How much time passed between IV and V?
- Thread starter Tribble puncher
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This would be the logical interpretation.
Then again, Taylor does say she has 300 years of catch-up learning ahead of her. Why would she have any? She's the one who should be teaching these future ignorami all about the whales, which haven't changed one bit since she last saw them. It's not like anybody could have written a textbook with new content on whales in the intervening centuries, what with the subjects having been extinct for all that time.
Trying to learn how to serve on a spaceship is a better justification for that line. And for her "See you around the galaxy!" parting line. Even when it only makes sense if she just euthanized the whales now that they served their purpose, and is free of Earthly commitments.
Timo Saloniemi
Then again, Taylor does say she has 300 years of catch-up learning ahead of her. Why would she have any? She's the one who should be teaching these future ignorami all about the whales, which haven't changed one bit since she last saw them. It's not like anybody could have written a textbook with new content on whales in the intervening centuries, what with the subjects having been extinct for all that time.
Trying to learn how to serve on a spaceship is a better justification for that line. And for her "See you around the galaxy!" parting line. Even when it only makes sense if she just euthanized the whales now that they served their purpose, and is free of Earthly commitments.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, she was the expert on whales, but there was a whole lot of other science and assorted knowledge that's been accumulated in the past three centuries. She'd have to catch up with all of that.
...Why?
I mean, she was the expert on whales. Why would she have to become a quantum nanobiologist on top of that?
Let the quantum nanobiologists do their three hundred years of catching down so that they will learn how to treat right whales right and humpback whales humpback.
Timo Saloniemi
Yup, if anyone in the 23rd century could claim to be the leading authority on the subject, she'd be the one.
Not that she'd have to become an expert on these other sciences, but there IS a basic understanding of science that must be understood to function as any type of scientist. In three hundred years, there would undoubtedly be some changes in what we thought we understood as science, and what the current 23rd Century understanding turned out to be.
Not to mention, it would take a while for her to simply learn how to function in the 23rd Century. Imagine a person from the 1700s being suddenly plopped down in 2018. They'd be so completely lost. Talk about culture shock. Kids today get confused by rotary phones! There would also be all of the alien technology, culture, biology, etc. to get accustomed to.
Technically there are about 90 known species of Cetaceans living now. There are about 18 species of whales if the Baleen whales and the 3 toothed whales are counted. the humpback whales Megaptera novaeanglaie are the only species specifically said to have become extinct by the time of TVH. Thus it is possible that some other whale species have survived into the era of TVH and some persons are 300 years more expert than her about those particular species.
Sure. Picard has dolphins aboard, after all (although those could of course be native to Alpha Beta Gamma, or replicated, or holographic).
But some sort of general whale knowledge surviving would rather drastically undermine the idea that nobody but Spock can figure out how to answer the Probe. It's not as if Spock has ever heard whalesong in the wild himself: he's running a search algorithm of some sort, on a hunch. If anybody down on Earth had any knowledge of whales, he or she would inevitably have better hunches about this thing (and also access to a better search algorithm and whalesong database than what that piece of Klingon junk had).
Would Taylor want to function as scientist? Being a whale expert would seem to be more than sufficient for making her happy, respected and able to dictate her salary. Moving away from the whales to study future science would be a nice hobby, but hardly a priority for her.
Not that her exclamation really means the catching up would be a priority, or even that it would ever take place. She's just giddy in general.
You mean, an ancient sailing ship?
The FNP by Paris' implication sounds like a reenactment society rather than an organization committed to doing serious work. Why opt for ancient ships when you have a job to do (and never mind whether they work on sails or subspace impellers)?
Okay, Paris may be conflating there, declaring ancient sailing ships a lost cause and the FNP career the next best alternative. It's just that in a universe as rich as the Federation's, "the next best" really shouldn't figure.
Timo Saloniemi
But some sort of general whale knowledge surviving would rather drastically undermine the idea that nobody but Spock can figure out how to answer the Probe. It's not as if Spock has ever heard whalesong in the wild himself: he's running a search algorithm of some sort, on a hunch. If anybody down on Earth had any knowledge of whales, he or she would inevitably have better hunches about this thing (and also access to a better search algorithm and whalesong database than what that piece of Klingon junk had).
Would Taylor want to function as scientist? Being a whale expert would seem to be more than sufficient for making her happy, respected and able to dictate her salary. Moving away from the whales to study future science would be a nice hobby, but hardly a priority for her.
Not that her exclamation really means the catching up would be a priority, or even that it would ever take place. She's just giddy in general.
You mean, an ancient sailing ship?
The FNP by Paris' implication sounds like a reenactment society rather than an organization committed to doing serious work. Why opt for ancient ships when you have a job to do (and never mind whether they work on sails or subspace impellers)?
Okay, Paris may be conflating there, declaring ancient sailing ships a lost cause and the FNP career the next best alternative. It's just that in a universe as rich as the Federation's, "the next best" really shouldn't figure.
Timo Saloniemi
To me, a marine biologist is a type of scientist. Even they would need a basic understanding of current science.
