My Little Grudge Against Rigel

[Christopher]

Could the Preservers and the Sky People that Chakotay's people encountered in the long past and in the Delta Quadrant be the same species?

Again, I don't think it makes sense to treat the Preservers as a "species," because no entire species devotes itself exclusively to a single activity. They're probably more of an organization or a movement.

And it's unlikely the Sky Spirits had anything to do with them. According to "Tattoo," it took the Sky Spirits generations to travel from the Delta Quadrant to Earth, and on their last visit, 12 generations before the episode (which would be 3-400 years before if we assume human generations, i.e. the late 20th or early 21st century), they found no survivors of their descendants and assumed they'd been wiped out. So the Sky Spirits missed the whole era when Native American populations were devastated and only arrived in the aftermath.

Most of those random Earth-like planets that have a similar culture to old Earth, I would imagine are using a different language, but the universal translators are working for both the Enterprise's crew and us the audience.

The Roman peoples should be speaking a Latin based language if they are originally from Earth, and the culture influenced by a Federation Historian should be speaking German, if they adapted the Nazi culture entirely.

Sure, that's the usual assumption, but "Bread and Circuses" made it quite explicit in dialogue that the natives were speaking American English.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/43.htm
"Complete Earth parallel. The language here is English."
"Colloquial twentieth-century English. An amazing parallel."

This was perhaps done to justify the use of English writing in the magazine, the TV equipment, and the like.

 

[Ithekro]

It has been nearly twenty years since I've seen that episode, and I think I've only seen it once.

 

[Timo]

Miri's World is the only one that is basically exactly like Earth, so Miri's people speaking English isn't that far gone. The Koms and the Yangs though...with the brutalized US Constitution...that is something else. That makes at least four parallel worlds along the same lines as Earth.

The thing is, though, three of the worlds are extremely distinct from Earth, so that the few parallels really stand out and make our heroes gape in amazement. In the case of "Miri", the parallel is near-perfect and prepares the ground for the eventual surprise of just one thing being different - of the planet being a deathtrap. Both these approaches together and separately speak against any sort of parallel evolution, and call for other types of explanation.

As for languages, we know the "Romans" spoke English (and while they spoke Kirk's English, ST4:TVH suggests Kirk's English is the same as ours, without the need for the UT to correct for a couple of centuries of drift). We can presume Miri did, too, given that her choice of language elicited no comment in an identifiably American environment. The folks corrupted by Gill? They wrote their signage in plain English (and not even in Fraktur at that).

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x21hd/patternsofforcehd0635.jpg

That leaves just the Omegans. If they can read at all, why don't they read the Constitution or the Declaration as they are actually written? Is this because they can't actually read English? But when Kirk reads the proper words out loud, the Omegans not only recognize them as the proper ceremonial noises to make (indeed, they probably should think that Kirk is making improper noises since his are different from theirs) but grasp their information content, creating if not perfect equivalence then at least a solid bridge between their language and the one in which the words were originally written (and we glimpse the text and verify that this is indeed English).

The folks probably simply are completely illiterate in any language, but speak English in honor of the John Gill equivalent who once perverted them into Yankees of sorts.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

I think the writers expect the audience to know why they were saved without explicitly stating it. They and the intended audience are human and more importantly Americans with a basic ( if romanticized) knowledge of history. They weren't going for some exotic unfathomable motivations behind the Preservers action.

Oh, I know they were saved. It's saved from what we are debating.

It was stated that they rescued cultures in danger of extinction.

AH! There is the difference! Your are taking culture specifically to mean these particular Native American cultures. I always took it to mean humans. And that it was happenstance that these Native American cultures were selected. I've never viewed the episode as meaning the cultures were intentionally chosen for a specific reason.

This changes everything.

 

[Christopher]

AH! There is the difference! Your are taking culture specifically to mean these particular Native American cultures. I always took it to mean humans. And that it was happenstance that these Native American cultures were selected. I've never viewed the episode as meaning the cultures were intentionally chosen for a specific reason.

