Vulcans Part 3

As I pointed out in the last part Tuvok was badly handled, miss managed to the point that he wasn't really Vulcan. He was more a generic alien, the sort you saw passing in the corridor of Next Generation and wondered if they were going to have an impact later or just be wallpaper.
Tuvok himself wasn't really explored either. We're told things about him, but other than a few episodes he doesn't do much. When he does get a chance to shine it turns out he is in Janeway's pocket. He doesn't have his own opinions and views, simply carrying out the captain's wishes. When some of his background was (eventually) fleshed out we learnt that he wasn't a perfect Vulcan, favouring emotions over logic as a child and finding the process of suppressing them difficult. The only result of this seemed to be a tendency to be the first in the crew to succumb to telepathic attacks and a case of shyness about his age.

Early on there was some hope, when he was helping Kes develop her mental powers, it offered some interesting moments. Vulcan physic abilities didn't come with any explanation or background, watching him train someone would have given some insight into the process. Were some stronger than others? Was it simply genetic instinct or was there specific training required? What was the limits, was physical contact necessary or was it just one level? Were there such a thing as Vulcan's with telekinetic powers? Just how important was the logical order of a Vulcan's intellect to the process, could emotional outbursts interfere or even block a mind meld?
Exploring this aspect of Vulcan society would have been thought provoking and fun. Instead most of Kes's training happend off screen. When we did see something it was often provoked by outside influence and was stopped, not by training, but by intervention. Tuvok was at one time burnt due to his own incompetence and the monster of the week.

This lack of understanding in Voyager wasn't restricted to the Vulcans. It was a lack of understanding about Star Trek as a whole that scuppered Voyager and outright sunk Enterprise. But let's take a step back and look at Deep Space Nine.
I jumped over the third trek series because there was only one episode that dealt with Vulcans, and it was perhaps the first nail in their coffin.
The episode was "Take me out To the Holosuite", from DS9's last season. In it a Vulcan captain, of a ship crewed entirely of Vulcans, re-lights a bitter rivalry with Sisko. The Vulcan Captain goes out of his way to antagonise Sisko for no reason other than profesional jealousy.
Read that again, and remember that Vulcan's have supposedly repressed all their emotions. Now I'm not suggesting that a Vulcan can't have difficulties suppressing pride, in point of fact it is in itself an interesting development. The problem is that an entire crew, more than five hundred of them, would go along with it. One or two egotistical Vulcans is natural, especially with the existence of the Kolinahr ritual, a Vulcan religious ritual to finally purge all emotions rather than simply surpress them, but to have a whole ship's full of them is stupid.
Here's why:- if I was going to prove my superiority over someone I'd do so by proving my way was better. Not by beating them at their own game. It's logical to prove that you are better because of who you are, not because you can play baseball better than someone you don't like. The Vulcan Captain, Solok, not only goes out of his way to learn the game, and train crew to play it, but out right seeks Sisko out to challenge him. We're told that he has spent years on this petty rivalry, writing several papers analysing a drunken bar fight the two of them got in to after he insulted Sisko.
Thats not all, when the DS9 team lose they celebrate a good game (and that Rom scored a run) by invading the pitch and having a grand old knees up in the bar afterwards. And this infuriates Solok.
This isn't the actions of an enlightened race, there is nothing Vulcan about this captain. Not one thing. In contrast in one of the early episodes of the original series the script originally called for Spock to punch the evil copy of Kirk, knocking him out with a right cross. Leonard Nimoy, the actor playing Spock, pointed out that a punch was too crude and primitive for the logical Vulcan and invented the infamous Neck Pinch on the spot.

By the end of of their appearance on Deep Space Nine Vulcans had been ruined. They had, in one spectacular episode, been reduced to petty, vindictive and bordering on racist parodies of everything a Vulcan wasn't. but it gets worse...

to be continued

Vulcans Part 2

Now don't get me wrong, I think that cultures should develop, especially invented ones, but that change has to have a reason. In or out of cannon. With the later Star Trek shows there was a distinct change in Vulcan culture that went the wrong way for no reason. It was almost as if the Writers at the time didn't know what to do with them or how to handle Vulcans when they did try.

