[geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, February 13, 2002 at 23:04:12 (-0600), Eric Dittman wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...
>
> [ On Wednesday, February 13, 2002 at 21:03:58 (-0800), Peter L. Wargo wrote: ]
> > Subject: [geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...
> > 
> > I'm watching my favorite ST:TNG episode off of the TiVo: "Darmok".  I 
> > never realized that Paul Winfield played the alien captain.  Damn, he 
> > can act.

I agree -- it was the best damn episode of any modern SF series ever.

> The whole "speaking in metaphor" idea bugged me.  How did they
> develop the words they needed to speak that way, and how many
> people die each year because they can't just yell "DUCK!" instead
> of saying "when BillyBob lost hold of the rope holding up the
> piano"?

What do you mean?  Surely you know that the Universal Translator was
capable of finding matching words in arbitrary never-before-heard
languages.  The problem of course isn't with syntax, or in this case
even of words with obvious individual meanings, but with semantics --
what do the words mean when you put them together.

Obviously the effort of translating such a concept into form suitable
for a modern television audience, even a very USA-centric one, is very
difficult, and the relative success of that episode is one of its
crowing achievements.

Indeed in a culture with a form of language based on metaphor there
would be some very commonly understood scenarios that could be quickly
expressed with one-word "abbreviations" -- eg. they might just say
"BillyBob!" and you'd get the heck out of the way of the falling piano.

When you think about it we do have many similar metaphor-based
expressions in common use now!  Even some based on Star Trek!  :-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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