Phasers in the Kitchen

[Kaziarl]

Someone asked, but I didn't see anyone answer, what the "Guess who's coming to dinner" line was a reference too.

If it was intended as a reference, which is not something I know, it could be a reference to the 1967 film with that name. In the film a white family has to put up with their daughter inviting her new boyfriend to dinner. The boyfriend happens to be a black man, and the time in which the movie is set it causes quite a ruckus among the girls parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_Who's_Coming_to_Dinner

 

[Subcommander R.]

America has a current embargo against Cuba.

Emphasis on "current". It's futile to argue about lasting effects when only an eyeblink has passed since the end of the event itself.

Essentially, all the effects listed are merely a return to status quo. Korea was split before the Cold War; situation remains. Germany was united; situation restored. The US was the technologically superior adversary but not outright military enemy of an ambitious Russia under authoritarian personal rule; situation restored. The US and Russia tried to expand their spheres of direct political influence through proxy wars, and now the wars are in the past and the influence is gone; both sides have humiliated themselves in Afghanistan, for example. And even that isn't merely situation restored, it's a no-event in world history, because everybody humiliates himself in Afghanistan sooner or later, be it Alexander the Great, Ashoka, or the British Empire.

You keep bringing up the Spanish succession but that has nothing to do about a Russian man knowing his Russian history.

Actually, that conflict is the very reason there could be a Cold War in the first place. That conflict drew the lines between the British and French empires that enabled the United States to be born; that conflict delivered Russia from the persistent threat of its annying northern challengers Poland and Sweden and enabled the rise of that superpower, the reign of the Greats that Chekov so fondly remembers. That conflict also split Europe to suitably sized pieces that could become a battlefield between the later superpowers, instead of being a monobloc world dominator itself.

The only significant difference there is that the Spanish succession issue is 600 years in the Trek past while the Cold War is 300. Since we don't remember the 300-year-old chain of events that shaped our world, there's no particular reason why Chekov ought to, either.

Doesn't mean Chekov would be particularly uneducated. Everybody here is keen to prove his knowledge of events 50 years in the past. Chekov might have been well educated on those, too, knowing the history of the UFP/Klingon conflict in painstaking detail - especially the role of Russia in it...

Timo Saloniemi

A Spaniard is more likely to know about the Spanish succession than a Russian, American, etc.

Your Brits, for the most part, know almost a thousand years of history to various degrees. And I think its impossible for a Russian in the future to not know about the USSR's history.

 

[Green Shirt]

How can the phaser disintegrate the pot but not the stuff inside?

I always wondered how a phaser beam set to disintigrate knew when to stop once the target was destroyed. How come it didn't continue to eat up the floor, or whatever else the target was in contact with?

 

[Timo]

...And why does the transporter (another "phasing" device) do the same?

Might well be that the phasing phenomenon cannot easily jump from one type of material to another. Flesh to bone, yeah, especially if the bone is surrounded from all sides by the phasing flesh. Flesh to clothing. But not so easily flesh to metal, or metal to potatoes.

The weak point there is that if our heroes fire at an enemy who is holding a metal gun, the gun usually disappears, too. Perhaps that only happens because the gun is such a volatile piece of equipment, with a "phasing charge" inside to begin with...

I think its impossible for a Russian in the future to not know about the USSR's history.

...Sometimes it appears to be nigh-impossible for a Russian of today to know about the USSR's history.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Subcommander R.]

...And why does the transporter (another "phasing" device) do the same?

Might well be that the phasing phenomenon cannot easily jump from one type of material to another. Flesh to bone, yeah, especially if the bone is surrounded from all sides by the phasing flesh. Flesh to clothing. But not so easily flesh to metal, or metal to potatoes.

The weak point there is that if our heroes fire at an enemy who is holding a metal gun, the gun usually disappears, too. Perhaps that only happens because the gun is such a volatile piece of equipment, with a "phasing charge" inside to begin with...

I think its impossible for a Russian in the future to not know about the USSR's history.

...Sometimes it appears to be nigh-impossible for a Russian of today to know about the USSR's history.

Timo Saloniemi

Five year plans, Lenin, Stalin, the Great Patriotic War, Sputnik, Gagarin, Afghanistan...

You'd be hard-pressed to find a Russian ignorant of all or most of that. Its pretty deeply ingrained in the national memory.

 

[Timo]

Yes, today.

Which is completely irrelevant in determining what will be remembered 300 years from now. Where does this weird myopia come from? What we think is important today probably isn't, not in the greater scheme of things. Not to anybody else but us.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Merky]

Why do we care about Rome? Greece? The Egyptians? Why do we care about the Nethanderals? Why do we care about Alexander the Great's conquests? Constantine? The conquests? The fall of the Ottoman Empire? The silk trade? The rise and fall of the Japanese Empire?

Because its history and we learn from it. It's history that has impacted the world and left it's stamp in the books. Clear, cut, done. History doesn't "die" and it doesn't " fade in obscurity ". Especially if it deals with a national's country of origin.