But that doesn't work, because humanity as a whole was not in danger of extinction at the time Miramanee's ancestors must have been taken. There were a few times in prehistory when humans came close to extinction, but the last was about 70,000 years ago, long before humans settled the Americas. Following that, humanity as a whole was never in danger of extinction until the invention of nuclear weapons in the 1940s. There's no way in hell that Miramanee's ancestors were taken from Earth in the 20th century.

Also, humanity as a whole is not a culture. It is thousands of different cultures. The word "culture" refers to a specific community or population with a distinct set of behaviors, beliefs, customs, language, etc. If the Preservers were rescuing cultures, they were rescuing ways of life, not merely biological entities.

 

[Timewalker]

They should have rescued the Beothuks. That culture did go extinct.

 

[Nerys Myk]

They should have rescued the Beothuks. That culture did go extinct.

I suppose one could write a fanfic where they do.

 

[Timo]

But that doesn't work, because humanity as a whole was not in danger of extinction at the time Miramanee's ancestors must have been taken.

Perhaps not in our reality, but Star Trek has plenty of threats around at the time... The Preservers might have been overcautious with one of those threats for all we know.

Also, humanity as a whole is not a culture.

Again in Star Trek terms, a planet or a species is a culture. We don't know if Earth would look like that to Kirk and Spock (they never indicate otherwise), but Spock is supposedly just quoting what it looked like to the Preservers.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Star Trek has always made many mentions of many planets, people and activities in the Rigel system. Here's the problem: Rigel is a blue supergiant and such stars only last a few tens of millions of years before going supernova, thus vaporizing anything unfortunate enough to be in the system at the time. That's not even enough time to planets to finish physically forming, let alone cooling off, let alone developing the simplest life, let alone developing intelligent li-....you get the general idea.

IMHO the reason why planets with advanced life are found orbiting young stars is because they were moved there. When a habitable and maybe inhabited planet orbits a star that is too old and is about to become a red giant, super powerful aliens simply open the mouth of a wormhole in front of the planet and let the planet enter the wormhole. The other mouth of the wormhole is opened in a new solar system where the velocity of the planet is right to put the planet into a good orbit.

And those super powerful aliens might sometimes move endangered planets to put them in orbit around young massive stars like Rigel, Vega, Spica, Deneb, etc. even though those stars will soon become red giants themselves, because "soon" on an astronomical scale is still millions of years, and those planets can be moved to third star systems when necessary.

I suppose that is why the Vians said they could only move the people of one planet in the Minara System to safety - because they could only make one wormhole to move one planet to a new solar system. They didn't have massive fleets of spaceships, just one giant wormhole maker with enough charge to move one entire planet to a safe solar system.

Timewalker said:

They should have rescued the Beothuks. That culture did go extinct.

Maybe they did move some Beothuks to another planet that has never been seen in any episode.

Timo Said:

Rather than postulate natural evolution in cases like pseudo-Rome, it's probably much easier to postulate a repeat of "Patterns of Force". A power-mad individual from outer space and possibly also from the future would exploit his superior technological means to pervert an entire planet (or at least its leading population group) to serve his interests without excessively blatant trappings of slavery and servitude - by evoking a totalitarian system that worked well on Earth. He'd save on creative costs by adopting past uniforms and banners, too. And central to his meddling would be the introduction of Newspeak, resulting in the utterly unnatural adoption of English worldwide.

In some cases, the meddler would be hanged, drawn and quartered before his influence fully settled in. In others, the legacy would live on - and since the culture forcibly introduced would be an advanced "20th century plus" one, it would also be a formally enduring one, with little language erosion or loss of imagery thanks to advanced recording technologies.

Star Trek would then have plenty of excuses for what we see. Planets would be Earthlike because of a self-feeding terraforming craze that has gone on for billions of years. Cultures would be Earthlike because of meddlers from Earth. Isolated population groups would be Earthlike because they are the descendants of slaves abducted from Earth. Only in desperate cases like "Miri" would an actual duplication of our homeworld by suitably fantastic means be the preferred explanation.

