Episodes in which these words are heard.

Tuvok says: "Live long and prosper." [#107 Gravity]

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: ORIGIN

In [#60 Darkling], the Doctor re-creates several famous persons as holograms. The holograms of Socrates and T'Pau play kal-toh, a Vulcan puzzle game. (Socrates is an influential philosophy thinker from the 5th century BC in Athens of ancient Greece.) T'Pau is a famous historical Vulcan leader. The real T'Pau is seen, and incidentally looks rather different from the hologrammatic representation created by Voyager's Doctor‡, in [TOS: Amok Time], in which the role is played by Celia Lovsky. [TOS: Amok Time] is notable for introducing several Vulcan aspects into Star Trek which are maintained throughout the several Star Trek series including [Star Trek Voyager]. The Personal Log entry for [#141 Live Fast And Prosper] details these under 'Continuity'. Of relevance to this article is that the Vulcan greeting/farewell "live long and prosper" is first seen and heard, along with the use of the visual salute composed of raised fingers spread and parted to form a "V" shape (seen in the screenshot above). In [TOS: Amok Time], the crew of USS Enterprise NCC-1701 visit the planet Vulcan to enable Spock to undergo the septennial pon farr mating ritual. He and T'Pau exchange the Vulcan ritual salute and words: "Live long and prosper." The sentence/phrase "Live long and prosper" was invented by Leonard Nimoy, who plays Spock in [TOS] and the [TOS]-era films. ‡ I suggest that an explanation for this discrepancy can be extrapolated from [#44 Flashback] in which, upon Janeway "accompanying" Tuvok back in time to 2293 on board USS Excelsior and "seeing" Captain Hikaru Sulu, she notes that Sulu looks nothing like his portrait at Starfleet Headquarters because holo-imaging resolution was less accurate in the 23rd century.

Spock in [TOS: Amok Time] T'Pau, carried on a litter, in [TOS: Amok Time] The Doctor shows Kes holo-Socrates (left) and holo-T'Pau. [#60 Darkling] first two pictures above are from TOSTW

[#41 RESOLUTIONS]

In late 2372, upon contracting a virus during a planet visit, Janeway and Chakotay find they were unable to leave the planet without the virus proving fatal. Accordingly they send Voyager and its crew homeward under Tuvok's command. After Janeway addresses all the crew in a moving farewell, Tuvok replies: "Thank you. Captain, Commander, I am sure I speak for the entire crew when I say we will always remember your grace and courage. And I would like to add: it has been an honour serving with you. Live long and prosper." Later, under Tuvok's command the Voyager crew manage to obtain the antidote to the virus from Dr Danara Pel, a Vidiian female scientist in love with the Doctor, enabling Janeway and Chakotay to return to their normal lives as Voyager's captain and first officer.

[#73 REVULSION]

In early 2374, during a gathering of some of the crew to witness and celebrate Tuvok's promotion to Lieutenant Commander, Kim and Paris relate to an amused audience how they once rigged the internal sensors to say "Live long and prosper" every time Tuvok accessed them.

Tuvok replies, complete with a remark directed at Paris and Kim: "Had I known this commendation entailed ritual humiliation I might have declined. However, I accept it with gratitude and will honour the responsibility that comes with it. During my three years on Voyager I have grown to respect a great many of you. Others I have learned to tolerate. As your tactical officer, I will continue to do my best to ensure a safe passage home. As a Vulcan, I share the following sentiment - live long and prosper." At that point Tuvok gives both the words and the salute.

[#99 ONCE UPON A TIME]

Early in 2375, the Delta Flyer, crewed by aris, Tuvok and Ensign Samantha Wildman, is badly damaged by an ion storm. They take the Delta Flyer to a planetoid to try and escape another ion storm but they crash there, ending up inside an intact Delta Flyer but buried beneath the rock surface in a cavern filled with lethal fluorine gas. Wildman is badly injured, they are unable to contact Voyager and the oxygen supply is running out. During the final moments of this desperate situation, when death seems certain, Paris and Tuvok converse as follows: The Delta Flyer on-board computer sounds an alert and says: "Warning: oxygen depletion in 2 minutes." Paris: "I never thought it would come down to this - suffocating beneath kilotonnes of rock on some nameless planetoid." Tuvok: "Did you envision a more heroic death?" Paris: "I didn't envision dying at all." Tuvok: "In accepting the inevitable, one finds peace." Paris: "If that's another Vulcan saying, Tuvok, I'll stick with 'Live long and prosper'."

the crashed Delta Flyer

[#107 GRAVITY]

In 2375 Tuvok and Paris crash in a shuttlecraft on a class-D planet inside a gravity sinkhole in which a time differential phenomenon operates. The differential ratio of .4744 seconds per minute means that a long times goes by for Tuvok and Paris compared to only hours and days for those on Voyager. In addition, the sinkhole is about to collapse and when it does so it will crush everything and everyone inside! While on the planet they befriend Noss, a female of an unnamed species, who crashed on the planet some fifteen seasons previously. She falls in love with Tuvok and, although he suppresses them as a Vulcan should, he feels something for her but tells her he cannot return her feelings. Voyager mounts a rescue, and she is beamed aboard Voyager along with Tuvok and Paris. Voyager returns Noss to her home planet. In a moving scene in the transporter room, Tuvok mind-melds with Noss to enable her to understand him and, content, she then goes to leave. In farewell, Tuvok raises his fingers in the Vulcan salute and says: "Live long and prosper."

Tuvok: "Live long and prosper." Noss: "You too."

