Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Wow, three "must"s in the book blurb? They really are going all-out with this series!

I'm thinking Beyer's one of those idiots who thinks being "above" something means you've wiped out even the thought of it.

It's not like there's oodles of reference points pointing out the exact opposite or anything.

She's had to write how many VOY books by now? It might very well have addled her brain.

When the series was in production they writesr said it was based around an incident that happpend ten year prior to TOS. Did we ever figure out what that was?

Battle of Donatu 5?


Axanar?


We found out yesterday that the head Klingon is part of the House of Kor, maybe something to do with the battle of caleb 4? Kor was there on the Klothos with kang and Koloth.

Spock died, where was his sister? Why didn't Kirk say anything to her? If she's dead, why didn't Kirk say anything about her. The only possible explanation I can think of is that she's either erased from history by some sort of time travel incident or she's a Federation spy or she's under some sort of witness protection program. All of which are dumb. Bones, why doesn't he have knowledge of this, would he bring it up quite a bit during an argument? You'd think he'd jump at the opportunity. Besides, wouldn't it be in Spock's medical file?

So they're doing a prequel to the prequel, set one year before "The Cage", real smart..Another red flag. Is that timeline even right, when did the events of "The Cage" happen?

*Sigh* why can't people read?

given this discussion i'm all for a midseason reveal: burnham actually is spock during some sort of gender confused phase. in the season finale she meets kirk and he makes her a white man because of *technobabbletechnobabbleveryspecialnighttechnobabble*

That's the problem you have when you have contradictory "fact" entered into a characters backstory.

On the one hand given the Vulcan reticence about their sex lives (Amok Time) and Spock about his family background (Journey to Babel) it makes sense that massive things about Spocks background would be a secret

Yet.

IIRC it was established that Spock had served on the Enterprise for IIRC more than ten years (probably 15 I can't remember), most of this was BEFORE the original series...

Which means that Spock would've gone through at least TWO other Pon Fars prior to Amok Time. What did he do get permission to hop a passing ship to Vulcan? And we're supposed to believe that in all those years aboard the Enterprise Spock didn't suffer any serious illnesses or injuries?

Basically by the time of Kirk's five year mission, Spock's medical and personnel file should've been chock full of vital information that McCoy could examine in great detail.

"Say Spock! You take a trip to Vulcan every 7 years like clockwork. I assume we'll need to make arrangements here in a couple of months?"

^IIRC, the age at which pon far begins is never specified. Given their 200+-year lifespan, it's quite possible Vulcans don't undergo pon far until much later than human puberty.

Except for the fact that in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock with the Genesis reanimated Spock seemed to indicate that it began for Vulcans in general and Spock in particular in young adolescence.

Vulcans don't usually grow from infancy to adulthood in a matter of days. The Genesis wave was an anomaly.

Also where onscreen has it been specified that the Vulcans have a 200 year lifespan or longer? I remember in "Journey to Babel" Sarek was referred to by McCoy as being "only 103" but it wasn't specified how long the average lifespan for Vulcans was.

Not to say it has not been mentioned onscreen. I could've missed it as to this day I haven't watched all of Voyager or Enterprise. And there are probably episodes of TNG or DS9 I've only seen a couple of times.

Point taken. But then again Saavik immediately seems to recognize the signs of Pon Far and accepts that it is occurring without question.

Unlike some human parents/school districts, I imagine Vulcans teach their children about sex at a very early age - i.e., as soon as they start asking questions.

Also, let's consider the dialogue in "Amok Time." It's clear that Spock has had no contact with T'Pring since they were seven years old. The ceremony that Kirk and McCoy are invited to is a classic Vulcan wedding. If Spock had undergone pon far before that, with whom?

I would assume that there are Vulcans who earn a living providing "Pon Far services". If the idea among Vulcans is that sexual relations are a strictly private matter devoid of emotional attachments it would be quite logical to have those employed in that field.