 

[Timo]

"Knowing" about Rome doesn't help us a bit in mastering the proper code of conduct for trying to to find out where the Caesar keeps his sailing ships. Just asking might cost us our lives. And certainly accentuating an innocent question wrong (through our Universal Translator which takes care of the English-to-Latin problem) might get us immediately labeled as spies of Carthage or worse.

Chekov might be dimly aware that Russia and the US were once enemies. But if they were staunch allies in WWI, WWII and WWIII (and the US Civil War), then certainly a Cold War or a dozen would easily be forgotten. Or does the average US citizen really keep track on when in history the French were allies and when they were mortal enemies? Just erring by a year would get a time traveler in deep trouble in Washington DC. Hell, remembering when Germany was an enemy and when an ally is difficult enough for most. And this despite "German" being the synonym for "Antichrist's Foul Bastard" in the very recent past.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Merky]

You're over analyzing this.

Cold War - Communism vs Capitalism. Lasted nearly a half century. Major tensions. Fear of a nuclear war. Set the tone for decades. Defined a century of events, catalysis towards major events that happened today.

No one has to know extreme details of where Caesar took a shit to realize that Christians were being prosecuted during the time of the Roman Empire. No one has to know the exact spot where Thomas Jefferson stomped on ant while writing the Declaration of Independence to know that African Americans were slaves and less than equal to the white man for nearly 250 years. You don't walk into Salem saying you're a witch unless you want to get stoned to death.

The mindset of the people of that era define history and is common sense once you read it.

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

I think Timo was "spot on," a stwere. Like in the Voyager episode "Future's End" Paris kept talking about the Soviets and the KGB in 1996... and he kept confusing the people because the USSR and KGB didn't exist anymore. He was only off by a few years.

 

[Kaziarl]

You're over analyzing this.

Most trek fans do.

 

[Merky]

You're over analyzing this.

Most trek fans do.

As I seem to have noticed.

 

[Timo]

Christians were being prosecuted during the time of the Roman Empire.

A good case of a little bit of knowledge doing you harm - there'd be plenty of RE periods there when stating you're a Christian would win you major brownie points, and confessing to not believing in Christ would win prime seats (actually, standing room only) in the middle of the arena.

Really, Russia and the US have been close military allies for longer than they have been enemies. For all we know, they went from animosity back to alliance in the early 2000s or late 1990s already, and jointly fought off the ECON. Certainly Chekov has never in any way indicated that he'd think his ancestors and Kirk's would have been at odds.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Merky]

A good case of a little bit of knowledge doing you harm - there'd be plenty of RE periods there when stating you're a Christian would win you major brownie points, and confessing to not believing in Christ would win prime seats (actually, standing room only) in the middle of the arena.

Yes, yes I know that. I should have worded myself a lot clearer.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how long they were allies and how long they weren't allies. It's still a well known period in history that defined a decade. I'll just agree to disagree here.

 

[Amasov]

I thought it was over-the-top that Valeris vaporized a good pot--and presumably wrecked the food that was being prepared in it--to set off the alarm, when all she needed to do was say, "Firing a phaser on board would set off an alarm." Yes, I know that would not be as visually interesting, but it would have been more believable, and would have avoided making the cooks resent the higher-ranking officers.

I don't know if you're trying to be funny or not, but this comment made me laugh so hard.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I don't know if you're trying to be funny or not, but this comment made me laugh so hard.

Thanks. I meant what I said, but yes I was trying to say it in a humorous way.

 

[Cicero]

Now, Uhura might have been rummaging through the aprons of the cooks next door. But she might also have been on the bridge at the time (considering no other top officer was, and somebody had to keep Starfleet in the dark about what was going on).

We saw one other senior officer, a female lieutenant commander (on the right) who appears to have been the ship's weapons officer (she tends to stand in the area of the weapons station). She briefly took the helm before the closing battle.

 

[Shatnertage]

I've not read through the whole thread, so I beg your pardon if I'm repeating what's already been said, but every time I see this thread title I think it's a new Food Network series starring William Shatner.

 

[SmoothieX]

A phaser would really make my life easier when I make my patented seared swordfish recipe.

 

[Smellincoffee]

It's entirely possible that Chekov's understanding of the Cold War is limited. ("Cold War? In Russia, all wars are cold! ) Maybe in Russia, even Russia of the 23rd century, it's underplayed -- drowned out, in fact, by the history of the Eastern Coalition. He might remember hearing something about tension between the United States and Russia, but bigger things happened in his universe -- the Eugenics Wars and World War 3. Compared to that, the 'cold war' might be as irrelevant as historical tension between England and Spain, England and France, France and Germany, and the US and England to us.

I watched most of TUC last night, and finished this afternoon, and am still wondering: why on Earth are Burk and Samno lying in the middle of the floor? There are no indications that the Enterprise crew is looking for them in that particular part of the ship -- they open the door, walking somewhere, and whoops! Look here! Someone has left two corpses in the middle of the walkway. Did Valeris really just leave them in some scarcely used corridor?