Tuvok was a major Section 31 player, part-time like Bashir. Recruited sometime after Stardate 9521.6, they bobbed his ears and sent him onto the Enterprise-B for some reason after he "resigned" from Starfleet. Decades later Section 31 assigned him to the Enterprise-D baryon episode. Once Picard was unexpectantly there they had to pull him out early. Finally, his last mission was as an undercover Vulcan, placed on a Marquis ship, presumed dead when Voyager and the Val Jean were presumed destroyed.
It was all an attempt to be taken in my the Marquis. H this failed because if Picard.
He then gets altered to look Klingon in DS9, and that doesn’t work.
And, finally, he is taken in as Vulcan. Sometimes the simplest undercover is the best.
The franchise has a long history of reusing the same actors in different roles.
Morgan Woodward played both Dr Van Gelder in Dagger of the Mind and Capt. Tracy in The Omega Glory.
William Campbell was both Trelane in The Squire of Gothos and Capt Koloth in The Trouble with Tribbles.
There are many others, but the best known is probably Mark Leonard playing both the Romulan commander in Balance of Terror and playing Sarek.
Dont forget James Cromwell. We could t have warp without him
https://preview.redd.it/q8t3bbn68zzg1.jpeg?width=447&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc81c7864d2e582207c4801677d798bb3f39e10a
After playing *kinda* young Tuvok in Star Trek: Generations as an officer on the Enterprise-B. Maybe his ears got pointy with age.
https://preview.redd.it/dwufay1zayzg1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd7339f8cb7d60a4cb9944db9ec75ccbcf5b301d
LOL, except both Nick and Tom are both human. I also wonder if Ro met Dara (Timicin’s daughter)
https://preview.redd.it/rtwhg6i9dyzg1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4aa8a65f2ee70c425792e779fe851e4a76f3222
It’s like hey your hair’s up. Your hair’s down. Twinsies!
I’m joking, but it was interesting how both Tuvok and this Tuvok-looking human guy served on Excelsior-class starships at the exact same time. I wonder if they ever met each other and were all “Umm are we best friends now?”
Although Nomoy originally suggested that the pinch was something only Vulcans could do using telepathic powers, this was never stated in the show. The general explanation is that it's a combination of blocking blood flow and nerve signals to the brain.
My read on it is just that's it's very difficult to get right, which is why people aren't doing it in every fight, but it is not exclusive to Vulcans.
I think it also fits with Vulcans’ particular ethos. When it becomes illogical to remain non-violent, the neck pinch offers a way to achieve incapacitation without unnecessary damage or provocation. But requires tremendous skill and focus to reliably succeed. Other species would resort to violence sooner, using simpler and less precise means.
I always thought it was more about needing strength, precision and a calm rational mind, which is why Data and Picard could learn it, but Kirk and others can't.
I guess it's just head canon but I always had the idea that it also had to do with strength. Human strength being insufficient. That worked for Data, but I forgot Picard could do it.
Actually this is a great thread that TNG used from the big Spock episodes, Unification.
Picard had a mind meld with Spock and his father. Through that process Picard picked up a few tricks, including the nerve pinch.
It was one of those narrative and writing moments that TNG was great at.
This was always a weird explanation for me because I always assumed the nerve pinch wasn't technically difficult, it just required the crazy strength that Vulcans have to pull off. It shouldn't require a mindmeld to learn.
Not saying you're wrong, but my recollection was not that it was a strength issue but one of precision in finger placement and movement, something that would be much easier to "teach" via the meld. It's not that humans are too weak, we are too clumsy.
In one of the TOS scripts it called for Leonard Nimoy to punch a guy out. Nimoy suggested that Vulcans were more evolved than that and suggested that he simply “nerve pinch” the guy using essentially precision finger placement on the person’s clavicle. They’d pass out because of alien powers or something.
The Zindi arc was cool because the ship wasn't all clean and shiny at the start of each episode. But yes season 4 had some really fun moments. The Klingon thing was hella cheesy but I did like it.
"What was is? Some kind of mutation?" "Or genetic engineering?" "We do not talk about it with outsiders." Well Worf it was both!
