continuation of "Face of the Enemy"??

[Tactical Drone]

Has there ever been a continuation of events in "Face of the Enemy?" I mean more of what happened to Ensign Stefan DeSeve and/or any mention of Major Rakal or Commander Toreth ever again? This was one of my favorite episodes of TNG and really showed the acting talents of Marina Sirtis. Troy was awesomely bad-ass in this episode and did so much more than just stand around saying "I sense hostility (in the ship captain who has all armament locked on)." I wish the writers had done so much more with her character.

 

[JAG]

You should try the Titan series as well as the A time to...series of books

 

[William Leisner]

Has there ever been a continuation of events in "Face of the Enemy?" I mean more of what happened to Ensign Stefan DeSeve

There was such a story in The Sky's the Limit, the title of which escapes me at the moment...

(*quick check*)

Ah, it was "Turncoats" by Susan Shwartz.

 

[JNG]

It'd be great if some author would take the opportunity to explain how changing clothes and putting makeup on allows someone to effectively impersonate an alien intelligence agent...did they not notice that she spoke English, or was she actually somehow speaking a Romulan language, or what? Boy, I have trouble enjoying episodes where that happens.

 

[DonIago]

As all the other Romulans were speaking English as well, I don't see why you're confused about that...

As for appearance....if they look like an intelligence agent and talk like an intelligence agent and claim to be an intelligence agent....and if questioning an intelligence agent tends to lead to getting phasered or imprisoned... I can hardly blame Toreth for reacting exactly as she did. Take things at face value until the agent does something truly suspect.

 

[Therin of Andor]

did they not notice that she spoke English, or was she actually somehow speaking a Romulan language, or what? Boy, I have trouble enjoying episodes where that happens.

If Romulans speak any number of dialects they might regular use a Romulan version of the Universal Translator to just understand each other.

 

[JD]

I've always assumed that Deanna's speech was being translated by her UT. It is supposed to work both ways right?

 

[Christopher]

^^Yeah, but theoretically, a listener should be able to tell the difference between someone speaking Romulan and someone speaking English and having it translated into Romulan. Unfortunately, ST generally (if implicitly) treats the UT as if it creates a perfect illusion that the speaker is using the listener's language.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Down to changing their lip movements.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

AFAIK, Deanna - after waking up on the Romulan ship - was first approached by N'Vek (who got her into this) before she had any contact with the rest of the crew. So N'Vek must have coached her on how to speak to them. In whatever language.

We don't know if Deanna was already fluent in Romulan, although she just might have been.

 

[JNG]

We don't know if Deanna was already fluent in Romulan, although she just might have been.

I guess it is possible, although it seems like that would have been both a major plot point and significant to Sirtis's acting choices during the episode.

I do prefer it to the other idea about the Universal Translator typically being used among Romulans with different dialects and whatnot, just because even though this makes plenty of sense taken on its own, it wouldn't do much to explain her speaking English there. I'd think the Romulans would have caught the English (or Betazoid speech).

Seemed like one of those things for which a Trek author could oh-so-casually slip in some explanation. I enjoy when the books take advantage of the space to address weirdness like that, as long as it doesn't get too fanfic-y.

I remember in one of the TOS Romulan books, there was a bit about McCoy being injected with RNA for a mission that taught him Romulan language but made him barf. Or something. I think this may be based on a now-discredited scientific theory about memory, but it was a nifty stab at confronting the issue.

If Troi had been a full Betazoid I could have bought some telepathic explanation. Hey, maybe while she was knocked out a Reman came in and mentally force-fed Troi a bunch of Romulan words!

Fiendish!

 

[Timo]

...theoretically, a listener should be able to tell the difference between someone speaking Romulan and someone speaking English and having it translated into Romulan.

...How? The lip-synch issue already seems to establish that the UT isn't a microphone-computer-speaker setup, but instead somehow intercepts the language at some point between your ear and your brain, making you think the opponent is speaking your language. Essentially, it would feed you a rough'n'ready translation and make you believe it was complete, and your brain would want to believe, thus adding the lipsynch and other details.

