Poetically I noticed that the planets reflect the species: Vulcan is arid & harsh, though tamed it still has a fire within. Andoria is colder on the surface & has frequent violent blizzards, but has a warmth beneath it's surface. Qo'nos is a world constantly wild, active, and in the extremes, though it is very hardy and steadfast. Earth is world of all trades, adaptive to near anything, a beating heart equally capable of grand destruction and great creation.
Almost like real masterful writer wrote the Star Trek setting and gave careful consideration for each facet of lore that was included. Even the way the sciences work, though based on real science, is poetic in it's application. Episodes dealing with engine issues were metaphors using the sciences to reflect other issues among the crew and the larger issue they encountered.
The idea that Vulcan has a number of names in their language makes sense. The world where we are is called Earth, Terra and Sol 3 in the English language alone.
Romulus and Remus traveled to Vulcan after creating Rome. They There they found a Greek philosophy who also traveled to Vulcan: Surak. They lead a movement against Surak's teaching that culminated with the exodus of thousands of Vulcans, seeking for a new planet.
In their case it could be a result of one of their many denial of information campaigns. Maybe Romulan operatives secretly working in the Vulcan government after the Vulcans' first contact was made with Earth picked the name for the connotations of a betrayed and sundered brother then spread the name to prevent the humans and Vulcans from finding out more about who they were.
Romulus and Remus were sons of the god Mars and thanks to TOS lore it's established the Olympians exist as entities and interfered with life on Earth. It's entirely possible that they interfered with the Vulcan/Romulan people as well at some point. And in Roman mythology Romulus disappeared in a magical whirlwind so there is your out for him gallivanting across the Galaxy with the other members of his family.
The Greek Gods existed in Star Trek cannon. They were powerful aliens there's a TOS episode. So its entirely possible that these gods were worshipped in multiple systems. Thst explains Vulcan but Romulus is admittedly more difficult to justify.
I had a thought on that. Perhaps, since Vulcan is so near to Earth, departing Romulans considered settling on and attempted to subjugate or contact the city of Rome, transferring cultural traits and Martial philosophy. Roman political life was dominated by precisely the same intrigues and Martial philosophies of the Romans. It would not be uncharacteristic of the Romulans to have fostered this behind the scenes, perhaps as a prelude to outright colonization. This time-consuming process would likely have been abandoned in favour of moving on on search for a more suitable, uninhabited world.
The Vulcan lore I'm familiar with is from the novel Spock's World. There is a scene in the book where Kirk brings up the subject of the Planet's name. Going with the idea of it being called that from Earth mythology.
"So, Vulcan in Terran is a god of forging and volcanos? Yes, I think that fits as the name of our home. It just makes me wonder - with all that Mythology, why do you call your own planet 'dirt'?"
Terra firma is dirt, just Terra comes from the name of the goddess of the Earth, Terra Mater(mother earth), who is a loving daughter of chaos with an anger for those that wrong her. Earth is planet of love, but chaotic by nature and easily made volatile. Or whatever, you can argue it's just dirt though. I just like thinking it more this way instead of simply dirt
@@christopherg2347 Technically, proper names are capitalized like every planet except usually Earth. That does suggest it is just dirt rather than a reference to a named goddess. ;)
When Spock was asked what his real name was he replied, "You couldn't pronounce it." Since there is nothing overtly different about Vulcan vocal cords this exaggeration hints that there is something about mispronunciations or people struggling with pronunciations that the Vulcans find really offputting or offensive and so they routinely provide names to outsiders customized to make pronunciations easier for them. Most likely they came up with the name Vulcan and provided that.
I don't know. I hear people say, "Feng Shui" and think "Wind and Sleep"???! Tonal mispronunciation, but it takes a few tries before I know what they meant.
@@argonwheatbelly637 Real languages have some rare features and often where what are very different phonemes in some are effectively the same in other languages. We all know the issue of L vs. R in some Asian languages. I know that Turkish has one sound that most of us English only speakers can't even hear let alone pronounce correctly.
I don't think it's his "real name" I think it's his sur or family name. Basically their given names are more modern and are simpler but family names have been aroun for centuries and are harder to pronounce.
