Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Of course, the weird thing is that in TOS the only confirmed appearance of the UT was in "Metamorphosis." You know, the one where they try to translate energy pulses being "spoken" by a creature that doesn't have vocal chords or any of a thousand different reference points that a UT would need to extract a language? In all other episodes everyone just happens to speak English! Not even "Federation Standard", but outright English!



Maybe I'll buy that the Klingons learned English to communicate with the Federation. Maybe I'll buy that the Guardian of Forever has something akin to a UT to allow it to talk to visitors. But that doesn't allow for the dozens of other cases where everyone just speaks English. How did the residents of Sigma Iota II read The Book? How can the Fabrini speak anything close to our language if they've been isolated for ten thousand years! Even Vulcan society doesn't go that far back!

[Nate the Great]

And don't forget that a big chunk of a combadge is just solid gold.

[Flying Gremlin]

Too bad you'll never see Discovery. S2E4 "An Obol for Charon" will throw three more monkey wrenches into your thought process about the UT.

[Nate the Great]

So a comment on a random YouTube video suggests that Uhura couldn't speak Klingon because Nomad wiped that knowledge from her mind and she didn't relearn it.


PNQ: Opinions?


Yeah, no. She had over twenty years to relearn a language as important as Klingon. Remember that she was an instructor at Starfleet Academy for many years, she had the time.

[Nate the Great]

So I watched a fan trailer for DS9 again...


PNQ: What kind of plot could a DS9 movie have had?

[Nate the Great]

So I'm watching yet another Shakespeare adaptation that moves the setting to the present but keeps the original prose...


PNQ: Is keeping the original dialogue necessary for a true adaptation of Shakespeare? Is his genius only present in his dialogue, with the characters, plotlines, etc. secondary in importance?


I wish I could see an adaptation of Shakespeare that had the original setting, characters, plot, etc. but updated the language. No more iambic pentameter, no references to obscure myths that were well-known to the Elizabethans but not to us, no words that are now extinct. It must be possible.

[Nate the Great]

Frank Sinatra, "The Way You Look Tonight"


(still think Fred Astaire did it better, but I have a question about Frank's version...)


Some commenters are saying that Frank is pronouncing "warm" more like "worm" at 0:50.


PNQ: Do you hear it?


I don't. I hear "wahrm", sure, but it never gets to "worm." That's just his accent, it's not something to make fun of.


EDIT: Upon rewatching I realize the joke was about a typo with the onscreen lyrics. Oops.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Is keeping the original dialogue necessary for a true adaptation of Shakespeare? Is his genius only present in his dialogue, with the characters, plotlines, etc. secondary in importance?

It turns out he dropped a lot of references to current events into his plays as well. The porter in Macbeth who goes on about equivocating, for example, is referring to the then-recent discovery that Jesuits had been teaching English Catholics how to not-lie in order to hide priests from the authorities.


At the end of the day, it all comes down to what you feel is important to you, to the integrity of the play, and to the audience.