Jean-Luc Picard (July 13, 2305 - ) ~ Quote of the Day

I like this quote.

Boy did he get that right.

I've always considered the entire Star Trek franchise to be the most successful and effective series of "morality plays" of our generation, sneaking in wisdom and morals under the guise of fanciful entertainment.

The words, of course, are those of David Kemper, who wrote that episode.

I worked on Star Trek (the original) from episode IV "Balance of Terror" (a ripoff of the 1957 film The Enemy Below, one of the best submarine films ever made) through most of the first season and about half of the second season. Also involved in ST:TNG, ST:DS9, ST:V and the first four or so episodes of ST:E, as well as the third and fourth feature films. Much of my current physical malaise and mental fog is due to chronic dilithium poisoning, but much of it is related to the mental stress of dealing with writers whose understanding of astronomy was limited to reciting Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I conceived a loathing for the show because, first of all, I had been reading science fiction at that point for a dozen years and hated to see my genre so sullied and tainted, and secondly because of a general attitude epitomized by something Gene Coon, the line producer of the first series, once said to me. I was suggesting (well, this was about the fourth time... maybe "nagging") that since we are in a tech-based series, over a hundred years in the future, maybe it's time to use the metric system. "Pete, he replied, "we don't want it to be authentic, we just want it to sound authentic." The writing was usually good, the acting often excellent, the attitude was (except for Roddenberry himself, a mensch if ever there was one in TV) occasionally cynical.

Thank you, Pete. Somehow, I figured they must've been Roddenberry's. Can't say I've ever been a "Trekkie", but I've felt that the franchise, especially Next Generation had a good deal of "socially redeeming" qualities. Perhaps I should give Kemper credit, if I can ever get my computer to re-open the edit feature--it has been giving me fits, especially maneuvering around in Gather!

Well, that only required 17 attempts, this time--
each attempt resulting in:



Of course, diagnosis comes up with no solutions,
but I only have this problem with Gather--
Every thing I post requires a multitude of attempts!

Say, Pete--as you are a liguist, you don't happen to be proficient in Klingon, are you? Romulan? Or any of the Federation languages?

Despite my language interest, I could never really get into the ST languages, mostly because until Marc Okrand created/coordinated Klingon, there was no consistency -- phonological or syntactic -- to them. I was once asked to write a funeral oration for Spock in Vulcan (the second or third film, I believe) but they didn't like it for reasons never explained to me. They went with some of the usual gibberish, electronically altered, and I decided at that point that I wasn't really interested. The only fictional languages that really fascinate me are Tolkien's languages of Valinor, Eressëa and Middle Earth.

I doubt if you could know less about it than I do--I'm not even sure if the language is called "Klingon". And I'd imagine you'd need an advanced degree in accounting to begin to understand Ferengi, along with their "Rules of Aquisition"!

Now, Tolkien's Elvish languages are intriguing--not that I've ever attempted to studying them, but I do know that he put extensive effort into re-creating a plausible facsimile. Perhaps he journeyed in the Otherworld a time or two.

He created, with the Elvish languages, several languages which were offshoots of the same original tongue. Thus there was Sindarin, or "Grey-Elven", the language of the Sindar, the Elves who remained in Middle Earth and did not travel to Elvenhome (Eressëa) with the great migration of Elves at the beginning of the First Age. It has a phonetic pattern intentionally similar to Welsh, and is the Elven speech most often heard subtitled in the film version.

And there is Quenya, a sort of "Elf Latin", still spoken by the Elves of Eressëa but in Middle Earth used only for ancient literature and what might be termed "ritual" purposes; Galadriel's lament Namarië (Farewell), which she sings as the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien, is in this language. Its sound pattern was based, so Tolkien wrote, on Finnish.

Three other languages appear in quotation: what Treebeard called "Old Entish", but just a short phrase or two exists; Khuzdul, or Dwarvish, never taught to outsiders and appearing as placenames such Khazâd-Dûm (the Dwarrowdelf) or Kheled-Zâram (the Mirrormere) and in the Dwarvish battle cry "Baruk khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!"; and Mordin, or the Black Speech, devised by Morgoth and Sauron, and used for the Ring inscription.

All this material is testable, and any of it may be on the mid-term.

It's been 45 years since I thrice read the Trilogy, and then the Simarillion, during down-times working in the Emergency Room at Kadena AFB, Okinawa, and I'd nearly forgotten most of that--but with my latest $50 Amazon gift card from Gather, I spent $48 of it toward the Blu-ray 15-disk volume of LOTR "Extended version" that they had on sale. I believe it goes into some detail about the languages, if I ever get around to checking it all out. Only 6 Blu-rays contain the movies themselves, and the other 9 DVDs are full of "Making of..", histories, et cetera, and hopefully, the languages.

I first read it in 1962-63, when it was assigned to me in my sophomore high school English class... I've lost count of the number of re-readings, but it's over 50. I'm currently rereading it; Pippin and Gandalf have just arrived in Gondor, while Frodo has been taken into the Tower of Cirith Ungol by the orcs. I remember something that Peter Jackson said about a year before TFotR went into production, and I knew we were in good hands: "I don't view this as fantasy, I view it as history."

My God! I just stumbled on extensive discourses on both Quenya and Sindarin in Wikipedia--pretty complex for a language unlikely to ever be spoken!

Yes--from what I've seen so far of the "Making of" disks, Jackson was dedicated to take his Herculean task as seriously as if Tolkien was looking over his shoulder--a daunting production!

For someone such as myself, who firmly believes that everything ever imagined has a reality somewhere (or somewhen), viewing it as a history is not all that far-fetched.

This is what keeps most Trekkies going... the idea that it IS real somewhere... and it's why Galaxy Quest is one of the funniest movies of all time.

"I had originally not wanted to see Galaxy Quest
because I heard that it was making fun of Star Trek,
and then Jonathan Frakes rang me up and said
"You must not miss this movie! See it on a Saturday
night in a full theatre." And I did, and of course I
found it was brilliant. Brilliant. No one laughed louder
or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that
the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie
were saved simply by the fact that there were fans
who did understand the scientific principles on which
the ship worked was absolutely wonderful. And it was
both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to
the dedication of these fans." ~ Patrick Stewart

In commentary on the Blu-Ray edition of Star Trek (2009), director J. J. Abrams called Galaxy Quest "one of the best "Star Trek" movies ever made."

Great quote; great truth and a great pity.

This photo is great too,

I loved the original series,but started getting away from it after TNG because the programs seemed more concerned with preaching than giving lessons in morality.

To tell the truth, I saw the original as a cartoon that happened to employ live actors, but even so, it managed to fill the "morality play" function rather well.

Did you ever wonder why they picked a British shakespearian actor to play a French Starship Captain?

They didn't, actually--he originally was initially considered for the role of Data. As I understand, Roddenberry did not want to cast Stewart as Picard, who was based on Horatio Hornblower, but envisioned an actor who had a lot of hair, but Stewart's stentorian voice convinced them. As for his being a Frenchman, I've heard Africans and even Indians who were educated in England who spoke with English accents.

Interesting...

:)

My favorite Star Trek Captain