In the episode where Vulcanian is used "Mudd's Women" we also learn that Harcourt Fenton Mudd can tell that Spock is only Half-Vulcanian so it makes me wonder what full blooded ones were supposed to look like... maybe they had the tail that Spock was supposed to have. Other fun outdated terms "Kling", "Klingonese", and "Bajora"
What's funny is that "Kling" is almost correct, if you go by Klingon language rules. Yes, I have been learning Klingon and yes, I am a massive nerd too. :)
@@MBF78 I speak a tiny bit of Klingon, few phrases, more than the average Trekkie but nothing near actually being able to speak (your basic nuqneH' sort of stuff). I occasionalyl go back to trying to learn but it's not the easiest language so props to you.
@@brighbytes Thanks. :) I only did it out of curiosity, and because Duolingo actually carries it. And yes, it's not easy, in fact it seems to be designed to be headache inducing on purpose.
I would suggest that the pre-Awakening Vulcan civilisation was probably centred around the coastal regions. However, as a result of their significance these regions were likely the most heavy contested during the various wars and as such were largely destroyed, hence their apparent absence from archaeological records. This would also explain the dominance of the inland desert regions as in the Time of Awakening onwards these areas would, ironically, be the most hospitable and thus culturally prominent. Additionally, the powerful coastal regions may have been the strongest holdouts of the old pre-Surak ways and therefore been tainted in the cultural memory of the Vulcans compared to the deserts in which Surak made his home, plus, of course, if this is the case then the coastal regions would also be the main area from which the Romulans originated resulting in yet further depopulation of those regions. Furthermore, the significance of the coastal regions would also lead them to be heavily nuked leaving large amounts of radioactive fallout which would take time to decay thereby further increasing the divide between them and the inland regions as the coasts took the longest to recover from the past whilst the desert cities and regions grew to prosper. A potential analogy with our world could be Mesopotamia which for millennia was one of the greatest centres of human civilisation but was devastated by the Mongols in the 13th century to such an extent that the region still hasn't fully recovered. Edit: sorry, that turned into a bit of an essay.
So Surak would be Vulcan Mohammed, albeit instead of a religion with a big focus on personal and interpersonal philosophy it’s a philosophy that people treat like a religion. That makes more sense the more I think about it, although the intentional counterpart was probably Moses.
in a star trek book i have Data said vulcans real name was T"Khasi and the other planet is T"khut im not sure how cannon that is but it fits the show and it works for me
No, it was actually a reference to the once-theorized planet Vulcan. A supposed planet, closer to the Sun than Mercury. The Joke was "Look, we found planet Vulcan, it's just in another system".
YES! I remember that from the 70s as a kid, seeing a few docos re Planet Vulcan, and that it was still around, & possibly sighted as recently as about 300 years ago with a telescope during a total solar eclipse!
I came here say that and post a link that too. I remember as a kid reading books on the theoretical planet: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet)
Nevasa is the star, the Vulcan Sun that we call 40 Eridani A. And you missed the name T'Khasi which is my favorite name for the planet. (The Star Trek Stellar Cartography book is beautiful). Thanks for the video.
*i can imagine that early human vulcan interactions and conversations were painfully comedic and that the humans sounded like the vulcan equivalent of Ernest T Bass from an american series about the life in a small southern town and the mountain resident with a predisposition of throwing rocks or bricks when upset*
Vulcan probably wasn't as much of a desert world before their nuclear war. Sure, the initial consequence is nuclear winter, but long-term after the dust settles the lack of plant life could cause the runaway warming of the atmosphere.
How do they replenish the atmospheric oxygen without plants? And why didn't they re-create their ecosystem in a time when the federation terraforms planets as needed?
@@MetalheadAndNerdThey had warp tech before the nuclear war started so they probably had at least some terraforming experience. They could have just used tractor beams to throw water-rich asteroids into their atmosphere and gotten the oxygen out that way. As for why they didn't recreate the world that was lost--they probably couldn't, at least not completely. If they had species that were as critically endangered as pandas and white rhinos are right now, they probably couldn't or didn't save those species while they focused on their own survival after the war. Bringing back a species that is already extinct is very difficult and may be impossible even if you do have its DNA. Fixing an ecosystem to function without critical species that served as an integral part of that ecosystem is extremely difficult. Introducing a foreign species to take the place in the ecosystem that used to be filled by a now-extinct animal or plant almost never goes well. Or maybe they decided to leave it as a monument to their former folly, a reminder of what logic saved them from.