[#126 RIDDLES]

In early 2376, while aboard the Delta Flyer Tuvok is attacked by an energy strike from the weapon of a mysterious invisible alien, later identified as belonging to the secretive Ba'Neth species. Tuvok ends up in a coma, but Neelix is instrumental in coaxing him out of it. Neelix volunteers to take Tuvok on a tour of the ship, in case the sight of familiar places and people help him. Neelix promises Janeway, "Don't worry, Captain. Tuvok will be back to his old self before you can say 'Live long and prosper'." Neelix goes on to assist the healing process: Tuvok's silence, due to the trauma, is first broken in Neelix's presence. The Ba'Neth weapon has disrupted Tuvok's mind, stripping away his persona of composed Vulcan logic and suppressed emotions. While this frees Tuvok emotionally, he later comes to resent that he is like a child and unable to do anything of use i.e. that his former self could do such as perform as Voyager's chief of security and tactical officer. Neelix helps the Vulcan and acts as his companion and confidant during this difficult period of adjustment which leads right up to the time that Voyager obtains information about the weapon from the Ba'Neth whereupon the Doctor devises a successful treatment.

Neelix brings some of Tuvok's personal possessions to him in sickbay in the hope that they will encourage him to waken from his coma. When Tuvok speaks for the first time since the weapon attack, Neelix is there to offer support and companionship.

[#157 SHATTERED]

In 2377, Voyager encounters a spatial rift which causes the warp core to destabilise. Chakotay goes to engineering but as he tries to maintain containment an energy blast strikes him, and both he and the ship shimmer in a strange effect. The injured Chakotay is beamed to sickbay, where he learns that his body was in a state of temporal flux, but that the Doctor's created chroniton-infused serum has brought him back to normal. Moving around the ship Chakotay discovers that the phenomenon that struck him down has shattered the ship into 37 different time zones, with each containing a different part of history or the future. Chakotay enlists as his helper the Janeway from a past era, specifically the time when Voyager was setting out in 2371 for the Badlands to find himself and his missing Maquis crew (early on in the events of [#1 and #2 Caretaker]). Together they visit the different time zones and inject the Doctor's serum into the bioneural gel-packs, because the bioneural circuitry runs throughout the ship and is thus the ideal medium to bring all the shattered parts of the ship into temporal synchronisation. During the visit to the messhall, Chakotay and Janeway find that the timeframe is that of the near future, after Chakotay was struck down in engineering. Triage has been set up in the messhall - many of the crew are injured. Tuvok, fatally ill with radiation poisoning, calls Janeway over. He manages to tell her before he dies: "I'm pleased you are here. I didn't think I'd see you again. I want you to know it has been an honour to serve with you and to be your friend." He takes a turn for the worse. Alarmed, Janeway calls urgently for Paris. With an effort Tuvok's fingers form the Vulcan salute: "Live long and prosper." Tuvok closes his eyes and and lies still. Paris arrives, scans him, and shakes his head - the Vulcan is dead. The sad experience of seeing her friend die, on top of seeing elements of what (for her) will happen in the future on Voyager, in particular being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, which prompts Janeway to tell Chakotay that she wants to put Voyager into temporal sync with her own time frame, not his, so that she can change the future and thereby prevent Voyager's crew ending up in the Delta Quadrant (and thus prevent Tuvok's death). Chakotay points out that she has seen only the negative aspects of her future and not the many positive effects her actions will have on her crew. After gaining the help of Voyager officers from different timeframes, they return to their own time periods and Chakotay successfully initiates the chroniton pulse to restore time to a few seconds before the accident, and then he makes sure it never occurs. This means that Tuvok's death occurred only in an eventually unrealised timeline, and in the new timeline, never happened.

[#169 HOMESTEAD]

In late 2377, Neelix arranges for a social gathering for the Voyager crew to celebrate First Contact Day, the anniversary of the Vulcans' first contact with humankind in 2063. Neelix gets Tuvok to repeat the first words spoken to humans by Vulcans on that historic day: "Live long and prosper." During the festivities, Neelix is informed that Voyager has encountered Talaxian lifesigns nearby. Taking the Delta Flyer, Neelix visits the colony whose inhabitants live inside an asteroid. There he meets the widowed Dexa and her young son Brax. Voyager hosts negotiations between the colonists and a mining consortium which wants to extract valuable minerals from the asteroid. Negotiations break down: the colonists are given just three days to leave, which means having to abandon their possessions and the city they have built, under the threat of the miners starting to mine whether they leave or not which would most likely result in many Talaxian casualties. Encouraged by Tuvok, whom he has always admired and respected, Neelix urges the colonists to defend their home and himself aids them in his small spacecraft Baxial as they set up a defence perimeter forcefield. During the negotiations earlier, Neelix and Dexa took the opportunity to spend time together, and Neelix now realises that he has fallen in love with her. He is, however, torn by the desire to stay with her and his responsibilities to the Voyager crew, and finds it hard to formulate the difficult request to leave. Janeway understands and pre-empts his request by asking him to accept the role of Starfleet's Ambassador to the Delta Quadrant, which would mean his having to stay in the Delta Quadrant although in touch with Voyager. Neelix accepts the post, grateful for her perceptive prescience. Numerous crewmembers line the corridor in silent tribute and farewell as Neelix walks to the shuttlebay in order to leave Voyager forever. Immediately before he leaves, however, Tuvok stops him, does a couple of dance steps and says: "Live long and prosper." Very moved, Neelix goes to disembark....and to embark on his new life with Dexa and Brax.

Tuvok repeats the first Vulcan words heard by humans. Dexa shows Neelix the colonists' city. Tuvok makes his final farewell to Neelix.