#meld

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“Sarek” TNG makes use of mind meld scenes a couple of times when Vulcans are visiting the crew, and it’s always methodically used and poignant. Perhaps the best example comes in “Sarek” when the titular character needs to meld with Picard in order to stabilize his Bendii syndrome–laden brain and do his ambassadorial job. And the scene gives us some of the best acting we’ve seen on the show to date. Using the linking of minds to really explore what it means to be a Vulcan, suppressing emotion but experiencing it nonetheless, is powerful stuff.

“Unification II” Later, we get kind of a culmination of that meld between Sarek and Picard when Spock also melds with the Enterprise-D captain. He knows Jean-Luc holds the memories and insights of his just-passed father, and this is a truly sweet way for our favorite Vulcan-Human hybrid to perceive how his dad really felt about him. Sarek is a terrible dad, we’ve established this many times, but somewhere under his Vulcan demeanor, he does care about his son, and the pleased look on Picard’s face when he shares this with Spock says it all.

“The Maquis, Part II” Just the one mind meld scene in Deep Space Nine, and that’s when that Maquis member Sakonna attempts to forcibly pry information from Dukat. We established last week when Spock mind melded with Valeris that the mind meld can be weaponized, which is fairly horrifying. These Vulcans are way too overpowered. But Dukat has prepared for just this scenario and his mental fortitude is no match for this Vulcan interrogator. Even if Gul Dukat is a bad man, you’ve got to find some triumph in him fighting off a nonconsensual meld.

“Ex Post Facto” The rest of these are all going to be Tuvok moments from Voyager, but we promise the list is barely half as long as all the Spock moments from last week. Interestingly, Tuvok uses melds a ton when he’s in his role as ship detective, I mean, security chief. Melding is the perfect tool for determining the truth in a situation, and Tuvok does just that when he melds with Paris as part of his murder investigation. He gets Tom off the hook and saves him from the Baneans’ weird disciplinary action and their little dog too!

“Meld” If you’ve been following this space for a little while now, you’ll know that Lon Suder is among my favorite minor characters. The mind of a psychopath is just so interesting; why else would there be so many podcasts about them? Tuvok also finds Suder’s mind compelling and can’t help himself when he wants to determine his real motives for murdering Darwin. The rest of the episode, we’re treated to some extraordinary Tuvok acting as his logical mind can’t handle the chaos in the thoughts of a madman. What a ride.

“Flashback” Is it a little weird that Tuvok melds with Janeway of all people in order to plumb his mind when he starts experiencing unsettling visions? Yeah, a little. Some could argue that maybe he should have melded with Kes or with another Vulcan on the ship (this was before we knew anything about Vorik, mind you) instead of putting the captain in danger of losing her mind as well. But their relationship is nice and the scenes of them putting together the pieces of what happened back on the Excelsior make for a cute little riddle.

“Warlord” If we were lamenting not seeing Tuvok mind meld with Kes in “Flashback,” then we can feel appeased that we see them meld in “Warlord.” Kes is being possessed by that tyrant Tieran, and Tuvok sneaks in his consciousness long enough to see that the Ocampan is still in there, fighting back as hard as she can. It’s a nice moment between the two since we already know that they have bonded over their telepathic powers and Tuvok has taken her under his wing as her mentor.

“The Gift” All that makes the final appearance of Kes (we’re not counting “Fury”) that much more tragic. In “The Gift,” Kes’s mental powers are spinning out of control and it’s only a matter of time before she blows. There’s a quick moment when Kes is phasing wildly in and out of corporeality and Tuvok fights through with a mind meld to stabilize her just long enough to get to the end of the episode. Vulcans don’t show it a lot, but it’s clear that Kes means a lot to Tuvok and he grieves in his own way when she leaves the ship/show.

“Random Thoughts” Detective Tuvok is best Tuvok. Like he did with Tom in “Ex Post Facto,” he melds with Torres to understand what really happened when she spread her violent thoughts in “Random Thoughts.” He learns enough from her experience to distrust that guy Guill, who was bogarting her feelings of rage for his own disgusting use. But Tuvok is on the case!

So when our Vulcan investigator weasels his way into Guill’s company and learns he’s dealing in disturbing memories on the black market, it’s the perfect time to whip out the mind meld! This jerk Guill is really asking for it, so Tuvok shares so many disturbing memories with the guy that the Mari merchant will be lucky if he’s not catatonic for the rest of his life. It’s one of the more squicky uses of a mind meld, like the ones from The Undiscovered Country and DS9’s “The Maquis,” and they couldn’t have picked a more deserving victim.

“Infinite Regress” Arguably, Tuvok mind melds with the most beings at once when he melds with Seven in “Infinite Regress.” It’s like melding with dozens (if not hundreds? Thousands?) of personalities at once because Seven is inhabited by all the individuals whom she’s assimilated into the Borg. And what a trippy LSD trip of a scene. We do admit: it does go on for way too long. The camera trickery and lighting makes it look like Tuvok wandering through a claustrophobic rave to find Seven amidst the masses, something only a skilled Vulcan can stomach.

“Gravity” Okay, this one’s really sweet. When Noss falls in love with a reluctant Tuvok, all he can really do is tell her he’s not interested, and he’s got a wife to get home to, and why can’t you fall for Tom like everyone else? But this hardened Vulcan is quite the softy on the inside. At the end of the episode, he mind melds with her so that she can see in his mind how he thinks about her. There’s some real vulnerability and openness about the experience, and you can tell that he cherishes their time together in his own Tuvoky way.

“Unimatrix Zero” Most of the Tuvok mind melds have used the Vulcan superpower as a way to get to the insight needed in a scene for the episode to progress. Its lie-detector capability is long established, after all. So it feels like we’re getting back to the campy roots of the thing in “Unimatrix Zero” when we get yet another magical element layered on top of it. Tuvok essentially sets up a mental conference call between Seven and Janeway so they both can enter the Borg paradise. But not Tuvok for some reason? It’s hilariously inconsistent here.

“Repression” One final use of Detective Tuvok on this list, but in this instance it’s not that Tuvok is using his meld to investigate some kind of crime. The meld was the crime in the first place! It turns out Tuvok is investigating himself! The poor guy is being mind controlled by some Bajoran whacko a whole quadrant away, and he ends up forcibly mind melding a bunch of former Maquis members into comas. That’s right, it’s mind-meld-as-a-weapon time yet again, and this one is truly bizarre.

“Workforce” Finally, we make it to Quarra, our final use of the Vulcan mind meld in Voyager. The whole crew has been brainwashed into happily working 9-to-5 jobs, but Tuvok, being a Vulcan, comes out of his brain fog more quickly than anyone else. He comes to understand the situation enough to know that an even better superpower than mind melds is Borg nanotechnology, so he mind melds with the brainwashed Seven so that she can eventually save the day.

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