Oh, I think it would. Even if the natives just saw the communicator vanish into thin air, that alone would wreak all kinds of havoc on a society as paranoid and warlike as theirs.
2x08 - The Communicator
- Thread starter Happenstance
- Start date
Oh, I think it would. Even if the natives just saw the communicator vanish into thin air, that alone would wreak all kinds of havoc on a society as paranoid and warlike as theirs.
It happens all the time in our world, too, judging by witness statements - stuff vanishing in thin air, people spontaneously combusting or giving birth to three-headed Elvises. Those reports didn't grow scarcer during the paranoia of, say, 1960s United States, but didn't exactly ignite WWIII, either.
So a box glimmers and ceases to be? Not even a Vulcan could think such a thing would have consequences.
But we have plenty of precedent to handheld communicators being unbeamable unless somebody is properly operating them. Kirk kept losing his; he never suggested beaming it to safety, sometimes for obvious story reasons, but sometimes not. And nothing much got beamed unless it had an active communicator on top of it.
Timo Saloniemi
So a box glimmers and ceases to be? Not even a Vulcan could think such a thing would have consequences.
But we have plenty of precedent to handheld communicators being unbeamable unless somebody is properly operating them. Kirk kept losing his; he never suggested beaming it to safety, sometimes for obvious story reasons, but sometimes not. And nothing much got beamed unless it had an active communicator on top of it.
Timo Saloniemi
I wonder if the premise of this episode was inspired by a dialogue that took place at the end of TOS "A Piece of the Action". Remember McCoy informed Kirk that he left his communicator in Bela's office; and Kirk then joked that those mobsters would learn from that technology and McCoy's carelessness would change the balance of power between those mobsters and the Federation.
It would still be only the natives word, without any physical evidence to back it up.
As paranoid as that society may be, I would assume that whomever those men told their story to, the people who heard them would take the story with a grain of salt. It is such a fantastic story. The conspiracy theorists would eat it up though. At that point in time, whatever damage was done was done, limiting the cultural contamination would seem to be the more reasonable objective.
On earth, there have been seemingly credible military people who have come forward with witness accounts of extraterrestrial encounters of one sort or another. Could they really be ETs or perhaps Russian technology or hallucinations or what? There will always be skepticism without actual physical evidence even in a paranoid society, I would assume.
Of the two alternatives, it was probably better to not leave any physical trace of the Enterprise's crew or equipment behind even if that meant having the natives witness the Suliban cloaked shuttle coming to the rescue, or even witnessing a transporter beam if that had been used instead of the shuttle rescue.
It would still be only the natives word, without any physical evidence to back it up.
As paranoid as that society may be, I would assume that whomever those men told their story to, the people who heard them would take the story with a grain of salt. It is such a fantastic story. The conspiracy theorists would eat it up though. At that point in time, whatever damage was done was done, limiting the cultural contamination would seem to be the more reasonable objective.
On earth, there have been seemingly credible military people who have come forward with witness accounts of extraterrestrial encounters of one sort or another. Could they really be ETs or perhaps Russian technology or hallucinations or what? There will always be skepticism without actual physical evidence even in a paranoid society, I would assume.
