I watched the Enterprise episode “Carbon Creek” over the weekend. I’m quite a fan of Enterprise, and I find that many of the episodes are just as good as TNG from years back.
In this episode, T’Pol tells the story of how Vulcans made First Contact with humans in Pennsylvania back in the ’50s. Spoilers follow.
There wasn’t much plot in the episode, and it was more of a character study (but, that’s ok, as sometimes that can turn out well). T’Pol tells of how a Vulcan ship crash-lands on Earth and, with little hope of rescue, the Vulcans start living among humans.
After several weeks of human life, they hear that their distress call was received after all, and that a Vulcan ship will pick them up. At this point, one of the Earth-living Vulcans mentions to his captain (T’Mir) that he would like to stay on Earth.
Cut to the rescue-ship landing scene, and the captain of that ship asks why only two Vulcans are at the landing point. T’Mir explains that two of her comrades died in the crash and that their bodies were cremated (really, only one body was cremated). So, she was covering for the Vulcan that wanted to stay behind — but she lied. And, Vulcans can’t lie, right? Bleh.
maybe the vulcans evolved between the 1950’s and Enterprise/Spock, much like the evolution of the kligon forehead between tos and tng.