On a related tangent, I always wondered why it seems like virtually every system in Star Trek has planets named Something I, Something II, Something III, etc. Were we the only species that decided to name the planets of our solar system something else? (Yes, I'm aware Earth can also be called Sol III, Mars can be called Sol IV, etc., but those names are virtually never used. No one would say anything other than Earth or Mars in casual conversation.)
Archer IV and planet naming
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Same reason why the names of most alien homeworlds are based on the names of the aliens, I'd wager. Cardassians from Cardassia Prime, Ferengi from Ferenginar, Bajorans from Bajor, Vulcans from Vulcan, Romulans from Romulus, Denobulans from Denobula, etc. I don't know if it was because of laziness or apathy, or if TPTB thought that viewers wouldn't realize the characters were talking about an alien character's homeworld if it didn't have a similar name.
More in the Mirror Universe than the Prime Universe, but that doesn't make it okay. Aside from humans from Earth, the Klingons are one of the only other major species whose homeworld isn't something like Kling or Klingonia or Klingar or whatever.
I prefer the way they did it in Mass Effect. Every species comes from a homeworld with a distinctive name (asari from Thessia, turians from Palaven, salarians from Sur'Kesh, etc.) If they'd done it Star Trek style, every species' name would be capitalized (they're considered common nouns in ME, so they don't get capitalized), and the Asari would be from Asar or Asaria, the Turians from Turia, the Salarians from Salaria, and so forth. Boring.
I prefer the way they did it in Mass Effect. Every species comes from a homeworld with a distinctive name (asari from Thessia, turians from Palaven, salarians from Sur'Kesh, etc.) If they'd done it Star Trek style, every species' name would be capitalized (they're considered common nouns in ME, so they don't get capitalized), and the Asari would be from Asar or Asaria, the Turians from Turia, the Salarians from Salaria, and so forth. Boring.
It's a plot device for the audience. Many people aren't going to make the connection between Sol III and Earth right away.
Conversely naming a planet in the system So-and-so 9 is a lot easier than coming up with 9 differing names for planets.
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie1.html
Also, the "huge planet looming in the sky" version from the theatrical release of TMP has been superseded by the Director's Edition matte painting (which works better, since it's a daytime sky and the live-action plate was clearly shot in sunlight) without the huge planet. Although "Yesteryear" still shows a fairly big planet (though nowhere near as big as the TMP one) in the sky.
Must be Delta Vega Vulcanis.
Must it be superseded? Has all of TOS now been superseded by the remastered versions? No more T'Khut? In The Enterprise Incident now only have 2 D-7's instead of three, the other being replaced by a BOP? Why can't we accept that it's simply a different version of the same things? A parallel universe with very minor differences. In one, Vulcan has a large co-orbital planet that has at least one moon, in the other, no sister planet. Must the past be overwritten? Isn't there room for more than one interpretation?
I guess I'd better toss my original DVD of TMP and only watch the DE then.
It's not a case of a later story changing something in an earlier one. Both the DE and TOS-R are simple re imaginings of minor differences. How small the Trek multiverse must be if there isn't room for both.
What makes up Star Trek? All of it. All the shows, the movies, the books, the comics. The dreaded canon is a limitation on the authors, not on the fans. My multiverse is large, it contains multiples, even universes that contradict each other. (Just how old is Pavel Chekov anyway?)
Nebulas in the Trek universe are much denser and more numerous than in ours, Does that bother me? Nope. Warp speed is different each time it's used, depending on the story. Problem? Not at all. Does that fact that Delta Vega exists simultaneously on the edge of the galaxy and in close proximity to Vulcan invalidate one or the other? Not in the least. I've got an open mind, especially where fiction is concerned. What I'm not a fan of is someone deciding that a previous story is "wrong" and deciding to "correct" it. It is what it is. Leave it as it is. Add something new instead of trying to make it all fit.
New worlds, new civilizations. Let's see what's out there.
Must be Delta Vega Vulcanis.
The novels have named it T'Kuht, also rendered as T'Khut, and sometimes T'Rukh.
Well, "must" is putting it strongly, but I think it makes a lot more sense in this case to favor the DE version. For one thing, there's the general principle that the theatrical release was rushed into theaters with many of its effects, sound design, editing, etc. incomplete, something that should never have been allowed to happen, while the DE was endorsed by Robert Wise as his preferred version of the film. I'm sure not inclined to argue with the guy who made West Side Story and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
More specifically, as I said, the live-action plate was clearly shot in daylight -- Spock casts a shadow and even holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight -- so the decision to replace the originally planned daylight scene with a night scene was simply bizarre. Plus the painting they used is just too fanciful -- the planet in the sky is absurdly big (unless it's shot through an extreme zoom lens from like a mile away from Spock), and the open lava pits would make the environment so uninhabitably hot that Spock would probably burst into flames just kneeling there. Not to mention that the shot was rushed and there's a visible matte misalignment between the planet and the mountains. It has always looked weird and wrong to me and just wasn't very well done. The DE version is based on the concept art for the originally planned version of the matte shot, the one they intended to do before scrapping it for the weird lava-pits-and-giant-planet scene. And it looks better and makes more sense on every level. I see no reason not to prefer it.
