Vulcan Mind Meld

The Vulcan Mind Meld is a telepathic link used by Vulcans. It required a physical touch as a link and allowed two individuals to temporarily share the same thoughts. It was invented by Leonard Nimoy for the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Dagger of the Mind", after network censors warned against the use of hypnosis to help an insane man reveal his true story. More at Memory Alpha.
==The Mind Meld in Canon==
In canon, exactly how mind melds work varies depending on the needs of the plot. Supposedly, Vulcans normally only initiate contact with other Vulcans, usually those they are close to.In "Dagger of the Mind", Spock hesitates to meld with the insane Van Gelder, saying he'd never used the technique with a human; "It's a hidden, personal thing to the Vulcan people, part of our private lives." In practice this is similar to the idea that Vulcans are unemotional or that anyone in the Federation ever obeys the Prime Directive: mentioned only to highlight all of the many, many, many episodes where they do the opposite.
Depending on the era of Star Trek and/or lack of other interesting plot for the episode, mind melds can cause a variety of maladies and after effects in either party. They can also be used for mutual communication or to rifle through people's brains forcibly. Either case usually involves a lot of mugging for the camera on the part of the actors, which often leads to interesting screenshots.
==Hand Position==
The default canonical hand position for a mind meld is for the initiator to place their fingers on the sides of the subject's face. The Vulcan Nerve Pinch is delivered to the base of the neck. The original series also featured the so-called Vulcan Death Grip, which involves placing the hands over the victim's face. However, this is a fake. Spock pretended to do it in order to make it appear to the Romulans that he had killed Captain Kirk, and it is complete hogwash. Fans speculate that Kirk made it up.
==Other Telepathic Techniques==
Vulcans can obviously use telepathy outside of mind-melding. In "A Taste of Armageddon" and "By Any Other Name", Spock was able to communicate feelings of unease to prison guards in order to make them open the door and come in to have a look, whereupon Kirk and company could bash them and escape. In "The Omega Glory" he guided a native woman to go get a communicator and open it so the Enterprise could get a signal and send a rescue party. And in "Turnabout Intruder," Kirk (in Janice Lester's body) asks Spock to use telepathy to verify it's really him in there. Spock does this so briefly that it seems not a mind meld but merely a mind touch. In the second draft script of "Amok Time" Spock explains that his mind and T'Pring's were joined by a marn tam connection, different from a mind meld. He even briefly shows Kirk how it's done. Spock also contacts McCoy's mind very briefly to prepare for his katra life essence to enter McCoy upon his death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 
When the Vulcan crew of the U.S.S. Intrepid are killed in "The Immunity Syndrome", Spock immediately senses their deaths, and was even able to pick up that "they did not know what was killing them, or would have understood it had they known," later telling Kirk they were "astonished" by their defeat. A deleted line in "Amok Time" refers to all Vulcans being able to sense their proximity to the home planet no matter where they are, and this connection appears to be what happens in "All Our Yesterdays" when Spock is thrown 5000 years into the past and gradually reverts to a more primitive state, like the Vulcans of that time period.
==The Mind Meld in Fanon==
In seperis' story You'll Get There in the End (It Just Takes a While), the prequel to her epic War Games, the mind meld from the Star Trek (2009) movie between Kirk and Spock (TOS) triggered pon farr in Kirk because the Kirk and Spock from the TOS universe were bonded and that transferred through the mind meld. In the story Kirk had to mate with Spock (2009) in a fuck or die scenario. Mind melds later become important in the sequel where Vulcan telepathy and the mechanics of mind melds and bonds are an important plot element.
Fans may mistake lighter, simpler telepathic contacts for mind melds. Numeous fan critics have identified writers such as Sondra Marshak (especially in The Price of the Phoenix and Della Van Hise (in Killing Time) seeming to use the mind meld as a metaphor for sex. Some have misread the mind meld as being identical with the marriage bond of pon farr and refer to Spock's occasional emergency one-sided melds (as in "Mirror, Mirror") as "literal mind rape". Since Spock also did a mind meld with the injured Horta in "Devil in the Dark", a machine in "The Changeling" and the whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, it can be assumed that the wedding bond is a more specific action.
Slash fans also fondly imagine that the brief Vulcan salute Spock gives just before he dies in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Kirk's pressing his own hand to the glass symbolizes subtext viewers are meant to interpret that the two have a sexual bond. The real Vulcan display of affection is the two-fingered gesture Spock's father Sarek makes with Amanda in "Journey to Babel". 
The real gestures leading up to sexual contact are seen between Spock and the Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident". It's strongly implied that telepathy was involved in their joining, but Nimoy portrayed it much differently from the mind meld, and it's unclear whether they formed a bond in the usual fannish sense. Most fans writing about this episode seem to believe they simply connected for a "brief encounter", quite proper for the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.
==The Mind Meld Portrayed in Fanworks==
File:Antimatter3mindmeld.jpg|one of first fan depictions of the "Vulcan Death Grip", from Anti-Matter #3, artist is Carol Lee
Image:Tal-Shaya 4 mindmeld.jpg|inside art showing Spock's meld with McCoy from "Mirror, Mirror" by Cheree Cargill from Tal Shaya #4
File:Katie J Green 1979 THE MELD .jpg|original art, Katie J. Green (1979)
File:Interstat39.jpg|cover of Interstat #39
Image:Lst6.jpg|cover of LoneStar Trek #6
Image:Mindmeld2.jpg|cover of Mind Meld #2 by Caren Parnes
Image:Spockanalia-5.jpg|Vulcan "death grip" from the cover of Spockanalia #5 
Image:Closer KS.jpg|Forced mind meld (repurposed "death grip") in a scene from Closer (vid)
Image:Thirdverdict1.jpg|from The Third Verdict by Bev Zuk
Image:Stardate18inside3.jpg|from Stardate #18, by unknown artist (HK?), showing Spock's placing of his katra in an unconscious McCoy's mind from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
File:Thyla27.jpg|the cover of T'hy'la #27, artist is IM Mueller
File:Neverandalways3.jpg|from Nome #9, from the story Never and Always, artist is Elwyn Conway
File:Nome10art7.jpg| from Nome #10, artist is Chris Soto for "One More Door" -- "This is a gorgeous illo! A close-up side view of Kirk and Spock in a meld; bare arms and shoulders. Spock's hands are on Kirk's face and you can see that Kirk is looking slightly away from Spock's eyes. I'm awed by that detail alone. It looks exactly like them as they appeared in the early movie arc." from The K/S Press #57 
File:Ksx2insidefront.jpg|from KSX #2, Spock and Avon from Blake's 7, artist is Caren Parnes
==Essays/Additional Reading==
==References==
Category:Star Trek Concepts