@@fingerboxes i didn't mean re-creating the original ecosystem exactly but creating some self sustaining ecosystem that at least provides oxygen. When the federation terraforms an uninhabitable planet they probably create some form of standard ecosystem that provides the basics for life like oxygen and drinkable water.
Translation is an art, not just someone making it “easier” for foreign speakers, but rather trying to evoke the same thought and feeling in the foreigners mind as the native speaker experiences when saying or hearing their word in their mother tongue. So if one of those names for the planet carried the same feeling for a Vulcan that the English word “Vulcan” did for a human, then “Vulcan” is a valid translation, and arguably a better one than a straight transliteration of the Vulcan word that would mean nothing to a human who had not learned the language.
Honestly, the one that really sticks out to me has always been Romulus, but this was actually fascinating. I didn’t know this cool in-universe explanation! Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you friends.😊
Yes, please give us more in depth looks at planets from all SciFi!! Some suggestions: Cardassia, Romulus, Risa, Kashyyyk, Felucia, Coruscant, LV-426 and Klendathu!
Everyone, compliment his video. Vah na'vu ma glanek s'ahm la u'nam-tor yeht'es t'Yel-Halaya heh n'T'Khasi kup kitaya tanaf na'suk-sef, il rik ish kal-tor etwel t'nash wak. Hi, Rick. #🖖
A cool and we'll researched video, and enjoyable to watch! I would like to suggest a planet for a video: Earth, from Firefly. I think it would be interesting to see a video upon this alternate Earth that had some significant differences from our own, though any alternate, fictional Earth could be fascinating to learn about, and to hear your insight on it's unique fictional lore. Great video as before, I look forward to the next!
I recall in one of the Star Trek TV series, it was noted by Spock or T’Pal or Tuvock...I don’t recall specifically that it was mentioned that Vulcan developed fusion technology before fission tech. That would have made the ancient VulcanWorld War briefly portrayed in ST Enterprise a thermonuclear exchange. Scary stuff if one really considers that those nuclear detonations were not Hiroshima sized yields but more like Castle Bravo or Ivy Mike shot sized detonations. Overachievers to a one, those Vulcans. lol
My head cannon was it was just coincidence. In a universe of thousands of species, cultures, languages it is just inevitable that similar sound combinations will pop up.
“Greetings, we are from the planet Yor-Eynas.” *_Snrk_* “I mean, wow, happy coincidence! We have a planet in our own system that shares the same name! 😅”
Since I first saw TOS as a kid. I've always thought of Vulcan, Romulus and the like, as being the names manually put into the language database, when humanity first learned of the different species. Long before the show takes place. That is why many species, planet names and other words, such as the Romulan Officer ranks, and their moon fit a common theme (Rome). The initial human translaters used familiar words I.e. from history or ancient pantheons, to make the "new languages" easier to remember. In Enterprise we see hoshi manually translating, and gradually expanding the language database. Once the Universal translater is invented, the alien languages we already knew, were kept as is. And these were possibly even used, in the development of the Universal translater AI, as training data. I might just not remember. But I can't think of any aliens introduced in TNG or later, that are named in the same way as those we know about early TOS.
A rather nice but apocryphal source is the 'Vulcan's Forge' novel, which posits that Vulcan *started* as a temperate world, but a spatial cataclysm (I forget the specifics of it) turned it into the desret is is today. Also don't forget the Intelligences of the Deep Sand....
The novel Spock's World says that Bronze Age Vulcan was struck by a solar flare that fired on side of the planet to the point mountains sagged and part of the planet's oceans and atmosphere were stripped away. Survivors were cave dwellers on the sunward-side and some still on the night-side. The climatic devastation lasted centuries and most societies were thrust back into a glacial stone age.
"We see a similar thing happen with the Klingon world and Qo'nos." Ahem... I think you mean "Kling" as stated in Season one of TNG! By the honour of Kling!
A very well made and detailed video. As always, taken with a grain of stardust as you say. If I remember correctly, I may not, knowing my faulty brain, Mount Surak was bombed during a point during the Earth/Roumlan war. I'd have to re-read the Enterprise Novels during that period. But either way, great video Rick. Really good.
So it's called Vulcan similar to why most countries have an English name on official documentation despite having local names (Japan vs Nippon, China vs Gònghéguó, etc).
Gongheguo is not “China.” That is just a word that means “Republic.” I think you mean Zhongguo, which arrogantly means the “central nation” (of the world)
For that human mythology bit well... Apollo and the Olympians exist as a real entities in Trek lore who galivanted around space thanks to TOS... So he could have gone there at some point and given his name to the planet.
