Star Trek: 9 Times Mr. Spock Got A Power-Up
4. Spock’s Warp Speed Telepathic Receiver
We usually see Spock either touching his mind fusion/probe/meld subject or just inches away, with at most a wall between them. Well, except in “The Immunity Syndrome”, when Spock jolts in shock and reports:
SPOCK: Captain, the Intrepid. It just died. And the four hundred Vulcans aboard, all dead.
Mind you, the Intrepid is reported to be in solar system Gamma Seven-A which a “full long-range scan” indicates is “dead”.
As Douglas Adams observed, “space is big, really really big,” and even if the Enterprise were right outside the system (it’s not), normal radio waves—let alone brainwaves—at light speed would take hours or days to reach the ship. If they were one star away… years. So for Spock to feel 400 minds die at such range requires Vulcan mental emanations to travel at FTL (faster than light) velocity. Just what sort of psychic horsepower do Vulcan brains put out to be detectable at such ludicrous distances? And just what sort of receiver is “Spock’s Brain” packing to receive this transmission?
The mind boggles, so much so that McCoy lampshades the question:
MCCOY: But I thought you had to be in physical contact with a subject before--
SPOCK: Doctor, even I, a half-Vulcan, could hear the death scream of four hundred Vulcan minds crying out over the distance between us.
Fortunately, this silly FTL telepathic power-up was a one-and-done. Well, at least until the movies...