By the way, it has been suggested given the attire T'Pring wore to the ceremony with a very convenient slit on the front of her skirt, that had she not issued the challenge and manipulated the events of her and Spocks ceremony that Vulcan tradition would've been for Spock and T'Pring to have had sex right then and there in front of everyone. Being observed by family members would keep sexual contact cold and impersonal and of course would help prevent emotional attachment to develop during the act.

Star Trek kinda contradicts itself here.

In TSFS, it's a very young (teenage?) Spock that undergoes Pon Far. This would imply that Vulcan puberty isn't far different from humans. HOWEVER, this situation was unusual in that rejuvenated Spock was "connected" to the rapidly aging Genesis planet, so the timing may not have been typical.

Since it's stated in "Amok Time" that Vulcans have to return home every 7th year of their adult lives to "mate or die," that Spock has been betrothed to T'Pring since childhood, and that Spock has never met the adult T'Pring, then we have to conclude that Spock's Pon Far in this episode was the first time he underwent it.

Of course, the females don't seem to have the same mating compulsion, so it's possible Spock underwent it earlier and had some kinda out that we're unaware of (some convenient Vulcan elder who knew just the right hand-wavey ritual was on board the ship that week, etc.). Or maybe it's not so lethal in younger Vulcans (key words "every seventh year of their adult lives") and he was able to get through it; Vulcan adulthood might be reckoned a little differently.

Or maybe Pike hooked him up with a very talented Orion girl.

His captain, if K/S fan fiction is to be believed.

Like garamet, shit was fucked up on Genesis.

Ensign Vorik experienced his first pon farr while stuck in the Delta quadrant, at which point he appeared to be a fully grown adult. (The actor playing him was in his mid twenties. )

Of course is there any reason to believe that "7 years" means "7 Earth years". ?

IIRC it is quite possible to have a human habitable (or Vulcan habitable in this case) planetary environment with "years" (the time it takes a planet to go around its star) anywhere from 180 Earth days (half an Earth year) all the way up to as many as three or four Earth years.

So its more than possible that in Amok Time the "7 years" referred to in fact refers to Vulcan circling its star 7 times and this corresponds to a couple of decades of human years.

^Good point:

Vulcan year: In Gene Roddenberry's novelization of The Motion Picture he indicated that nine Vulcan seasons were equal to 2.8 Earth years. This would make Vulcan's year 456 ± 33 Earth days long.

And that's interesting. Because the four seasons Earth has is based upon the axial tilt of the Earth.

It would seem that you would have to have seasons based on other predictable factors to have "nine seasons" especially having an odd number like that.

Perhaps based in part on flare activity from Vulcan's star. Vulcan could have a highly elliptical orbit so you would have a system of "seasons" based on axial tilt, distance from the star, and flare activity from the star itself.

Of course then again we have Spock saying in "Man Trap" that "Vulcan has no moon" but in The Motion Picture we clearly see a monstrously huge moon or something similar hanging over the Vulcan desert during Spock's aborted Kholinar ceremony.

Some suggestions have been made that this is a twin planet to Vulcan and it and Vulcan orbit a center of gravity between them which could "technically" mean it is not a moon.

I first read about something like that nearly thirty years ago in one of the old Best of Trek compilation books.

Me:

I first read about it in the novelization for The Motionless Picture, where Kirk says in his introduction something about he'd be foolish to have someone who only goes into heat every seven years as "his love partner."

I remember that part of the novel, though I didn't read the book until the early 90s.

What I remember about the novelization was that Gene Roddenberry had apparently read the old book "Engineer's Dreams" where it was suggested putting a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar and reclaiming large tracts of the Mediterranean Sea. In the opening of the novelization Kirk was thinking about the changes that had occurred to the old Mediterranean as a result.

Don't know about the last part, but as far as pon farr, he mentions in "Amok Time" that he'd hoped his hybrid nature would spare him from it entirely, so that episode is probably actually the first time he got it.