Both times by the same character, a character who apparently doesn't have solid knowledge of Earth history.
A question about the Botany Bay.
- Thread starter Tenacity
- Start date
No. Spock was agreeing with Gill's statement, and not a statement by Kirk.
Also, Spock ridiculous idea that German stood "only one step away from global domination" is just another example that he has no real understanding of Earth's world history.
I'm going with 1980's.
Spock claims for the numbers of dead in the 1st and 2nd world wars are obsurdly low, and historically wrong. Spock was talking out of his ass.
And how is getting numbers so wrong possible a "changed premise?"
Is it possible you don't understand what that term means?
Why would that be requirement? Spock was factually incorrect, whether anyone points it out or not
Spock was simply not sighting accurate numbers, therefor he was wrong.
Okay, so who was right and who was wrong about the death count from the 3rd world war, Spock or Riker? The two were no-where near each other (37 million vs 600 million).
They both can't be right.
What's James Kirk's middle initial? It is R or is it T? They can't both be right.
Except Spock didn't employ the computer when he made his claim that the ship was a DY-100. He and Kirk were both making their identification by memory.
Kirk has alway stated that his middle initial was a "T." And when his records were read, they too had the initial as a "T."
So between Mitchell using a "R," and Kirk using a "T," I would say that Kirk is the one who is correct, and Michell is the one who is wrong.
Now that I've answered your question to the best of my ability, please answer mine, Spock or Riker?
No, Mitchell wasn't wrong, because at the time, Kirk's middle initial was R. And Spock was correct, and then Riker was correct. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing and purposely not accepting that premises change in a show as long-lasting as Star Trek.
I propose that the farther your historic information is from the actual events, the more inaccurate your understanding of history is. So, someone in the 1960's would have better and more accurate information than someone in 2060's and them more than someone in 2160's and so on to the 2260's and then on to the 2360's. Throw in a couple of wars and conquerors rewriting history and its gets even worse. So, Spock's historic information would be generally better than Riker's.
I personally think they are really talking about two different things, though.
The change to the number of dead people is a retcon. These things happen in fiction. However, it is a little fun to think that Spock, who's usually precisely right about everything, was way off the mark. That, and it's fun to think Spock confused two completely different wars when he said "Your so-called last world war".
The thing with the German government's efficiency when Hitler was in power, a lot of Germany's information from those days was classified until a few years ago, so the writers in the 60s had to simply guess.
However, with the matter of this DY spaceship, I don't see any reason to believe Spock was wrong about this, unless your headcanon is that Spock is never right. And Kirk never said it was a DY-500. He said it was similar to a DY-500. There was no disagreement between Spock and anybody about this.
The thing with the German government's efficiency when Hitler was in power, a lot of Germany's information from those days was classified until a few years ago, so the writers in the 60s had to simply guess.
However, with the matter of this DY spaceship, I don't see any reason to believe Spock was wrong about this, unless your headcanon is that Spock is never right. And Kirk never said it was a DY-500. He said it was similar to a DY-500. There was no disagreement between Spock and anybody about this.
Perceptions of historical events, persons, etc. also tend to change over time. For example, the notion of Nazi Germany as a remarkably efficient state was far more widely-accepted in the period during which the episode was produced than it is today.
See:
https://coffeecuphistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/the-myth-of-nazi-efficiency/
An expert can spot the difference between a Block I Apollo and a block II. Spock could probably spot the different radiators on the SM, whereas Kirk would just recognise an Apollo.
Exactly.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I think it’s ‘fun,’ but the OP’s premise is that Spock is constantly wrong about things, and that’s just not true. Because if it was, other characters would be constantly correcting him, and they don’t. Therefore, whatever he’s talking about, whether it’s the amount of people killed in a war, his opinions about the efficiency of a 1930’s fascist regime, or his recognition about the class of a sleeper ship, he is correct in terms of what the context was at the time the episode aired.
Not at all, I am advancing a position through. Simply not agreeing with you isn't arguing.
How can you "retcon" a historical fact?
Not even close, I'm saying that Spock's knowledge in the specific area of Earth history is lacking.
Why would they do that?
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It is my theory that Star Trek happens in an alternate universe where WWI and WWII had different histories and much fewer deaths than in our universe. It is my theory that Spock correctly gave the casualties in the third world war on the list that he studied in his era, and Riker correctly gave the casualties in the third world war in the list that he studied in his era, which would thus be the fourth or higher number world war in Spock's list.
I assume that when fictional characters mention details about their fictional setting, they are always correct, since the audience is counting on them to reveal data about the ficitonal setting. I think that a writer should never have a fictional character be wrong or lying about important data about the fictional setting, unless that is a plot point that will be revealed later in the story. "Bread and Circuses" was written and filmed in 1967, Star Trek: First Contact was filmed in 1996, 29 years later. If the creators of "Bread and Circuses" had some plot point in mind about Spock being wrong about the deaths in the Third World War they, or rather various successor of them, certainly waited a long time to reveal that, and I don't see what the story pay off would be. If would have a bold person in 1967 who assumed that Star Trek would continued to be in production for more than a year or two longer.
Possibly Star Trek is in an alternate universe where Nazi Germany waa not only evil, but also much more efficient than it was in our history.
