General Trek Questions and Observations

Quark is awesome, one of my favourite characters and the bar and his development is so much of the heart of that series for me. As well as Quark I loved the whole set up of different Ferengi.

 

Could've simply given him an English mother in that early TNG episode and mentioned him spending summers in London or going to boarding school in Manchester.

 

^Even that would have been enough, yes.

Not sure why they wanted the character to be French in the first place. Probably to promote the feeling that Starfleet is international, Earth is really united, and so on.

 

Gert Fröbe's dialogue in Goldfinger was dubbed by Michael Collins. He also dubbed his lines in Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang.

 

I had Season 2 of TNG running in the background while working and...

Oh man, those poor, poor Mariposans. At the end of the episode they are about to have their whole culture thrown back five centuries by those drunken Victorian peasant stereotypes! And that is supposed to be a happy ending?

ALso never noticed how sexist season 2 is. I mean I was aware of some problems, like the Child, but it's a lot more than just that episode.

 

If it makes you feel any better, the Bringloidi were likely slaughtered after the Enterprise left and cloned to be ideal Mariposans.

 

He had to be French, because in Gene Roddenberry’s head canon, Jean-Luc Picard = Jaques Cousteau.

 

There is a Facebook group called "The Same Photo Of Chief O'Brien Every Day".

 

1. There's a lot about this episode that bothers me. Most notably that Riker kills two helpless innocents, and escapes unpunished. Killing your own clone is still murder.

2. The world was just more sexist in 1987, and even more so in the 60's, when Trek TOS came out. Some people involved in its creation had been born in an America where women couldn't even vote.

 

We don't know if they were alive yet

 

Was reading a review for Discovery 3x01, and in the comment section, one person posted, "At this point I just don’t really think that the people in charge of Trek really understand the franchise in the way that I do."

I don't understand why anyone would continue to watch Star Trek shows that "fail" to live up to the gatekeeping they have going on inside their own head.

 

Again, there's nothing wrong with a British actor playing a French character and there's no need to force a connection to the actor's real life background. And it's not like French people are forbidden or incapable of enjoying a cup of Earl Grey or Shakespeare. What was he supposed to do? Eat cheese and quote the Little Prince ad nauseum to satisfy French clichés?
Just saying that they should have pronounced his name correctly (and not just Patrick Stewart, everybody should have pronounced it correctly) . I'm not even French and still I know how to pronounce Jean-Luc Picard.

 

No, those clichés aren't necessary, and can even be offensive in itself. However, if you choose your lead actor to portray a character from a certain nationality, that actor should be able to make that impression at least somewhat convincingly. An actor playing someone from nationality <x> doesn't need to be fluent in the national language of <x> as far as I'm concerned, but at least he must be able to speak sentences in that language reasonably convincingly if the script occasionally calls for it. So I would expect Stewart to at least be able to mouth sentences in French somewhat decently, even if he doesn't actually speak the language itself.

As a counterexample, I've seen several movies where a character was supposedly from my own country, yet the 'foreign' accent the actor employed in that role was so far removed from the accent the average native from my country would actually have when speaking English that it was a source of hoots of laughter. That won't do for me. Either make a serious effort at approximating the correct accent, or don't do it at all.

 

Size of the Federation: 50 quadrillion miles across.
Distance between Britain and France: 21 miles.

Puts things into perspective, yes?

 

But with the universal translator, there was very little reason for him to speak French at all, unless names were mentioned
(Jean-Luc, Champs-Elysees etc.)
I agree he and the other actors should have been able to pronounce those reasonably well.

True. For all we know native French speakers in the 24th century just sound like Picard, due to three hundred years of language drift hahah.

Also this makes me think; what happened to the various royal families by the time of Trek? Earth is a united planet, so there can't be kingdoms for them to rule anymore... Are they all deposed?
That's assuming any of them survived WW3 and the Post-Atomic Horror, that is.

 

Well, take a look at the world's most famous royal family. They're not actual government rulers, just honorary figures. Emperor Kahless is a contemporary (24th century) example. It's conceivable that such people might still exist on certain Federation worlds. Including, possibly, ones colonized by humans.

