What are some plain stupid things from Season One?

[Timewalker]

Uchhh! Let's get FAR away from calculus!



They might not have planned to cast Majel as Mrs. Troi when they chose Sirtis. Maybe when they chose Majel, they needed to explain why Deanna had an accent and Lwaxana had none.

It would have made sense if her father had had the same accent, but he didn't. Kids don't just develop wildly different accents from their parents for no reason. It comes from somewhere.

For example: I had a bit of a Swedish accent in my child/teen/young adult years, but that's due to living with grandparents with Swedish accents. I just grew up hearing and saying certain words in certain ways, pervasive enough that one of my high school teachers picked up on it and one day asked me, "Are you Swedish?" He could tell because he'd once taught in a predominantly Swedish-speaking farming community in my province. Most people were completely fluent in English, of course, but their mother tongue was Swedish, and that's the community where my grandparents farmed for many years as well (not that this is why they had the accent to begin with, but it reinforced it).

So I have to wonder what caused Deanna to be so out of step from her parents.

 

[Herbert]

In "The Neutral Zone", the way the survivors from the 20th century got treated like dogshit by everyone on the crew, even though one of them (Ralph Offenhouse) had the presence of mind to figure out the solution to the problem and save the day!

That always bugged me as well. The condescension and dismissal is off the charts. They might not be where they are, living a 24th century dream if not for those ignorant ancestors. I'm glad they toned down that attitude, moving forward on the show.

 

[Herbert]

They might not have planned to cast Majel as Mrs. Troi when they chose Sirtis. Maybe when they chose Majel, they needed to explain why Deanna had an accent and Lwaxana had none.

Harping on accents is pretty pointless because it's so arbitrary. Why doesn't Worf speak with a Russian accent? Why does French Picard speak like a Brit? Why do we see so few humans on the Enterprise with anything other than a regular, non-southern, non-New York type, etc American accent? At least with Trip on ENT you could tell he was from the southern U.S. Why doesn't Mr Mot speak with some kind of accent? Why do many aliens sound like they spoke english all their lives?

Yeah, it's insanity to dive down into the accent rabbit hole. Best to just leave that alone and roll with it.

 

[Timewalker]

Harping on accents is pretty pointless because it's so arbitrary. Why doesn't Worf speak with a Russian accent? Why does French Picard speak like a Brit? Why do we see so few humans on the Enterprise with anything other than a regular, non-southern, non-New York type, etc American accent? At least with Trip on ENT you could tell he was from the southern U.S. Why doesn't Mr Mot speak with some kind of accent? Why do many aliens sound like they spoke english all their lives?

Yeah, it's insanity to dive down into the accent rabbit hole. Best to just leave that alone and roll with it.

It nags at me because attention was drawn to it specifically, in the dialogue. It would have been easy enough to mention that Deanna had picked it up from her father (until we learned he didn't speak with that accent) or if she'd spent a significant amount of time somewhere that the people do speak like that.

An example of an in-universe explanation of multi-family accents is the 1984 Lynch movie (Dune). Leto, Jessica, and Paul all have different accents. It's easy enough to head-canon it as Leto speaks with a Caladan accent (born there), Jessica speaks with a Wallach IX accent (one of the Bene Gesserit chapterhouse worlds), and Paul spent so much of his life with servants and retainers like Duncan Idaho that he picked up their accent.

So why didn't the showrunner drop a line in somewhere to explain Deanna's accent? After all, we the audience were basically told that even Deanna's mother considers her accent unpleasant, and something she should have "lost."

The complaints about Patrick Stewart having a French family who speak with a British accent is ridiculously easy to explain, given the millennia-plus of interaction between England and France. We don't know the precise political boundaries of 24th-century Earth, and because I'm familiar with the broader scope of history (and the linguistic influences when invaders come and go), this part of the show doesn't bother me.

Worf likely could speak Russian if he had a reason to. But he doesn't, at least not on the ship, and it's not like he had zero exposure to Klingon languages in his childhood. Note that he doesn't use slang much, and he speaks in a more formal way, as someone might whose first language is not what might be considered the 24th century equivalent of standard English.

 

[PhotoBoy]

I was going to suggest Deanna got her accent from Mr Xelo, Lwaxana's former valet, but I just checked the scene in Haven and Lwaxana comments that Deanna's accent reminds her of her father! So, we can perhaps assume Ian Andrew had some sort of accident that damaged his speech centers and required him to re-learn how to speak, at which point he lost his accent.

Did Marina ever say why she stopped bothering with Troi's accent in the movies?

 

[Vger23]

People shit on S1 of TNG incessantly, and the best we can come up with is a couple throw-away lines about math class and an accent?

 

[Timewalker]

I was going to suggest Deanna got her accent from Mr Xelo, Lwaxana's former valet, but I just checked the scene in Haven and Lwaxana comments that Deanna's accent reminds her of her father! So, we can perhaps assume Ian Andrew had some sort of accident that damaged his speech centers and required him to re-learn how to speak, at which point he lost his accent.

