tjhairball wrote:Vulcan is determinedly pacifist as a planet, but produces some of the best field researchers in the Federation on a consistent basis and has a logical interest in science. This is why the Vulcan Science Academy trains and fields its own fleet of research vessels, rather than work on board armed Starfleet ships.
Vulcan science ships customarily carry nothing that is strictly an offensive weapon, except in the alternative universe explored in "Mirror, Mirror." (I.e., established canon) in which Vulcans have few qualms about engaging in violence to insure their survival.
There's no canon proof of Vulcan having a fleet of unarmed science vessels. The Intrepid was an armed starship, and the ship seen in DS9 was back from combat operations.
In that horrible DS9 episode the Vulcans were shown to be quite rascist, which could explain segregated ships.
There were several jokes about the Vulcan ships being unarmed, and one that suggested the Intrepid's phasers had been dismantled. All Trekkie jokes, and most from (sorry) novels.
A couple novels also had the Vulcans as racist, or at least seeing themselves as superior to the emotional, illogical Humans.
PS: The reason I refer to the novels so much is because I owned nearly all of TOS novels starting with #5!
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Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:In that horrible DS9 episode the Vulcans were shown to be quite rascist, which could explain segregated ships.
Well, it could be argued that Starfleet screened out the racist pigs from Vulcan academy graduates and assigned them to segregateds ships, while allowing the more sensible Vulcans to serve on the "mixed" ships, but this begs a question: If Starfeet officers were found to have racist tendancies (like those Vulcans), why not simply take disciplinary action and/or boot them out of Starfleet, rather than going to the trouble of having them all assigned to segregated ships (which from a personell-resources standpoint can understandably be a headache).
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The Kernel wrote:And none of that IDIC shit is canon anyways unless they mentioned something about it in Enterprise.
The IDIC symbol first appeared in TOS#63 and its philosophy was expressed in one of the closing lines of that episode fairly closely:
The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
And the ways our differences combine
to create meaning and beauty.
Generally speaking, I tend to think of TOS as canon...
Ah yes, "Is There In Truth No Beauty". Season 3. About as canon as you can get.
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The Kernel wrote:And none of that IDIC shit is canon anyways unless they mentioned something about it in Enterprise.
The IDIC symbol first appeared in TOS#63 and its philosophy was expressed in one of the closing lines of that episode fairly closely:
The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
And the ways our differences combine
to create meaning and beauty.
Generally speaking, I tend to think of TOS as canon...
Ah yes, "Is There In Truth No Beauty". Season 3. About as canon as you can get.
Really? I admit, it's been years since I've seen that episode, but I always thought that IDIC was a creation of the Star Trek novel writers. I stand corrected.