 

I'll agree that for Picard, the rules might be slightly different, you can of course come up with all kinds of rationalizations / reasons why he wouldn't speak our current French.

As for language drift, I would say that generally, in three hundred years a language changes significantly, but not beyond recognition (of course there always will be exceptions). I tried this in the past and found I can read / listen to 'reconstructed versions' of 300 year old samples of all 'modern' languages I have a working knowledge on and generally I won't just recognize the language, but also will be able to follow what the text is about, even though I may miss out on some of the finer details or particular expressions. (Exceptions may include particularly obscure dialects or texts, but I would have trouble with particularly obscure modern dialects or texts as well).

We don't know what 'united' truly means, in this context, I think. If it's a kind of E.U. structure, it just might be possible -- we still have various monarchies here in the E.U. where they're mostly only figureheads.

I doubt those royal families would survive into the 24th century anyway, but not necessarily on those grounds.

 

Oh I wasn't saying that French would become irrecognizable by the 24th century, just saying that, for all we know, 24th century French in the ST universe might sound like contemporary French spoken with a British accent.

I agree that we don't exactly know what "united" means in canon, but to me it means that Earth is now one "nation" with the countries and nations of the past existing as "regions" within that "Worlwide Nation". And Jean-Luc saying he's French just means he originates from the French "region" just like a modern Italian person can say they are "Venetian" despite Venice not existing as an independent nation/republic for well over 200 years now.
But I am fully aware that it is just my interpretation.
I guess in that case the British royal family would be kind of like the former rulers of Hanover now, who's former kingdom doesn't exist as a independent country anymore either.

 

Fair enough. Not that I would think it particularly likely that French would evolve in exactly that direction even though I wouldn't be too surprised for it to incorporate some English influences. But, you can never know

 

If you are writing about the British royal family, the head of it, the monarch, has an role in government. The monarch more or less makes every decision of the parliament, the cabinet, and the prime minister happen by giving their assent. Of course it has been a century or two since the monarch has not given their assent to the will of the government.

I note that most countries in the world have a separate head of government, like a prime minister, who runs the government and rules the country, and head of state, such as a president or a monarch, who is the living symbol of the country. Countries where the head of government and head of state are the same person, like the president of the USA, or the King of Saudi Arabia, are a minority. Which doesn't mean that the many heads of state who are not heads of government have no governmental functions at all.

You seem to accept the popular idea that a kingdom must be a soverign and independent country.

In 19th century Europe newly independent coutnries usually became kingdoms, thus creating an idea that kingdoms were independent countries.

But even in Europe, Bohemia was a kingdom for over 700 years, but was never an indpendent country in all that time.

Similaly, the Kingdom of Slavonia was part of the Kingdom of Croatia until 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary until 1868, and the Kingdom of Hungary was part of the Empire of Austria from 1804 to 1868. Because the same person occupied all four thrones, that is little noticed.

Germany was united by the formation of the German Empire in 1871. But that didn't mean that the Kings of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurttemburg lost their crowns, or the grand dukes, dukes, and princes who were sovereigns of other states in the new German Empire.

And medieval Ireland has many exmples of non independent kingdoms and kings.

At the present time there are 44 sovereign states which are monarchies - but Barbados is planning to become a republic before the end of 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchies

That is much smaller than the number in Wikipedia's list of current constituant monarchs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_constituent_monarchs

Many of those rulers have titles which may be more like noble titles than royal titles. I am certainly not familiar enough with those rulers to know which titles are more like noble titles and which are more like royal titles.

But I think that the number of kingdoms which are constituant parts of larger monarchies or republics is much greater than the number of kingdoms which are independent countries.

I point out that in the Lensman series of space operas a state which humbly calls itself "Civilization" rules most of the Miliky Way Galaxy, with some kind of a federal system of millions or billions of planetary governments under the central goverments. There are several mentions of planetary presidents within "Civilization". In one scene, an enemy terrorist uses mind control on the prime minister of a member planet within "Civilization", to make him murder the other ministers and his monarch in a cabinet meeting.

You should also read my answer to:
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/110223/imperial-kingdoms