"To Thine Own Self"
May. 7th, 2010 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyAha! Another episode of TNG I haven’t seen before—and goddamn, it’s one of the episodes that fills me with glee! I flippin’ love it when the Space!People make first contact with some pre-industrial society in TNG, because of instead of the “WE COME IN PEACE SHOOT TO KILL” philosophy of Captain Kirk and whoever they put in charge of The Future in Avatar and the CDF of Old Man’s War*, you get to watch a much more hopeful view of people who really do care about treating people with civility.**
Quite apart from the optimistic idea that maybe at some point we actually learn from past mistakes, it makes for a lot more interesting plotlines and character interactions. Us vs. Them gets kind of old after a while.
It’s why I’ve said that I’d love to just see Avatar be a documentary—I am the sort of person who barely needs a plot if the universe itself is interesting enough. I could spend hours on a pointless virtual tour of Pandora. There are also a million other plot possibilities I can think of that would be more in-depth and engaging, although there would be fewer opportunities for huge explosions. (Off the top of my head: lost wanderer human falls in with Na’vi, humans and Na’vi band together to save Pandora or Earth from some outside threat, humans decide to save Pandora from some outside threat while remaining unknown to the natives, aliens do that for humans,*** Na’vi and humans establish trade, etc., etc..) I’d take any of those as a totally interesting alternative.
Plus, in this one you get to see Data being helpless and stripped of affectation and showing he’s innocent and empirical, and then a mob beats the shit out of him. And there's a crazy medieval Alchemist Lady! What more could you ask for?
Yet Another Universal Translator Discussion Question: In this episode, Data gets Classic Hollywood Amnesia and forgets who he is and what the Federation is, but he remembers Science. So he staggers into some preindustrial society and spouts technobabble at them—but he does it in their language, and they don’t seem to have science words. So is he just making words up? Tossing in English (or Klingon or something) words? Using these people’s words in strange new ways analogous to some weird linguistic algorithm? Or what?
*Still an excellent book, and I’m led to expect that as I read more I’ll find that they question their tendency to shoot all the aliens.
**I know people have just remarked upon Stephen Hawking’s pessimistic predictions about aliens, but he’s been saying it would go badly since at least A Brief History of Time. (Damn, that’s a good book.) But I do hope some aliens would be nicer than that.
***Mostly just because that’s my one real beef with the Prime Directive. It pisses me right the hell off when the Federation starts waffling on about how sad it is that they’ve just found a planet that’s about to get destroyed and they can’t be assed just to knock the asteroid out of the way while not making any contact with the people. Dude, it’s a stroke of luck you came along when you did. Just save the fuckers.
Quite apart from the optimistic idea that maybe at some point we actually learn from past mistakes, it makes for a lot more interesting plotlines and character interactions. Us vs. Them gets kind of old after a while.
It’s why I’ve said that I’d love to just see Avatar be a documentary—I am the sort of person who barely needs a plot if the universe itself is interesting enough. I could spend hours on a pointless virtual tour of Pandora. There are also a million other plot possibilities I can think of that would be more in-depth and engaging, although there would be fewer opportunities for huge explosions. (Off the top of my head: lost wanderer human falls in with Na’vi, humans and Na’vi band together to save Pandora or Earth from some outside threat, humans decide to save Pandora from some outside threat while remaining unknown to the natives, aliens do that for humans,*** Na’vi and humans establish trade, etc., etc..) I’d take any of those as a totally interesting alternative.
Plus, in this one you get to see Data being helpless and stripped of affectation and showing he’s innocent and empirical, and then a mob beats the shit out of him. And there's a crazy medieval Alchemist Lady! What more could you ask for?
Yet Another Universal Translator Discussion Question: In this episode, Data gets Classic Hollywood Amnesia and forgets who he is and what the Federation is, but he remembers Science. So he staggers into some preindustrial society and spouts technobabble at them—but he does it in their language, and they don’t seem to have science words. So is he just making words up? Tossing in English (or Klingon or something) words? Using these people’s words in strange new ways analogous to some weird linguistic algorithm? Or what?
*Still an excellent book, and I’m led to expect that as I read more I’ll find that they question their tendency to shoot all the aliens.
**I know people have just remarked upon Stephen Hawking’s pessimistic predictions about aliens, but he’s been saying it would go badly since at least A Brief History of Time. (Damn, that’s a good book.) But I do hope some aliens would be nicer than that.
***Mostly just because that’s my one real beef with the Prime Directive. It pisses me right the hell off when the Federation starts waffling on about how sad it is that they’ve just found a planet that’s about to get destroyed and they can’t be assed just to knock the asteroid out of the way while not making any contact with the people. Dude, it’s a stroke of luck you came along when you did. Just save the fuckers.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 10:55 pm (UTC)Yeah, Data seems like someone who could much more probably be subjected to Hollywood Amnesia.
Science words with conlangs are tough, aren't they? I get really blocked with them just because, while they're still pretty naturalistic, they're also a bit more derivative as people revise and update the way they categorize the universe. Plus, the need for precision makes it hard to just tack a new definition onto an extant word, and leads to people trying for a logical naming system ... it's a lot harder to take into account, I think.
(Get Medieval is awesome, but the language question doesn't seem to bother me as much. I do remember Asher trying to explain atomic theory to Jacques--I figured he uses alien words when there's no French equivalent and then explains it. Oh, but my favorite is still the translation of "we don't have gravity"--"the rough translation is 'hang on'!")
no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 11:43 pm (UTC)