Before I jump into the meat of the problem in the next section I'm going to prove my point with a bit of background on Voyager. I am also going to present what went wrong with Star Trek Voyager and how I would have fixed it or done better.
Voyager's problem was, to put it simply, that the show was nothing more than a mediocre retread of any one of a hundred ideas already explored better elsewhere. It was bland and dull at the best of times, hideously insulting at the worse. What makes this so galling is that the premise was sound; a ship is lost at the far end of the cosmos with no way home, with two crews that are forced to work together despite their differences, making new friends, new enemies and new discoveries as they struggle to get home, an impossible distance away.
With a premise like that it's rather hard to fail, there is so much potential available:- Who's to say that what we perceive as Universal laws are the same? What new dangers face the crew in unexplored space? Can they learn to set aside their problems and work together? Can the inexperienced captain, freshly promoted from a promising science officer, handle the pressures of being in command? The scope and development potential promised a great show with some interesting twists.
Instead we were patronised with a combination of Technobabble and mind numbingly tedium. There was nothing new or interesting. Very little development carried from episode to episode. Whenever there was a disaster it was quickly forgotten, any resources the ship needed, or issues with equipment that was never supposed to last that long without maintenance, that did arrise were fixed between episodes. The unification of the two crews was solved with one or two episodes early on, without any friction to speek of.
While there was one or two tweaks and moments I could enjoy it was just a mediocre show written for a pay check by tired and overworked hack writers.
The Holographic Doctor, Kes and later Seven of Nine all had the promise to be break-out characters. We could explore their issues and independent development within the show and learn a lot about them.The Doctor had some very good scenes and a good arc to him. Mostly that came from Robert Picardo's excellent performance but the writers did, on occasion, make use of that talent. Kes was practically useless and her leaving mid way through the show was hardly surprising. As for Seven of Nine, well there's a reason a lot of reviewers argue that it became "The Seven of Nine show, featuring Seven of Nine."
I'm not saying Jeri Ryan is a bad actress, but the writers were far more interested in squeezing her into a corset and skintight catsuit, slapping a pair of high heals on the blonde bombshell and have her strut for every pre-pubescent male in the audience.

The reason I'm going over all this is that in the middle of it all we had Tuvok. The token Vulcan security officer to remind everyone this was Star Trek. Now if we went back to the premise I outlined earlier Tuvok would have been Janeway's adviser. The man she would turn to when it looked bleak and she couldn't find a way out. He could have been the logical pragmatist to temper Janeways idealist nature. His suggestions the glue that held the fragile alliance between Federation and Marquis together. It would have been logical and help expand the understanding of Vulcans influence in the Federation.

This was, in hindsight, a major disservice to Gene Roddenberry's vision. Humanity always seemed to be the driving force behind the Federation, everyone else felt like they were junior partners. Turning up every so often as the script demanded it. Every development and improvement was human lead, far from being multi-cultural it felt like other races were there simply to add to the head count. If it was up to the Vulcan to smooth tensions between the idealist Federation and the sceptical Marquis we could have returned to the same sort of trio we had in the original. Making Voyager a character based drama, opposed to the technobabble filled disappointment it ended up as.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to show Vulcan's place in the Federation. Playing to the strengths developed over the previous two shows and keeping in touch with the wider Star Trek Universe. Instead, as I said before, Tuvok was included as nothing more than a token head nod to the original show. His impact was negligible and could have been filled by any species in Trek without meny changes to the character. To make things worse whatever episodes he had to expand his character showed him to be a less than perfect Vulcan. Suffering from psychotic episodes, emotional turmoil, repressed memories imprinted by a psychic parasite and even going as far as braking under torture (something Vulcan mental disciplines prevent, it is stated several times in the original show that to do so would kill them)
The only reason Tuvok was a Vulcan was to remind us that we were watching Star Trek. An effort that marked the beginning of the end.

To be continued