On tonight's episode, that vulcan woman( I haven't memorized the names yet) said that if enterprise sent an assault team (I dunno if thats what she said) through the transporter, it would make too much noise. Why? the transporters on the show made a soft humming sound.
Also, has anyone noticed that when they transported the team to the vulcan temple thing, the color of the molecule dissolving (I think) looks just like the borg transporting future Janeway in the last episode of voyager. I know it's too much detail and I notice stupid small things, but I'm just saying.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
True.. By all rights, Enterprise transporters should be yellow, really shrill, and take about 10 times as long as they did. Just if you like 'The Cage'
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
About that noise thing, though... Vulcans are supposed to have more acute hearing than humans. And we don't know squat about Andorian hearing abilities.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
But apparently, in Enterprise Vulcans have exchanged that for acute senses of smell. I found most of the references of them not benig able to stand the odor of humans (clean, washed humans) to be more than a little disturbing.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Tuvok said his ears don't help him hear better than other humanoids..."Innocence" VOY.
But then...I think there have been other references to Vulcans being able to hear alot better. So who knows?
"Broken Bow" establishes that Vulcan females have a hightened sense of smell...not necessarily all Vulcans.
And yah...I also was disappointed that the transporters run so smoothly and quickly. This is the birth of this technology. It should be a lot clunkier than 24th century transporters (one would think).
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
I think the reference to Vulcan hearing has to do with something about Spock. "The Vulcan atmosphere is thiner and they have better hearing so they could hear in it" or something like that.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
At the end of the TOS show with the flying parasites attaching themselves to people and killing Kirk's brother, Kirk says to McCoy that he was so preoccupied with Spock's superior eyes that he forgot about the Vulcan hearing. It could've been a joke.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I think there was a TOS episode where Spock heard some sonic blast before anyone else did. That too would seem to point to superior Vulcan hearing.
I guess Tuvok could've been tryign to prevent more annoying questions from the kiddies.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Or their better hearing simply has nothing to do w/ the points.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
That's true. The kids asked about the shape of his ears and whether they helped him hear better. So maybe they do have better hearing, it just doesn't have anything to do with the shape of their ears.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Until last night, I don't believe there was ever any evidence, canon or otherwise, that Vulcans have a more acute sense of smell than humans do. I would have actually thought the opposite. The scene reminded me of STVI, when the crew was complaining about the Klingons' stench.
Personally, I thought that that Vulcan's comment about the smell was quite an illogical and rude thing to say. What made it worse was that T'Pol agreed with him. IDIC got a name drop in this episode, but it seems like the Vulcans of this century don't practice what they preach.
I wonder if it is intentional that the writers are trying to make T'Pol the least likeable character in Star Trek. I don't really like her all that much, although the other characters are starting to grow on me.
[ November 01, 2001: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Vulcan women were canonically established to have a particularly strong sense of smell in Broken Bow. Forgotten so soon?
quote:Personally, I thought that that Vulcan's comment about the smell was quite an illogical and rude thing to say. What made it worse was that T'Pol agreed with him.
Why would the Vulcans have a concept of rudeness the same as our own? Even on Earth, there's a huge spectrum of opinion from culture to culture on what is considered bad manners and what isn't. Vulcans are a pretty blunt and passionless sort... they'd see drawing attention to flaws as a perfectly natural thing to do.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
There is one thing about Enterprise's transporters that I noticed is similar to the transporters in The Original Series. On TNG and the later series (and the movies), the transporter effect was of a cylindrical column of light encasing the transportee as he/she/it shimmered out of existence. In TOS, the shimmering effect was confined to the outline of the transportee's body. Enterprise's transporter effect seems to confine itself to the transportee's body as well for the most part (and I add that qualifier because I can't remember if this was the case for "Strange New World").
I can understand why the Vulcans could have a more developed sense of smell. It goes back to the planet Vulcan having a thinner atmosphere than Earth. Smell works by means of the particles of whatever is being smelled being conveyed through the air into the nasal cavity. If there is less air, the nose has to work harder in order to properly smell something on their world. This leads to two options: 1) evolution creates a more sensitive nose to compensate and 2) evolution ditchs sensitivity of the nose in favor of increasing sensitivity to the other senses. Either one could really work with the Vulcans; it looks like option one is it. If it's only the Vulcan females with the advanced sense of smell, that could be due to their unique mating habits and all that jazz that I don't feel like typing out right now.
As for rudeness, yep, what qualifies as rude differs from culture to culture. For example, the Vulcans seem to prefer that no one speaks unless it is needed. Soval, T'Pol, and the other aide in "Broken Bow" didn't speak until prompted. T'Pol was explicitly telling Tucker and Archer not to engage in idle chit-chat. None of the hostages spoke except for the lead cleric and the cleric's young aide. Everyone else stayed silent. So Archer and Tucker engaging the lead cleric as they did was obviously rude to the Vulcans, but the Vulcans pointing out something logical about T'Pols situation (yeah, it was hard to adapt to the smell of humans) isn't considered rude.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Why does T'Pol need to be likeable? Is it really very probable that all the characters would be to everyone's liking? There needs to be diversity in the characters' personalities. And I don't see why they should all be different, but just a little different. If one of them is totally opposite to everyone else, what's bad about that? Especially when that one character is the alien who's surrounded by emotion when her entire race has rejected such.
The writers aren't trying to make her unlikeable. They're just writing the character the way she ought to be.
