![]() ![]() ![]() So in both screen and prose Trek, the term “mind meld” somehow became the default by the late 1970s - but how? Why that term, when it was so infrequently used in TOS and never in TAS? As far as I can tell, it was pretty standard in Bantam’s books from then on (though I don’t have them all in my possession). 1970’s Spock Must Die! by James Blish used yet another unique term, “mind-lock.” But the next original Bantam publication, the 1976 anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages (which was mostly reprinting earlier fanfiction stories, though newly revised for the anthology), uses “mind-meld” consistently in multiple stories. It also occurred to me to check into the tie-in fiction that came out between TOS and TMP. (“Mind probe” was used twice, in The Next Generation‘s “Menage a Troi” and Deep Space Nine‘s “Extreme Measures,” to refer to mind-scanning technologies akin to the Klingon mind sifter, but never for Vulcan telepathy.) So sometime between TAS and the movies, the term became standardized. And it’s been the exclusive term in every subsequent Star Trek production. It was also used in The Search for Spock (referring retroactively to Spock’s katra transfer to McCoy in TWOK) and The Voyage Home (for Spock’s mental communication with the whales). The term was then used in onscreen dialogue in TMP itself, for the contact between Spock and V’Ger’s memory crystal. I always used to have the sense that “mind touch” referred to a shallower, more basic telepathic communication while the “meld” or “fusion” was a deeper, more complete blending, but as you can see above, the terms were used more interchangeably than that.Īnd yet the 1977 writers’ bible for Phase II, the TV revival project that later turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture, did use the term “mind-meld” for Vulcan mental abilities. The usage was all over the place, and “mind meld” was the third-most common term after “mind touch” and “mind probe.” And the writers’ bible for TOS refers only to Spock’s “strange Vulcan ‘ESP’ ability to merge his mind with another intelligence.” In the first major Trek reference book, The Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble, the version that gets the longest lexicon entry (29 lines) is “Vulcan mind touch,” with “mind link” (non-Vulcan) getting six lines, “Vulcan mind fusion” five lines, and “Vulcan mind meld” only four, the shortest entry (though no “mind probe” anywhere in sight). So that’s “Vulcan technique” in season 1 “mind probe” and “mind touch” in season 2 “mind meld,” “mind link,” and “mind fusion” in season 3 and “mind touch exclusively in the animated series. ![]()
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