What makes you think that Spock misidentified the Eugenics War as Earth's last world war? Don't use the dates. It seems to me extremely probable that the United Earth government sometimes changes the official Earth calendar, including the epoch that year are counted from, to satisfy various pressure groups. So if the Eugenics wars in the mid 1990s SS (in the "Space seed" calendar) and the Third World war about 2053 FC (in the First Contact calendar) were both the last world war on Earth, they must have been the same world war. Thus the "Space Seed" calendar should count the years from an epoch almost 60 years later than the epoch of the First Contact calendar.
Thank you for sharing that. That eminently readable article explains how Nazi Germany appeared efficient, while being anything but when checking its undercarriage.
As for the in-universe aspect of this, the expression put forth was "the most efficient state". Efficient in what? Well, that is also explicated for us: efficient in rising from the ashes of the Depression and Great War humiliation to political prominence. This doesn't call for any high standards of working bureaucracy or high-output industries or the like: it calls for gall, posturing and audacity, which no assessment of the Nazis has ever found lacking.
This was also Gill's apparent aim. He wasn't interested in optimizing the output of Ekosian factories, or the throughput of their social security system. He was trying to optimize the process by which a planet in chaos would get reorganized. And the Nazi posturing and hatemongering would do fine there, as already demonstrated on Earth.
What ulterior motivations Gill had for doing so, we can further debate, because the episode gives us none. Kirk puts words in the dying and delirious man's mouth, repeating platitudes Gill must have used during his lectures. Did Gill himself believe in those? Or was he just working a particularly efficient scam here, robbing an entire planet of its riches or playing king, until an usurper put an end to that? Never mind: "the most efficient state" is not a false statement in the context.
As regards the original idea, Spock can't remain being wrong through the first quarter of "Space Seed". His understanding of the exact nature of Khan's spaceship must be true to the facts by the time he refers to "DY-100" the second time. But of course we can speculate that he uncovered the fact that the Botany Bay was actually a DY-603½, or even a ZX-57B, and is now lying to his CO to save face; in fact, Spock could be doing that all the time, aware that the odds of getting caught are pretty much zero.
If we assume Spock is not lying, then it follows the ship is a DY-100, though.
Timo Saloniemi
This was also Gill's apparent aim. He wasn't interested in optimizing the output of Ekosian factories, or the throughput of their social security system. He was trying to optimize the process by which a planet in chaos would get reorganized. And the Nazi posturing and hatemongering would do fine there, as already demonstrated on Earth.
What ulterior motivations Gill had for doing so, we can further debate, because the episode gives us none. Kirk puts words in the dying and delirious man's mouth, repeating platitudes Gill must have used during his lectures. Did Gill himself believe in those? Or was he just working a particularly efficient scam here, robbing an entire planet of its riches or playing king, until an usurper put an end to that? Never mind: "the most efficient state" is not a false statement in the context.
As regards the original idea, Spock can't remain being wrong through the first quarter of "Space Seed". His understanding of the exact nature of Khan's spaceship must be true to the facts by the time he refers to "DY-100" the second time. But of course we can speculate that he uncovered the fact that the Botany Bay was actually a DY-603½, or even a ZX-57B, and is now lying to his CO to save face; in fact, Spock could be doing that all the time, aware that the odds of getting caught are pretty much zero.
If we assume Spock is not lying, then it follows the ship is a DY-100, though.
Timo Saloniemi
You are indeed making an argument that Spock is constantly wrong about things, and your premise is based on a falsehood which you don't seem to want to accept because you have some sort of weird agenda of trying to make Spock out to be a liar.
It's not a 'historical fact.' The show is fictional, and fictional shows can change things.
And I'm saying that you don't know the difference between mistakes and retcons. Or you do know the difference but are being deliberately obtuse about it to win your silly argument.
Because if the intent of the TOS writers was that Spock was constantly saying incorrect things about Earth's fictional history, those writers would make it clear to the audience that Spock was wrong by having another character correct him. But they don't. Ergo, the intent was that Spock was correct. Those writers (or the fictional character of Spock that they're writing for) can't be held accountable if some future writers writing for a completely different show 20 years later decide to change those fictional 'facts.'
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This is a weird thread.
Also - is it really all that controversial to say that Nazi Germany was one step away from global domination? I've seen many historians theorize that if Germany had forced Great Britain/the UK into surrender (presumably the one step Spock was talking about), that it was entirely plausible that the isolationist factions in the United States would have triumphed and stayed away until Germany - now able to concentrate all its firepower on the Eastern Front - was too powerful to resist, leading to the eventual defeat of the U.S. as well. (This scenario also necessarily posits that Japan would not attack and provoke the U.S. at Pearl Harbor - which could also be the one step Spock was mentioning.)
Also - is it really all that controversial to say that Nazi Germany was one step away from global domination? I've seen many historians theorize that if Germany had forced Great Britain/the UK into surrender (presumably the one step Spock was talking about), that it was entirely plausible that the isolationist factions in the United States would have triumphed and stayed away until Germany - now able to concentrate all its firepower on the Eastern Front - was too powerful to resist, leading to the eventual defeat of the U.S. as well. (This scenario also necessarily posits that Japan would not attack and provoke the U.S. at Pearl Harbor - which could also be the one step Spock was mentioning.)