That story thread started earlier than the Unification episode – Picard's mind-meld with Sarek was in Season 3's episode, also called "[Sarek](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sarek_(episode))".
He then shared what he learned from that meld with Spock, in Season 5's "[Unification](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Unification_I_(episode))", following Sarek's death.
Tuvok was a major Section 31 player, part-time like Bashir. Recruited sometime after Stardate 9521.6, they bobbed his ears and sent him onto the Enterprise-B for some reason after he "resigned" from Starfleet. Decades later Section 31 assigned him to the Enterprise-D baryon episode. Once Picard was unexpectantly there they had to pull him out early. Finally, his last mission was as an undercover Vulcan, placed on a Marquis ship, presumed dead when Voyager and the Val Jean were presumed destroyed.
Picard killed that man. He knocked him out and left him to die. He did say something about going back to get him, but the thieves said nope. He killed the rest, too.
My theory for that episode is that they wouldn't let Patrick Stewart do any action scenes so he decided to hire his own separate cast and crew and snuck onto the set so he could film his own die-hard.
If you ACTUALLY watched TNG and didn't only farm digital internet points, you would know why Picard could do the Vulcan nerve pinch. It's pretty hard to miss.
There kinda is. We were taught you cans do a karate chop on the neck close to the shoulders. Using both hands.
You kinda black out for a split second. We used to do it for fun to each other, but they told us it could cause someone to drop a weapon if done from behind.
Anyway, shock to the brain and all
Well yeah I know it's there in humans, I mean the presence of such a nerve cluster must be a commonly shared evolutionary trait among the descendants of the Progenitors
Some of the animosity between Shatner and Nimoy was supposedly because Shatner was annoyed that Nimoy was getting more of the interest from female fans.
As a woman, I can tell you that Spock was definitely more of a sex symbol than Kirk, in my eyes.
"inexplicable" was a joke about stewart being bald and sexy and not about nimoy's looks. Nimoy was younger during the original run and had a great fan following during and after.
Captain picard had already mind melded with sarek by that point in the show and it was said he gained the ability to do the nerve pinch because of it, but then they never used it again. So... Who knows?
Picard not using it is even used as a gag later in one of the romulus episodes, when Spock and data elegantly take out guards with the pinch and Picard just haymakers one in the face
One/off buttons are one of my favourite storytelling conventions. Sometimes you need a character to not know something or not influence events for a period of time so the writer arranges for them to be temporarily removed. It can be anything from moving off to the side to talk with someone to punching them out.
In sci-fi the options are endless, and especially in Trek:
- Phasers set to stun
- Anesthizine gas
- Knockout hypospray
- Vulcan nerve pinch
- O'Briens special hammer blow to the back of the skull (my ass that wouldn't hurt)
- Trek-fu double handed hammer blow first to the chest then under the chin
- Suspending in Transport
- Q flicking people in and out existence
- Data's off switch (shhhh)
Also what I was thinking, but I feel like I remember hearing saying that humans don't have the grip strength to do the technique properly. Maybe TOS Spock? Or I could just be making it up lol
It's beta canon but Nimoy said that Vulcan's can do it because they have fine senses/nerve endings in their fingers so they can find and paralyse just the right nerves (he does it to a space horse in ST:V) and that always made sense to me, implying it can't be taught.
But it's a fun bit to say that Picard picked up the knowledge from Sarek.
Dunno how Data can do it though!
I’m not sure where that’s a line or not but alternate timeline Kirk in Strange New Worlds also does the nerve pinch and explains that he learned it from a Vulcan cellmate.
The characterization of Picard as a hot-tempered pugilist who firmly maintains a facade of a scholarly peacemaker was thoroughly established long before this episode.
When I was a kid I thought only Vulcans could do it bc they are stronger than humans and have more fine motor control so they could pressure the nerve in ways we can't. Then I saw Picard do it and had my mind blown haha
McCoy wasn't handling Spock's katra very well and seemed to be in a mental war with himself. Even if he had the instinct to use it, he might not have been clear-headed enough to perform the nerve pinch correctly.
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