Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Which of these 8 dropped Star Trek plots would you most like a continuation to?


8. Gary Seven. Actually, he was good in the John Byrne comics and in the novel Assignment: Eternity, but recasting him to appear again would be fun, maybe in conjunction with the Department of Temporal Investigations.


7. The kids from Miri. Actually, I don't really think we need to return to this plotline. What else is there to say about them?



6. Balok. I don't agree with this one. One of the Strange New Worlds collections features a story about Voyager encountering Bailey in the Delta Quadrant, that's enough for me.



5. The Kelvans. Unless Trek gets to the point that intergalactic travel is possible, I don't really see the point. It would make an interesting seasonlong arc akin to the Xindi or Stargate Universe, but you must remember that only the Kelvans that we met assumed humanoid form, the rest would be very alien.



4. Gillian Taylor. What else is there to her story that needs to be told? Again, there's a Strange New Worlds story (costarring Carol Marcus!) that continues her story enough for me.


3. The Gorn. You'd have to do a lot to flesh out this culture to make them interesting enough to visit. Let them stay in the novels and comics.


2. Charvanek. This one I agree with. They could've done so much more with her. Eventually she could've become sort of the Romulan version of Commander Shran (Nate just referenced Enterprise, lock your doors!). Her appearances in the TOS novels and the Vulcan's Soul trilogy were great.



1. The Guardian on the Edge of Forever. I agree with this one as well. The Guardian had tremendous potential. The Yesterday Saga books are great, his interactions with Q in the Q Continuum Trilogy, etc. A Strange New Worlds story even showed that the Department of Temporal Investigations has been known to use the Guardian on occasion.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: What do you think is the stupidest or most unnecessary subplot in a two-parter?


I'm watching "Time's Arrow" and it's amazing how much the Mrs. Carmichael subplot annoys me. She uses up screentime that could've been better spent fleshing out the villains or making the Mark Twain stuff a bit more meaningful.

[Nate the Great]

In "Trials and Tribbleations" Worf says that Darvin's real name is Darvin.


PNQ: Huh? The guy's name is Gralmek, "Arne Darvin" is just an alias!

[DrWho42]

why do they wear spacesuits in among us if they breathe air

[Nate the Great]

In "Blaze of Glory" Eddington complains about the replicated food. I suddenly wonder...


PNQ: If you're so uptight about replicated food, why would you join Starfleet in the first place?



I mean, one of the unspoken rules of Starfleet is "the vast majority of your food will be replicated", right?



I'm sorry, I just hate Eddington in particular and DS9's handling of the Maquis in general.



I rewatched "The Maquis" the other day and got so annoyed about how they handled the introduction. They were building on multiple NextGen episodes from the past, and STILL didn't write them correctly. The only way any of this makes sense is if the original DMZ leaders lied to the colonists in the beginning. Every single DMZ leader, every single colony. Which will never sound plausible to me.

[Nate the Great]

I've been pondering how to flesh out the Voyager aliens so there are fewer blatant knockoffs of Alpha Quadrant races...


PNQ: Other ideas?


The first thing that comes to mind for the Kazon is a twist on the Ferengi. Instead of money (the Delta Quadrant doesn't seem to have anything approaching a de facto universal currency like gold-pressed latinum), they covet resources. In their area of the quadrant water isn't as plentiful as elsewhere, and they don't have anything approaching replicator technology. Expand it beyond just water, what about fertile cropland, mines of usable ore, fungi with medical purposes. They play Settlers of Cataan instead of Monopoly like the Ferengi do.



KAR: I must protect my territory. Territory is power.


As for the Hirogen, hunting shouldn't be their only hat. Emphasis shouldn't just be on the kill, but it should instead be on showing superiority by becoming better than their prey. Outthinking them, predicting their movements, and above all not being discovered. Good predators don't reveal themselves until just before they attack. The Hirogen shouldn't even be a known quantity, nobody should know their name until Voyager outthinks them. What if Voyager encounters a number of races who talk of their destroyed ships and outposts, but who have no idea who did it? The sensor network should be hard to find and extremely resiliant. There was no need to destroy it, just have the Hirogen increase their computer security and increase the number of ships guarding the network. Eventually Voyager would be made to detour around it to avoid the Hirogen.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Which of these 8 dropped Star Trek plots would you most like a continuation to?


7. The kids from Miri. Actually, I don't really think we need to return to this plotline. What else is there to say about them?

Very unhappy things in The Cry of the Onlies.

6. Balok. I don't agree with this one. One of the Strange New Worlds collections features a story about Voyager encountering Bailey in the Delta Quadrant, that's enough for me.

They also encounter First Federation technology in Ragnarok.

5. The Kelvans. Unless Trek gets to the point that intergalactic travel is possible, I don't really see the point. It would make an interesting seasonlong arc akin to the Xindi or Stargate Universe, but you must remember that only the Kelvans that we met assumed humanoid form, the rest would be very alien.

The Kelvans could be a starting point for brainstorming a Starfleet ship that ends up in the Andromeda galaxy or whichever galaxy they were from.

