Kirk v Trump

What he said. That "of" is one of (proper use of the word) my biggest written pet peeves. And I occasionally need to sound off about it. Being ungrammatical is part of speech. It's what idioms are. But that doesn't excuse transcribing such ungrammatical speech into print, not when the correct form is taught in grade school English classes. That doesn't progress the language, it just damages it.

That's my 2¢. I'll shut up now.

 

If you mean me, it's "What she said."

 

I really am not comfortable with this whole conversation. If it were merely about Kirk and his decision making is one thing, but to bring politics into this. I think it's far better not to bring that into discussions about ST. They always say not to talk about religion and politics in mixed company. It staves off potential blow ups

 

Barrows and Landon seemed to bring something to the table but the other Yeomen were just ciphers in skirts. While I agree that Rand as a character was often not well written, using a recurring character allows more personality to shine through. Noel was originally Rand too. While I love Noel, I have to admit that it would also have been a great part for Rand, giving her agency and action that her previous roles lacked. It could have helped revolutionise the character.

Uhura also gets scared in Mirror Mirror and Plato's Stepchildren!

I agree with your other points though. I would have preferred it if Kirk had possessed some additional information on which to base his hypothesis. I do accept though that the allegorical nature of the story meant that the root of the conflict was left deliberately blank (not even vague) but he looks like a chancer.

The politics is just a backdrop to provide the context for allegories. Is there any point in discussing Let That be Your Last Battlefield without understanding it's real world context? I'm genuinely fearful of where some real world decisions might lead but some politicians still take that leap. Kirk does the same.

I wonder more generally if idolising that kind of hero by making them succeed through luck rather than research, hard work and compromise means that domestic politics becomes more blinkered. Kirk does make mistakes too I suppose.

It might be interesting to consider what real world point they were trying to make? Are they advocating abolition of the nuclear deterrent? That seems to be the closest parallel.

It does raise an interesting question as to what the root cause of the conflict might be. It doesn't seem to be about land. Is it pure racism, religious and philosophical, or human rights abuses?

Also, if each planet ends up with an extra 3million people each year, what does that mean for their infrastructure going forward. Soon, they may need land, and we're back to square one :-P. One of the more interesting TNG allegories was the one proposing that retired people should be retired permanently at 60 to control population. That's a real world problem that's steadily getting worse!

 

Interestingly, I just watched phase II Enemy Starfleet and I thought the discussion of their various options was far more balanced.

 

If politics must be brought up in connection with TOS, then I think it would be better to examine the politics of the time in which TOS aired, as contextual historical discussion. But anyway...

He's a master gambler.

I got the impression that there was a slowdown due to their equipment being destroyed, but it was only one disintegration chamber.

"Wouldn't of" is a mishearing of "wouldn't have" or its abbreviation "wouldn't've." The word "of" makes no grammatical sense in this construction.

For that matter, people tend to drop the "t" when speaking quickly. And of course, the "l" is completely absent from the pronunciation. So in everyday speech you may hear something that sounds like "wudnuv," but that doesn't mean it should be written that way. Written language tends to be more prescriptive to maintain a standard, rather than descriptive of colloquial speech patterns.

Unless it's quite obviously a ruse, as in "The Corbomite Maneuver," then the default way of watching would be to take the dialog at face value. There's really no reason not to.

Kor

 

Just watched Galileo Seven, and the guy who was trapped in a rock corner and had the giant slowly advancing on him seem very scaried.

Chekov was scaried in Deadly Years.

Bailey was scaried by the jumbo beach ball.

Yeah, Uhura's such a wimp.

 

She's one of the smartest characters in the show but you get the impression she's not trying very hard to impress anyone :-P. I wish they'd let her throw in a few more sarcastic quips.

 

The Taste of Armageddon analogy doesn't quite work though because the people on Vendikar and Eminiar VII didn't want to kill each other in direct conflict whereas on Earth people are still quite eager to do just that.

 

That's why I wondered if it might be a ban the bomb analogy. The wisdom of a nuclear deterrent being anything more than an expensive fantasy.

 

That makes sense. Like if no one had the bomb, the choices would be direct conflict or actually working out your problems peacefully. Hm. Although until people get sick of killing each other, banning nuclear bombs as the ultimate deterrent won't stop people from shooting each other, unfortunately.

 

"A Taste of Armageddon" functions metaphorically on multiple levels.

There's the ban the bomb metaphor: Armageddon is bad, m'kay.

But it's also making a cautionary point against the Cold War. The war they're fighting isn't a hot war, so it's pretty easy to make the connection that their orderly, simulated war is a metaphor for the Cold War.

There's also the point that mechanized war, especially war based on mechanization that removes people on one side or another from the negative consequences of warfare, is bad. The writers may not have had our present-day real world in their imagination when they wrote the episode, but that problem is something that we face today, outside the theory of nuclear stand-off, but rather with drones that take our pilots out of harm's way and yet allow us to continue to wage war. It's a problem, because the technology is an enabler of war. The episode did directly make the point that technology that sanitizes war is an enabler of war.

 

Nailed it. This is my preferred view of ToA. The depersonalization and distancing of the realities of war through technology. Applied then. Applies now. Deeply troubling.

 

Wasn't there something in the dialogue in "A Taste of Armageddon" that indicated that the Eminaran leaders were "exempt" from being "killed" by the computerized attacks and that as guests of them that is why Kirks landing party was also exempt?

That's kind of another worthy lesson all on its own.

 

I just watched the episode a few weeks ago, and I don't remember this.

Kor

 

Scaried? Is that like scared and harried?

 

This is a failed analogy, because Ankara is an undisputed part of Turkey. Jerusalem is not entirely Israel's rightful territory. There is a principle in post-WW II international law that you cannot annex territory as a result of war, and it's still true even if the country that prevailed in the war didn't start it. Israel is in the wrong for annexing any territory it acquired in that war -- West Bank, East Jerusalem. Moving embassies into an occupied territory is a concession that the occupier is right in occupying it. Furthermore, a country with an embassy is supposed to be defended by the country it's located in. If the US embassy is moved, we will expect Israel's police and armed forces to defend our embassy. That's also a concession that Israel has a right to be in Jerusalem.

 

One would think the guy who can't keep Wagner and Strauss straight might let a minor typo slide.

 

No. Kirk and his landing party weren't casualties because they weren't on the Enterprise when it was "destroyed".