klingon word came from the Vulcans themselves. Although that's admittedly a retcon, since the Klingon word was coined by Marc Okrand decades before ENT.

At least it's not as bad as with the Romulans. It's obvious that "Romulus and Remus" were meant to be human-assigned names for the twin planets, based on the famous mythological twins. But the writers of ENT: "Minefield" must not have known their mythology, since they had T'Pol explicitly say that the Romulans' own name for themselves was pronounced "Romulan." That was a scream-inducing moment.

 

[Kor]

^ It goes back farther than that, but I dare say that only the most geeky would spot this... in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the Klingon words for Humans and Romulans were established to be "Tera'ngan" and "RomuluSngan."

The first one obviously comes from the English word "Terran" (which in turn comes from Latin and maybe some earlier proto-Indo-European root that I'm too lazy to look up right now), but why would the Klingons get their name for the Romulans from the Human word for those people?

Kor

 

[Christopher]

The first one obviously comes from the English word "Terran" (which in turn comes from Latin and maybe some earlier proto-Indo-European root that I'm too lazy to look up right now), but why would the Klingons get their name for the Romulans from the Human word for those people?

They would if they only learned of the Romulans through humans. Pre-Enterprise, we could've assumed a future history in which the Klingons didn't become major players on the local interstellar stage until after the Romulans had been confined within the Neutral Zone, so they would've encountered humans first and learned of the Romulans from them. Although that no longer works in the context of what we now know about Trek history.

 

[Ronald Held]

Vulcan was one of the many names of the planet, including Minshara?
After ENT, could the designation Romulus be indirectly due to Vulcans?

 

[xortex]

If Spock were really telepathic, Vulcan could have been Earth for all we know. In fact all the planets could have been Earth if the Talosians had anything to say about it. Kirk and crew could have been holographic or telepathic projections or illusions playing out in Spock's mind. Spock may have been the only real character in Star Trek at all.

As you can tell I didn't read the thread. I'm just very imaginative.

 

[Triskelion]

Romulus and Vulcan have always been human-assigned names. I can accept that they are meaningful translations shoehorned into familiar human contexts - but never alphabetic transliterations that just so happen to have equivalent cultural histories. That's just drinking too much of your own kool-aid.

This phenomenon reflects a growth in precision (and anal retention) of popular culture: the tendency to conventionalize what was once a spontaneous creation process to fill the slots between soap commercials with some cool Martians or whatever.

Who knew it would be put under such a microscope?

Maybe it's all Berlinghoff Rasmusen's doing!

 

[Drone]

As crass as it is, I can't resist. Spock, the Bill Cosby of deep space.

The difference being that Spock would've been trying not to take advantage of his power over women.

I know, but I thought the hell with verisimilitude. However, what would you say to the possibilities with Mirror Spock?

 

[Christopher]

As crass as it is, I can't resist. Spock, the Bill Cosby of deep space.

The difference being that Spock would've been trying not to take advantage of his power over women.

I know, but I thought the hell with verisimilitude. However, what would you say to the possibilities with Mirror Spock?

I say I'm very glad that idea was dropped. Or at least never formally spelled out. We did see "hypnotic Spock" in "The Omega Glory," when he whammied that Yang woman into getting the communicator. So apparently that idea was still alive and well in Roddenberry's mind. Otherwise, though, best not to think about it.

 

[Drone]

Didn't he attempt to do essentially the same thing to Kelinda in By Any Other Name? Kirk describes it as a mind probe when suggesting it, citing the experience with the guard in a Taste of Armageddon. Mind probe vs. mind meld. What's the distinction other than the former not requiring direct physical contact?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yes, Spock did the mind thing on Kelinda and also a guard in "A Taste of Armageddon."

It was ultimately Kirk's hypnotic powers that got to Kelinda, though.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Spock's creation seems to involve a certain amount of wish-fulfillment. He can see and hear better than we can, his muscles are stronger, he will live longer...

For Gene Roddenberry of all people, the ability to sway any woman without even trying seems like another example of wish-fulfillment. Gene was projecting what he'd want for himself.

 

[Drone]

Yes, Spock did the mind thing on Kelinda and also a guard in "A Taste of Armageddon."

It was ultimately Kirk's hypnotic powers that got to Kelinda, though.

Was the latter the true explanation of Kirk's effect or was he simply endowed with the mark of the Kavorka?

 

[Christopher]

Didn't he attempt to do essentially the same thing to Kelinda in By Any Other Name? Kirk describes it as a mind probe when suggesting it, citing the experience with the guard in a Taste of Armageddon. Mind probe vs. mind meld. What's the distinction other than the former not requiring direct physical contact?

