General Trek Questions and Observations

I thought the pre-Abrams-universe was the alternate ENT-universe which deviated from TOS-universe as a result of ST:First Contact...

 

Actually, it came from the homeless guy who stole McCoy's phaser and disintegrated himself in "The City...". Turns out he was more important than we thought.

 

(Perhaps I should start a new thread for this, but for now, let's just ask the question here.)

How did Trills ever get the idea to join with these symbionts in the first place? I can barely imagine that one of them thought one day: 'hmmm, I wonder what would happen if I put one of those hideous slugs into my body'.. Or did this relation start involuntary, as e.g. a parasitic one?

 

Clearly, it's been going on for some time, given that the humanoid Trill are born with the pouch-like orifice that allows symbiosis to occur. Something like that takes hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years to evolve.

 

Or perhaps the Trills have been genetically engineered, like the Suliban for example, or the Jems, the Vorta. The Denobulans, genetically modified themselves, so that they could literally smile from ear to ear, swell like a blowfish or climb mountains without any equipment... Also, they have sex all the time but the males don't like to be touched... (you'll have to explain that last one to me)...

 

I imagine that the humanoids and the symbionts on Trill already had some sort of relationship with one another long before the first joining. In their natural environment, those milky caves on Trill, symbionts can communicate with both each other and non-symbionts, so it was probably there that it was discovered that there were two intelligent sentient species sharing the planet.

Joining is a medical procedure, so I can imagine that the first joining may have been a medical emergency. It may have been discovered long ago that Trill symbionts and humanoids were compatible with one another, and the first joining could have been done out of desperation to save the life of either a dying symbiont or a dying humanoid. It may have been only after they were joined that it was revealed the process merged the memories and skills of both symbiont and host humanoid, IMO.

 

While yes, there's some differences between how the Trill were portrayed in TNG and DS9 (and early DS9 and late DS9 for that matter) I think it's also worth noting that, in a pinch, Riker was able to substitute as a temporary host for the Odan symbiont.
Perhaps before regularly joining with the humanoid Trill, the symbionts parasitically took over animals as needed and that's how the humanoids discovered them?

 

A fine way to refer to the 38th President of the United States of America.

 

Recently watched TOS Shore Leave.

A scene in the beginning surprised me a bit: on the bridge, Kirk complains about an aching back and his female yeoman immediately gives him a kind of brief back massage without even being asked to (though Kirk accepts it as perfectly normal). Was this an explicit part of her duties? Or was this considered more 'normal'/acceptable back in the sixties, when this episode was made?

 

Truthfully, Kirk thought it was originally Spock and immediately tensed up and quickly put an end to it when he realized it was the yeoman. So it was a case of an overly helpful yeoman.

 

One of the best and strangest scenes in the show XD
He also looks at Spock's ...lower back right after that

 

... as if that would have been perfectly normal and appropriate on the bridge (Spock giving him that massage)

 

Sometimes I think about how, when Star Trek Phase 2 was in development, Gene Roddenberry had the opportunity to create a new major alien race for Star Trek and came up with the Deltans, which were basically people from a porno planet. It must've been hell to be a pizza delivery guy or a plumber on Delta IV.

 

This was also the period during which he came up with the "love instructor." It fits!

 

In the 60's, it would have been unthinkable. Until 1969, the notion that people had the right to love whoever they chose to didn't really exist.

 

Bones Bones Bones... Why are you smoking while performing heart surgery on Ambassador Sarek in "Journey to Babel"? I'm pretty sure you're not burning Vulcan incense inside the sterile field...

 

That's always been a ridiculous claim. It's come up in discussion before. E.g.:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/journey-to-babel-deforest-kelley-smoking.300756/

 

Okay. I had a look at that thread. Nothing to add.

New observation from same story: I just love how Ambassador Gav's body is strung up in the Jeffries Tube like a hock of ham curing below the rafters. That Orion agent is one sick bastard.

 

GAV: I need a friend. Who can I piss off in this roomful of delegates?

 

I have something to say: In "Generations" the dynamics of the champagne bottle are all wrong!!!

You see there are only two possibilities:

1) This is an ordinary bottle of champ:

The instant the bottle was exposed to the vacuum of space the cork would have been expulsed with great speed ( comparable to the speed of a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun) and the champagne would have extremely fast turned into a gas at the neck, turning the whole bottle into an accelerating rocket. The whole thing would have happened so fast that you couldn't see anything. One instant the bottle is there, the next it would have disappeared.

2) This is a specially reinforced bottle of champ for "vacuum christening"...

The instant the bottle hit the hull the champ would have turned into a gas (the way nitroglycerine does) with the effect of a grenade. Once again you wouldn't see anything (it would be faster than the eye can see) and you wouldn't hear anything, or maybe inside the ship, they would hear the impact of some pieces of shrapnel hitting the hull but it would be very brief!

Plus this would be a cold explosion so no flames, no sparks, no fumes, NOTHING!!!


So there!!!