If the brain wants to believe, it's likely to ignore any suggestion that the speaker isn't speaking your language, unless that suggestion is really blatant. What would qualify for blatant suggestion? I'd think mainly two things: the speaker says something that by its content raises a flag (say, she uses a clear Anglism rather than the corresponding Romulan phrase, even though each individual word is correct Romulanese), or the UT is equipped with a signal that tells when it's on.

And I'm of two minds about the latter possibility. Sure, it would be practical in some situations to have an "on sound" for the device. But it would also be annoying as all hell. It would appear likely that everybody in the Trek universe keeps their UTs activated all the time, even in their sleep: their surroundings are saturated with foreign languages, after all, and a space adventurer certainly would wish to understand when he overhears a random alien whispering "on the count of three" or "lookit 'em knockers on his sis". So even a ship full of Romulans who all speak the same native language (I rather think this might be the case on the Romulan Star Empire which is big on policies such as unity and racial hatred) would see everybody's UT activated and ready to process alien languages - without specifically notifying the user that the languages are alien.

As for onscreen evidence, the only time anybody has been suggested to recognize a post-22nd century UT would be ST6:TUC. And we never really saw that happen, as our heroes chose not to use the UT, so we don't know exactly how it would have happened. Would the computer have beeped "Alert! Alien UT signal detected!" or perhaps "Alert! Grammar analysis suggests speaker is using alien UT!", or did our heroes think that their UT's Klingon routines had commonly known shortcomings identifiable to the model, and that a book-based translation would result in different shortcomings, more difficult to trace back to Starfleet?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

even though this makes plenty of sense taken on its own, it wouldn't do much to explain her speaking English there. I'd think the Romulans would have caught the English (or Betazoid speech).

We don't know that the Romulans were hearing anything but Romulan coming out of their UTs. It was the TV audience that was hearing English.

Maybe the reason Troi was chosen as the spy was that she already knew some Romulan?

 

[Timo]

We know Riker knows that "Veruul!" strikes a cord in Romulans, but beyond that it remains unclear whether anybody in the Federation actually has deciphered the Romulan language.

Diane Duane got mileage out of the idea that Romulans basically invented their language when leaving Vulcan, in order to shed all remnants of their origins. It would be something of a tactical advantage if Romulans thereafter made triply sure that their language was not readily accessible to outsiders: they could refuse to speak it in the presence of foreigners, guard their written materials with all due paranoia, and
generally hunt down anybody intent on leaking information about their culture. (Indeed, that's also part of Duane's premise for "The Romulan Way", as the Federation has to send deep-cover agents to the Star Empire simply to learn what the hell makes these people tick in the first place, rather than do anything as specialized as spy on military or industrial secrets.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

^ Down to changing their lip movements.

I sort of assume the translator synchronizes the translation to the speaker's lip movements, although that would give the translated speech kind of an odd cadence. And it would also require the speaker to mouth the words rather than actually speaking aloud, and require the listener not to realize where the sound was coming from, and so on and so on... Aaaaaahhh!!!!!

I remember in one of the TOS Romulan books, there was a bit about McCoy being injected with RNA for a mission that taught him Romulan language but made him barf. Or something. I think this may be based on a now-discredited scientific theory about memory, but it was a nifty stab at confronting the issue.

That's right. In the '60s, there was an experiment that seemed to show that if you taught a flatworm to run a maze, stuck it in a blender, and fed the remains to another flatworm (eww), that other flatworm would absorb the ability to run the maze. It led to (or supported?) the theory that memory was stored in RNA. Science fiction writers glommed onto this and made extensive use of the idea of RNA "drips" as a means of rapid learning. However, it proved impossible to replicate the result of the flatworm experiment; it turned out to have been -- wait for it -- a fluke. The idea of memory RNA was completely discredited in science, but remained popular in SF.

 

[JNG]

even though this makes plenty of sense taken on its own, it wouldn't do much to explain her speaking English there. I'd think the Romulans would have caught the English (or Betazoid speech).

