Since the episodes were shot and finished on film, I’d imagine the producers would make sure everything looked good all the way through, from dailies to an actual print. Would they even have tested what anything specific looked like on TV screens?
Vernal galaxy
- Thread starter Falconer
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Blanket generalizations should be avoided. Just because some background details are useful doesn't mean they all have to be adopted. Naturally it depends on each specific case and whether it's useful or sensible. The things you mention are gibberish, obviously, but if we have an onscreen document showing that the guy running Starfleet in 2266 was Robert L. Comsol, what the heck is wrong with that?
Nothing is wrong with it in its way. “Comsol” sounds to me like a military acronym, not a surname. Couple that with the coincidence of the Comsol ordering Mendez to assume command being the same Robert L. Comsol that signed the Talos IV order some 13 years earlier, well, that seems to be a bit of a stretch.
This whole debate is quite diverting for those who would explain how Watson’s jezail bullet migrated from his shoulder to his leg. For me, I was just happy to finally see that mysterious document only briefly glimpsed on my parents’ 26” Zenith. On the other hand, I was disappointed that an official file would refer to a “half-Vulcan Science Officer” who really wasn’t in a position to make recommendations to Fleet Command. As I said, to each his own.
There's a DS9 guest actor named Frank Military and a Star Trek Into Darkness guest actress (and Star Wars Resistance semi-regular) named Nazneen Contractor. There was a bit actor in the movie Cocoon named Ted Science. Surnames are weird.
How is that a coincidence? He's the commanding officer of Starfleet Command, so naturally he'd be involved in plenty of big decisions. And both orders pertain to the same highly sensitive situation, so it stands to reason that they'd both be brought to his attention. It just requires him to have stayed in the same post for 13 years, or to have been promoted to an even more senior post. (Or, as someone conjectured above, the memo could have been a recent one reaffirming the original order.)
You appear to be assuming those are even legal names. Michael Keaton's actual name is Michael Douglas. A lot of actor names are invented because of how SAG works, or because an actor or agent doesn't think the actual name is saleable.
How does that refute my point? It just shows that people can have unusual surnames for a variety of reasons, whether they're born with them or adopt them later. And it's 300 years in the future. Maybe Robert Comsol is half-Denobulan or something. Maybe "Comsol" is a variant romanization of the Korean name Gam-Seol (감설). There are countless possible explanations for the existence of an unfamiliar name. There are so many unusual surnames out there that it doesn't make sense to rule any of them out, especially in a science fiction context.
I'm not "assuming" anything. I'm looking for possible solutions, which I find preferable to just being negative.
There is a similar situation in the cover painting of an editiion of one of Larry Niven's books from the 70s or 80s.
Here is a ink to an mage of a cover seen in some Edition's of Niven's Tales of kNown Space:
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/7b/TLSFKNWNSB0000.jpg
In the foreground there is a map showing several stars from the known space series, spread out over about 100 light yeras or less, and the background is an image of the entire disc of the Milky Way Galaxy about 100,000 lgiht years wide. So the foreground and the background of the cover are at radically different scales.
That is my explanation for the space map used in the TNG episode "The Chase". Here is a link to a photo showing the map on a screen in the background:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Chase_(episode)?file=Directing_The_Chase_1.jpg
The distances Galen moved his finger on the map when plotting his proposed expediition would equal tens of toousands of light years compared to the diameter of the galactic disc. Phil Ferrand, in The Nitpickers Guide For Next Generation Trekkers commaents onv how that expediiton would take decades according to most TNG era programs.
So my explanation is that the individual stars and the borders seen are a foreground element and the actual map, and the galactic disc seen in the background is merely a decorative element at a vastly different scale.
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Comsol seems like a miltary acronym to me too, but that doesn't mean that it can't also be a real family name.
Acording to Ancestry.com there actually have been people using the surname Comsol:
https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=comsol
Anyway, I think it is rather humorous to imagine that Admiral Robert L. Comsol happened to be the ComSol (Commander Sol Sector) during "The Menagerie". As I wrote in an earlier post, that is like imagining Admiral Van Gaard in command of the vanguard of the Dutch fleet.
What is the coincidence is a senior admiral still being a senior admiral after 13 years? An dwho claims that the document was written immediately after the voyage toTalos Iv? It might have been written years after the voyage to Talos IV.
As for Watson's wound, perhaps the bullet wounded watson in two places. Maybe Watson's horse threw Watson off and Watson's body was in a horizontal position while tumbling through the air when the bullet struck, hitting both the shoulder and the hip.
Or maybe Watson the army surgeon was bending over examining a wounded person when a horizontally travelling bullet struck him in both the shoulder and the hip or leg.
I read all the Sherlock s Holmes stores one after the other as a teenager. Noticing the contradiction between "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House" on one hand, and The Valley of Fear on the other hand, I decided they must happen in alternate universes. So the alternate universes where Watson was at the Battle of Maiwand, and was wounded, and survived, and met Sherlock Holmes, and wrote about him, could be a tiny minority of all the alternate universes where Watson was born. And similarly there could be many alternate universes where Watson was wounded in the shoulder and met Holmes, and many other alternate universes where Watson was wounded in the leg and met Holmes.
