Agreed. Though given the specific words and context used it is clear that what is being referred to reproduction.
...Especially considering that Spock had already found a mate - the whole blood fever was because he was being drawn to his preselected female counterpart. Otherwise, he would supposedly have resolved the issue by giving Christine Chapel what she most wanted, and sent T'Pring a postcard.
I disagree. While it may not be explicitly stated in dialogue, I think it is strongly suggested that the the mating drive(being horny) is a once in seven year thing. We even learn from Tuvok that the once in seven years feeling of horniness increases in Vulcanian males as they age.
Yet all this only points to pon farr making mating imperative, not to the logical opposite of mating being dependent on pon farr.
while not explicitly stated I think it could be rationally argued that Pon Farr is something only Vulcanian males undergo. This incident you cite would be good evidence for this. Further evidence would be T'Pring's actions in Amok Time.
Yet T'Pol is crazy with lust in "Bounty" and specifies this to be pon farr, a cyclic thing affecting all Vulcans. None of the other evidence or lack thereof manages to contradict this.
All she stops short of establishing is that the female cycle would be seven years long. And thankfully so. It's already pretty bad that mating and subsequent procreation would depend on the synchronizing of cycles: humans manage it with 27 days and a large number of potential partners, but Vulcans in their isolated desert villages and 2500-day cycles would really be up the creek without water.
Which may be why there's this mental bonding thing: in order to be able to procreate at all, Vulcans have to prearrange decades in advance.
But, as you say, T'Pring shows no signs of pon farr, now that thanks to T'Pol we can recognize the signs. So either matched cycles are unlikely to be a thing, or then T'Pring managed to shake off her pon farr a tad sooner than Spock, who himself recovered in an eyeblink in that episode.
A Vulcanian having sex only once every seven years would likewise be considered normal. They would be no more considered "dry years" than monday-wednesday would be considered dry days.
Yet the
lack of reference to such cannot be used as evidence for lack of constant sex, no matter which way one looks at it.
The sibling point is interesting. How many cases of Vulcanian siblings do we have?
We don't know the age difference between Sybok and Spock, but DSC might well soon tell. Tuvok had four children, and special mention was made of the youngest having been born out of Tuvok's eleventh pon farr. Nothing suggests that the other three were born out of pon farrs, though - or that Spock, Sybok, Tuvok, Sarek or any other Vulcan would have been conceived during a bout of blood fever.
We are specifically told they take a mate (have sex) once every seven years. The only this that can disturb this cycle is "extreme feminine beauty".
Well, that's one interpretation. But Sarek didn't take new mates once every seven years as far as we can tell - he only had three that we know of. And Spock doesn't quite claim that last bit.
Droxine: "You only take a mate once every seven years?"
Spock: "The seven-year cycle is biologically inherent in all Vulcans. At that time, the mating drive outweighs all other motivations."
Droxine: "And is there nothing that can disturb that cycle, Mr Spock?"
Spock: "Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, Madam."
While Spock here is flirting, he's also being his usual evasive self and probably telling those clever lies Vulcans are famous for. Neither of his answers to a yes-or-no question is a yes or a no, remarkably enough.
Pon Farr is stated as being biological. While in the rest of their lives Vulcanians can hide their emotions, this biological response rips that logical vernier from them. It's not something that can be overcome through culture.
It is only McCoy who speculates that culture and the logic religion is to blame for the Vulcans going mad - and even he is only saying that the role of culture here is to amplify the natural madness, apparently from lust to insanity.
Well, I guess that resolves it.
Banging one's head on a wall might well do the trick, yeah. I mean, if two as utterly dissimilar things as homicide and sex are viable outs from pon farr, then probably just about
anything is, including singing real loud or drawing circles in hot sand.
Pon farr just isn't what it's advertised to be. Which may mean McCoy hit the nail in the head: Vulcans only have it so bad because they choose to be so damned ashamed about it. For any other Vulcanoid, it might take an outside observer with medical training to spot the onset of one's pon farr.
Timo Saloniemi
