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The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

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The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby THE Rigil Kent » Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:56 pm

Rather than muddle up the bond thread with this, I figured that we could have a separate thread entirely for this topic.

As has been pointed out, the entire Koss-T'Pol marriage isn't very logical when you boil it down and look at it. T'Pol is a major renegade in Vulcan eyes and has already rejected one "get your ass back here or the marriage is off" communication from the Koss-parents. Then there's the whole P'Jem thing which she's blamed for. Throw in the fact that she quit her job to run off with humans on what was considered an illogical expedition and now she's brought a human home to meet her mother and you get a picture of sheer illogic. They would have to be concerned that this illogic on T'Pol's part might be some sort of genetic abnormality (which evidently it was if the showrunner's season 5 plans of revealing her to be half-Romulan bore fruit) which would likely cause concern that it might be passed on to any offspring.

So why would Koss (& family) push forward the marriage? There is no logic in their actions. By publicly tying their family to hers, they are essentially linking themselves with the pariah and painting a big target on their back. For that matter, they probably aren't even sure T'Pol will come back when Koss goes into pon'farr! And then, after she goes back to the human ship, T'Les abandons everything that T'Pol sold away her future for to go hang out in the desert with the Syrannites (which makes me wonder why Koss wouldn't immediately have the marriage annulled.)

Which leads to the various theories:
  • Koss has a thing for T'Pol. Understandable - she's hot - but it doesn't work for me really because the way he goes this seems fairly underhanded.
  • Koss' family are Syrannites, so they're covering for T'Les. Again, this only partially works for me.
So what's your theory? Mine (which has been incorporated into my Endeavour series) is less a theory about Koss' family and more about him.

Put simply: he liked T'Les. Not in the Mrs. Robinson way, but as a professor (did they establish what she taught at the Science Academy? Let's just presume he took a couple of her courses and liked her.) So Koss liked T'Les. Thus, Koss saw only one way to protect T'Les and that was by marrying T'Pol, so he pressured her into this marriage. Like all Vulcans, he figured that affection would come in time (although "Home" established pretty clearly that he wasn't ignorant of her ... friendship with the human, Tucker.) After the wedding, they went their separate ways for the time being because that was part of their arrangement, but while in conversation with his family, overheard enough conversations between his parents to realize that they were scum. Closely linked to V'Las, they were at least partially responsible for T'Les' ouster at the Academy because they wanted retaliation against her family for the slight T'Pol had given them with the previous marriage rejection. Koss spoke with T'Les about this matter and she bolted to join the Syrannites. After T'Les' death, Koss released T'Pol because he perceived some threat to her from his parents (since they had been linked to V'Las and thus suffered a serious status fall after the Vulcan civil war.)

What are your theories?
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby panyasan » Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:05 pm

THE Rigil Kent wrote:So what's your theory? Mine (which has been incorporated into my Endeavour series) is less a theory about Koss' family and more about him.

Put simply: he liked T'Les. Not in the Mrs. Robinson way, but as a professor (did they establish what she taught at the Science Academy? Let's just presume he took a couple of her courses and liked her.) So Koss liked T'Les. Thus, Koss saw only one way to protect T'Les and that was by marrying T'Pol, so he pressured her into this marriage. Like all Vulcans, he figured that affection would come in time (although "Home" established pretty clearly that he wasn't ignorant of her ... friendship with the human, Tucker.) After the wedding, they went their separate ways for the time being because that was part of their arrangement, but while in conversation with his family, overheard enough conversations between his parents to realize that they were scum. Closely linked to V'Las, they were at least partially responsible for T'Les' ouster at the Academy because they wanted retaliation against her family for the slight T'Pol had given them with the previous marriage rejection. Koss spoke with T'Les about this matter and she bolted to join the Syrannites. After T'Les' death, Koss released T'Pol because he perceived some threat to her from his parents (since they had been linked to V'Las and thus suffered a serious status fall after the Vulcan civil war.)

What are your theories?


I like this theory. So both Koss and T'Pol act because they are willing to protect T'Les. Plus I do see Koss' family more the V'Las type than the Syrannite type.
Also if Koss and T'Pol made a clear arrangement how to deal with their marriage (she is free to go back to Enterprise), T'Pol's decision to go on with the marriage and her actions towards Trip after she returned on Enterprise make much more sense.

My own theory was more or less that Koss had met T'Pol before and wanted her to be his wife. Because his parents wanted it, the family had agreed to it, he saw her as a challenge (I don't think the "hot" factor had a lot to do with it) and maybe deep down it's Koss' way of rebelling towards his parents and being envious of T'Pol's - so it seemed - freedom.

