Did you want John Rhys Davies to play Flint?

[Guy Gardener]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_for_Methuselah

When they were (in the story) programming Janeway's playtime with the Leonardo DaVinchi workshop holoprogram, the engineering team (or "artist" backhome) painting the logistics must have had thought about whether they were going to use a classical interpretation of Leonardo or not. Have "the Master" be 50 something years old or nearly 4 and half thousand years old because one is a genius and the other is just a guy who has had a bit longer to work things out, so to wit completely different characters, and you got to wonder if all that stuff that Leonardo "just accomplished" weren't Flint emptying his closets like spring cleaning or a garage sale

Gods, she might have even had a choice about which Leonardo she wanted to play with when she was setting her preferences during the preamble... And she chose the lie over the truth? (Or every one thought kirk was drunk when he wrote his logs?) Shades of Shannon O'Donnell no? What we think is the past is more important than what it actually was. How fricking Orwellian.

Or Kathy could have just out and out met Flint because McCoy's diagnosis about the lads mortality had been off the mark somewhat.

Oh dear.

It wasn't a question of money was it that they didn't want to play for Flint even though they had Flint, a shadow of Flint on camera for several episodes?

It's so sad when dosh trumps art.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It was eventually proved to be a fabrication of a megalomaniac genius with too may years to sit around thinking up bullshit. Or rather, that was what they wanted people to believe, to preserve the iconic greatness of Da Vinci and the others Flint claimed to have been. It takes away from the wonderfulness of humans (a very important Trek theme) to suddenly tell everyone "oh hey, btw those really great people weren't human after all".

By the time it was Janeway's era this was just a silly hiccup in Kirk's logs about yet another super alien making unprovable claims.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I thought he was a mutant or at least an unwitting hybrid? The lad thought that he was human until he didn't die for the first time, if after all, the entire mission wasn't some sketch or practical joke to pull Kirks leg.

What about Gary Seven then teacake?

Did he also steal mankind's des... You, know that you sound like Lex Luthor talking about Superman don't you?

Actually.

If instead of an Asshole, what if Henry Starling had been Flint? (I know he wasn't, but when they were spitballing the plot... This was after all supposed to be the 30th anniversary episode(s).) It would have sidelined some of Starlings drives from the original story but it would explain his ability to adapt future tech so easily too and if he had been the secret master of the Earth for thousands of years, well that kind of gives him the moral authority to... And then Janeway says: "Ah, hell... Another damn Caretaker."

I have a very special man crush for Ed Bagley JR.

 

[Timewalker]

It was eventually proved to be a fabrication of a megalomaniac genius with too may years to sit around thinking up bullshit. Or rather, that was what they wanted people to believe, to preserve the iconic greatness of Da Vinci and the others Flint claimed to have been. It takes away from the wonderfulness of humans (a very important Trek theme) to suddenly tell everyone "oh hey, btw those really great people weren't human after all".

By the time it was Janeway's era this was just a silly hiccup in Kirk's logs about yet another super alien making unprovable claims.

Flint was human, not alien. And the reason the DaVinci hologram was traditional is because Kirk and his crew were sworn to secrecy about Flint's existence. What Starfleet doesn't know, Starfleet can't teach Kathryn Janeway ~100 years later.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Janeway *knew* that Kirk claimed to have met Da Vinci.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But Janeway knew.

TUVOK: There are several possibilities all within a ten kilometre radius of the city. I must admit, your Mister da Vinci is an astute observer of nature. These maps couldn't be improved upon by Voyager's topographical computer.
JANEWAY: He was a Renaissance man, Tuvok. Interpreted, reinterpreted, deconstructed, fantasized about all through history. Vasari thought he was an angel. Freud thought he had a problem with his mother. James T. Kirk claimed he met him although the evidence is less than conclusive.
DA VINCI: Buon giorno, amici.

I actually took this as a condescending slap on my rump. The writers were actually signalling that they for once were not ignorant of what had come before, Berman celebrated the fact that he hadn't seen much/any of the original Star Trek (Since he was a boy?) and that he didn't plan on rectifying that ignorance because it might muddy his vision of "modern" Star Trek which he was in the middle of building.

Now, this time here however, Ricky knew, but he didn't give a poop.

 

[froot]

The bit at the end of the quote claiming the evidence was "less than conclusive" makes it pretty obvious that she thought the business with Kirk and Flint was just some conspiracy theory or legend. God knows Kirk probably had a billion stories circulating about him at that time - some true, some sort of true, some that were mostly BS.

Kirk was sworn to secrecy. Anything that got out about Flint was probably much later by some loudmouth who no one believed anyway.

That's probably why she went with the "traditional" da Vinci hologram. She knew, but clearly didn't put a whole lot of stock in it.