When Captain Pike is transformed into a Vulcan in the latest Strange New Worlds Season 3 episode, he suddenly becomes a man who shouts. Indeed, the opening narration of “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” features Pike, as his new Vulcan self, speaking in a halted, shouty voice. Is this what Vulcans sound like? Are Vulcans, as Spock admits in the new episode, sometimes pushy, arrogant “jerks”? While the overall tone of “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” falls into the category of one of SNW’s sillier episodes, at its core, the story is asking a question that Star Trek has been posing since before the series was even on the air. What the hell is a Vulcan anyway? Spoilers ahead.
Back in 1964, before cameras rolled in December of that year on the pilot episode “The Cage,” Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was still dabbling with the basic concept of whatever kind of alien Spock was supposed to become. In some early memos and outlines from Roddenberry, Spock was described as “so satanic you might also expect him to have a forked tail.” And, as fans will note, in “The Cage,” Spock shouts quite a bit. These rough drafts of Spock, and by extension, the Vulcans as a whole, were retconned in The Original Series, but not as quickly as one might assume. Spock still grins in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second series pilot, and even in “The Corbomite Maneuver” — the first regular episode filmed (not aired) — there’s some remnants of the more aggressive Spock, at least in his tone of voice. Clearly, Anson Mount studied this performance in his creepy, over-the-top Vulcan take in Strange New Worlds.