It's a theory you can easily combine with Rigil's theory - Koss married T'Pol to help T'Les in the first place and maybe also to have a shot at T'Pol - but when he sees that a. he couldn't help T'Les any more b. no way he is every going to get a shot a T'Pol - he asked for an annulment.
However, I must say now I have read Rigil's theory - I like that one better.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby crystalswolf » Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:50 pm

Don't have a lot of time, so I'm make this a drive-by post. In "The Understanding" I had it where Koss basically lived vicariously through his betrothed and respected her rebellion against the "Establishment" because he saw it for the corrupt governing body it was, not to mention the rampant hypocrisy in their society. In other words, she was doing the right thing in his eyes, even if no one else beleived it. Also, I had it that he was not particularly willing to push the marriage, but pon farr during "Home" gave him that extra "push" in the form of emotional instability, added with his parents wishes. And his parents wanted the marriage because of a political/historical quirk in their traditions (although this is only hinted at in the last chapter).
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby Aquarius » Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:27 pm

There's another theory that's been overlooked all this time.

Everyone assumes that Koss is sullying his name by insisting on making T'Pol his wife, that association with her is going to bring down his family because of P'Jem and everything else?

But what if the disgrace happened long before that? She wouldn't come home. When she called Koss's family's bluff (or maybe it wasn't?) and didn't come home when they wrote her and said "come home now or else," Koss was disgraced because of her rejection. If betrothal happens when they're small children, you have to imagine that the pickings for other women in his age bracket would have to be slim to nonexistent -- at that point your're dealing with women who'd lost their mate under similar circumstances (in which case, disgrace + disgrace = more disgrace), women who'd lost their mate to some kind of unfortunate accident (it can happen but young widows are usually pretty hard to come by, I'd think), or women who already weren't marriageable in the first place.

So really, if we were to imagine these as the circumstances, it's not hard to imagine that convincing his original intended wife to go through with things might seem like the best option. For him and his family, it may be better to live with, "well, she's a little weird, she exposed our Andorian secret, but she and Koss worked things out and she took him back" than, "W to the T to the actual F is so wrong with Koss that even a misfit like T'Pol doesn't want him?" That's got to be pretty bad for his dignity, you know? And even if there are "better" chicks available...well, it doesn't look so good for him. If T'Pol was so awful in their eyes, would it make sense for another woman to want her leftovers?

T'Pol may have been his only way out.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby Glory1863 » Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:03 pm

Betrothal as young children gives Koss' family the out that they didn't know what they were getting. Just how "bad" T'Pol is doesn't manifest itself until she's been with the humans. I think they could claim that they gave her every chance possible to clean up her act, but she was too oppositional and defiant to take them. From reading Spock's World, I'm not sure that prearranged marriages were to the level that there wouldn't be any decent chicks left for Koss. Plus, if humans can make the calculation that wealth and power can make an outright ugly or sleazy guy worth it, why wouldn't Vulcans make the same calculation? And Koss isn't that bad looking.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby Aquarius » Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:18 pm

Glory1863 wrote:From reading Spock's World, I'm not sure that prearranged marriages were to the level that there wouldn't be any decent chicks left for Koss.


It's been a long time since I've read Spock's World, so I don't remember how far back into Vulcan's history they go. I can see the possibility of prearranged marriages starting to go out of fashion by Spock's time, but what had been stated (implicitly if not explicitly) in the show is that betrothal at childhood is something that's basically expected of everyone. I don't know that I would use a novel to argue against the show, especially one written during a period in the franchise where the novels were expressly not to have any direct bearing on the show (ie, no plot point in the book could permanently alter anything; authors had to end things leaving the characters and situations pretty much the way they were found) and therefore had plenty of room to contradict each other.

That's not to say that an author's take on how things could've gone isn't valid. I'm just saying that there's plenty of room to not take it as gospel.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby EntAllat » Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:25 pm

THE Rigil Kent wrote:So why would Koss (& family) push forward the marriage? There is no logic in their actions. By publicly tying their family to hers, they are essentially linking themselves with the pariah and painting a big target on their back. For that matter, they probably aren't even sure T'Pol will come back when Koss goes into pon'farr! And then, after she goes back to the human ship, T'Les abandons everything that T'Pol sold away her future for to go hang out in the desert with the Syrannites (which makes me wonder why Koss wouldn't immediately have the marriage annulled.)

Which leads to the various theories:
  • Koss has a thing for T'Pol. Understandable - she's hot - but it doesn't work for me really because the way he goes this seems fairly underhanded.
  • Koss' family are Syrannites, so they're covering for T'Les. Again, this only partially works for me.
So what's your theory? Mine (which has been incorporated into my Endeavour series) is less a theory about Koss' family and more about him.

[..]

What are your theories?


My theory would involve the extended clans.

As everybody's already noted, in many arranged marriages across Asia and into the middle-east, it's not necessarily about the two individuals. It's about extended family. Individuals (sometimes two people who can't stand each other, or even those who are openly gay/lesbian) can sometimes get stuck together because the overall joining of the families is seen as beneficial somehow, even if that benefit is only to the two people who brokered the marriage. (It depends on your family's socioeconomic class, political leanings, religiousness, etc. of exactly how far this is taken. Some liberal, modern, upper middle-class families will just "help" the young people meet families "properly" once it's become obvious there's a spark. (Everybody goes to weddings, young people talk to each other, older adults watch and see who hits it off.) Families just try to get along for the sake of the two young people. In other circles, a father essentially sells off his ten year old daughter because, in the end, he thinks it would be better for the rest of the family to have the cow/goat/money than the daughter.)