1. The Guardian on the Edge of Forever. I agree with this one as well. The Guardian had tremendous potential. The Yesterday Saga books are great, his interactions with Q in the Q Continuum Trilogy, etc. A Strange New Worlds story even showed that the Department of Temporal Investigations has been known to use the Guardian on occasion.

Also First Frontier.

Originally Posted by DrWho42

why do they wear spacesuits in among us if they breathe air

There's so much sabotage and general shenanigans in space that life support is on the fritz more often than not, wearing the suits just saves time

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

In "Blaze of Glory" Eddington complains about the replicated food. I suddenly wonder...


PNQ: If you're so uptight about replicated food, why would you join Starfleet in the first place?

Why would you join Starfleet if you don't like the transporter?

[Nate the Great]

Ah, the transporter. One place where I have to admit that Pulaski's character wasn't well written. McCoy would gripe, but he never avoided the thing. He understood that it was a necessity to do his job. Except for that one time, Barclay sucked it up and beamed anyway. But Pulaski? She didn't even have a transporter trace, which meant that she almost died in "Unnatural Selection" because of her stubbornness. "Unnatural Selection" was Stardate 42494.8, "The Child" was 42073.1. That means that she avoided using the transporter for FIVE MONTHS! For a starship I find that inexplicable, especially the flagship. Especially for the Chief Medical Officer.



I recall McCoy referring to himself as "Chief Surgeon" of the Enterprise once. I wonder if some ships have two separate jobs for this, one to handle the crew as a whole along with away missions (McCoy was also the ship's psychologist, remember) and one to stay in Sickbay to handle the bigger medical problems. What if Pulaski wasn't really "Chief Medical Officer" but was really "Chief Surgeon", a non-senior officer position that stays onboard ship at all times. What if there was another unseen doctor who handled the away team stuff?

[Nate the Great]

One of the TNG TV Tropes pages calls the Universal Translator "maybe above all the rest, the single biggest "don't think about this too much" technology in all of Star Trek."


PNQ: Opinions?


After all, as presented the UT has to be able to do the following:
1. Scan the language centers of the brains of everyone in range to form a translation matrix that can be used on the fly.
2. Listen to the speaker's voice to not only translate the words, but also create a copycat artificial voice so everyone doesn't sound like Stephen Hawking.
3. Not only translate based on universal linguistic principles (and let's not even get into how THAT works), but restructure the translation to sound more natural to the ears of the specific person wearing the combadge.

4. Create holographic projections of lips over everyone in range so the lips look like they're speaking the language of whoever is wearing the UT AND not conflict with the projections of the other combadges in range.
5. Obey rules specialized for each language on what to translate or not translate (i.e. say "bat'leth", not "sword of honor", say "Gul" not "Captain").
6. Mute the sound of the original words to not overlap with the computer-generated translation. Oh, and be able to do this for dozens of people in dozens of different places speaking dozens of languages SIMULTANEOUSLY.


Kinda makes the Babel Fish sound less implausible, doesn't it?

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

One of the TNG TV Tropes pages calls the Universal Translator "maybe above all the rest, the single biggest "don't think about this too much" technology in all of Star Trek."


PNQ: Opinions?


After all, as presented the UT has to be able to do the following:
1. Scan the language centers of the brains of everyone in range to form a translation matrix that can be used on the fly.
2. Listen to the speaker's voice to not only translate the words, but also create a copycat artificial voice so everyone doesn't sound like Stephen Hawking.
3. Not only translate based on universal linguistic principles (and let's not even get into how THAT works), but restructure the translation to sound more natural to the ears of the specific person wearing the combadge.

4. Create holographic projections of lips over everyone in range so the lips look like they're speaking the language of whoever is wearing the UT AND not conflict with the projections of the other combadges in range.
5. Obey rules specialized for each language on what to translate or not translate (i.e. say "bat'leth", not "sword of honor", say "Gul" not "Captain").
6. Mute the sound of the original words to not overlap with the computer-generated translation. Oh, and be able to do this for dozens of people in dozens of different places speaking dozens of languages SIMULTANEOUSLY.


Kinda makes the Babel Fish sound less implausible, doesn't it?

I taste pennies now after reading this. That's bad, right?

[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.

[Nate the Great]

Doomcock made a video about Brie Larson and Captain Marvel. I won't link to the video because you guys don't seem to like him, although I must mention that he made a Voyage Home joke in this one.



PNQ: Was Brie Larson herself the problem in the Marvel movies?


I don't care about behind the scenes drama. That's the director's problem, not mine. Star Trek itself has had its share of demanding and hard-to-work with actors, with the Shat himself as only one example.



My problem with her performance in Captain Marvel, etc. was that she didn't have enough to do to showcase a wide variety of emotions and performance types. And that's a writing problem, not an acting problem. I won't be watching Captain Marvel again because I don't like the fundamental story and tone, not because of Larson's performance. She didn't have enough to work with in the first place.

[NAHTMMM]

There's a few Marvel movies I haven't seen, and Captain Marvel is one of them. I haven't heard anything that would turn me off from seeing it.