Vulcan nerve pinch

The script for "The Enemy Within" (1966) stated that Spock "kayoes" (Knocks Out) Captain Kirk (William Shatner)'s duplicate,[1] but Leonard Nimoy, who opposed the Vietnam War and supported Eugene McCarthy,[2] felt that such a brutal action would be unnecessarily violent for a Vulcan.

The book The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry offers a simple explanation: the pinch blocks blood and nerve responses from reaching the brain, leading to unconsciousness.

[citation needed] In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Cathexis", the Doctor inspects a crewmember who was found unconscious and observes an extreme trauma to the trapezius neck bundle, "as though her nerve fibers have been ruptured"; and it is later revealed that the person was the victim of a nerve pinch.

Notably, the above-mentioned instances with Data and the holographic Doctor, "DS9"'s Changeling, Odo,[8] "TNG"'s Jean-Luc Picard,[9] "VOY"'s Seven of Nine.

In the Animated Series episode "Yesteryear", Spock uses the nerve pinch on a Le-matya (a mountain lion-like creature) to save the life of his younger self.