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M-113 Creature/"Salt Vampire" in "The Man Trap"

I don't see how you can make a meaningful statement about what the creature may or may not know with any real substantiation. I don't believe Crater said anything about its age and we have no way of knowing how that might relate proportionally to the normal life span of the species. Did he say that it was dying when he first encountered it or did that occur only after it had killed his wife? Regardless, this individual had a life before Crater's arrival and may have known others of its kind before they succumbed to starvation, or perhaps were killed perhaps by this survivor.

Further, what do you base the supposition that nothing could be communicated by the creature, or as you put it, insight "coming back into being". What does that mean? That it might have known somethings of substance in the past, but had forgotten them? I can't really tell what you're getting at. Crater claimed that it was intelligent and one wonders what kind or quality of communication had passed between them. over time. It's possible that it didn't possess the ability to speak, but in the type of controlled environment I described above, one that safely prolonged the creature's life, why wouldn't it be possible for it to simply assume anyone's appearance and be able to verbalize the story of its own life, even if one concurs with your contention that it knows nothing of consequence of the history and culture of its species generally. I doubt that the creature would consider that torture compared with what, in fact, happened to it.

While not a scattershot comment on the breadth and range of your knowledge generally, I find it disconcerting that with some frequency, you make these authoritative sounding statements that in reality, have nothing actually shown that provides any verification for their thesis, rendering them as nothing more than the type of suppositions anyone might make about the subject, save the fact that the lacquer of gravitas and obviousness that you apply to them, perhaps makes you prone to believe that they are less likely to be questioned than those of others.:shrug:
 
Fascinating to see the face behind the salt vampire.
Quite the formidable foe at the time.

I think that I will add some sea salt to my dinner, just looking at that character and those multi-fangs makes me worried about it appearing under my bed tonight and having me as a snack. If I eat a bunch of salt, maybe it will expire of an overdose before my doom is totally sealed.

"Be Prepared" is often a good motto.

Oh wait, I have no need to worry, it was "The last of its kind."

What a relief. Bedtime will be far more serene knowing that.
 
I don't see how you can make a meaningful statement about what the creature may or may not know with any real substantiation.

That the creature would be worth pumping for information is the claim that requires extraordinary proof. "The last of its kind" does not imply any sort of academic repository of knowledge, and probably does imply a deranged individual with a distorted image of reality. But even an average Joe would only know so much.

This is not the original point I wanted to make about the interrogation being of academic (i.e. useless) value, though. Some minimal data might be gained from the culture, yes. But there is little or no "humanitarian" benefit to that, as the culture would still be gone after the last survivor dies. Or even if she (?) lives forever. The culture is gone. It won't continue living in shelves upon shelves of academic studies. "Preserving" it in this dead for is a selfish deed, not an altruist one.

Further, what do you base the supposition that nothing could be communicated by the creature, or as you put it, insight "coming back into being". What does that mean?

Not the creature, the species. Reintroducing the species through medical wonders would result in a hollow species, a freak show that mankind would have to create from nothing much, teaching the biological beings a series of tricks that make them resemble the scattershot human impression on how their culture used to look like. A few decades after "Man Trap", the planet might again with human assistance be teeming with salt vampires, but they would be a different culture altogether, an all-new one even if based on the same biology.

That's what I call academic fiddling. It's self-gratulatory, done purely for capturing the abstract knowledge - it should not be made to sound as if in some way serves the poor salt vampire species. With just one individual remaining, all that really remains is a moral decision on the subject of good death.

While not a scattershot comment on the breadth and range of your knowledge generally, I find it disconcerting that with some frequency, you make these authoritative sounding statements that in reality, have nothing actually shown that provides any verification for their thesis, rendering them as nothing more than the type of suppositions anyone might make about the subject, save the fact that the lacquer of gravitas and obviousness that you apply to them, perhaps makes you prone to believe that they are less likely to be questioned than those of others.:shrug:

In short, you prefer long phrases which are difficult to understand, and I prefer short ones that may be difficult to understand. The result? Conversation, a series of necessary explanations, corrections, contestations, arguments - hopefully.

Typing five lines on a subject won't make it any better stocked with "verification", not when the "facts" of the matter are fictional to begin with. Which is why I vastly prefer to make a point, and then later argue it if there emerges the need. (Add to that a flair for the provocative and you get me. But basically everything about a 1960s TV scifi show is provocative to start with, being so distanced from the reality in which we currently find ourselves.)

Timo Saloniemi
 
Wonder what became of M113? Did anymore archeologists visit the planet and set up residence especially after Kirk's logs were inspected? Makes you think doesn't it!
JB
 
Wonder what became of M113? Did anymore archeologists visit the planet and set up residence especially after Kirk's logs were inspected? Makes you think doesn't it!
JB

Really, what if that wasn't the last one? It's not like Crater explored the whole planet himself, there could be a few herds on another continent.
 
I'm arguing two things, I guess: that no such insight is to be gained from this single individual, who is unlikely to have accumulated anything at all

Well, the creature's personal experiences and memories are of incalculable value; Crater only scratched the surface of the creature's backstory, but due to the intensity of the investigation, and subsequent death, knowledge about then-near extinct species was lost forever. For a Federation / Starfleet which "seeks out new life and new civilizations," trying to learn as much as possible about the salt creature should have been as crucial as the need to defend themselves against it.

Its like Ellen Ripley's attitude in Aliens: she is so offense-minded / shell shocked, that she disrespects the idea of the xenomorphs being of any value. Their origin, purpose and mission was of no value to her. That's not the Starfleet/Federation mission, but that one-way philosophy was the one adopted in The Man Trap.
 
Thank you, thank you!. The point is not to make a forfeit or pastiche representation of the species to be displayed in an arena like Westworld, as Timo suggests. There is no way of intuiting what the creature did or didn't know about the history, culture, values, etc from which it sprang. So, simply because as the last genuine article, that might or might not die anytime in the near future, and that there is no possibility of reconstructing a population of these creatures, there is simply no good purpose in pursuing information, knowledge, and understanding for their own sake. That is academic according to him, perhaps analogous to mental masturbation in its worthiness, and comparable to torture for the creature. Yeah, right. I think I had the same conversation with him about soon to be dead languages and the value of attempting to preserve some semblance of them to discern telling information about the past lives of those who once spoke it. Same response, basically. If I'm confusing you with someone else, Timo, my apologies, but I don't believe I am.

At any rate, thanks again Trek_God_1, for being someone else that has the ability to see the worth and validation in examining, when possible, the lives and experiences of races that, even if diminished to a single representative, hold a place in the honored accumulation of knowledge, as opposed to being considered as essentially superannuated rubbish, best and conveniently forgotten about.
 
Been a while since this thread was active, but I just thought I'd update it with some relevant news:

I just checked the guest list and it looks like Sharon (or "Sandy" as the website lists her) Gimpel will be one of the guests at the 50th anniversary con in Vegas in August.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend for anyone who's going, but I'd love to know what she had to say.
 
IMDb.com days that Gimpel also played a Talosian (uncredited) in The Cage. How accurate is that? I don't see anyone like her at Memory Alpha.
 
I can see that happening. She fit the costume and it was a day's pay.

But I have another doubt: along with the Psi 2000 mannequin having been used, there's the fact that an inanimate prop would reduce the risk of editorial match-up problems (because the person's bodily position changed between shots).
I'm confused. Weren't they talking about using a mannequin for the Squire of Gothos display, not the actual character from Man Trap?
 
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