Worst lines of dialogue in Trek?

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by BlueStuff, Jun 3, 2020.

  1. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You do remember how to fire phasers...right?

    You told him about the statue?!

    (Examples of Riker being funny....not bad lines)
     
  2. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    I remember the first line (which the Klingons found funny; I didn't). I don't recognize the others.

    Being funny and having a sense of humor aren't the same thing.
     
  3. Finn

    Finn Bad Batch of TrekBBS Admiral

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    I disagree. How that line would be described wasn't what actually said. I did a few rewatches of Voyager. How it was actually said wasn't as cringeworthy as many claim it to be...
     
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  4. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ok
     
  5. scotpens

    scotpens Professional Geek Premium Member

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    I wasn't aware that "peoplekind" was even an actual word.
     
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  6. Kor

    Kor Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    "Commander, set course for the First City of the Klingon Imperial Empire." :rolleyes:

    Kor
     
  7. Phoenix219

    Phoenix219 Commodore Commodore

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    Yup. See: The Orville for this done properly with John LaMarr.
     
  8. FormerLurker

    FormerLurker Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That was bad. At the least it should have been "The Imperial Klingon Empire", which, while an incorrect description, is not a redundant statement (it's the same kind of empire as the UK, with a Prime Minister the Klingons call the Chancellor [used to be the Supreme Commander, but whatever]).
     
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  9. scotpens

    scotpens Professional Geek Premium Member

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    What's the difference? They're both redundant. "Imperial" means "of or pertaining to an empire." It's like saying "military army" or "scientific science."
     
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  10. FormerLurker

    FormerLurker Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Saying "Klingon Imperial Empire" is simple redundance, and clunky. Saying "Imperial Klingon Empire" implies that the Emperor controls everything directly, no High Council, no Senate, no Cabinet, nothing. It's wrong, because the Empire is not only ruled by a Supreme Commander, but also has a High Council. But it's not redundant, at least not in the sense you mean.
     
  11. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    I expect it will make it into whatever lists may exist of recently-coined words.

    Here is the exchange where Trudeau used "peoplekind" (he later claimed he was joking):



    What brought about this exchange was that various Catholic and evangelical "charitable" groups were angry with Trudeau and the Liberal government for bringing in legislation restricting federal funding for student summer jobs to organizations that signed an agreement to respect the rights of women and minorities as set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    It seems like a simple thing, right? Just sign a piece of paper saying your organization respects everyone's Charter Rights (particularly those of women and minorities).

    Wrong. In these organizations' view, they feel they have every right to engage in discriminatory acts and proselytize in favor of those discriminatory acts... because of their religion (religion is another protected basis recognized in the Charter).

    In short, the legislation the Liberals enacted was intended to prevent anti-abortion groups and anti-LGBT groups from using federal funds to hire students to distribute anti-abortion/LGBT pamphlets and hate literature (same thing, in my view), and engage in any other activities intended to harm, harass, or proselytize against minorities' and women's rights.

    Of course these right-wing groups didn't like that and some of them turned out to the town hall in Edmonton to tell the PM off and demand that he reverse the legislation. The woman in the clip started going off-topic, rambling and babbling about "maternal love" and by that time I suspect Trudeau was trying to figure out a polite way to get her to STFU (he has extraordinary patience with people at these town halls, but he does have his breaking point).

    She finally did shut up, Trudeau went on to another question from someone else, but every media outlet in the country and quite a few internationally picked up on the "peoplekind" comment and started mocking it relentlessly.

    So that's why this word has political connotations in Canada.
     
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  12. MAGolding

    MAGolding Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    The name of the Klingon Imperial Empire is translated from Klingonese into English.

    And possibly it is translated into English badly. And the meaning of words can change over time. Words can have two or more different meanings at the same time. Different words can mean the same thing. But if two words both have several meanings, possibly those two worlds are synonyms in only one meaning each and the rests of their meanings are different.

    For example the word "prince" has several meanings in English. The one I was most familiar with was a title of a member of a royal family, so when I read The Lord of the Rings I was confused by Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth.

    Other meanings of prince include a generic term for a ruler, and a ruler of a semi independent state or principality, which Imrahil is an example of. In the German language a prinz is a member of a royal family, and a furst is the ruler of a principality, but both words are translated into English as prince. Prince is derived from, and sometimes used to translate, the Latin world princeps.

