Star Trek Ruminations

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...

While Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country wove issues of translation and communication into the story, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home issues of translation and communication are the story. More than any of the other movies, and more than all but maybe a handful of episodes, the drama of this story grows directly out of the complexities of communicating with alien life-forms. In his book I Am Spock , Leonard Nimoy provides some insight into the creative process behind this movie. Early on he consulted with three scientists involved in the SETI program, including Philip Morrison. Morrison argued strongly that communication with an alien life form would be virtually impossible: In addition to the mechanical problems of having radically different speech organs, the thought process and shared experience from a totally alien environment and path of evolution would leave even a translated sentence incomprehensible. Of course, in the Star Trek universe we are dealing with a lot of hum...

Let us take a moment to revisit the idea of scanning brain activity to guide the translation process. I suggested that the UT may be able to detect thought patterns that correspond to certain categories of words - such as nouns, verbs, or specific kinds of nouns (people, animals, food, numbers). I recently came across an interesting book that indicates that the human brain actually does work that way. The books is Um . . . Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean , by Michael Erard. The book compiles historical, literary, anecdotal, and linguistic evidence that show the inner workings of the mistakes we make when speaking. In the process of studying these speech disfluencies the underlying structure of language and thought patterns begins to emerge. Erard explains: For instance, when you accidentally swap one word for another, you always choose a word of the same part of speech, which is why I heard someone say, "That's the cake on the icing" (where two ...

“ Little Green Men ” ( DS9 ) gives us insight into the Ferengi Universal Translator, and in the process illustrates some of the logistical problems with any such device. According to this episode, Ferengi have their UTs implanted in their ears. This echoes the Babel Fish of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . (There’s a slightly more serious, in-ear device in the Michael Crichton novel Timeline , although it didn’t make it into the movie.) There’s a logic to the in-ear approach that we don’t have with other incarnations of the Star Trek UT. Consider the scene in “The 37s” ( VOY ). In that scene the revived Japanese man from 1937 marvels that he is hearing everyone speak Japanese. How? Because Janeway and Kes are wearing little gold pins? How is it that there is no cacophony of overlapping voices speaking English, Japanese, Ocampa, and whatever other languages may have been represented? This is a basic flaw in the presentation of the Universal Translator. On the other hand, having th...

"We must respond personally. The Universal Translator would be recognized." - Pavel Chekov There is no doubt that this scene is mostly played for laughs, and seeing Starfleet officers frantically searching through books and speaking Klingon badly is an entertaining sight. But it's problematic if you think it through. At the same time, Chekov's statement highlights a significant issue for the Universal Translator. First, some of what makes this scene difficult to accept. To start with - and this is really just nitpicking - why does Chekov get the disembodied voice over about the UT? Wouldn't that be Uhura's line? Would a Starfleet vessel really have a library of books about the Klingon language? Would Uhura really speak Klingon so badly? Hoshi Sato was probably spinning in her grave.The Klingon translators at Kirk and McCoy's trial speak better English than she speaks Klingon. (Supposedly Nichelle Nichols objected to the scene because she believed Uhura wo...

Maybe you've already seen this before. It's the smallest of silly footnotes to my ongoing discussion of the Universal Translator , but I just came across this post about the physical prop used for the UT on Enterprise ("Terra Prime") . Turns out they used a "mineral magnet toilet cleaner." Hey Hoshi, Translate This! (Have Phaser, Will Travel)