Or he might have deliberately lost it due to Lwaxana's continued complaining about it and just wanted peace.

Did Marina ever say why she stopped bothering with Troi's accent in the movies?

She started getting slawwwpy and drawwwly with it even in the late seasons of TNG, and it was also very noticeable when she guested on Voyager. I don't recall what she sounds like in the later series because I quit watching them.

People shit on S1 of TNG incessantly, and the best we can come up with is a couple throw-away lines about math class and an accent?

Oh, do excuse some of us for not all being interested in the same thing. I get bored to death when people spend dozens, hundreds, or thousands of posts on the minutiae of what ships look like, what color the nacelles are, or what precise hexadecimal number Kirk's shirt should be. I don't deliberately go into those conversations to say so, though.

 

[Vger23]

Oh, do excuse some of us for not all being interested in the same thing. I get bored to death when people spend dozens, hundreds, or thousands of posts on the minutiae of what ships look like, what color the nacelles are, or what precise hexadecimal number Kirk's shirt should be. I don't deliberately go into those conversations to say so, though.

Yeah, you don't need to get all indignant. Relax.

My point is that people shit on S1, and perhaps....just maybe...it's not nearly as bad as everyone likes to pretend.

 

[Timewalker]

Yeah, you don't need to get all indignant. Relax.

You don't need to get all condescending.

My point is that people shit on S1, and perhaps....just maybe...it's not nearly as bad as everyone likes to pretend.

Did I say that? There are episodes I like that hardly anyone else does, and Tasha Yar is my favorite TNG character.

 

[Vger23]

You don't need to get all condescending.

It wasn't condescending. It was making a point that S1 isn't as bad as everyone thinks if the best we can come up with is two throw-away lines about an accent and math class.

You chose to be offended, and I responded with clarification. Seek to understand before getting offended. Written medium isn't always ideal for communicating intent. Why assume someone is trying to be an asshole, and then express defensiveness, without knowing the context? Let's not look for fights. We have enough bullshit without seeking more out.

 

[Timewalker]

Written medium isn't always ideal for communicating intent.

Which is why it's a good idea to read a post before submitting it, to double check if it might be misinterpreted.

Telling me to "relax" is what I found condescending. I'm very relaxed about this, at least in comparison to some arguments I've seen about aspects of the first season that don't bother me.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

She could have spent time with relatives and adopted the accent to annoy her mother in a fit of teenage rebellion.

Maybe when she speaks with it, she makes a face that resembles Lwaxana's mother-in-law.

 

[Timewalker]

What point would there be in that, since she uses the accent all the time, no matter where Lwaxana is?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

She got used to doing it. To her, it's now more a reminder of her father's heritage than whatever it once was, and brings her comfort.

 

[matthunter]

One example might be Sandi Toksvig, a Danish-British comedian and presenter. Despite her Danish birth and British mother, she was raised largely in New York because her Danish father was a foreign correspondent (famously, Sandi was in Mission Control at NASA aged 11 holding the hand of Neil Armstrong's secretary as he stepped foot on the moon because her dad was covering the event). She had a strong New York accent and was roundly mocked for this when she came to a boarding school in the UK, and thus remodelled her accent on Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.

Possibly Deanna, facing similar prejudice at her school (might Lwaxana be described as new money, despite her claim to the various heirlooms?) did something similar, adopting a "posher" accent? Though why accents should matter to telepaths is another matter entirely...

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps it's her personality, normally expressed in other ways when using telepathy, that translates as an accent when speaking aloud.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Many of us who are 2nd generation immigrants don't have our parents accent (though could imitate it for a joke, if we have siblings/community)...we have the accent of our community, who we interact with everyday.

For Deanna, she grew up on Betazed, right? Isn't that where Riker met her? So she she probably was speaking the language of her planet/home, with little interaction with English, or at with those with a "standard" accent.

With Lwuxanna.... was she she child of a diplomat? I waould "excuse" her Americna accent because she grew up in an interstellar community, and knew English/standard since a little girl.

NOw, i would say the "real" reason is that Majel Barrett isn't a great actress as far as accents (as opposed to say, Peter Jurasik), and wife of Trek creator, so she didn't bother trying.

Which is a shame -- i actually appreciate Mirini Sirtis actually trying for an"alien" accent.

 

[JesterFace]

In Finland people usually speak Finnish.
You might have heard the expression "Rally English", the thing that is English with strong Finnish accent.
However, I'm somewhat proud that I can pronounce English well, perhaps well enough to fool native English speaker into thinking I'm native English speaker too. I'm not sure though, I haven't tried.
But the point, accents can be imitated and learned, at least I think so.

 

[Oddish]

Maybe it's the Universal Translator.
Lwaxana speaks Betazoid language. The translator changes it to perfect unaccented English.
Deanna speaks standard English, but with an accent. Same with Picard.

 

[johnnybear]

Getting back to an earlier comment I don't see that students in the future would be working or learning all year through without a vacation of sorts? Especially as there is a growing movement these days to fight back when pressurised to work till you drop which is very much the attitude in the UK!
JB