[geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...

[Eric Dittman]

> > [ 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.

I think there were better episodes of ST:TNG, but I didn't think a
lot of ST:TNG (or the followups) as a whole, with most episodes
being solved with Treknology pulled out of someone's ass in the
last 10 minutes without much work towards the solution in the
previous 50 minutes.

For episodes of ST:TNG, I think "The Inner Light" was much
better.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" also stands out as the first episode
I remember that Picard didn't surrender when given the chance.

> > 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.

What bugged me is why would a race develop a normal language
and then move towards speaking in metaphors?  They had to
have had normal language to have described the original event
that became the metaphor.  And to be consistent, each new
event would have to be described in known metaphors, which
would create extremely long new metaphors.

For an example, explain how electron migration in integrated
circuits occurs using metaphors for events that happened in
Roman times.

> 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.

What ranking did "Darmok" get in the viewer polls?

> 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!  :-)

We do have some metaphor-based expressions, but we don't speak
in them exclusively.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/