#actually I think if this could be cited somewhere on the fanlore page that would be my greatest legacy

[remythologise]

Oi gday mate what are your top ten star trek scenes that could provide evidence to the theory that adult Vulcan are ballsless and shed their balls in puberty

Yeah it’s really important that we at tumblr dot com continue a long and noble history of academic inquiry.

As first argued in the seminal essay, ‘The Vulcan Penis Problem’ [1], it’s vital that we as 20th-21st century humans do not let our imaginations become stifled by our own preconceived notions of what genitalia, or sexual relations, should look like. Goodwin successfully argues that the over-representation of circumcised penises in Trek fanfiction should not necessarily apply, as there is no reason circumcision should be commonplace in the future. Even in our own time, this is true - though predominantly American authors may see this as common practice, in countries such as Australia the male circumcision is not taken as the imagined default. Australia, too, was home to many natural discoveries which did not fit into natural classification systems, such as monotremes. Thus, we can see how even minor geographical and evolutionary separation on our own planet can result in wild diversity in similar-looking animal species.

Vulcans, therefore, may look as similar as humans on the outside as hedgehogs to echidnas, but it is as likely they are as different in reproductive function as live birth is to egg-laying. While some academics have argued [2] that these changes may be in features such as texture and applied motion, I believe that in fact the Vulcan divergence involves a detachment of exterior testicles, leaving the cock freestanding. Let’s lay out the evidence for this argument.

The first point to be argued is that as previously outlined, Vulcan’s environment is vastly different to Earth’s, leading Vulcan physiological evolution down a different path to our own with thinner atmospheres and higher temperatures [Amok Time; Operation - - Annihilate!]. We know for a fact that Vulcan organs, such as the heart, are in different positions to our own [The Omega Glory] within the interior of Vulcan bodies, and thus it is not a stretch to imagine that testicles might be inside, rather than outside a Vulcan too.

In a Voyager episode, Nothing Human, we are introduced to the concept of a ‘Vulcan reproductive gland’ [3], the function of which is never explained. It is extremely likely that this gland is the substitute for a human ballsack, the ballsack having retreated to the inside of Vulcan bodies. The function of the ballsack is to keep sperm cool outside the body. Vulcan sperm would clearly have to endure much higher temperatures if positioned outside the body, so instead evolution dictated that the mature Vulcan’s sperm should instead rest inside the body, where they can be kept cooler thanks to rapid blood flow that circulates what McCoy references “that green ice water you call blood” [The Naked Time; The Paradise Syndrome] . Pre-pubescent Vulcans are likely holding a remnant of proto-Vulcan physiology, a vestigial ballsack, one that is shed when they reach adulthood and need to conserve all resources for survival.

Of course, no discussion of Vulcan reproductive function can go without mention of their unique mating cycles, the ‘pon farr’. Though Amok Time is often cited as the greatest source of data in this field, one scene in The Search for Spock also reinforces that pon farr only commences after puberty. Perhaps it is likely that, in the violence of a Vulcan’s first pon farr, the vestigial balls are simply too delicate to endure the vigorous and repeated rutting, and thus are detached during this time.

There is also more symbolic implication that Vulcan are ballsless. In What Are Little Girls Made Of? we see Kirk holding a large phallic rock [4], obviously meant to represent the Vulcan penis he wishes to hold. This rock has very small mounds that are more coagulated with the penile structure, a clear indication from the writers that Vulcan penises on an adult male such as Spock do not have the same bulging ballsacks of their human counterparts.

When we consider the implications of the ballsless Vulcan, perhaps other physiological features become more obvious. The erogenous hands, for example (Journey to Babel), might be nature’s own substitute for the loss of the sensitive balls to play with.

Finally, it must be said that Vulcan sperm and reproductive systems must be substantially different to human ones as crossbreeding was rarely successful, even with medical intervention and 23rd century technology (Enterprise; Demons, Terra Prime).

For these reasons, it can be safely concluded that upon detailed study the Vulcan adult is ballsless. Future research in this field should analyse what other monumentally interesting features of reproduction biology and behaviour remain to be discovered – as this essay touched on, it is clear that internal ball systems are only the beginning of the strange and wonderful world of Vulcan genitalia.