Rereading my post I realise it might come across much harsher than I intended. I wasn't offended nor did I mean to cause offense. The post I quoted seemed to me to be symptomatical of the debate but I was speaking in more general terms.
If you could change one thing...
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
But that's uncharacteristic of Picard; he's not a fatalistic, "lost cause" kind of person."Remember the Alamo."So unless "the Picard who fought at Trafalgar" was actually serving on a British ship, Picard's reverence for Trafalgar makes no sense.
I considered for a time, and wrote a story that was such for the SNW contest, that Picard's Trafalgar ancestor was the rifleman in the fo'castle who shot Nelson. Except that doesn't match with the portrait of the man we see in Picard's Nexus fantasy, which indicates the Picard was an officer, if not a ship's captain.
It does occur to me, now, at this very moment, that Picard might revere his ancestor because he was born on the 500th anniversary of Trafalgar in 2305.
Not to worry. This has been turned out to be a much more interesting discussion than I envisioned when I first made my funny little post.
I don't think anyone is really suggesting that Picard should have been portrayed as the second coming of Batroc the Leaper. "Zut alors! Sacre bleu! C'est magnifique!" I'm just not sure why they bothered to keep him French after they cast Stewart. Especially since, as with the Trafalger bit, they just tended to write him as British anyway.
I honestly suspect they just forgot he was supposed to be French sometimes . . . .
"Commander, signal the following in all languages and on all frequencies: 'We surrender.' State that we are not asking for any terms or conditions."But that's uncharacteristic of Picard; he's not a fatalistic, "lost cause" kind of person."Remember the Alamo."So unless "the Picard who fought at Trafalgar" was actually serving on a British ship, Picard's reverence for Trafalgar makes no sense.
Well, let's review the exact lines:
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie7.html
I don't see him saying that he personally reveres that particular ancestor. He's saying that his family considered it important to tell him about all his prominent ancestors. What he reveres is the family heritage as a whole.
True, he does list that particular ancestor along with a couple of others who definitely did great things. But he also reveres history. So maybe his appreciation for that ancestor is not about his military achievements per se, but about his participation in an important historical event. After all, Picard isn't the sort who'd base his respect for someone on how many kills they racked up or how many battles they won. He's a scholar first, not a warrior. Maybe the reason the Picard at Trafalgar is important to him is because that Picard wrote an account of that historic event in his personal journal, which was then passed down through the Picard family, allowing his descendants such as Jean-Luc to gain insight into the mind of this family member who lived through those times.
After all, the importance a person has in overall history and the importance he has within his own family can be two very different things. For instance, I doubt you'd find any books on WWII history that mention my grandfather's participation as a governmental consultant helping liberated Italian cities and towns set up new governments, since that's not a major part of the history of the war and he was just one participant of it. But it's a story that's been passed down within our family.
While I don't doubt that much of Europe will be homogenized even within my lifetime... I just find it really hard to believe that Britain will ever really culturally unite with the rest of Europe that way. The Brits are always just kind of in their own world, I think, and I don't really see that ever changing.
I agree. Large factions of us will resist any sort of unity with the mainland until the end.
Some of the reasons are good ones, and understandable, others not so much. Although personally I think a lot of those opposed to closer ties don't realise that most of the problems they identify with a European government are pretty much part of our government too- but that's just me. I don't really have much of a strong view either way, though I do worry sometimes how insular we can be.
Picard would've had about 4000 direct ancestors (assuming marginal inbreeding) in 1805. I would expect, given the fall of barriers between population groups, that hundreds of 'em were non-French. It makes sense to me that Picard might think it was pretty cool that one fought in the Royal Navy at Trafalgar (as opposed to the one who was a huge slaveowner outside Atlanta, or the one who was a hobo in Guangdong). He may be the only famous guy (unlikely to actually be named Picard) in the whole generation, French or not. It wouldn't actually affect Picard's nationality at all--I have no East Asian ancestry (afaik), but if it turned out I had an ancestor who flew for the IJN at Pearl Harbor, that'd stil be pretty neat.
