Code named Babel

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Why is the planet where the conference was being held "code-named Babel"? That would seem to suggest that for security reasons, the real name of the planet was kept a secret. Yet everyone seemed to just call it "Babel", as though that were its actual name.

 

[Christopher]

Kirk actually called it "the neutral planetoid code-named Babel," i.e. an asteroid, or perhaps what we'd now call a dwarf planet. Presumably it has no name of its own, just a catalog number, and was chosen as a neutral location because of its insignificance. Since we also saw a planet named Babel in ENT: "Babel One," it stands to reason that any location chosen as the site for such an interstellar conference is code-named Babel.

Although some of the novels and comics have depicted it as a single planet that had been used for such conferences for centuries, even before humans gave it that code name. I don't think that was D.C. Fontana's intent, though.

 

[Frontis]

Babel means a confusion of sounds or voices...maybe that helps.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Thanks, but I was wondering why it was a code name, not a regular name.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Babel was probably easier to say than what ever the planetoid's designation was.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Perhaps the actual destination where the Enterprise was taking all the ambassadors was classified. So, it was broadly known by its code name Babel, but only those with sufficient clearance knew exactly where it was, which planetoid it was, ahead of time.

 

[Christopher]

Whoever came up with the code name Babel in-universe had either a limited knowledge of the Bible or a cynical sense of humor, since the Tower of Babel is a story about the failure of communication resulting in the fragmentation of people who had been unified, which is pretty much the diametric opposite of what Babel Conferences are meant to achieve. In real life, a TV writer choosing that allusion makes sense, because it conveys the conflicts and challenges to unity that drive the story, but in-universe, it's an incongruously pessimistic name.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:1-9 ESV

 

[1001001]

I like this one better.

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[David cgc]

Whoever came up with the code name Babel in-universe had either a limited knowledge of the Bible or a cynical sense of humor, since the Tower of Babel is a story about the failure of communication resulting in the fragmentation of people who had been unified, which is pretty much the diametric opposite of what Babel Conferences are meant to achieve. In real life, a TV writer choosing that allusion makes sense, because it conveys the conflicts and challenges to unity that drive the story, but in-universe, it's an incongruously pessimistic name.

Just like how people in sci-fi keep naming ships Icarus.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps out of a sense of (sometimes misguided) sentimental sympathy; you know, "well, at least his namesake got to fly", or "we're finishing what they started and hopefully, succeeding where they failed."

 

[DonIago]

Just like how people in sci-fi keep naming ships Icarus.

Indeed. I'd much rather fly on the Daedalus.

Maybe not if I had children, though...

 

[Christopher]

Dang, the Old Testament God was really mean to humans, wasn't he? Kicks us out of paradise for seeking knowledge, wipes everyone out in a flood, sabotages our engineering projects, etc. The whole "God is love" thing didn't come along for a few millennia yet.

My epigraph for Star Trek: Enterprise -- Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel was a quote I invented from an Andorian politician at the 2161 Babel Conference where the Federation was founded:

"There is an ancient human legend: The peoples of their world came together to build a vast tower reaching to heaven, but their god, fearing their potential to achieve whatever they imagined, cursed them with the inability to understand one another’s speech and scattered them across the Earth. . . .

"The reason humanity has now conquered the heavens is that they finally stopped blaming their god for their own fear of what they could achieve together."

 

[Shawnster]

Dang, the Old Testament God was really mean to humans, wasn't he? Kicks us out of paradise for seeking knowledge, wipes everyone out in a flood, sabotages our engineering projects, etc. The whole "God is love" thing didn't come along for a few millennia yet.

That's not exactly how those accounts go. On the surface that might sound right, but when you explore the accounts the deeper reasons come out.

The Bible does not condemn seeking knowledge. Quite the opposite. The Bible tells us that "wisdom is the most important thing" (Proverbs 4:7) and to "guard your thinking abilities" and "safeguard knowledge". (Proverbs 5:2)

The Genesis account about being expelled from the Garden of Eden is not condemnation of knowledge. It's not a Prometheus type of story. The tree is actually the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad." The Hebrew word here means morals. The account is about the original human parents deciding they wanted the right to choose for themselves what was good and bad in the way of morality. They chose to disobey God and refused to live by his standards. As a result, God did the same thing many parents today do when a grown child refuses to live by their parents' rules. He kicked them out and told them to go live on their own.

