additional New Trek thoughts

[very_improbable]

I actually have a lot of New Trek thoughts, but I'm so out of practice making big list-y fannish reaction posts that I don't think I'll get 'em organized.

Here, though, is something I haven't seen mentioned on the flist so far about the remaining Vulcans. There are, from a planet with an Earth-like population, around ten thousand survivors, Baby Spock tells us. Later on Old Spock says that he's going to help rebuild Vulcan society and has found a suitable new homeworld.

I am not sure the writers of this movie fully understand how many "ten thousand" is. The small, dull suburb I used to live in near Seattle had a population of forty-five thousand. The population of the Fleet at the end of Battlestar Galactica was about thirty-eight thousand. There's a food co-op in Park Slope with twelve thousand people in it.

I suspect some of the handwaving that makes it possible to imagine populating a "homeworld" with ten thousand people comes with the whole Trek-style-SF package, where entire planets have homogeneous cultures--except, of course, for America Earth--and shared languages and remarkably uniform climates and so on and so forth. So no matter how few individuals remain of the Vulcan species[1], it seems only natural in Trek-logic that they will go out and find themselves an M-class planet with no sentient life forms and introduce themselves to its ecosystem and start a colony from scratch.

The original idea of this post was a little bit pondery and a little bit snarky, but now I just feel kind of sad. That's what happens when you try to think about planets getting blown up.

I GUESS THE POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE IS: The other story I want that probably nobody else wants is the one that deals in some way with this Vulcan refugee situation and the complicated and insane interplanetary politics they would have to be faced with while attempting to also handle their planet blowing up, and do a bunch of Federation planets offer to just house the Vulcans indefinitely (I mean a lot of people are quite fond of the Vulcans, as far as I can tell) since there are fewer Vulcans than there were people in the Key Arena when I saw Barack Obama there last February, and are there Vulcans who think it wouldn't be such a bad idea for them to live in, you know, Montana, or on Trill, until there are at least like a hundred thousand of them? and also maybe aid would not be limited to Federation worlds. I feel like Romulans would want to get in on this somehow, and it's obvious that their offer to send a top division from the, like, Romulan Corps of Engineers to help build New ShiKahr or whatever is just a way to get themselves into Federation space and compromise the security of a nearly-extinct society and nobody wants them anywhere near this process, except that, you know, Ambassador Spock, who spent all that time living among them in the...future...says it would be logical to consider it.

I think I should probably go to bed now.


[1] Er. Subspecies? Here is the thing, Vulcans and Romulans can mate with each other and produce fertile offspring. It's complicated.

Comments

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Subspecies? Here is the thing, Vulcans and Romulans can mate with each other and produce fertile offspring. It's complicated.

.......This is where I prove that I'm a terrible science and Star Trek geek by saying that it's always Bothered Me Terribly (tm) that everyone in the Star Trek universe can apparently interbreed with no regard to species. Everyone. Romulans and Vulcans, okay, fine - they're from the same species. They're like cousins, really. But Humans and Vulcans! And Klingons and Humans! And Cardassians and Bajorans! Despite the fact that one is obviously mammal-derived (or something absurdly similar) while the other appears to be evolved from something similar to a therapsid! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapsid) I think about this too much! Way too much!!!

....That said, we have no proof that Spock (and Saavik, and all the other half-breeds we know) are not infertile. Which would at least make some degree of... exceedingly vague... half-hearted... semi-sense. Sort of. Argh.

Edit: Wait, fertile. You said fertile. Am I forgetting some known half-breed who canonically had children? o_O

[thingswithwings.livejournal.com]

I don't know of any vulcan-human examples, but there are two half-klingon, half-human women who have kids: Worf's ladyfriend, whose name I forget, is half-human and has Alexander, and also there's B'Elanna Torres on Voyager. I could buy that any of the Trek species could interbreed via advanced fertility medicine, but it does freak me out when it's presented as an accident - as on DS9, with the Cardassian/Bajoran thing.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

I thought I remembered Vulcan-Romulan offspring that had their own offspring from somewhere? But I could be wrong. I had to look up a lot of this stuff on Memory Alpha to begin with.

But seriously, Cardassians and Bajorans, by accident, what the fuck is up with that. That's like if that tortoise and hippo that made friends with each other at that wildlife sanctuary had a baby. (Yes, I know the tortoise and the hippo are both male.)

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

I know they handwaved the alike-looking-aliens thing in one episode of TNG; did they do the same for the fertlity, perhaps? And one thinks that would be an interesting problem for the remaining Vulcans. "Interbreeding will DESTROY OUR RACE", perhaps?

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have a feeling that the level of pre-existing Vulcan taboo against intermarriage would go from "widespread disapproval" to "INCEST TABOO" at this point.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

(Which is an odd comparison but you know what I mean.)