Brief musings of a Trekkie

In rewatching Star Trek: Voyager, it has occurred to me that the hard time characters give Vulcans about not expressing emotions the way most other species do is…kind of racist (speciesist?). Yes, we know Vulcans do feel deeply, but they’ve learned to control their emotions and that’s very important in their society. The ribbing is portrayed as being in good humor but underlying at least some of it is this idea that they should be less Vulcan. Imagine telling a black person to be less black? A Buddhist to be less Buddhist?

Last night, when watching the beginning of the episode Tuvix, I wanted to tell Neelix to shut up and stop nagging Tuvok about not expressing himself as exuberantly  as Neelix.

I know, of course, that there is a level of arrogance Vulcans tend to have about themselves and their cool, logical superiority, so I’m not saying this doesn’t go both ways. Perhaps, though, the underlining intolerance of “be more like me and less like you” should have been explored more specifically in relation to the interaction of Vulcans and other species.

Anyway.  Today’s First Sentence is actually from a fanfiction story I wrote about Silas and Bod from Neil Gaiman’s the Graveyard Book. It’s from 4/6/2016.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Don’t worry, not a lot. I mean, I can’t drive but I won’t be hung over or anything.”

“How reassuring.”

P.S. The image above is from Star Trek: Voyager and I don’t in any way own it.