Phoning Home: Not As Easy If You Don't Know Your Number

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Man, writing a first contact scene without a Babel Fish is hard.

Especially when the first thing you want to communicate with the aliens is, “Hi, we’re sorry unscrupulous pirate aliens abducted you, but you’re safe now in the galactic community! Now … can you tell us roughly which of the stars in this vast whorl of glittering systems is yours?”

Not to mention I still have sickbrain,* which means for all I know I just wrote a scene involving psychedelically furred aliens whose faces can fwoomp out like giant inside-out umbrellas and whose language sounds like dueling banjos.

Hah, wouldn’t that be crazy and … oh, it looks like that’s what I did write.

Good god, I’m not even on any drugs other than your basic antidepressants, and yet I see colors in music and firmly believe that the number eight is male and invent flying umbrella-faced banjopeople.

I probably wouldn’t even notice if I took LSD.

Well, anyway. This scene is complex enough that I wasn’t sure I was going to put it onscreen. The aliens are important enough to the plot of this Doctors! episode, but if it weren’t for the fact that it also provides a very useful setting for secondary character development, I might have just scrapped it. I myself would find a slow, uncertain scene involving a somewhat lost galactic culture trying to talk to a thoroughly lost pre-space individual to be fascinating if done right, but then I also found the linguistic appendices in The Lord of the Rings fascinating, so I’m not the best judge here. But I think if I do it right it’ll wind up useful and interesting.

I just hope I still think that when I get all the mucus out of my head. Otherwise I’ll have to try again, and damn, it was tough enough the first time.


*I know I’m whinging, but I am sick dammit and GET to whinge, and I hate the way I think when I’m sick. It’s sort of fuzzy and soupy at the same time.

Comments

[serrana.livejournal.com]

You know, C. J. Cherryh's Chanur novels start exactly like that.

No, srsly.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* I actually thought of that when I realized I should do this scene, and reread the first part of Pride of Chanur for ideas on getting past the language barrier. These poor displaced critters are even more lost than Tully, though--they are a non-spacefaring species abducted from their own planet. Fortunately at this point they're in a much more stable position.

It's just, you know, nowhere near home ...

[beccastareyes]

I was thinking that as well.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure how people live who don't have worlds and people in their heads. It strikes me as being rather boring.

[tay421.livejournal.com]

I can't agree more.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right? I have been known to ask "Then what do you THINK about?" before, actually ...

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

It's kind of mindbending. I don't think I've ever asked anyone that, but I do wonder.

[tsita.livejournal.com]

I agree that eight is male. I prefer numbers 2 or 3 or multiples of them. If said number is a multiple of both, I'm very happy.

Hmm.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

My favourite band AFI has a song called Synesthesia. [/random]

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Hehe, the Freefall Comic in the tab next to this one is about waking up after sleeping for 18 hours due to being sick. Synchronicity!

Edit: The scene you're talking about also kind of reminds me of a bit in Schlock Mercenary when they're trying to figure out where Schlock's Homeworld is, and he can basically just give descriptions of the planetary surface and the force cage he was in on the pirate ship that abducted him.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I probably wouldn’t even notice if I took LSD.
That means if we can somehow harvest that I won't have to do that thing to the water supply that my friends and I've said too much