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Good catch! You were more diligent than I was. I tried that same thing yesterday, and I didn't see any actual examples on the front page, so I thought it was just a generic placeholder page for a non-result. But you're right -- looking more closely, the "Census Data" link turns up this:
https://www.ancestry.com/search/categories/35/?name=_comsol
Also variant spellings like Comsel, Comsil, McComsel, Comsal, etc. This is what I was saying -- there are so many unusual surname variants in real life that you can't rule any name out.
Except why would a commander of Sol sector (or Commander, Solar Forces as the Concordance had it) be involved with the Talos affair, which is nowhere near the Sol system? I don't think ComSol makes any sense in-universe as an abbreviation for the person listed in the memo as "Commanding Officer" of Starfleet Command. That would be like saying the commander of the US Navy is only responsible for the Eastern Seaboard.
Since the stories were Watson's retellings of the events rather than the actual events, isn't it simpler to assume that he chronicled certain details inaccurately? We know he occasionally changed or redacted some details to protect the real people involved, so maybe he deliberately presented certain information differently in different stories to obfuscate the reality. For all we know, the ur-Watson was actually wounded in the groin or the buttocks, and to avoid embarrassment he claimed it was somewhere else, and then he forgot where he'd put it the first time. If Doyle could forget the details in real life, then Watson could do the same in-universe.
...The more plausibly, the more time passed between the events and their commercialization by Watson.
Likewise, much might depend on how long it takes Kirk to recover from the adventure of the week and sit down to dictate his log entries. If there is little time, certain errors might result simply from Kirk being dog tired. If there is more time, Kirk may not only forget certain details - he will have more time to contemplate the events, and the consequences of making the events public, and may see the need to alter his story.
Although he could probably alter the story afterwards any number of times. The three people able to pervert the logs in "Court Martial" are Spock, a skilled manipulator of computers; Finney, a man whose job it is to keep the records; and Kirk. If we must, we can argue Kirk is a computer wizard, too (even if he can't make the computer stop flirting with him in "Tomorrow") - but the likelier scenario is that the CO has the authority. Or enough of it to abuse his way through the remaining safeguards, at any rate.
...Perhaps printed copies of important documents are littered with hidden verification words to expose this sort of rampant tampering? That is, the copy where the galaxy is vernal and the computer is level-mass is legit, but the one where it's not has been written by somebody without the authority.
Timo Saloniemi
Likewise, much might depend on how long it takes Kirk to recover from the adventure of the week and sit down to dictate his log entries. If there is little time, certain errors might result simply from Kirk being dog tired. If there is more time, Kirk may not only forget certain details - he will have more time to contemplate the events, and the consequences of making the events public, and may see the need to alter his story.
Although he could probably alter the story afterwards any number of times. The three people able to pervert the logs in "Court Martial" are Spock, a skilled manipulator of computers; Finney, a man whose job it is to keep the records; and Kirk. If we must, we can argue Kirk is a computer wizard, too (even if he can't make the computer stop flirting with him in "Tomorrow") - but the likelier scenario is that the CO has the authority. Or enough of it to abuse his way through the remaining safeguards, at any rate.
...Perhaps printed copies of important documents are littered with hidden verification words to expose this sort of rampant tampering? That is, the copy where the galaxy is vernal and the computer is level-mass is legit, but the one where it's not has been written by somebody without the authority.
Timo Saloniemi
As the wikilink nicely explains, the system there isn't "galactic" at all - it's merely a way to put spherical coordinates around Earth/Sol, with bits of the Milky Way more or less accidentally falling within that system, too.
If the Milky Way were ever to be given its own north and south, in a system that actually described the Milky Way rather than the skies above Earth, it's not difficult to guess which way it would go. And things of this nature are going to be put to a test fairly soon anyway: it makes zero sense to assign north to an exoplanet based on how it's tilted wrt the distant Earth, in a fully 3D reality out there. And less sense in Trek fiction for anybody to agree that the orientation of Earth should be given any attention when pondering galactic traffic rules....
Star Trek has never made use of 3D coordinates that would follow a system of any recognizable sort. The TNG Tech Manual describes one very plausible system, with spherical (IIRC) coordinates centered on the center of the galaxy (however that one is defined), thus imitating the system that gives headings/bearings relative to a starship. However, the only time we get coordinates in TNG, in "We'll Always Have Paris", these don't follow that system. When DIS gives coordinates, for "If Memory Serves", they are an abusive version of FASA ones, not following that system, either, and not making any 3D sense. But that's military cartography for you: coordinates are more likely than not given in code, and maps drawn in cipher...
Timo Saloniemi
It also looks like they went to extra trouble by sending it to the print shop, instead of just using a typed sheet.
It makes sense within the context of all the early references to the Enterprise being an Earth ship.
Of course it's a galactic system; the whole point was to have coordinates that lined up with the observable MW as opposed the Earth's equator.
GCS:
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/wgalchart.gif
Equatorial system against MW:
https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/WISETiles/wise_allsky.jpg
Wasn't on accident it was on purpose.
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Yeah, but we're looking at it from 55 years later and trying to rationalize it within the universe as we understand it today. In that context, it's preferable to treat "Comsol" as a person's name rather than a job title.
I agree with this, but I feel the Federation would have picked one.
Even if they did, they wouldn't talk about a "ventral galaxy." That's just silly.
Might be part of trying to show Desilu/Star Trek were serious film makers.
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