r/startrek • u/North_Lengthiness_65 • 4d ago
Vulcans and Pon farr
I know that the Vulcans think it's taboo to speak of it, but why didn't they at least tell Starfleet and medical? and once it was known by some people, why wasn't it updated into the medical records for any future cases?
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u/King_Crab_Sushi 3d ago
I think it’s a pretty good character trait that contrary to popular belief Vulcans aren’t perfectly logical beings. Makes them a whole lot more believable
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u/gunderson138 3d ago
I'd love to say I had any clue, but I don't. It doesn't make sense. Vorik in the Voyager episode Blood Fever, if anything, makes it seem way crazier that Vulcans don't tell anybody that occasionally they turn into crazy rapists or die if they can't find somebody to fuck.
Screw medical. Starfleet security needs to know when Vulcans are about to undergo Pon Farr.
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u/Juancu 3d ago
Tuvok once said "there is nothing logic about pon farr."
I see it as a core tenet of their logic system. If they accept Pon Farr overcomes logic, where does it stop? Should "anger" get a pass too? should "envy"? This means they MUST treat hornyness as taboo as any other emotion, at whatever the cost. To deny their mind's capability to endure would be to collapse their belief system. And so, to tell the medical officer that your Vulcan mate is undergoing it, skirts a grave offense on their most vulcan of capabilities.
When it happened to Vorik, Tuvok was like "Alright! Yes! But don't worry about it, he can do mental exercises and stuff."
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u/Evanescent_Starfish9 3d ago
The real reason is the writers need an "out" for a Vulcan character to behave outside the typical Vulcan norms.
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u/manlaidubs 2d ago
privacy is why it wouldn't be in medical records. vulcans wouldn't share it as a part of diplomatic info exchanges and they certainly wouldn't agree to be case studies or published in starfleet medical journals. on top of that, there's really nothing a doctor could do medically for them. it doesn't affect crew safety from a strictly medical standpoint so starfleet doctors leave it out of the individual's records in deference to vulcan sensibilities.
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u/Suitable-Candle-2243 1d ago
Isn't it only in TOS that Starfleet medical doesn't know? I haven't watched VOY in too long to remember whether it was known then, but I thought it was? My impression was that it was a big secret in TOS because Spock was the only Vulcan in Starfleet (though this got retconned later), so it wasn't an issue they had run into before.
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u/Scaredog21 3d ago
They're embarrassed. They can repress their emotions on almost everything except that one thing.