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Old 03-07-2019, 10:09 PM
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Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
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SPOCK: As I turned and my eyes beheld you, I displayed emotion. I beg forgiveness.
SURAK: The cause was more than sufficient. Let us speak no further of it.

I prefer TOS Vulcans to almost any other Vulcan in Trek. As SF Debris put it, emotionless doesn't mean lifeless.

SURAK: In my time, we knew not of Earth men. I am pleased to see that we have differences. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.

This line has stuck with me for most of my life. It may not be one of the great Trek quotes, but the meaning grows the more you think about it. Another unspoken reference to the IDIC.

ROCK: The confrontation of the two opposing philosophies you term good and evil. Since this is our first experiment with Earthlings, our theme is a simple one. Survival, life and death. Your philosophies are alien to us, and we wish to understand them and discover which is the stronger.

While the experiment of good vs. evil is an old and rather hackneyed scifi trope, my biggest problem with the idea is that this is hardly good vs. evil, it's survival. As Odo says, "The one thing I've learned about humanoids is that in extreme situations, even the best of you are capable of doing terrible things." Furthermore, "willing to kill to survive" doesn't equate to "evil" in the simplistic terms that the Excalbians seem to want.

MCCOY: Can we beam the captain and Spock back up?
SCOTT: We don't have the power. They'll come aboard a mass of dying flesh.

If you don't have the power the transporter won't even engage, and even if you force it they just won't materialize. Yeah, yeah, I remember the scene in STTMP, but I'd rather consider that whole movie noncanon, if only to excise those awful uniforms from canon.

KIRK: What do you want?
GREEN: The same thing as you do, to get out of here.

Now this is weird. Where is Green planning on going? Does he think he's been transported here from World War III and has a life to get back to? So many questions...

KIRK: That rock-like thing is our enemy, not those illusions.

What is it with TOS episodes and naming redshirts with no more than one line but refusing to name much more important characters in spoken dialogue? Seriously!

KIRK [OC]: What caused the red alert?
UHURA: I don't know yet, sir.

The ship heating up caused the red alert, you don't know the cause yet! Do these scripts get proofread or not?

SCOTT [OC]: We're on emergency battery power only.

KIRK: What happened?

[Bridge]

SCOTT: I can't explain it, sir, but the matter and antimatter are in red zone proximity.
KIRK [OC]: What caused that?
SCOTT: There's no knowing and there's no stopping it either. The shielding is breaking down. I estimate four hours before it goes completely. Four hours before the ship blows up.

So auxiliary (AKA impulse) reactors don't exist yet AND you can't dump the animatter manually? Who's the numnut that designed this ship anyway? Leah Brahms would've had this guy fired for even suggesting such a ship's design.

KIRK: Scotty, inform Starfleet Command. Disengage nacelles, Jettison if possible.

Whether or not this was an oblique reference to saucer separation capabilities, I must point out that jettisoning the nacelles isn't going to solve much. There's no antimatter in the nacelles, just warp plasma!

KIRK: There's nothing immoral about fighting an illusion, Mister Spock. We play their game, fight, or lose the ship and all the crewmen aboard.
SPOCK: And if they're real, Captain?

Then you defend yourself. We've seen plenty of Vulcans have no problem killing in battle, or even just to gain a mate. Get off your high horse, Spock. If you were that much of a pacifist you never would've made it this far in Starfleet.

KIRK: Thank you. Thank you. Mister Spock, we'll need weapons. I believe the ancient Vulcans made something like a boomerang?
SPOCK: Yes, Captain.

You need either a proper knife or sufficient time to carve a boomerang, neither of which they have. If they had a proper knife, they'd just use it. And if they had sufficient time, setting booby-traps around a home base would've been more effective.

SURAK: In my time on Vulcan, we also faced these same alternatives. We'd suffered devastating wars which nearly destroyed our planet. Another was about to begin. We were torn. But out of our suffering some of us found the discipline to act. We sent emissaries to our opponents to propose peace. The first were killed, but others followed. Ultimately we achieved peace, which has lasted since then.

I thought that the proto-Romulans were exiled. Besides, you hardly have the time or the ambassadors to spare in this case. What is Surak's argument again?

