Hoshi-Linquinstic Skills....

[Joel_Kirk]

You'll never see the NX-01 with a tractor beam. I find that's part of the charm. Even in Season 4, there's a moment during The Augment trilogy where they disable a Klingon Raptor by latching onto it with the grappler and using its tether pylons to disable their warp drive.

Check out Breaking the Ice in Season 1, where Archer has to swallow his pride and ask the Vulcans for help. They have tractor technology and use it to save the stricken shuttlepod.

^^

I'm actually up to 'Breaking the Ice' now...

I'll look out for that scene.

You'll never see the NX-01 with a tractor beam.

Columbia appeared to have some E2-Enterprise modifications added by the time she left Spacedock. Perhaps a tractor beam might have turned up in future seasons. If we'd had them.

There was going to be a tractor beam installed on the next Tuesday, but the show was canceled before then.

 

[SFRabid]

I think it would have been more believable if Phlox or T'Pol had brought along a translation device from their home world rather than pretending that someone could speak a language after hearing a few words. It really got bad when her language skills turned into being a math genius. Language and math more opposite than alike.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. After all, a translation device is something of a must for starfaring species in Trek - so how could T'Pol's or Phlox' species have been starfaring for centuries without such a device?

It was a bigger disappointment with Stargate, which abandoned the translation angle just one lousy episode into the run, in "Emancipation". And they, too, would have had every excuse to introduce a translation device, a standard piece of technology that the Goa'uld would have used for holding together their realm. The other alternative is that the Goa'uld realm already had a lingua franca and that our heroes all learned it (but the audience heard it as English for convenience) - it's just that I wouldn't credit Col. O'Neill with that sort of learning abilities...

Perhaps we could argue that Vulcans, Denobulans, Klingons and pretty much everybody out there have much better head for linguistics, and learn to speak English in a matter of minutes, thus never needing artificial aids? Basically every Trek species does have a larger cranium than us puny humans...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I think it would have been more believable if Phlox or T'Pol had brought along a translation device from their home world rather than pretending that someone could speak a language after hearing a few words. It really got bad when her language skills turned into being a math genius. Language and math more opposite than alike.

^^

I agree...they don't mix.

I'm not much of a math person; but I do love learning the particular language I'm studying.

I know director Melvin Van Peebles picked up French while living in France; I'm sure some people pick up languages while staying in certain foreign countries or hanging around people of a certain etnicity....(and I don't think majority of them are math geniuses)...

 

[bluedana]

It really got bad when her language skills turned into being a math genius. Language and math more opposite than alike.

At least in Vox Sola, it wasn't so much that she became a math genius. She actually had to ask for T'Pol's help with the higher mathematics (and T'Pol agrees that math could be considered a type of language). It was more that she realized that the alien language was a type of code she could decipher using mathematics and tones. Her gift for hearing patterns would fit right in there. Later, in Countdown, she is able to outwit the enemy for a while by using cryptography - again, not so much mathematics as codewriting & codebreaking based on patterns and combinations.

 

[Timo]

Also, cryptography could be considered a field in which Sato would have practical rather than theoretical competence. She can operate translator machines despite not being an electronics specialist or physicist; she can understand vocalizations despite not being a biologist or an anatomist. What she does in "Countdown" might be applying one of her standard Starfleet communications ciphering/deciphering techniques, rather than exhibiting any particular genius.

It's not that we'd have to assume all the Xindi to be incompetent cryptographers, even less skilled than Sato. It's just that the reptilian Dolim might have been temporarily short on those particular resources, and in a perfect position to borrow from Archer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Sato is just a cunning linguist. Simple as that.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

Sato is just a cunning linguist. Simple as that.

T'pol/Sato fiction....Hmmm...

*ahem*

Sorry, I was drifting there...

Yes, I do agree, middyseafort...she could be gifted, [which could hint at some 'augmentation' Skystalker and I thought about earlier]...