Kirk's infinitly old glasses

[Trekker4747]

First of all, in the OP, it's absurd to think the glasses remained in the same antique store for 300 years. They could've been bought, used, and resold a 1000 times in the intervening time for all we kow.

Secondly, it is a bit silly the lenses would be cracked. Even today glasses lenses -and even in 1987- are made of plastic. It seems plausible in the 23rd century they'd be made of some plastic-like material or even transparent aluminium. So that they cracked during the battle with Khan is a bit silly.

Thirdly, the implication to me was that the glasses were part of a closed time loop, that they have no "real" origin which, adimitedly, is silly but that's the implication I got.

 

[MikeS]

What's sillier is that they've forgotten how to do laser eye surgery by the 24th century.

We can really over-analyse on this board at times.

 

[Trekker4747]

What's sillier is that they've forgotten how to do laser eye surgery by the 24th century.

We can really over-analyse on this board at times.

23rd century And yeah, you'd think that some-kind-of surgery or something would exsist to prevent or correct the eyes degrading due to age. (I know McCoy told Kirk he was allergic to some eye-correcting drug, but you'd think eye-correction would be surgical and not medicinal.)

 

[Shazam!]

How is this thread still going? Kirk made a joke. That is literally it.

 

[Broccoli]

First of all, in the OP, it's absurd to think the glasses remained in the same antique store for 300 years. They could've been bought, used, and resold a 1000 times in the intervening time for all we kow.

Secondly, it is a bit silly the lenses would be cracked. Even today glasses lenses -and even in 1987- are made of plastic. It seems plausible in the 23rd century they'd be made of some plastic-like material or even transparent aluminium. So that they cracked during the battle with Khan is a bit silly.

Thirdly, the implication to me was that the glasses were part of a closed time loop, that they have no "real" origin which, adimitedly, is silly but that's the implication I got.

McCoy said Kirk liked antiques, so maybe McCoy found a pair that still used glass lenses.

 

[RobertScorpio]

IIRC, in The Wrath of Khan, Bones said he got those glasses at an antique store. This seems to strongly imply that after Kirk sold the glasses, they lie in the store for 300 years, then Bones picks them up and gifts them to Kirk

No it doesn't. It strongly implies that Kirk was making a joke due to being in a time period chronologically before he had received the glasses : /

That's my take on the situation as well. "They will be again" means that in the future, a new pair of glasses will be made, which will eventually become those glasses (i.e. Kirk will get them for his birthday, will take them back in time with him, give him to the antique dealer, and they will probably stay there forever). Technically, it is the same pair, but at a different point in the glasses' own personal timeline.

The glasses that Kirk gives to the dealer *won't* eventually become the ones he gets in the future. Indeed, they can't be, because with enough trips around the time loop, they'd eventually crumble away to dust.

Just like if you travel back in time so that you die before you are born. Your corpse doesn't become your fetus...

This is the same situation with the watch in the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Who built the watch?

Rob

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

First of all, in the OP, it's absurd to think the glasses remained in the same antique store for 300 years. They could've been bought, used, and resold a 1000 times in the intervening time for all we kow

Ah, they weren't, that's the joke.

Maybe Kirk is feeling being a little sour about the whole thing. He's pawning a very well intentioned gift from an old friend. Yes, it's to save the universe again, but he has to part with a little treasured item.

But that friend is still to buy them. From a linear point of view in time, he still has to. McCoy did buy them again, by our (1980s) perspective, many many decades down the line. But he's already bought them for Kirk, in Kirk's lifetime.

It's the good Admiral's play on the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey effect. I mean, if anyone in Starfleet knows about going back in time and giving the temporal backbone of the universe a bit of a shaking, it's Kirk after all

 

[Trekker4747]

McCoy said Kirk liked antiques, so maybe McCoy found a pair that still used glass lenses.

Um, the type of lenses a pair of glasses uses isn't restricted to when the glasses were made.

 

[Broccoli]

McCoy said Kirk liked antiques, so maybe McCoy found a pair that still used glass lenses.

Um, the type of lenses a pair of glasses uses isn't restricted to when the glasses were made.

I didn't mean to suggest they were. However, others have mentioned how, apparently, silly it was that the glasses had glass lenses (given in the future, transparent aluminum will apparently replace everything), so I am giving a suggestion on why that might be: Perhaps McCoy got a pair of old school glasses because Kirk likes old things.

 

[Trekker4747]

McCoy said Kirk liked antiques, so maybe McCoy found a pair that still used glass lenses.

Um, the type of lenses a pair of glasses uses isn't restricted to when the glasses were made.

I didn't mean to suggest they were. However, others have mentioned how, apparently, silly it was that the glasses had glass lenses (given in the future, transparent aluminum will apparently replace everything), so I am giving a suggestion on why that might be: Perhaps McCoy got a pair of old school glasses because Kirk likes old things.

It still seems silly the lenses would be made of glass. Even if McCoy came across 400 year-old glasses with 400-year-old lenses in them that doesn't mean the prescription in those lenses will match Kirk's. So the prescroption to those lenses would have to be made and it seems odd that even in the 1980s when the movie were made glasses lenses were made of plastic. Glass should be an antiquated idea to people in the 23rd C.

I mean, even people who "like old things" today don't make mirrors out of polished bronze.

 

[Broccoli]

Hey, I'm just throwing out ideas. Maybe there won't be a material as good as glass that can be adjusted to an eye prescription. Perhaps as awesome as something like fans claim transparent aluminum is can't do that.

Then again, if we want to get really realistic about this, Kirk wouldn't need glasses at all. Surely laser eye corrective surgery has been perfected by the 23rd century.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

So the glasses McCoy bought had transparent aluminium lenses then? Does that mean that if Scotty hadn't been given the cash to visit the Plexicorp by Kirk, who pawned his glasses, the transparent aluminium wouldn't have been invented back then and refined to allow McCoy to buy such a pair of spectacles for Kirk?

Probably not. Which is why I'm such a hopeless Time Lord, all my temporal loops collapse like a pack of cards

 

[Ronald Held]

In the early 21th century, I have glasses with glass lenses.

 

[Broccoli]

So the glasses McCoy bought had transparent aluminium lenses then?

I don't think they are. It was suggested elsewhere that they should have been made of that.

 

[RobertScorpio]

So the glasses McCoy bought had transparent aluminium lenses then?

I don't think they are. It was suggested elsewhere that they should have been made of that.

I confess..I made them. Its just another one of these paradoxes (like killing your father in before you were born) that suggests an infinite amount of universes are created by this single 'choice'. We really need the ANTI-MONITOR to cut back on all these universes; again.

Rob

 

[Corran Horn]

What's sillier is that they've forgotten how to do laser eye surgery by the 24th century.

in 2025 everybody who ever had laser eye surgery either went insane or rose from the dead as a zombie. It was subsequently banned.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

How could the glasses be part of a closed loop? If that were true, they would eventually crumble into dust from 'overuse'.

 

[22 Stars]

Unless the molecular bonds are renewed each time through the time stream. Duh!

 

[Trekker4747]

Hey, I'm just throwing out ideas. Maybe there won't be a material as good as glass that can be adjusted to an eye prescription. Perhaps as awesome as something like fans claim transparent aluminum is can't do that.

Plastic! My lenses are made of it.

 

[Broccoli]

How could the glasses be part of a closed loop? If that were true, they would eventually crumble into dust from 'overuse'.

You're just not thinking 4th dimensionally.