There is a novel, I can't remember the name, were not only is it reviled that there is a silicon based society deep underground that actually has influenced Vulcan society from the beginning. But also, that originally, Vulcan was tropical world close to earth, and that it was due to one of it's suns undergoing an expansion, that the world is mostly desert.
This reminds me of wondering how a planet as uninhabitable as Vulcan could develop a high tech society or even replenish the oxygen in it's atmosphere.
I remember reading a post on the IMDB message board or maybe an earlier source, that the Vulcans worship a desert god, among their pantheon. And that he aided Spoke.
They did something neat with Koronos too, since the Klingons have time wobbly bobbly crystals on one of their moons right? Also, the Vulcan hand sign is derived from a hand gesture Rabbis make during specific rituals etc. Imagine making the hand symbol with both hands, and join them together with your thumbs forming the bottom of a triangle. This was Nimoy's idea, and I guess they just ran with triangles. It's all in the documentary his son was making with him when he passed.
Cowboy Bebop has an interesting representation of Mars. . . That's kinda niche, however it's a subject widely open to comparison analysis. Mars was also the geo locale for at least parts of Robotech. Mars as a SciFi subject could be a hefty multiple episode documentation... You've done a great amount of bits and pieces here and there already. Live long and prosper!
I liked the explanation in the first few chapters of "Spock's World". It claimed that the planet Vulcan was a tropical paradise with little seasonal change until a solar flare flash-fried it into a desert wasteland. Fits the 'God of the Forge' aesthetic rather well. Although we don't need the 'cthia' part of that book that didn't quite work for me.
Scientists updating Newton's calculations and others noticed that there was more gravitational pull than could be explained by the mass of the known planets in our solar system. So speculation was that a very small planet orbitted the sun inside the heleiosphere of the sun in between Mercury and the sun. This purposed planet was called Vulcan. In the end it was determined that sunlight had mass. That explained the anomaly in readings. You're welcome.
The reason they used the name vulcan was that a theorized planet that some pre-20th century astronomers thought existed in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun.
It's possible the humidity along the coasts would make the environment more uncomfortable than farther inland. With the small oceans sea trade was likely minimal.
I have a theory as to why their cities aren't near the shores. They used to build their cities next to water, and those cities were the largest and more important, but as such got nuked during Surak's time, and the nuclear reactors in those cities went critical when the cities got hit, poisoning the coast lines and water. So in the centuries immediately after, new urban centers were built inland, and even after the radiation cleared, their new cities were so advanced they didn't need to settle around bodies of water anymore to be self sufficient and maintain trade, as they had shuttles and technologies for efficient water making or deep earth water extraction.
Anvil region and The Forge are typical tools one would expect the God Vulcan to use when making weapons and such. Incidentally the God Vulcan also happens to be the type to lose his anger and can go into a state of rage. Sounds familiar? Just like the god himself, the surface of the homeworld is heavily scarred and defaced severely.
well i wouldn't say anything from STD is spoilers since it can't even be considered of the prime timeline, that Enterprise was a total giveaway for that.
I don't waste my time with STD, that Star Trek makes me hurt to pee. As far as I'm concerned, it's Kelvin and not prime canon and therefore irrelevant.
It was made canon that the Vulcans didn't evolve on Vulcan. While the Vulcan records don't go back to their origin the Romulan records apparently do. In STP Narek says: "Some say it dates back from long before our ancestors first arrived on Vulcan."
from what i understand that line was a mistake the line was supposed to be "some say it dates back from long before our ancestors left vulcan" but they were on a deadline and didn't have time to redo the scene
I could be wrong but there used to be a hypothetical planet called "Vulcan" that orbited the Sun within Mercury's orbit. I suspect Gene Roddenberry got the name Vulcan from the hypothetical planet closer to our Sun than Mercury which was meant to account for perturbations in the orbit of Mercury before Einstein's General Relativity made the existence of such a planet no longer necessary to explain Mercury's orbit. You're still right though because that hypothetical planet was named after the Roman god Vulcan.
