How can Spock's mother (who is a human) live on Vulcan all her life without suffering health problems?
Since the air on Vulcan is thin, how can she breathe? Obliviously doesn't spend her time locked in her air-conditioned house?
shareHow can Spock's mother interbreed with a "green-blooded" Vulcan at all?
shareSci fi handwave, that's how. In reality, there is zero chance we will be biologically compatible with a species originating on another planet.
shareI watched enough Star Trek to know that the storyline was that they did some kind of genetic manipulations to create Spock, but that creates more questions than anything. Like ... why, create a mule ( cross between a female horse and a male donkey ) that is sterile? And if Spock is not genetically Vulcan, why does he go through the Pon-Far(sp?) the Amok Time, and why would he get married, and why would any Vulcan woman marry him?
It would make more sense that Amanda and Sarek would have used a Vulcan surrogate, or adoption, if any of it would make sense at all. Maybe Sarek was a lower and struck out with the Vulcan babes, and he heard that Earth girls were easy? ;-)
I think the idea that Spock was the product of genetic engineering is more fanon than canon, but really - what else makes sense? A human being able to breed with an alien species without genetic engineering is less possible than a flying squirrel breeding with a blue whale. I mean, both species are mammals with iron-based hemoglobin molecules in their blood, right?
As for a human living on Vulcan, humans are capable of acclimating to high altitudes, within limits (the limit being the oxygen content found at about 20,000 feet above sea level, or 7,000 meters). If a human is put in an environment that has a low but tolerable oxygen level, their body will start producing extra red blood cells to get the most oxygen possible to the body (this is part of the "acclimation" process mountain climbers do). And by the 23rd century there might be medications that make a human body produce more red blood cells in the long term, or which make their existing cells transport oxygen more efficiently, appropriate for people who live on low-oxygen planets, but still. I don't think Amanda was spending a lot of time on Vulcan's highest mountains.
I think the idea that Spock was the product of genetic engineering is more fanon than canon...
Agree. I can't recall anything in any Trek series (I've seen them all except Deep Space) or movie that would suggest Spock was anything other than the product of a couple of aliens bumping uglies.
A human being able to breed with an alien species without genetic engineering is less possible than a flying squirrel breeding with a blue whale. I mean, both species are mammals with iron-based hemoglobin molecules in their blood, right?
I think the answer to that might be in a Next Gen episode - the one where the Klingons, Cardashians, Romulans, and Humans were searching for pieces to an ancient computer program. Turns out it was a video message that told them all that all of them were the products of a long ago "seeding" program by these now long gone aliens. It explained the similarity in body layout and might, with a stretch, explain the interbreeding capability of these divergent species.
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Well yes, that episode can explain all the human-alien hybrids who appeared on the show, at least at a superficial level.
But seriously, how the hell can someone whose molecular structure is based on hemoglobin-based oxygen transport successfully breed with someone whose oxygen transport system is based on some different kind of molecule? And what the hell is up with Klingon blood anyway, which came out lavender colored in that movie?
It's one of those things that we're not supposed to think about too hard, because none of the writers orproduction designers had studied anatomy and physiology, or assumed the viewers had.
Well, yeah, it's science fiction. Check our disbelief at the door. Only raisinettes allowed!!