Daystrom Institute
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Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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Wow - I had never put those two together before.
Anyway, Memory Alpja states that intensive meditation is also used to alleviate the problems associated with pon farr.
What doesn’t make in-universe sense to me is that the condition comes from a neurochemical cascade. Even in our time, we recognize many of these conditions and have targeted drugs and therapies for them. Surely a society that is medically and technologically more advanced than ours by orders of magnitude would be able to simply treat the condition.
As a plot point it makes sense, and Roddenberry both personally and as a person of his time saw things like brain processes as strange and mysterious. It allowed them to play with the still evolving character of Spock and with Vulcans in general. It allowed them to do that “put a human condition into an alien and turn it up to 11” kind of thing they loved so much. The same would go for Lon Suder, of course.
They just get really hand-wavey around medical questions.
Meditation had been shown to be less than effective (Tuvok and Vorik both tried and failed to use meditation to get through their Pon Farrs).
It seems that, in universe, something about Vulcan physiology also prevents medication from being particularly effective as well (also failed for both Tuvok and Vorik).
Coming from someone with an academic background in biology, the treknobabble in biology and medicine is pretty terrible.
There’s a concept called the neural correlates of consciousness that basically states that every thought, memory, emotion, or other mental process has a direct correlation with the wiring and states of the cells in your brain. We can debate on whether or not to include other body states or gut bacteria, but the essence of the argument is that there is no “mind” as a phenomenon apart from the brain. This being a more serious sub, I’d argue that something like transporter technology implicitly assumes this, since you arrive with the same thoughts, memories, and emotional states as you had when you were decompiled.
So you’d be able to say that the Vulcan amygdala becomes hypertrophic during pon farr due to signaling by some other physical brain structure and activates the limbic system which itself becomes hypersensitive to stimulation and so on. So you can govern your pointy-eared patient some space Xanax, which increases the effectiveness of Vulcan GABA, which calms them down. Or using your advanced knowledge of physiology that no doubt extends down to the level of quantum effects, find another avenue of intervention.
Basically, I’m acknowledging your point - it’s a necessary complication that makes for interesting plot lines - but it really doesn’t line up with a justifiable in-universe answer.
Applying human neurobiology to Vulcans might not be too useful, since there are too many variables that come into play, from their telepathic abilities, to vastly different blood chemistry.
We know that at the very least, the Ponn Farr is more than just a simple neurochemical rush, at least in a way that makes it so that it isn't possible to safely suppress, or deal with via other methods. Otherwise, Voyager could have dealt with Tuvok's by giving him an epinephrine shot, rather than the somewhat complicated affair with a holodeck.
I went over to have a little look-see about Pon Farr on Memory Alpha.
"You only take a mate once every seven years?" "The seven-year cycle is biologically inherent in all Vulcans. At that time, the mating drive outweighs all other motivations." "And is there nothing that can disturb that cycle, Mister Spock?" "Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, madam." – Droxine and Spock, 2269 ("The Cloud Minders")
There's pretty much no justification for the biological reason behind the seven year cycle that I can remember. But do we know what cycle it is? Perhaps it's something to do with the planetary bodies around Vulcan? Like in humans, the menstrual cycle is about the same as one moon. (Sandi Toksvig once noted how it was definitely women who came up with the earliest calendars [in context they were talking about the "earliest man-made calendars"])
So if their planet had some sort of a cycle that every seven years there's a nice long summer because of some planetary alignment, it could be a good time for fighting and fucking.
Oh but I was just supposed to say "nice comment, thanks", and not babble on about something I was thinking about, lol.
Shoulda paired it with a wank. There's gotta be a holodeck treatment for this that can fool the body
The holodeck can work, but seems to be less than 100% effective. It worked for Tuvok, but not for Vorik.
Something that also seems to work is a fight, so it is possible that a boxing match, or something like that might be effective in letting off steam enough to deal with it.