We don't know that the Romulans were hearing anything but Romulan coming out of their UTs. It was the TV audience that was hearing English.

Maybe the reason Troi was chosen as the spy was that she already knew some Romulan?

I was addressing this as an either-or between the two possibilities. I can't play with the middle ground there because it is too much of a stretch to suggest that the Universal Translator could somehow transparently correct her incomplete knowledge of the language they'd expect her to be speaking (I can't imagine it could translate Romulan into "better Romulan," especially unnoticed.)

If she knew it then that's that and the UT doesn't have to be involved, but as I said, it seemed like a big thing not to mention that Troi knew the language. I do think it is to some extent implausible that Troi would know much, if any, Romulan spoken language when the Romulans had evidently been out of contact with the Federation her entire adult life prior to "The Neutral Zone."

If the UT was translating the English she was speaking into Romulan, this is anything but an explanation. I'm not referring to what they hear "coming out of their UTs," but the actual English she would be speaking. How could it not be obvious that she was using a translation machine? I will cut Trek a break on some stuff and enjoy rationalizing oddities, but I don't think I am willing to entertain the concept that the Universal Translator is not only an amazing translator that knows what people are trying to say and makes it understandable, but is also a kind of force field/holoprojector that somehow reaches into the throats of speakers and selectively jams the sounds that are actually being made by the speakers and generates its own and then creates the illusion that its sounds are sourced from the speaker, and not only does so in real time but sometimes by projecting ahead and guessing at words that are yet to be spoken! Even if such a device did somehow exist in Trek, I have to think that military personnel on a warship transporting an intelligence agent on a secret mission would be the last to allow themselves to be fooled by it.

It seems almost as unlikely that most astronauts in the Federation have heavy-duty cybernetic brain implants or whatever that alter their perceptions while translating.

I don't think we are supposed to interpret the fact that English is typically spoken on the show as a direct simulation of what would be experienced in that sci-fi universe; we have to interpret the functioning of the UT in some semi-realistic way that still allows it to function smoothly enough to permit the situations in Trek. Usually this is quite possible and I don't have any problems with it (for example, I imagine the hails between aliens that have never met before contain some sort of computer Rosetta Stone kind of business based on prime numbers or some easy point of entry, and that the computers can learn enough from these initial transmissions to allow dialogue.) The "infiltration" episodes are one example from a very short list of things on Trek that really give me pause.

Wasn't there some whatnot about "brain waves" being part of how the UT worked in TOS? Could some necessary and useful commonality in brain waves exist between different species? I try really hard to find some rationalization hiding somewhere in that.

Hey, maybe while she was knocked out a Reman came in and mentally force-fed Troi a bunch of Romulan words!

I meant this as a joke, but upon reflection, maybe it is the best I can do. Telepathy in Trek is not especially well explained or scientifically plausible, but at least it's established in the setting.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

On the other hand, any inconsistencies in the way Deanna spoke while on the Romulan vessel could be chalked up to the fact that she is supposed to be a Tal Shiar officer: The crew would be obligated to respect *any* language she chose to speak, without question.

 

[KRAD]

However, it proved impossible to replicate the result of the flatworm experiment; it turned out to have been -- wait for it -- a fluke.

GUARDS!!!!!!

 

[FredH]

However, it proved impossible to replicate the result of the flatworm experiment; it turned out to have been -- wait for it -- a fluke. The idea of memory RNA was completely discredited in science, but remained popular in SF.

Still begs the question of how that one cannibal flatwork did manage to get through the maze, doesn't it? (Unless it was an easy, badly-designed maze one could stumble-- uh, slither through by accident.)

 

[JD]

The UTs in Trek have always kinda bugged me. They referred to them throughout the series, but they never really explained what they were or how they worked. I think there might have been one were they made a reference to them in relation to the com-badges, but that really wouldn't work, because there were tons of times where we saw them speaking without combadges to aliens that could not possibly have been speaking English.