    Considering how quarrelsome Klingons are, it must be rather common for group os of KLingons to revolt and form their own independent states, which may last for sorter or longer times before being reunited with the main Klingon state or conquered by their enemies. Thus at any one time there may be more than one Klingon state in existence.

    So if there are a bunch of independent Klingon states at the same time, they might all use "Klingon" as part of their names to show that each is ruled by Klingons, though the majority of the populations of some or all of them may be non Klingons suffering under Klingon Rule.

    So, for example, "imperial" might mean "with an emperor as monarch" or "having the right to rule all the universe", and "empire" might mean "state with an emperor" or "the rightful government of all the universe".

    So if those meanings are combined into Klingon Imperial (having the right to rule all the universe) Empire (with an emperor), or into Klingon Imperial (having the right to rule all the universe) Empire (state with an emperor), the use of imperial to modify empire might not be redundant.

    Other Klingon states might be named the Klingon Royal (with a king as monarch) Empire (the rightful government of all the universe) or the Klingon Imperial (having the right to rule all the universe) Republic (having a republican form of government), for example. There could have been dozens of Klingon states with two, three, or four word official titles.

    But I think that there should have enough enough separate Klingon states at the time of "Sins of the Father" that Picard has to use the full title of "Klingon Imperial Empire" to make certain that the Enterprise went to the capital of the right Klingon state.

    The Wikipedia article Boer Republics lists 19 Boer Republics existing during the 19th century, with as many as five existing at the same time, an example of an ethnic group having more than one state at the same time.

    Do you know how many different Roman Empires there were? I haven't counted them all.

    For a few years in the 1220s, an era where some people might think there weren't any Roman Empires anymore, there was a state in western and central Europe that used the names of Roman Empire and Holy Empire and was starting to combine them into Holy Roman Empire. In eastern Europe and western Asia, there were four states, each named the Roman Empire, called Romania ("Roman Land") for short. Modern historians tell them apart by inaccurately calling them the "Empire of Thessalonika", The "Latin Empire of Constantinople", the "Empire of Nicaea", and the "Empire of Trebizond" or "Trapezuntine Empire". Warning to time travelers - Don't use those names in the past if you want to live!

    In addition, the ruler of the Second Bulgarian Empire may have begun to use the title of "Emperor of the Bulgarians and the Romans". And a large part of Asia Minor was ruled by the "Sultan of Rum (Rome)".

    During the 16 to 18 years from 1355 to 1371/73 there was the Holy Roman Empire, the remains of the so called "Latin Empire", with the emperor usually in exile in western Europe, the "Empire of Trebizond", and the restored eastern Roman or so called "Byzantine" Empire. Plus the "Empire of the Serbians and the Romans" and the other "Empire of the Serbians and the Romans", "the Empire of the Bulgarians and the Romans", and the other "Empire of the Bulgarians and the Romans".

    And what was the title of the Roman Emperors? Don't assume that since emperor is derived from imperator the title of the Roman Emperors was imperator. from about 27 BC to AD 284 the title of Princeps was often used by the emperors, so that period is often called the Principate. About 284 Princeps was abandoned, and the title of Dominus was often used by the emperors, and that era is often called the Dominate. So Princeps can mean emperor as well as prince.

    Other titles of emperors were imperator, Caesar, and Augustus. There were eras when the heir to the throne, or a junior emperor, used the tittle of imperator Caesar, and the emperor, or the senior emperor, used the title Imperator Caesar Augustus. So an imperator Caesar, and even more so a plain imperator or plain Caesar, was lower than a full imperator Caesar Augustus.

    In the time of the Komnenos Dynasty (1081-1185) the title of Caesar had been reduced to fourth in rank, below Sebastokrator and Despot.

    In the eastern, Greek speaking, part of the Roman Empire, the Latin imperial titles were often replaced by Greek titles. the emperor was often called Basileus, which original meant king, but was used more or less in the sense of "The Only King, Ruling the Whole World", when used to describe the emperor. By about AD 900 the title of the senior emperor, the one who actually ruled, was usually Basileus kai Autokrator ton Rhomaion, which is usually translated as "Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans".

