Star Trek Ruminations

In the past I've commented at length on the plausibility of the Drayan , a species the ages in reverse in the episode "Innocence" ( VOY ). Recently Earthweek featured an article on an 'immortal' jellyfish called turritopsis nutricula . As explained below this little animal is not just biologically immortal, but is actually capable of reverse aging. Turritopsis nutricula - That is the scientific name for a jellyfish-like creature. After it matures and reproduces, this creature completely reverts to a younger state and starts its life over again. (Read more here and here .) So speculation and extrapolation aside, we do have here on earth proof that there is such a thing as reverse aging. If only we could get poor turritopsis nutricula a new name. Perhaps Drayan would be most appropriate. You can read these same comments in context here: 100 Years Young - Can an Organism 'Grow' Smaller and Younger?

To update an older discussion - I came across one more glimpse of Utopia Planitia that predates the Voyager episode "Relativity." In the seventh season TNG episode, "Parallels" there is an image of Utopia Planitia taken by the Argus Array (see the image in the lower right of the display). Admittedly this is the Utopia Planitia from a parallel universe, but "our" Worf didn't identify any major discrepancy between this Utopia Planitia and the "real" one. While the visual evidence is not entirely clear, it looks to me like this is not an orbital facility, but rather something on the surface of Mars. The display seems to make a distinction between orbital stations on the left and planetary locations on the right. It also appears that all of the structures are built between the craters. An orbital station would visually overlap at least some of the craters on the ground. On the other hand, even if it is an orbital facility it still looks marked...

I'm definitely not the first to say it, but watching Deep Space Nine now, it's amazing to see how stories about toppled regimes, provisional governments, terrorists and freedom fighters, political and religious corruption have become even more meaningful now than when they were first written. I thought something similar about the socio-economic issues dealt with in "Past Tense." Re-watching this story also raised some questions in my mind about the time travel involved. "Past Tense" - Future Imperfect Here we have an interesting glimpse into the near future. Of course, it was the near future back when the show first aired in 1995, but it's even closer now. One thing the show failed to predict is the prevalence of cell phones and other wireless devices. We see one wireless phone in the episode, but we don't see a single mobile phone. There's also not a flat screen to be seen - just a lot of bulky terminals. I'm sure it made sense at the tim...

Tuvok and Neelix have been the obvious odd couple on the ship since Neelix first tried to hug "Mister Vulcan" in the pilot episode. "Riddles" may be the strongest and most touching episode in the Tuvok-Neelix arc. Here the true depth of their friendship is established. Really, it is probably this episode which carries the emotional weight of Tuvok's "dance" for Neelix when he departs at the end of the next season. The premise is an attack by a shadowy (pun intended) race called the Ba'neth leaves Tuvok in a coma. He wakes up mute, disoriented, and with a severe brain injury that leaves him in an child-like state. To obtain information on the weapon, Janeway teams up with an alien investigator to track down Tuvok's assailant. That plot in itself is fairly standard, and it's not the only time the Doctor has claimed he needs more information about a weapon to undue the damage that it has caused. That seems like a stretch - something like sayin...

“The Devil in the Dark” is basically the early prototype for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Of course, “The Devil in the Dark” doesn’t have time travel or all of the fish-out-of-water gags of the movie, but at the core these are both stories about communication—and of the conflict that can grow out of a lack of communication. In his book, I Am Spock , Leonard Nimoy makes a direct link between his fondness for this episode and his inspiration for The Voyage Home . The Horta is an interesting case study of the difficulties of translation. First, there is the mechanical hurdle—this creature has no speech organs. As Phillip Morrison indicated , in a diversely populated universe what we think of as speech can hardly be universal. We have to wonder, how quickly would we recognize intelligence and communication from totally alien life-forms? The seemingly omniscient UT simply is no match for the Horta (or the whales, or the mystery probe that came to find them). Spock makes an attempt to ...

Reflecting on the role of translation in the Star Trek movies brings us to Star Trek: Insurrection . Now in this film, translation plays no role whatsoever, and therein lies the problem. One of the difficulties of this movie is explaining the revelation that the Son'a are really the Ba'ku. This raises a lot of questions about where they got their ships, how they have represented themselves as an entire race and a force to be reckoned with, how they were able to enslave two other races and so on. I would guess they misrepresented themselves to the Federation like so many Gibeonites (see Joshuah 9:3-15), and the Federation didn't probe too deeply because of the questionable nature of the whole matter. But that simplistic explanation doesn't really account for everything. You can read a much more thorough exploration of the the Son'a problem here, along with some theories that try to explain it away. No matter how we explain their deception, it seems incredible that...