SURAK: Surely it is more logical to heal than kill.
KIRK: I'm afraid that kind of logic doesn't apply here.
SURAK: That is precisely why we should not fight.

Will becoming martyrs save the Enterprise? I have no doubt that if Kirk and Spock were presented with that option they'd take it, but they haven't.

GREEN: How can I believe that? No one talks peace unless he's ready to back it up with war.
SURAK: He talks peace if it is the only way to live.

I wonder if there is a Vietnam allegory somewhere in here.

KIRK: Your Surak is a brave man.
SURAK: Men of peace usually are, Captain.

It's exchanges like this that helped immortalize TOS.

ROCK: You are the survivors. The others have run off. It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted. However, you have failed to demonstrate to me any other difference between your philosophies. Your good and your evil use the same methods, achieve the same results. Do you have an explanation?

Yes, this was a fight for survival, not a fight between good and evil. At least the Beyonder in Spider-Man TAS set up a more reasonable scenario!

KIRK: What did you offer the others if they won?
ROCK: What they wanted most. Power.
KIRK: You offered me the lives of my crew.
ROCK: I perceive.

I like it when Kirk can teach a lesson with words. He also does it better when he uses few words but leads the other person through the chain of logic. When he tries Picard-style speeches it inevitably turns into a pile of hammy preaching.

KIRK: What gives you the right to hand out life and death?
ROCK: The same right that brought you here. The need to know new things.
KIRK: We came in peace.
ROCK: And you may go in peace.

I wonder if the Excalbians could fit as a Federation member.

SCOTT: The ship is functioning normally again, sir, and the restart cycle is in operation. You'd never know anything had been out of order. I can't fathom it.
KIRK: Mister Sulu.
SULU: We should be on warp power within thirty minutes, sir.

I thought Scotty found a way that was faster than thirty minutes back in "The Naked Time"!

The Fiver

Lincoln: Just beam me aboard Air Force One.
Spock: There is no ship with said name in the area.
Kirk: No, but there will be once he's aboard! Kirk to Scotty, energize!

Wouldn't it be NASA One when a President finally goes into space?

Kirk: Yes. Now to figure out why our weapons were left behind. Are you a perverted Ferengi transporter chief, Mr. Lincoln?

A Menage a Troi reference, neat. I suddenly wonder why IJD GAF didn't include a Roberta Lincoln reference.

Lincoln: Surak? Surraaaaaaak? Hey, Pointy! It's me, honest!

Should've been "Pointy-Ears", but whatever.

Spock: It appears the creatures of the planet could manipulate matter at will, and built the characters out of our own expectations of them.
Kirk: Interesting... and if I expect to see an Orion slave girl on my lap right now?
(POOF)
Tinky Winky: Gagahehe-zeeday!
Spock: ...then you get smitten by parody.

First, curse you IJD for reminding me of the Teletubbies. Second, Tinky Winky is the purple one, the green one is Dipsy (and yes I had to look this stuff up, don't ever accuse me of watching Teletubbies! I feel enough shame for watching Barney way longer than I ever should've.). Of course, both Tinky Winky and Dipsy are boys, but these are hardly the worst aspects of this scenario.

Memory Alpha


* There were attempts to get Mark Lenard to play Lincoln (which would've been cool, as he would've played each of the four main Trek races), but he had scheduling conflicts.
* Another reference to TOS taking place in the 22nd century. Series bible rant, moving on...
* Kahless appears as a human-type Klingon despite this occurring before ENT. Instead of bringing up ENT I'd rather go with "nobody on the Enterprise knew what he looked like, and the computer didn't have a picture either, so the Excalbians had to kludge together an illusion based on what the Enterprise crew thinks he looks like."
* In 2014 a celebrity tweeted the no honorable way to kill line thinking it was an authentic Lincoln quote. It reminds me of the equally fictional Lincon quote from Pollyanna, "If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." At the time Roy Disney actually made souvenir lockets with the quote in it to sell before being told that it was made up!

Nitpickers Guide

* If Lincoln has no knowledge of technology past his lifetime, why did he walk towards a door without a knob knowing it would open?
* How does Kirk not know who Surak is?
* Phil was quick to point out previous ordinary uses of minutes and miles.
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