    However, Autokrator had usually been used to translate the Latin imperator so it can be considered to mean emperor as much as imperator does. Thus the title Basileus kai Autokrator ton Rhomaion can be translated as "king and Autocrat of the Romans", "King and Emperor of the Romans", or "Emperor and Emperor of the Romans".

    The early Holy Roman Emperors used the title of Imperator Augustus, which may mean "emperor" or "emperor emperor". By about 1200 the person elected emperor used the title Rex Romanorum et semper Augustus, "King of the Romans and always Emperor" until crowned in Rome, and then the title of Imperator Romanorum et semper Augustus, "Emperor of the Romans and always Emperor".

    Medieval rulers of Georgia used the title of mepet mepe, Georgian for King of Kings, and some also used the title of shahanshah, Iranian for King of Kings.

    So there are some real life examples for the "Department of Redundancy Department".
     
  13. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    Thank you for your informative post, @MAGolding. Your last paragraph reminds me of a real cabinet portfolio that exists in the province of Alberta, Canada (where I'm from): We have not only a Minister of Red Tape Reduction, but also a Deputy Minister of Red Tape Reduction. If our provincial government wasn't so corrupt, it would be something to laugh at.
     
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  14. FormerLurker

    FormerLurker Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Nah, they're just there to make sure you pay the same for smaller rolls of the same product.
     
  15. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    Actually, it's intended to reduce the number and scope of the regulations the government itself has to go through to do things like remove environmental protections from our provincial parks so they can start up a strip mining operation, or a whole laundry list of ways to change rules in favor of what the government wants to do and would find it inconvenient to hold meaningful public consultations and actually listen to the Official Opposition party (this is a government that literally put earplugs in their ears one time when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking).

    This portfolio's real purpose is to remove these impediments from other ministries like environment, health, education, etc. When questioned at a recent news conference, the Minister of Red Tape Reduction referred all questions to other ministers and gave no meaningful answers of his own.
     
  16. Delta Vega

    Delta Vega Commodore Commodore

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    Every time Wesley Crusher opened his trap he uttered the worst lines of dialogue in Trek, repeatedly
     
  17. SubspaceDad

    SubspaceDad Ensign Newbie

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    Redheaded Onlie: “Blah! Blah! Blah!”

    Kirk: “No blah! Blah! Blah!”


    Kirk’s rebuttal always makes me snort. The premise of the episode is cool, besides looking EXACTLY like 1960’s Earth, but the execution (from a completely armchair fan perspective) could have been better.
     
  18. Xhiandra

    Xhiandra Captain Captain

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    I meant ladies magnet in-show. He's the Kirk of TNG in that respect.

    Anyway, back to bad lines:

    PARIS: It's the Voyager. It's us.
    PARIS: Sensors confirm it's definitely USS Voyager.

    Not an egregious case, but "the Voyager" sounds really quite clunky... and so does "it's USS Voyager". Both in succession magnifies the effect.

    Same episode (Parallax):

    JANEWAY: If your analogy's correct, how do we get through that sheet of ice?
    TORRES: Look for a crack.
    JANEWAY: Or make a crack. Take something and smack it into the ice until it buckles.
    TORRES: Wait a minute. What if we've already made a crack in the ice?
    JANEWAY: When we first entered the event horizon.
    TORRES: If we could find our entry point, we might be able to slip out the way we came in.
    JANEWAY: So we'd be looking for a subspace instability in the event horizon. What would make it show up on our sensors?
    TORRES + JANEWAY: Warp particles.

    Them saying the last line together... ugh.
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2020
  19. NCC-73515

    NCC-73515 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Picard: "Aaaaard klaxon leeeeesss blag blan ar'nik ka'nik. Aaaaard krasulaaa. Rassss trassss trasulaaaah."
    The word klaxon seems so odd there XD

    And because I just watched it:
    KIRK: I'm Tweedledee, he's Tweedledum.
    SPOCK: Two spacemen marching to a drum.
    KIRK + SPOCK: We slith among the mimsey toves, and gyre among the borogoves.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2020
  20. Farscape One

    Farscape One Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Can it be considered dialogue if it's singing?

    :)
     
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