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Beloved Star Trek Character Busted Franchise’s Biggest Myth With Single Line
By Chris Snellgrove
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Star Trek has some of the most passionate fans on the entire planet. For the most part, those fans are unified in their love for this decades-old sci-fi franchise. However, there are a few things the fandom has bitterly debated over the years. One of the most intense arguments involves a seemingly innocuous question: can Vulcans lie? Some fans are convinced that these logic-loving aliens are far too moral and upstanding to deceive anybody. Other fans believe Vulcans are fully capable of lying and have successfully convinced the galaxy that they always tell the truth.
This persistent Star Trek myth goes back to The Original Series and claims made by characters like Spock and Dr. McCoy. Eventually, this myth was busted by Tuvok, who reluctantly told Seven of Nine that Vulcans were capable of lying but generally preferred not to do so. After decades of fan debate, this finally settled the matter. However, what most fans don’t know is that Tuvok accidentally busted this myth far earlier in the show. In “Twisted,” he blatantly lies to Captain Janeway in a scripted exchange that seriously upset Tuvok actor Tim Russ.
The Man, The Myth
First, we need to talk about how the “Vulcans don’t lie” myth came about. Back in The Original Series episode, “The Enterprise Incident,” a Romulan commander asks Spock if it’s true that Vulcans can’t lie, and Spock responds, “It is no myth.” This idea is also backed up by Dr. McCoy, who offered his medical opinion on the matter in “The Menagerie, Part 1” when he says of Spock, “the simple fact that he’s a Vulcan means he’s incapable of telling a lie.” Even the android Data agrees. In the Next Generation episode, “Data’s Day,” he wrote a message to Bruce Maddox about how Vulcans couldn’t lie.
If you pay close attention, though, Spock himself sometimes justified telling blatant lies. In The Wrath of Khan, when Saavik realizes Spock told Kirk that Enterprise repairs would take longer than they did, she confronts him: “You lied!” Spock (who was speaking in code to Kirk) simply replies, “I exaggerated.” In The Undiscovered Country, his apprentice, Valeris, does something similar. When asked to name her fellow Starfleet traitors, she says she does not remember. When Spock asks, “A lie?”, she responds, “A choice.”
A Secret Onscreen Lie
When he began working on Star Trek: Voyager, Tuvok actor Tim Russ seemingly bought into the idea that Vulcans don’t lie. In an interview with Cinefantastique, the actor discussed some dialogue from the episode “Twisted” that he disagreed with. “There’s a line in an episode we just finished, ‘I’ve always respected the Captain’s decisions.’ And that line was difficult to say.” Elaborating, he said, “[The] line was difficult to say when, in fact, we know he […] violated protocols [in ‘Prime Factors’] by taking matters into his own hands.” He’s referring to an earlier incident where Tuvok traded Starfleet technology to aliens for technology that could transport the Voyager crew 40,000 light-years.
To those closely watching Star Trek: Voyager, this settled the old debate: Vulcans can lie, as we saw Tuvok do to Captain Janeway. On other occasions, Tuvok has found ways to (like Spock before him) justify his deception. After he tells Chakotay, “As a Vulcan, I am at all times honest,” the commander says that Tuvok clearly lied when he passed himself off as a loyal member of the Maquis. Tuvok replies, “I was honest to my own convictions within the defined parameters of my mission.” To this Vulcan, it seems, lies are in the eye of the beholder.
A Borg Assimilates The Truth
Later, Star Trek: Voyager would bust this old franchise myth in a much more blatant way. In the episode “Hunters,” Seven of Nine asks, point-blank, if Vulcans can lie. Tuvok reluctantly admits to her that Vulcans have the capability of lying, but that he has never found it useful or necessary. Given Tuvok’s previous moral flexibility, this information might square the circle with the line about always respecting Janeway’s decision. In Tuvok’s mind, he may respect her decision without following it.
With any luck, this helps settle the debate, once and for all. Vulcans can lie. They just mostly choose not to do so. This explains what they are capable of while also explaining their reputation for honesty. If nobody ever sees you lying, why would they doubt you are honest? If you doubt what I’ve written, though, you can always wait until First Contact Day and ask the first Vulcan you see about all this. Don’t worry: I’m sure he’ll tell the truth!