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Would you forgive this man?
Vorik refuses to use the standard methods for controlling pon farr that Tuvok recommends, decides for B'Elanna that she will mate with him whether she wants to or not, and when she shuts him down he infects her with a potentially fatal medical condition to force her to submit to him sexually. Tuvok did not turn into a psycho rapist when in pon farr; Spock became violent but still didn't become a psycho rapist. This all adds up to Vorik being responsible for his actions. How is he not, at the very least, demoted for conduct unbecoming an officer?
- Whaddaya mean, "refuses"? He spends a full scene trying to meditate, and it's at least implied that he had sex with the holo-Vulcan. It just didn't work.
- Spock tried to kill his own captain. It's made entirely clear in "Amok Time" and this episode that the pon farr is akin to temporary insanity.
- The reason Tuvok doesn't go berserk is because he's been through it all before. This is Vorik's first pon farr.
- Vorik did not "infect" B'Elanna on purpose; it was an accident. He originally tried to just shut himself in his quarters to wait it out, where he couldn't endanger anyone, because he knew he was rather unstable in that state. But after sleeping with the Holo-Vulcan seemed to work, both he and the crew of Voyager probably let their guards down.
- It's generally agreed (and rightly so) that Tom was right not to accept B'Elanna's advances because she wasn't in her right mind. Why is Vorik considered responsible for his actions while B'Elanna isn't, when they were suffering the same affliction?
How does the Doctor know nothing about pon farr?
According to this episode, perfectly normal Vulcans can turn violent and unpredictable, or even die, during a cyclical mating cycle. Fair enough. But how does Starfleet not know anything about this condition? How can the Doctor's database (which must include data from Vulcan doctors) be so vague? This is a known condition that causes Vulcan personnel to become an intense danger to themselves and everyone around them. This is information that, logically, Starfleet Medical personnel need to know. Yet the unemotional, logical Vulcans conceal it because they're embarrassed?
- Try humiliated. How comfortable would you be talking about being raped, or catching venereal disease, AIDS, mental illness? The Vulcan culture is based around the control of their emotions, yet the pon farr just rips that away.
- Vulcan logic is frequently less wholly rational than it is wholly rationalIZED. Because you're right, it is wholly logical that Vulcans on Starfleet ships should, bare minimum, have this information given to the medical doctors who are going to have to "treat" them while being bound by confidentiality, and we see repeatedly that Starfleet vessels are often far from home - Vulcans may traditionally intend to simply take personal leave and return to Vulcan to deal with the... problem, but that's not always viable when you're on vessels on the far edge of the Federation, or, like in Voyager's case, seventy thousand light years from it. BUT... Vulcans do not discuss matters of the loss of their control without significant cajoling to extract the slightest bit. Because their logic tells them that this is a Vulcan matter, therefore Vulcan solutions are all that are needed.
Related to the point about Vulcan solutions, why didn't the Vulcans have a solution?
As revealed in First Contact, Vulcans have been a space-faring race for at least some time prior to Cochran's warp flight. This naturally means that early Vulcan space explorers would almost certain have run into this very problem: If they should succumb to pon farr while on a voyage, they could potentially be years Vulcan itself. There would almost certainly have been many occasions of Vulcans entering it while on deeps-space voyages. So why hadn't Vulcans already worked out a solution even before First Contact with humans?
- Likely, they just didn't travel farther from Vulcan than comfortable given their biological cycle, based on how advanced their warp technology was at the time. And really, being more than three-and-a-half years of travel away from home is not ideal for a wide variety of reasons, mating cycles being the least of those. Maintenance and replacement of delicate parts, being close enough to other vessels to render assistance in the event of an emergency, etc. It's entirely logical that Vulcans would simply not sign up for a voyage that would take six months if their next pon farr would be in four months.
- It’s also possible they made sure the ships were crewed by mated/bonded pairs of Vulcans, so when the males time comes, they can just deal with it in the privacy of their own quarters, with a simple message to their senior officer, who would know what it means and would just leave them be until they emerge, having dealt with it. Sure, it might result in children aboard, but Vulcan children are taught control and meditate techniques from an early age, so there wouldn’t be the issues with human children.
