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Journey To Babel Aliens

Who are the midget shriners with gold skin?:
IMG_3659_zpsfno5lhy8.png
Billy Curtis and Jerry Maren.

The race was finally named by an "Enterprise" script, if not making it onto the screen:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ithenite
 
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re "Midget shriners".

This is from the Little People of America website:

"Such terms as dwarf, little person, LP, and person of short stature are all acceptable, but most people would rather be referred to by their name than by a label."​

The "M" word is frequently considered offensive in that community.


At SD. Here it's clearly food color dyed fruit. :)

It is okay to say "fruit"?

The youth baseball organization in which I played in the 1960s was called "The Midget League," this in a little burgh called Chicago. They needed a synonym, as "Little League' would probably involve paying a fee to a national organization.
 
Sometime before the twenty sixth century? Well that could be anytime plus what were they doing on The Enterprise in the twenty third century then? Or were they members but nobody knew? The Andorians, The Tellerites, The Vulcans were all members...
JB
 
Yes, the little copper guys was my first thought. Tellarites is my second pick. I'd like to see them way more fleshed out.

In fact and in hindsight, I think I would have preferred fewer aliens of the week and more of the "more established" aliens. There were some episodes in the entire franchise where it didn't matter that the alien of the week was new to the viewers.

That would've made the universe feel really small, though, if they kept running into the same five races all the time. If they had decided to do that, I would prefer if the show took place in one small section of space and was about keeping the peace in that area or something because making the show about exploring and seeing new things while only seeing the same five races every week doesn't feel right.
 
That would've made the universe feel really small, though, if they kept running into the same five races all the time. If they had decided to do that, I would prefer if the show took place in one small section of space and was about keeping the peace in that area or something because making the show about exploring and seeing new things while only seeing the same five races every week doesn't feel right.
I disagree. I don't feel that the Trek universe is particularly enriched by having hundreds of bumpy-headed alien mono-cultures. That worked in the sixties with sledge hammer allegories but it's just so tiresome now. Enterprise started to be way more fun with the focus on the Andorians, Vulcans, and Orions. Introduce a new alien race - sure - but then spend more than a single episode on that visit. Flesh them out and tell several stories before moving on. That would be my preference.
 
Sometime before the twenty sixth century? Well that could be anytime plus what were they doing on The Enterprise in the twenty third century then? Or were they members but nobody knew? The Andorians, The Tellerites, The Vulcans were all members...
JB

Where are you getting "twenty sixth century" from?

The assumption is that the Ithenites were members of the UFP in "Journey to Babel" and were being taken as delegates to discuss Coridan's admission. It's also possible they were non-member trading partners of Coridan.

I recently had a go at customizing one.

New Trek customs
by Ian McLean, on Flickr
 
Where are you getting "twenty sixth century" from?

The assumption is that the Ithenites were members of the UFP in "Journey to Babel" and were being taken as delegates to discuss Coridan's admission. It's also possible they were non-member trading partners of Coridan.

I recently had a go at customizing one.

New Trek customs
by Ian McLean, on Flickr

That's what it said at the top of the page strangely enough! Maybe because that time travelling guy that Archer used to meet up with was from the future perhaps?
JB
 
That's what it said at the top of the page strangely enough! Maybe because that time travelling guy that Archer used to meet up with was from the future perhaps?
JB

Yes, canonical (screened) information can't narrow it down any finer. But the original intention of the script for "Demons"/"Terra Prime" was going to put an Ithenite at the meeting. Note that not all the delegates end up joining the UFP as founding races.
 
Not in reference to a gay person.

How 'bout Trekkie, I find that offensive...

So, "dwarf", not offensive for some reason ... "midget" is, for some reason... "little person", patronizing, cutesy, only slightly less belittling than Munchkin...yet PC for some reason ... This is all utterly random. \\ \
 
As is the case with most offensive terms. A lot of them weren't offensive when they first came into use, then they were. Sometimes the word is acceptable for one ethnic group to use but not any other. Even then some people think the offensive word is acceptable if it's mispronounced.

Not just ethnic groups, but genders too. It's ok for two women to call each other a derogatory term, but never OK for a man to call a woman the same term.
 
Well, that's just irony or something.

"Oriental " ... I challenged someone to defend that being offensive, and she said it evoked an image of "the mysterious East" ... mystery is just so offensive.
 
As is the case with most offensive terms. A lot of them weren't offensive when they first came into use, then they were. Sometimes the word is acceptable for one ethnic group to use but not any other. Even then some people think the offensive word is acceptable if it's mispronounced.

Not just ethnic groups, but genders too. It's ok for two women to call each other a derogatory term, but never OK for a man to call a woman the same term.

Sometimes a term was offensive when it first came out and them lost its offensive connotation over time.

In other words: I try to be nice. But I'm not going to fret over upsetting every person who crosses my path. In my mind dwarf is a much more offensive term then midget. So I would use the term midget before ever using dwarf, when referring to people who are significantly shorter than the nominal human average.
 
As someone who's been on the receiving end of some of the appellations some of you consider "PC", fuck that noise.

And anyone who equates "Trekkie" with something as loaded as "fruit" needs a sense of proportion.
 
...
So, "dwarf", not offensive for some reason ... "midget" is, for some reason... "little person", patronizing, cutesy, only slightly less belittling than Munchkin...yet PC for some reason ... This is all utterly random. \\ \
I thought it was a bad idea for the professional astronomers to come up with "dwarf planet" for Pluto, Ceres et c. But then again, they've been referring to "dwarf stars" (white dwarf, red dwarf) for some time, so I suppose that nobody cares.

Now, had they called Pluto a "pickaninny planet" back in 1930, there'd be mounting regret. :whistle:
 
... This is all utterly random.
That's politics, for you. Nothing more. Nothing less. As Gillian Taylor so eloquently put it, "... whoever said that the Human race was logical?" Bears don't have these problems. They shit in the woods, eat berries and get fat. They don't harass eachother about any of that. But we Humans, we like labels. For a time, maybe, they're in common use, then they're suddenly deemed offensive - to make sure the lawyers get paid, probably.
 
That's politics, for you. Nothing more. Nothing less. As Gillian Taylor so eloquently put it, "... whoever said that the Human race was logical?" Bears don't have these problems. They shit in the woods, eat berries and get fat. They don't harass eachother about any of that. But we Humans, we like labels. For a time, maybe, they're in common use, then they're suddenly deemed offensive - to make sure the lawyers get paid, probably.

Yes! This comment gets a superuberultramega like.

Unless, of course, that offends you.
 
Politics is what Journey to Babel is all about. The politics of imaginary lines. The politics of being in a chain of command. Family politics ... the whole bit. What I like about that is that DC Fontana didn't take on more than she had to. She set everything up so that these political issues could all play out and end up being tied into one, neat bow, at the end. Too often STAR TREK has failed at that. It brings in political heavyweights, just to demonstrate how out of touch with reality they are compared to our favourite crew Heroes.

And whatever issues get brought up along the way are just dropped, or downplayed in the sense that "... there will be an investigation" by some, unknown, third party and we never do get to hear about what happened. Or, more often than that, it all revolves around one, evil tyrant who can be easily dispatched by Kirk's jump-kick to the mid-section. Ah, poor fool, you couldn't have anticipated encountering the Enterprise! Look at you, now, being carted away into the hands of justice as the credits begin to roll ... with everybody's problems immediately solved.
 
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