Well, the term "mind meld" was never the standard usage for it in TOS. It was called various other things -- mind probe, mind touch, mind fusion, mind link. "Mind meld" was only used twice in TOS, and not until the third season. I think it was its use in The Search for Spock that solidified it as the default term from then on.

Anyway, I'm thinking in terms of the writers' intentions. D.C. Fontana and Jerome Bixby wrote "By Any Other Name," and they had Spock's attempt to control a Kelvan mind fail. But Roddenberry, the guy who came up with the "sexual hypnotism" idea, was the one who wrote "The Omega Glory," and once you realize that Roddenberry had that idea, it casts Spock's mental influence on Sirah in a whole new light.

It was ultimately Kirk's hypnotic powers that got to Kelinda, though.

Actually they didn't. She discovered she enjoyed kissing, but she didn't have any particular interest in doing it with Kirk, tossing him aside in favor of Rojan. Kelinda was a fun character because she had agency and made her own choice about who she wanted to have fun with, rather than simply being a passive conquest for the male lead. Perhaps that was Fontana's influence on the script.

 

[uniderth]

For Gene Roddenberry of all people, the ability to sway any woman without even trying seems like another example of wish-fulfillment. Gene was projecting what he'd want for himself.

Ain't nuttin' wrong wit dat.

 

[Christopher]

For Gene Roddenberry of all people, the ability to sway any woman without even trying seems like another example of wish-fulfillment. Gene was projecting what he'd want for himself.

By all accounts, though, he was already quite successful at seducing women. I can understand some shy and lonely teenager fantasizing about having the power to hypnotize women to sleep with him, but it's odd that someone who was already as successful a womanizer as Roddenberry would feel he needed extra help.

But then, he did say that Spock was uncomfortable with his influence over women and tried to avoid taking advantage of it. Maybe that reflected an ambivalence on Roddenberry's part toward his own success at seduction.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It was ultimately Kirk's hypnotic powers that got to Kelinda, though.

Actually they didn't. She discovered she enjoyed kissing, but she didn't have any particular interest in doing it with Kirk, tossing him aside in favor of Rojan. Kelinda was a fun character because she had agency and made her own choice about who she wanted to have fun with, rather than simply being a passive conquest for the male lead. Perhaps that was Fontana's influence on the script.

Leaving aside the fact that there was a winky there to begin with, seriously, actually yes they did. I didn't say "got Kelinda," I said "got to Kelinda." Kirk "getting to Kelinda" doesn't mean his "winning" her for himself, something Kirk was never interested in to begin with. It means simply what it says. "Got to Kelinda" means "decisively influenced Kelinda by reaching her," which is exactly what Kirk did. And, if Kirk hadn't known what he was doing, he might easily have ended up a cuboctahedron.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

I thinks he idea that Spock's home planet is in another star system is implicit from almost the beginning, but in terms of explicitly stating that? I'm stumped.

For reference, here's some of Roddenberry's early comments on the character's home planet (May 2, 1966):

Is this a commonly known memo? I just recently got my hands on a copy (3 pages long, entitled
"Character Analysis Mister Spock"), and some of it is familiar (at least to me) from the writer/director guides, and some is not. Being that it is from May 1966, it is clearly "primordial" in some regards (i.e. home planet hot named, character details, etc).

I actually found this thread by googling some passages from the memo that seemed particularly obscure, but there were not many (any) other "hits".

 

[Harvey]

Is this a commonly known memo? I just recently got my hands on a copy (3 pages long, entitled
"Character Analysis Mister Spock"), and some of it is familiar (at least to me) from the writer/director guides, and some is not. Being that it is from May 1966, it is clearly "primordial" in some regards (i.e. home planet hot named, character details, etc).

I've never seen the contents of the memo posted elsewhere (beyond the parts that were absorbed into the writer-director guide).

 

[alensatemybuick1]

Well, thank you then for posting the bit you did (and for the response just now as well).

 

[scotpens]

. . . Personally, I would have been very interested to see Vulcans espousing hypnotism instead of telepathy. Hypnotism is fascinating.

The episode that introduced the Vulcan mind-meld, "Dagger of the Mind," was originally written to have Spock hypnotizing Van Gelder. The NBC censors objected, saying (a) Spock has no business hypnotizing people because he's not a qualified medical practitioner, and (b) you can't depict the act of hypnosis onscreen because of the risk of someone accidentally being hypnotized while watching the show! (Yes, TV censors really did think like that back in the primitive '60s.)

So the offending scene was rewritten to have Spock use "an ancient Vulcan technique to probe into Van Gelder's tortured mind." Spock even specifically said, "This will not affect you, Doctor McCoy, only the person I touch. It is not hypnosis." Thus, out of the constant battle with network censors, the Vulcan mind-meld was born.