Novelverse "facts" you've taken into your head-canon
- Thread starter WarpTenLizard
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Not just preference, but practicality. Even though Diane Duane postulated both a Sulamid (Lt. Athendë) and a Horta (Ens. Naraht) on board the Enterprise, and Kathleen Sky postulated the Enterprise hosting a veritable menagerie of ambassadors, from sentient lampreys to sentient koalas to a sentient shape-shfiting pyramid (most or all of which had punning names), it's generally more convenient if most of the crew are at least roughly the same shape, and eat roughly the same food. As I recall, the trials and tribulations of supporting an extremely diverse crew were significant subplots of the first few Titan novels.
You should never have humans and sentient koalas on one ship. The humans would get distracted from their jobs due to the extreme cuteness of koalas and the koalas had to deal constantly with humans trying to cuddle them.
Counselor Huilan from Titan comes to mind.
I still can't get over that they worked Stitch into Star Trek as a species.
Which doesn't mean it can't be done, just that you have to commit to making the effort -- the same as with designing public spaces to be accessible for wheelchairs or for the blind. It's more challenging and difficult, sure, but people who shy away from challenges don't join Starfleet anyway.
Yes, I believe Ambassador Karhu insisted that nobody call him cute. Which Scheaffer immediately recognized as an attempt to manipulate the crew by means of reverse psychology.
And Mr. Bennett, I know what you mean. I spent nearly a decade working part-time in an ice rink that was situated about two feet below-grade, with an entrance (and shop) situated three feet above-grade, in a strip center with no elevators. While it's unlikely that any skaters would need to get in via wheelchair, any parents and spectators in wheelchairs were stuck with the indignity of coming in through the back door (right past the dumpster, down the narrow ramp used for the rare occasions when we needed to get the ice resurfacer out of the building). What in the Hell was that architect thinking when he/she designed the place?!? (Not to mention that the ground -- and the refrigeration pipes -- heaved under the ice, making it necessary to repaint the ice several times a year.)
I just recently rewatched Buck Rogers in the 25th Century to review on my blog, and I was struck by the oddity of the fact that Buck's annoying robot sidekick Twiki needed people to carry him up and down stairs. Now, first off, Twiki was a type of robot called an "ambuquad," meaning his whole purpose was to walk around (and to carry the non-ambulatory "quad" Dr. Theopolis around like a giant medallion), so why wasn't he designed to handle stairs? And second, given that quads/robots were so commonplace in that culture -- including a couple of types of robot that were basically large wheeled carts -- shouldn't their interior spaces have been designed for robot accessibility in the first place? Especially considering that quads like Theopolis were supposedly the ones in charge of the civilization to begin with? The designers didn't really think their worldbuilding through.
I read a claim that the Avenger classification for the Reliant was derived from Khan's dialogue in the film ("I mean to avenge myself upon you, Admiral" and "I shall avenge you."), but I don't know if there's any truth to that. It doesn't seem to have originated with production sources, though; the screenplay for The Voyage Home describes the Saratoga as "A RELIANT class vessel."
In any case, the ship in Intersection Point was meant to be something else. The story was was first published in 1971 (in a fanzine), and then appeared officially in the anthology The New Voyages in 1976.
I felt the same way. For all the controversy at the time the book was published, the disagreement is bound to have been sorted out by the 24th Century—though it's probably more likely to have endured than the current, arbitrary system.
For what it's worth, Ceres was actually classified as a dwarf planet at the same time as Pluto; it's in the asteroid belt, but it's not considered an asteroid anymore.
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You'll die laughing..The more I hear about Before Dishonour the more I want to read it.
Uh, . . . ok.
I find myself thinking of the movie version of Dune. And the Guild Navigators. Personally, I never actually saw the movie all the way through. In the books, I got as far as "God Emperor," and re-read the first one, and then all my Frank Herbert went to a used book dealer. Cheap.
In "The Perfect Mate," Geordi distracted the Ferengi emissary by asking, "have you had a chance to see the dolphins yet?" So yes, they were canonically on board, but no specifics were given about why they were on board. No doubt it was intended to be a reference to the bit from the Tech Manual, but only Tech Manual readers would get it.
Now I'm thinking of the dolphin seen in SeaQuest, with a special device that translate their language (hopefully not high-pitched annoying [though I haven't seen SeaQuest since I was like 12]). Makes me think that the watery species like whales and dolphins can now communicate with the crew with these devices (while the felinoid and caninoid species simply translate the languages of cats and dogs aboard starships and space stations, i.e. a Caitian officer translates for Data on occasion about Spot).
They might rely on universal translators like everyone else. But I suppose they could use voders (cf. "The Infinite Vulcan") programmed to produce English.
That doesn't make any sense. Just because an alien species happens to bear a surface resemblance to a type of Earth mammal, that doesn't mean it literally is a member of the same taxonomic family. And even if it were, that wouldn't give it some magic ability to speak the language of its biological relatives. Can you understand the language of a chimpanzee or a gibbon?
You got a point. I wish I could understand what is going on with my slowly senile cat considering the past month he has ended up falling from the fence into two other properties that are lower on their side to ours and coming back worse then before. But it is interesting since cats and dogs in my opinion are smart so why don't we know what they're saying in Star Trek?
Animal behaviorists today actually do have a pretty good understanding of the meanings of canine and feline vocalizations and body language. But it's not on the same order of complexity as an actual language, with words and syntax and so forth.
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