Naturally, the above would also often happen with Earth replaced by Andor or Zontar. But both Andorians and Zontarans would live on Earthlike planets because galactic terraforming would gyrate towards a single standard. And the audience would simply fail to recognize the blatantly obvious Andorian costumes or Zontaran catchphrases used by the poor corrupted natives because the audience comes from Earth.

In my post # 26 here:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/that-which-survives.292403/page-2#post-12339715

I say:

Perhaps the Earth of Star Trek and our Earth are both decoy copies of the real Earth. Perhaps it is prophesized across the universe that on the real Earth Humans will release the Spawn of Cthulhu, who will spread out from Earth and spread death and destruction across the universe. Beings aware of the prophecies are on the alert to find the real Earth and destroy it to prevent the spread of the Cthulhu Spawn.

And maybe the Cthulhu Spawn created many millions of fake Earths across the universe. Those who destroy one of the decoy Earths will stop looking for the real Earth. And those different decoy Earth's will have different stars visible in their skies, which will all be given the names of stars visible from the real Earth. With this theory one can rearrange the Star Trek stars to avoid many problems of Galactography.

It is possible that some of the more Earth like replica Earths in Star Trek might be some of those hypothetical decoy Earths set up by the Cthulhu Spawn or equivalents. In that case they would be populated by Humans brought from Earth by Cthulhu Spawn to replicate various Earth cultures.

Timo said:

As for languages, we know the "Romans" spoke English (and while they spoke Kirk's English, ST4:TVH suggests Kirk's English is the same as ours, without the need for the UT to correct for a couple of centuries of drift). .

Maybe it wasn't the "Romans" who spoke English as their native language. Maybe the Romans spoke Latin as their native language, having been transported from the ancient Roman Empire. Maybe the natives of this particular province spoke English, having been transplanted from England on Earth, and the Romans working in this province had to learn English for their work. Though it would have been a little strange for so much a difference to remain between Romans and provincials after 2,000 years.

Merik says:

MERIK: There's been no war here for over four hundred years, Jim. Could, let's say, your land of that same era make that same boast? I think you can see why they don't want to have their stability contaminated by dangerous ideas of other ways and other places

So possibly that province ruled by Proconsul Claudius Marcus is near the antipodes from the center of the Roman Empire on that planet and was conquered only 400 years ago, so most of the natives have not yet learned to speak Latin.

 

[Timo]

...Alternately, Merrick himself introduced English as the new standard language on the planet, as part of the recent society-wide makeover that helped solidify Marcus' power and save Merrick's own neck.

The planet has mass media, which would seem to go against the sustainability of provinciality. On the other hand, mass media would help a lot with establishing a New World Order planetwide.

Of course, Merrick himself is probably a bit too recent to have effected a change where even the old Septimus speaks English as his native tongue, voluntarily and among his counterculture friends. But if Random Civilian Skipper Merrick sailed to the place all the way from Earth, others may have done so previously, and some of them may have studied under John Gill. Or given lectures that the young and impressionable Johnny attended with gleaming eyes.

As for mobile planets, those are a known quantity in Trek now. But apparently they weren't in TOS yet, not until Kirk reported back on one, so harebrained theories of "parallel evolution" might still be going strong.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

...Alternately, Merrick himself introduced English as the new standard language on the planet, as part of the recent society-wide makeover that helped solidify Marcus' power and save Merrick's own neck.

The planet has mass media, which would seem to go against the sustainability of provinciality. On the other hand, mass media would help a lot with establishing a New World Order planetwide.

Of course, Merrick himself is probably a bit too recent to have effected a change where even the old Septimus speaks English as his native tongue, voluntarily and among his counterculture friends. But if Random Civilian Skipper Merrick sailed to the place all the way from Earth, others may have done so previously, and some of them may have studied under John Gill. Or given lectures that the young and impressionable Johnny attended with gleaming eyes.

As for mobile planets, those are a known quantity in Trek now. But apparently they weren't in TOS yet, not until Kirk reported back on one, so harebrained theories of "parallel evolution" might still be going strong.