Well, that's a meaningless question, because "all" of TOS has not been altered by the remastered versions, only the very brief portions of each episode that contained visual effects. But on the whole, yes, I would rather believe that, for example, Flint's mansion looked like this than that it was an inexplicably exact duplicate of the Kalar fortress on Rigel VII right down to the landscape and planets in the sky. Obviously a lot of the FX shots in TOS were just meant to be suggestions or approximations of the underlying concepts, the best they could manage with the resources available. TOS-R was able to use more powerful tools to come closer to the original intent. It's not a matter of one being "true" and the other being "false"; they're just different artistic interpretations of an abstract idea.
See above re: "Yesteryear."
Which I think was a great idea, as was the Romulan-style paint job on those D-7s. It made it feel more Romulan. The reason they used the D-7s in the original was simply because they'd built this expensive ship model and wanted to get more use out of it, and because they'd misplaced the original Romulan ship miniature. It wasn't a pure, perfect artistic decision, it was a compromise made due to pragmatic limitations. It's part of the overall work now, but I have no problem with the refinement of putting a Romulan ship in the mix as well. Again, it's just a difference of interpretation.
Again, see my comments re: "Yesteryear." It's still possible to believe that the companion world exists; it's simply that the depiction of that world presented in the theatrical edition's matte painting was deeply problematical on many levels. "Yesteryear"'s version isn't quite so astronomically or geologically ludicrous, nor as badly designed a painting.
Sure, if you're speaking Vulcan.Must be Delta Vega Vulcanis.
The novels have named it T'Kuht, also rendered as T'Khut, and sometimes T'Rukh.
Well, actually those were two different events. First, after "Heart of Glory," the makers of TNG decided "Kling" sounded silly and just referred to "the Klingon homeworld" from then on. Later, the writers of The Undiscovered Country, a separate group of creators, named the Klingon homeworld Kronos, which Klingon language creator Marc Okrand then Klingonized as Qo'noS (no u) in his second edition of the Klingon Dictionary, and which the shows began using starting with DS9 (the name was never used in TNG).
The simplest explanation, in terms of preserving a systematic universe with systematic naming practices, would seem to be that Archer IV was not among the planets named after Jonathan Archer. Only planets Archer and Archer were. Or perhaps Archerworld and Archerton. Or Jacklandia and Jonathan, for that matter.
That is, even if we accept that two planets were named after Archer, we do not need to also accept the source that says Archer IV was one of them. Those are separate: the Mirror Hoshi says out loud that two planets were named, but only the text on the screen creates the Archer IV connection.
Alas, this particular text is the only one that is actually legible in the episode. The uppercase names of the two planets are rather easily made out.
http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x19/inamirrordarkly2_172.jpg
Of course, we're always left with the option that the universe where this happened was not the "regular" one. After all, application of the same sort of resolution and scrutiny we use in the naming problem requires us to also notice that in that universe, the Defiant had angular railing at the bridge, and the crew wore standard "TOS delta" insignia, which is not the case in this one.
Makes great sense. So "traitors of Kling" are "traitors of Klingondom", not traitors from a physical place called Kling. Heck, good old John M. Ford and the related FASA material already used the word in that sense (although they spelled it without the g). That is, in the "The klin in you is strong, young padawan" sense. Plus, as part of the name for the language, Klingonaase, or the homeworld, Klinzhai (which probably is just Klingonaase for "homeworld", which is a planet named Qo'noS).
However, this still leaves us with the wall map from "Conspiracy" where Probert saw it fit to include a place named Kling.
Timo Saloniemi
Korris's reference in "Heart of Glory," if I remember the line correctly, was to "the warriors of Kling." That could simply be an archaic or poetic variant term for "Klingons." He never actually said it was a place name; viewers just assumed.
Apart from that tiny and illegible text in the "Conspiracy" map, our references to "Kling" or "kling" are limited to this single passage:
Kling might be a place where traitors live, but it sounds more as if it is the thing said traitors betrayed... A district in the Klingon realm doesn't really make much sense, unless it is something akin to Washington D.C., a location closely associated with government shortcomings.
Timo Saloniemi
Kling might be a place where traitors live, but it sounds more as if it is the thing said traitors betrayed... A district in the Klingon realm doesn't really make much sense, unless it is something akin to Washington D.C., a location closely associated with government shortcomings.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, yes, I know perfectly well that's the case in reality. I read that paragraph just yesterday -- not just the Memory Alpha reference, but the original Encyclopedia one -- as part of my research for post #33. What I'm saying is that in-universe, the reference doesn't necessarily have to be to the name of a planet. We can use our imaginations and think of alternatives, which is what I was trying to do there. Okay?
Gotya, alternatives are great, or there's less to discuss, but I was reacting to you saying that "viewers just assumed," thinking that somehow you meant the homeworld interpretation had been driven by viewers.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I didn't make the assumption that Kling was the homeworld when I first viewed the episode. I really thought it was referring to something tribal, cultural, or perhaps the warrior code. The line was really hard to miss; I was hanging on every word, and "Kling" without the "-on" stuck out big.
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