That ain't grown out. That's highlights. She got her hair did lolIt was at least long enough for Uhura to grow out the grey.
Uhura: You'll whip her together, you always do
Scotty: New ship put together by monkeys
Scotty: ...and then we found out...
Kirk: You said 2 weeks. I gave you 3
Kirk: I miss my old chair
None of this sounds like stuff you'd still be bitching about a lengthy time later. They're still on Earth. I'm inclined to think just the 3 weeks, as mentioned, after a leisure cruise, that despite IV's finale romance, was wrought with malfunctions. Enough time for some shore leave on Earth, even though it must have been some serious work, given how different the bridges look
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=44721&fullsize=1
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=48735&fullsize=1
Honestly, sad though it may be, I think it makes a certain amount of in universe sense for the ship to be a dud. I too think they wouldn't have wasted time between the probe & trial. They spent time on Vulcan while the trial plans got going. What wasn't expected was that on the way back to be tried, they'd save Earth. So what was unplanned was giving Kirk another ship so soon
My guess? They took whatever new ship in progress, they had kicking around the shipyards, stuck an Enterprise label on it, & handed it off, to avoid PR blowback for grounding the Earth's saviors, who literally time traveled in an old Klingon bucket, to rescue an extinct species, in order to get the job done. Nobody would give a crap if 5 minutes after they engaged their engines, they'd have to spend weeks making the dumb thing operational
So if there are no whale experts on Earth and thus no whales, then quite possibly there would be consideration after TVH about repopulating the oceans with other whale species from the past as well as acquiring more humpback whales from the past for better genetic diversity. Other whale species might especially be wanted if the Humpbacks are determined to be fully intelligent and other factors indicate some other whale species should have been even more intelligent than humpbacks.
The bridge could have been modular so just pull one out and pop in a new one.
That could give new context to the "I miss my OLD chair" line. It might not have meant the chair he blew up on Genesis; It could have meant the chair he had *last WEEK*.....
I don't think that they would have to remove and replace the bridge modules to redecorate. I remember an old novel, probably The Alternate Martians (1965) by A. Bertram Chandler, where the heroes take the spaceship to Mars to do research into alternate universes of Mars. The government makes them take out all the controls in their control room and replace them with controls compliant with Martian regulations. After the Martian inspectors certify the controls as compliant with Martian regulations and leave, the protagonists rip out the new control systems and replace them with their old old control systems which they prefer. I don't think it would take Mr. Scot too long to strip the bridge down to bare walls and sockets and then replace the control stations with new ones.
Or then, now that Earth has a good idea of the sampling rate of the Whale Probe, they could forget all about whales. The next time that thing comes calling, Earth can replicate whales at the push of a button if need be. Or then push the other button, the one that makes the Whale Probe disappear.
Why would humans want competition?
But the whales being intelligent is far from said. Spock conversed with them - but Spock can converse with machines and rocks just as easily. And it's not as if he discussed quantum chromodynamics with them.
(Indeed, one wonders why mindmelds or Universal Translators aren't more commonly used for conversing with lower life forms, that is, life forms that are factually lower on the intelligence totem pole and/or significantly less capable of using language. Why does Data experiment with Spot's food when he could just crank his commbadge up to eleven
and ask Spot pretty please to describe his/her favorite dish? And why didn't Spock run the whalesong of the Probe through the translator the first thing he recognized the song for what it was? Or, rather, before he recognized it?)
Indeed, the swap from the end of ST4 to the opening of ST5 would probably mostly entail snapping vanity covers over the brutally braced walls and laying the carpeting over the bare metal. Oh, and returning to the TOS style, wall-wide flat display panels after the brief foray into clumsy and anachronist-looking separate "tube" monitors. But swapping your TV set is among the most common, most frequent and simplest redecorating tasks (hey, even a man can do it!).
I'd like to think that vanity covers are very much a thing in Starfleet, and their brief absence in TMP was not an aesthetics choice but a matter of there not being enough time to install the plywood-like cover plates. ST2 in turn had those plates uninstalled so that the cadets and trainees would get more hands-on training and a bit of welcome suffering; ST5 just returned to business as usual.
Timo Saloniemi
Yep, she might be the whale expert, but she still needs to learn how to work current equipment. If the interface is well designed, that shouldn't take too long, but she does still have 300 years of catch-up to do.
And if she wants to fit in, that includes 300 years of human culture, plus all of the alien stuff as well. A human from 1718 would be ignorant of Beethoven, the Beatles, Jane Austen, Thomas Paine... a lot of passing references we take for granted...
It's just odd that she contextually, indeed almost grammatically seems to connect the catching-up with her science ship posting. As if she could learn new things specifically thanks to being posted there, that is.
Being the whale expert aboard a whale monitoring ship shouldn't prompt that specific response IMHO, but more like "I've got a thousand things to teach to these kids".
Timo Saloniemi
Being the whale expert aboard a whale monitoring ship shouldn't prompt that specific response IMHO, but more like "I've got a thousand things to teach to these kids".
Timo Saloniemi
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