Very interesting, although can't technically be classed as a planet. By current definitions it only meets 1 of 3 criteria- have sufficient gravity to form a sphere. I could accept that one criterion would change due to space exploration - the need to orbit our sun would likely change to need to orbit a star. But the final criterion is quite fundamental, the need to have cleared it's near orbit of similar sized objects which it would fail due sharing its orbital path with another celestial body
The biologist in me wants to know if an arid planet can support enough life to support a large population. I assume that most of the water is underground, but in Star Trek Discovery we saw Ni'Var had clouds, rain, and red trees growing outside.
@@exilestudios9546 If they have warp capable ships they could be mining asteroids for water, turning Vulcan green? The last season of ST: Discovery was 1,000 years after Season 1.
Supposedly, the Vulcans know that there is a creator/deity/whatever. But while they know that such exists, they don't know if this is a good or evil force. They simply know it as The One. They know The One exists, but know nothing about it's capabilities, character, etc. This actually makes logical sense. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be destroyed, only relocated and/or transformed. So where does the energy that animates a brain go when that brain dies? It has to go somewhere. It can't be destroyed. The Vulcans seem to understand this on an instinctual level. They don't know where the energy goes, but know it has to go somewhere.
Perhaps once the Vulcans did have their cities closer to the seas, but over time the waters receded from them? A logical solution then would have been to build roads to the seas, to maintain necessary access routes, water would have been transported to the cities and likely kept in giant water towers. viaducts would have also been a logical next step, but if the beach were the traveling sort, a better plan would have been to construct pumping stations, not at the transient coast line but instead farther out, under deep water where the sea was more likely to remain sitting, at least for a longer time.
140% of the gravity of Earth (said gravity is 1.4 that of Earth) means we would not be able to visit it. A 200 pound man stepping off his Earth ship on Vulcan means he would weight 280 pounds there and even if he could stay up right it would not be for long. But, the real problem is your blood would weigh 140% of that which your heart has always pumped and it would have to work so hard to move the blood around your body that it would give out very quickly, and even worse the blood pressure would have to spike as a result, most people would stroke out within a few hours, and before that happens all your capillaries would burst, a gruesome way to go, bleeding to death under your skin.
I always just saw it as early universal translators picking up the religious and cultural connotations of Vulcan's (the planet) many names and spitting out the closest human equivalent, being Vulcan. And that primary and beta canon's various contradicting 'true' names are a reflection of that too, often peoples who ascribe significance to their country's name that way often can't settle on a common name. Effectively, it's like the example of how the language of most international relations is English, which is made all the more interesting when one considers that English is not the most prolific language in the world by number of native speakers. And that a country like Japan officially presents itself to outsiders as "Japan", which is the common English name for the country that no native speaker actually uses when speaking their native tongue. And furthermore, just like Vulcan, this lack of specific attachment to the name could have to do with the fact that historically, Japan has actually had many different names. It's kind of weird to an English native speaker living in a country that has used only English, and has a longstanding English name perhaps. But to countries that aren't "lucky" enough to be the origin or frequent user of the most common tongue, it's really not that unusual to have to deal with adopting different names and terms for the sake of outsiders. The Vulcans may be a founding member of the Federation, but English clearly is the common language of business and diplomacy, while the Federation capital is Earth.
There is a little more to the name. Newton's model didn't quite account for Mercury's orbit, so some astrophysicists speculated that they're might be a protoplanet between the sun and Mercury, which they named Vulcan because it would have to be hot enough that it would basically just be a ball of lava. Einstein debunked that conjecture - but Trek's original audience, scifi nerds in the 60's, would likely have recognized the reference.
T'Khut is the name of their sister-world - it's a binary planet. Intriguingly, the "terrestrial" planet discovered orbiting 40 Eridani A is just barely starward from the Goldilocks zone, and is described as a "super-Earth", meaning it's a rocky planet markedly more massive than ours. Or possibly a twin planet, with each component being *slightly* more massive than Earth, and with one possibly having a sufficiently strong magnetic field to protect a thinner atmosphere than ours and a small amount of liquid water...
Surprised you didn't mention the Vulcans whom divorced from other Vulcans, despite Surak's pleas, becoming Romulans. Or the repelled alien invasion of Vulcan, giving Vulcan warp technology.
I study mythology has anyone ever noticed that all the other planets are named after Roman or Greek Gods but Earth is always written as earth in text books. But most people dont know the name is supposed to be called Gaia. Which I'm assuming is the connection to being mother earth. Also if you go back and watch the old Captain Planet the leader was Mother Earth Gaia who gave them the powers of the elements. 🤔