Timo Saloniemi

I don't know why you suppose that there have been recent big changes or a planetwide New World Order. Merik says there hasn't been any war for 400 years and that Roman society is very conservative.

And remember that the title used by Claudius Marcus is Proconsul, used by governors of senatorial provinces. Thus it is logical to assume that he is the governor of the local province and not the emperor. The mass media makes this Roman world more closely knit than the ancient Roman Empire. But note that the TV equipment looks like 1960s style.

In the USA the various TV networks connected their cities with coaxial cables for program transmission beginning in the 1940s and didn't connect the east and west coasts until the 1950s. The first use of communications satellites for international and intercontinental TV transmissions was in 1963 and 1964 and it didn't become routine for years. So 1960s technology would mean that provinciality could continue for a while.

 

[Mudd]

It's explicit in the episode itself, of course. According to Spock's translation of the obelisk symbols, "It was left by a super-race known as the Preservers. They passed through the galaxy rescuing primitive cultures which were in danger of extinction and seeding them, so to speak, where they could live and grow."

Which would easily have described the human race in general at most points in our history, grandiosity about our resilience to the contrary. Plagues and famines and war, oh my!

 

[Timo]

I don't know why you suppose that there have been recent big changes or a planetwide New World Order. Merik says there hasn't been any war for 400 years and that Roman society is very conservative.

Yet the society by its outer trappings, the output of its industries, its consumer preferences, is that of the 1960s United States, and that one isn't the product of centuries of stability. Quite the contrary, in fact!

It's unlikely any sort of "development" could give the results we see - yet simple enough to get the results from an "intervention".

Of course, if the intervention took place 400 years ago, then it's pretty much all right. The "conservative" pseudo-Romans might have progressed from 1800s transplanted US influences to 1900s ersatz US technologies in four centuries rather than one. Or then the meddler had a time machine (I mean, having one is basically both a license to meddle, and sufficient cause), much as with the most natural explanation of "Omega Glory".

But the other distinct possibility is that the 1960s tech was dumped from a spaceship's databanks much like the 1930s tech was dumped on Ekos, either in a playing-god gamble, or then involuntarily much like the "barbarian" gladiators were obtained. And the tech would come with instructions, meaning the upper classes and slaves alike would have to learn English. Which probably is available as a pill in the 2260s anyway.

And remember that the title used by Claudius Marcus is Proconsul, used by governors of senatorial provinces. Thus it is logical to assume that he is the governor of the local province and not the emperor.

Possibly so - he rules over "a large city" rather than "the planetary capital", in the reasonably informed opinion of our heroes. But how does a local leader get the dibs on an eetee? One whose existence he subsequently literally advertises in prime time television?

The mass media makes this Roman world more closely knit than the ancient Roman Empire. But note that the TV equipment looks like 1960s style.

And is in synch with the submachine guns and the technology of the uniforms and whatnot, which adds problems upon problems on the synchronicity. A recentish intervention, or one that some centuries ago left a stagnated society still stagnated but now with unduly advanced technology, fits that bill the best.

In the USA the various TV networks connected their cities with coaxial cables for program transmission beginning in the 1940s and didn't connect the east and west coasts until the 1950s. The first use of communications satellites for international and intercontinental TV transmissions was in 1963 and 1964 and it didn't become routine for years. So 1960s technology would mean that provinciality could continue for a while.

An attractive model indeed. Then again, our heroes picked up a broadcast describing the very survivors of the Beagle long before they decided upon a city to spy on. Uhura isn't choosing that broadcast based on content, as the Beagle content only comes later on. So a global broadcasting system is somewhat implied here.

Of course, the place isn't exact 1960s Earth/US in terms of tech - no signs of nuclear power, say. Which way the anomalies go is far from said.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

Merik says there hasn't been any war for 400 years

Which doesn't mean no military activity. Suppressing the slaves, keeping the civilian population in line, preventing breakaway provences. Those submachine guns came from a need for them.