Edit: oh, and as for the OP--the collapse of the Romulan Empire.
Edit: oh, and as for the OP--the collapse of the Romulan Empire.
...except that Captain Picard specifically says that it was a Picard at Trafalgar that he's referencing.
Well, Texans are in kind of their own world; they think of themselves as a separate culture and even occasionally make noises about seceding to become a sovereign nation again. And yet politically and economically, they're an integral member of the United States, and I'm sure you can find Texans living or attending schools in every state of the union, and people from every other state living or attending schools in Texas. We've even had Texan presidents (Eisenhower and Johnson by birth, GWB by residency).
So I wasn't talking about cultural homogenization. I was talking about the formation of a shared community. Surely the American experience proves that the latter doesn't require the former. Even if England retains a somewhat separate culture and identity now 400 years from now, that doesn't mean it's segregated from the rest of Europe. There's no huge wall between them preventing free travel and interaction. Even the English Channel isn't much of a barrier anymore thanks to the Chunnel. So there shouldn't be anything strange or implausible about a 24th-century French family attending school in England, especially if they have transporters to make commuting across the Channel even easier than it already is.
We call it the Channel Tunnel, no one calls it the Chunnel regardless of any official name.
And speaking of Brits and Texans, I'm a former on my way to becoming a latter, thanks to my marriage to a Texan who is 56% Irish and has Czech and German (among others) heritage.
I would retcon the entire TNG Relaunch and have the Big E go explore the Cygnus Reach.
And speaking of Brits and Texans, I'm a former on my way to becoming a latter, thanks to my marriage to a Texan who is 56% Irish and has Czech and German (among others) heritage.
I would retcon the entire TNG Relaunch and have the Big E go explore the Cygnus Reach.
Also regardless of what you read on websites like Wikipedia!
Lively conversation. I like it 
.
As for what I'd change about treklit if I could:
1 - More cohesion in the TNGR books from Resistance to Before Dishonor. GttS and LtP fit fine...
2 - Marco would still be in charge
3 - I would have made both of the original VOY-R duologies into just 2 books altogether. I can seee splitting the first 2 I guess, but the second set could have easily been one book.
4 - Maybe I wouldn't have killed Janeway like they did, but as a big fan of what Kirsten has done with VOY, I could take or leave this one.
Overall I think treklit is great, and I'm a firm believer in hindsight being 20/20.
...oh...and I'd make Harry Kim the official second officer of Voyager
.As for what I'd change about treklit if I could:
1 - More cohesion in the TNGR books from Resistance to Before Dishonor. GttS and LtP fit fine...
2 - Marco would still be in charge
3 - I would have made both of the original VOY-R duologies into just 2 books altogether. I can seee splitting the first 2 I guess, but the second set could have easily been one book.
4 - Maybe I wouldn't have killed Janeway like they did, but as a big fan of what Kirsten has done with VOY, I could take or leave this one.
Overall I think treklit is great, and I'm a firm believer in hindsight being 20/20.
...oh...and I'd make Harry Kim the official second officer of Voyager
More. Captain. Proton.
I think I'd also vote for the TNG relaunch to have been more smoothly characterized, a la the A Time To books, or the DS9R. And, as momentarily entertaining as it was, I'd have probably left out the Borg eating Pluto from Before Dishonor.
(Though honestly, I really expect that one to be ignored if anyone ever refers to Pluto again.)
(Though honestly, I really expect that one to be ignored if anyone ever refers to Pluto again.)
OMG, I'm so glad I skipped that book. Sounds pretty dumb to me.
I could do with less destruction and death in general, to be honest. But that seems to be a trend in canon media, as well, they destroyed two planets, after all. At the moment, the Trekverse seems to rush from crisis to crisis, which is a bit tiresome after some time. More exploration or politcal conflict would be neat.
Yes, please! Love The Adventures of Captain Proton! I presume that you are being facetious. Seriously though, it might be fun to put more Captain Proton in the books or to have its own book series.
Write it campy like Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s Batman television series and Flash Gordon (1980). When do you start Dayton?
