Re: SV: Re: Enterprise

Name an episode where humans or anyone who works (full time) for the
Federation has gone back to the 20th or 21st century and NOT understood
spoken English?

You're thinking, most likely, of the DS9 episode in which three Ferengi (who
depend on the Universal Translator to understand most any language they
encounter other than their own) went to Roswell in 1947.  When Cmdr. Sisko
(and Dax and Bashir) went to the mid 21st century (San Fransisco), they
understood everyone; when Kirk & co. went to 1969 (I think) and almost
screwed up the history of space travel, they understood everyone; when those
same idiots went to 1932 (approx.) and seriously damaged the history of
EVERYTHING (by saving someone who, by virtue of being alive, allowed the
Nazis to win WWII), they understood everything; when they went to San
Fransisco in 1984 and met up with the mom from Seventh Heaven at the
Monterey Bay Acquarium (except in the movie it was called "The Cetacean
Institute"), and had to save the Earth from the extinction of grey whales,
they understood everyone.  When Capt. Picard, Dr. Crusher, Riker, and Troi
went to San Fransisco (what is UP with that city) in 1889 to rescue Data,
they understood everyone (including Mark Twain and Jack London).  I can't
think of any other time travel episodes at the moment, but my ST
Encyclopedia is across the country at the moment and I consider it a point
of pride not to check the website.

Enterprise, BTW, is leaps and bounds ahead of most every ST series when it
comes to plot consistency in terms of languages.  The UT works the way they
always SAID it does (by taking spoken input and processing it until workable
translations can be produced), and when it doesn't work, they're screwed.
They've used "an inability to communicate" as a plot device at least nine or
ten times so far, and the communications officer is around for more than
just racial balance and the perks of having women wearing short skirts on
the bridge all day long (oh, and the need for someone to say "hailing
frequencies open" -- they found out for TNG that you can actually have
pretty much anyone say that, and so they deleted the communications officer
altogether ^_^)  Recall that in many TOS and TNG episodes, everyone they met
spoke English, and that (a far worse crime to my mind) the Voyager and
Defiant met peoples NO ONE with a UT had ever come across before (the
Founders, the Ocampans, the Kazon...), and indeed, no one from their entire
galactic quadrant had ever even heard of -- and THOSE PEOPLE were
immediately understandable.  Enterprise at least follows its own rules, sort
of, in this respect (I won't get started on the fact that NO ONE HAS MET the
Ferengi or the Romulans in person at the beginning of TNG or TOS,
respectively, but Capt. Archer has...)

The fact that the way the UT is supposed to work is completely bogus, and
the fact that Hoshi shouldn't be that good at her job, is beside the point;
the Heisenburg Compensators (the thing -- well, one of the things -- that
makes transporter technology possible) are completely bogus, and Geordi,
Scotty, Trip, O'Brien, and Torres shouldn't be that good at THEIR jobs,
either.  For crying out loud, you want to talk prodigies, try Wesley
Crusher, who was so good at HIS job that besides saving the lives of
everyone on the ship a minimum of five times a season (he was limited to
saving the entire galaxy to no more than twice per season, I think), he also
qualified to be ascended to a higher plane of existence (yet managed to make
it to the wedding of two senior Enterprise officers, no problem...)  The kid
is practically a demi-god, and before that he was an expert in quantum
mechanics, warp theory, communications (he knew Morse Code!), and
nanotechnology.  All Hoshi does is languages, and half the time, she gets
stuff wrong.  Note also that the UT is supposed to be looking for patterns
based on all the languages it already knows -- it's like C3PO, with six
million forms of communication, you're going to be able to recognize and
categorize NEW forms a lot faster.

I do agree that it's odd that Nog, at least, wouldn't understand English
(when he goes to the Roswell crash site).  He's going to Starfleet Academy
by then, IIRC.  But oh well.

[what I like better is the fact that every Goa'uld in the Stargate universe
speaks English AND Ancient Egyptian, without any kind of dialect or accent
involved... the humans learned their version of Ancient Egyptian from a
slave population on one remote world, and now they can talk to every System
Lord in the galaxy, whee... it also took Dr. Jackson approximately 10 hours
from the time he realized the slaves were speaking Ancient Egyptian to the
time he was able to speak to them fluently... but all his previous studies
were of hieroglyphs...]

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://lloannna.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo

"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even
though the end may be dark."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Tristan
> In some episodes when they go back in time to our time, when we do speak
> English, they can understand what we say. In others, they can't. They
> could at least opt for some form of consistency.
>
> Tristan (hasn't watched ST in aaages)
---
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