The other accounts you referenced are similar. God brought about the Flood in order to actually preserve humanity until it was time for the Messiah to come. The Earth had been filled with violence and the human race was literally being corrupted by outside demonic influences to the point there would be no one left to save by the time the Messiah arrived.

Likewise, the Tower of Babel was yet another instance where a group of people wanted to blatantly rebel against God to the point where it would be impossible for the Messiah to fulfill his role of salvation.

The God of the so-called "Old Testament" is painted as violent and cruel in the same way that a stern but loving father is painted as being horrible by a rebellious child. Instead of focusing on the numerous acts of love that have been displayed over the years, the choice is made to highlight the few instances where discipline and correction were necessary.

 

[fireproof78]

Unless the code name refers to trying to confuse those who would seek to disrupt the conference.

 

[Christopher]

That's not exactly how those accounts go. On the surface that might sound right, but when you explore the accounts the deeper reasons come out.

Gee, and people say I take jokes too seriously...

And saying that murdering everyone on Earth except one family is "discipline and correction" is ludicrous. Rather, the OT was written in a time when early civilizations constantly struggled against destructive, uncaring nature, and thus they perceived gods as capricious, arbitrary figures of great power that humans had to try to appease and understand lest they be trampled underfoot on a whim. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport." It's a common theme in most world mythologies of that era, that gods could be either benevolent or gratuitously destructive to humans depending on their whims. The various flood myths such as Noah, Utnapishtim, and Deucalion & Pyrrha are all probably inspired by some great flood in prehistory that the survivors tried to rationalize by inventing stories about it.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Perhaps out of a sense of (sometimes misguided) sentimental sympathy; you know, "well, at least his namesake got to fly", or "we're finishing what they started and hopefully, succeeding where they failed."

And in no way do we feel like we've jinxed ourselves.

 

[Poltargyst]

Dang, the Old Testament God was really mean to humans, wasn't he? Kicks us out of paradise for seeking knowledge, wipes everyone out in a flood, sabotages our engineering projects, etc. The whole "God is love" thing didn't come along for a few millennia yet.

I was thinking how at times later in the Bible, God slaughters or commands the slaughter of groups of people because they aren't his chosen people or they don't worship him.

Um...wasn't it you who divided humanity up into all the different groups?

 

[Ssosmcin]

Babel was probably easier to say than what ever the planetoid's designation was.

Not if you're Shatner. Everyone pronounces it "Bay-bel" in the episode (British English) and Shatner gives us "Bah-bel" (American English) in the animated series (i.e. Babble).

No idea how we were intended to say it in the Biblical sense, but Shatner mangled the planet name in TAS.

Along with "Ori-on" and in STV, a hard G in Rigel.

 

[Christopher]

Along with "Ori-on"

To be fair, every actor in "The Pirates of Orion" pronounced it "Oary-on," Doohan and Nichols as well as Shatner, so it must've been a directorial instruction, or whover typed up the pronunciation guide for the actors got it wrong. And Shatner got it right in "City on the Edge," "Journey to Babel," and "Yesteryear."

Also, every actor who said "Benecia" in "The Conscience of the King" said it "Benna-SEE-ya," and every actor who said it in "Turnabout Intruder" said "Beh-NEE-shya." Then there was Nimoy mispronouncing "cryogenic" as "seerogenic" in "Babel." Kelley had some weird pronunciations too; I once got a strange look from my father when I echoed Kelley's pronunciation of "crystalline" to rhyme with "talon."

And there are some consellation names that nobody in Trek got right, like Ophiucus (which is "oafy-OOK-us" instead of "oh-FIE-a-cuss") and Eridanus/Eridani (which is "eh-RID-a-nee" instead of "air-a-DAH-nee")