BEHIND-THE-SCENES : [BLOOD FEVER]

STORY BACKGROUND: Pon farr is the Vulcan term for the time of mating. Although Vulcans live strictly by the dictates of logic, their veneer of civilization is ripped away from them during Pon farr, every seven years of their adult life. The individual experiencing Pon farr will stop eating and sleeping if not allowed to return home to take a mate, as established in [TOS: Amok Time]. During Pon farr, the brain is thrown into a neurochemical imbalance that can be fatal if the mating drive is not acted upon. The Vulcan telepathic mating bond draws mated couples irresistibly together during Pon farr, as seen in [#58 Blood Fever], when the Vulcan engineering officer Ensign Vorik enters Pon farr and initiates a telepathic mating bond with Torres, whom he decides would make a logical mate. Torres exhibits symptoms of Pon farr during an away mission, particularly in the presence of Tom Paris, whom she secretly (or not so secretly) desires. With the Doctor's help, Vorik tries to suppress his Pon farr symptoms, but is unable to, and pursues Torres to the planet's surface. Vorik's Pon farr ends after he is defeated by Torres in the Vulcan ritual combat Koon-ut-kal-if-fee.

[#58 Blood Fever] was a very fun episode to shoot. I think that we all had fun. It was directed in an interesting way where it was mostly handheld. And Marvin Rush, our director of photography, was there with us alone basically in very tight spaces in this cave, and a lot of the camera movements and a lot of the blocking was improvised with natural lighting.

We were in dark caves with flashlights and we basically choreographed the fight scenes, the fight-love scenes, to light each other's faces with the flashlights, and he would work with us, the director of photography, as a kind of three-person dance. And we would be struggling and the camera would be right there, and we'd know that as we landed here, as he had a line and the camera moved to him my flashlight would have to light his face, and you know the struggle would bring a flashlight onto my face. It became this great dance that we had. A lot of physicality was all choreographed and improvised within boundaries, and I think that's what gave it the life.

I haven't seen that episode in a while, but I'd love to go back and look at it. The shooting of it was a blast. We had a lot of fun.

We did an episode that dealt with pon farr happening to one of the other characters, Vorik, on the show. There was a scene in there, where he and I, in which we encounter each other in his quarters, and he's going through this pon farr, and I'm not of course at the time. And we had to figure out, well, how would they behave towards each other? Among human beings there would be a certain degree of sympathy perhaps. If you had cancer and I had cancer, we could understand what each other is going through. We would be sympathetic towards each other, we might bond that way, we're in the trenches together. Well, for the Vulcan characters pon farr is the displaying of emotions and anxieties, and that is embarrassing and disturbing for them. And so it was nice we played the scene together.

Vorik initiates a telepathic mating bond with Torres

Tuvok visits Vorik in his quarters to ask some awkward questions

When I worked it out with the writers, I said: "How do we do this? How can we make this happen? Well, I think they should be very uncomfortable in the presence of each other, not even look at each other in the eye very easily, avoid each other's gaze and be very aloof with each other, very distant from each other, very cold, whatever needs to be done and then we get out. It's very uncomfortable for both of us, and that's how we should play it." And so we came up with this moment which had not been exposed or shown before that.

Torres fights Vorik in the Vulcan ritual combat called Koon-ut-kal-if-fee

What are other the cultural aspects of pon farr? I mean, what about the marriages, what about if they're betrothed to someone when they're born, what happens if they're not, if that falls through, what happens if one of the other partners reject, can they marry outside their race as was done in [TOS], or what's the cause and effect for it? We had to make it up. We had to create this backstory, so that was part of designing and building upon what we already had, so far as the philosophy of this character.