So, thinking this through ...

In this case, I would assume there's something of importance in T'Pol's extended family and somebody in the other family knows about it/wants it and this is a way to get it that won't bring about unwanted attention. Obviously there have been young females before who've refused their arranged mates - that's what the kal-if-fee is for. So one family insisting that another family live up to their arranged marriage agreement even though the young female doesn't want to, probably wouldn't attract a lot of attention. If there's tradition for dealing with it, it must be a not uncommon situation.

We didn't know anything about T'Pol's father and his standing in Vulcan society, so maybe there's something there. For example, marriage of Koss to T'Pol might mean that Koss's first cousin is now related to T'Pol's first cousin and voila, tradition dictates that said latter cousin must assist the new cousin in acquiring something of value to the entire clan, like a stable position in a government office he works in. Lame example, but you get the idea.

In societies that still do arranged marriage and still have somewhat stratified class structure, there's a LOT of "who you know" and under the table deals that go on. If Vulcan society during T'Pol's time had fallen so far away from Surak's teachings that they didn't know about mind-melds, demonized the Syrannites and Romulans were able to infiltrate at such high levels as the Vulcan High Command, I would expect to see some of this kind of thing, though perhaps rationalized via "it's logical to operate this way because it's efficient" or some such nonsense. So, given that, I'd attribute something less-than-savory to whoever is behind the pressure for the two to marry.

Koss's family was "influential". But sometimes families of influence aren't necessarily in a good position financially. There's often examples of old "nobility" or families who own estates that go back centuries in their family but they can actually afford to keep them up, or live that lifestyle. So ... a Vulcan equivalent of that might be ... Koss's family belongs to an elite, influential family, but they've lost some key holdings that threaten that position in society? And there's something in T'Pol's family that would ensure they keep their power?

Alternatively, in order to have built that influence over the centuries maybe they simply married into families that owned things? What if an part of T'Pol's family actually owned land that was important for a monastery? Koss's family (or someone in it) wanted to have control over some segment of the Vulcan priests -- via the power they could wield controlling that land? Or it would give them access/ownership/guardianship of/access to stored katras? It would have been interesting had there been something that T'Pol's family didn't know about, but that the marriage broker on Koss's side DID know about. And wanted. And somehow it tied into the Romulan infiltration of the government.

Anyway. I'm starting to write fic now, rather than interpret what was on the screen. :) I think what it comes down to is the writers borrowed, as usual, elements from eastern culture for the Vulcans but we were missing strong and logically Vulcan explanations for what happened. If they'd had another two seasons they might have addressed this better. (And had they not decided the actress for T'Les was too expensive and killed off the character, we might have seen a little bit more of the motivations from her as well in future story lines.)
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby panyasan » Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:38 pm

In response to EntAllat's theory it is interesting to notice the way T'Pol's family home is decorated. There is a lot of "old" art present in the garden, which would suggest T'Pol's family is "old nobility" or "new money" family.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby Dinah » Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:17 pm

I came up with a theory for T'Pol marriage in a story I'm writing. I see Koss as a dutiful son who is willing to do whatever his family requires of him. '

T'Pol is the first officer on the Human's flagship. She would be privy to a portion of the Human's plans, armaments, strategies, etc. I think Koss' father would figure that he could control her as easily as he controls his son. Once she was married, T'Pol could provide Koss' father with much of the information he desired and try to use her position as a way to exert influence on the Humans. If this was the case, it would be reasonable for Koss' family to grant her request to return to Enterprise rather than spend her first year with her husband; Koss' father would want her back on Enterprise as soon as possible.

Problems would arise, though, when T'Pol and Archer visit Vulcan and through channels, Koss' father realized that T'Pol actually exerted very little influence over Archer. Archer was the one with the power and influence. At this point, Koss was sent by his father to end the marriage to T'Pol because she was no longer seen as an asset. That also why Koss agreed to help Archer after the Kir'Shara was discovered.
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Re: The Logic behind the marriage in "Home"

Postby Kathy Rose » Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:22 am

There are a lot of wonderful ideas here. I find the argument that T'Pol's family came from "old nobility" appealing, since I got the impression they weren't well off financially. (Trip fixing that piece of kitchen equipment for T'Les, for example. If they had the means, T'Les probably would have gotten it fixed herself.) The family name could have outweighed financial considerations for Koss's family.

My own theory is that Koss's family is ticked off that T'Pol is trying to delay or avoid marriage. It's an affront to them and Vulcan custom. For all their espousing non-emotion and logic, Vulcans can be vindictive and petty in certain circumstances. So what if T'Pol is a little "weird" by their standards? The greater embarrassment to them would be if she totally defied what was expected and didn't marry Koss. It could also be seen by them as something that would weaken the established structure of Vulcan society.
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