Return of the Archons question

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Given that we're all awash in RF energy from cell phones and wi-fi and such, it would be nice if we could harness it to power streetlights or keep our devices charged or whatever.

Quite, but that would involve a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. And we're not awash in nearly as much RF energy as we would have been if Tesla's "magnifying transmitter" idea had actually worked, and been adopted. Or at least until the last of the fuel supplies ran out, and/or we managed to sterilize the planet with pollution (both chemical and RF).

 

[Phaser Two]

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/al...2-return-of-archons/return-archons-br-230.jpg

It wasn't just a hollow tube that killed Tamar. It was a hollow tube that had some mechanism to emit a sparkler/smoking effect. The hollow tube was capable of manifesting a physical effect that was visible and lethal to the target. I do like the Christopher's idea that it was used to direct wireless energy at targets.

No, it was, according to Spock, "merely a hollow tube . . . [n]o mechanism." I'm pretty sure Spock would recognize a mechanism if he saw one. But now we're drifting (not unexpectedly) into the other Lawgiver problem . . . how did they do what they did? Despite the issues of an antenna that somehow defies impedance matching and contains no tuner element, I'm willing to handwave it given the other feats we see Landru perform. (For example, finding, projecting to, and disabling the landing party.) The real trouble lies with Spock's line of dialogue. But it's a cool line, expertly delivered by Nimoy, and keeps the very unsettling mystery going. Maybe the line should have been " . . . mostly a hollow tube, Captain, with apparently insufficient mechanical elements to kill."

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Was it ever said what the composition of the tube was? Perhaps it's made of an alloy with unique properties.

 

[Phaser Two]

No.

 

[Christopher]

No, it was, according to Spock, "merely a hollow tube . . . [n]o mechanism." I'm pretty sure Spock would recognize a mechanism if he saw one. But now we're drifting (not unexpectedly) into the other Lawgiver problem . . . how did they do what they did? Despite the issues of an antenna that somehow defies impedance matching and contains no tuner element, I'm willing to handwave it given the other feats we see Landru perform. (For example, finding, projecting to, and disabling the landing party.) The real trouble lies with Spock's line of dialogue. But it's a cool line, expertly delivered by Nimoy, and keeps the very unsettling mystery going. Maybe the line should have been " . . . mostly a hollow tube, Captain, with apparently insufficient mechanical elements to kill."

It seems to me that the concept of a tube that can concentrate and fire energy with no mechanism is analogous to the concept of a transporter that can materialize or dematerialize people with no receiving station. In both cases, the technology is presumed to be so Sufficiently Advanced that the necessary mechanism is at the far end and does it all remotely.

 

[blssdwlf]

No, it was, according to Spock, "merely a hollow tube . . . [n]o mechanism." I'm pretty sure Spock would recognize a mechanism if he saw one. But now we're drifting (not unexpectedly) into the other Lawgiver problem . . . how did they do what they did? Despite the issues of an antenna that somehow defies impedance matching and contains no tuner element, I'm willing to handwave it given the other feats we see Landru perform. (For example, finding, projecting to, and disabling the landing party.) The real trouble lies with Spock's line of dialogue. But it's a cool line, expertly delivered by Nimoy, and keeps the very unsettling mystery going. Maybe the line should have been " . . . mostly a hollow tube, Captain, with apparently insufficient mechanical elements to kill."

The use of the "hollow tube" manifested an audible sound effect when Sulu was absorbed. When Tamar was blasted by the "hollow tube" there was clearly a blast sound effect with sparks and smoke coming out of the tube. Spock was correct in that he could find no obvious visible mechanism on initial examination. But later the tube was explained as part of a larger advanced tech wireless mechanism and even called out by Kirk as the advanced tech is consistent with what they've seen so far.

​

SPOCK: Fascinating. This is merely a hollow tube, Captain. No mechanism.​

...​

KIRK: A lighting panel.​

SPOCK: Amazing in this culture.​

REGER: Comes from a time before Landru.​

KIRK: Before Landru? How long ago was that?​

REGER: Nobody knows positively. Some say as long ago as six thousand years.​

SPOCK: It took a very advanced technology to construct a device like this. Inconsistent with this environment.​

KIRK: But not inconsistent with what we've seen. Security.​

KIRK: Those staffs. Hollow tubes. Antennae for some sort of broadcast power. What is it, Mister Spock?​

SPOCK: Strong power generations, Captain. Near here, but radiating in all directions.​

 

[E-DUB]

OK. Now explain Kirk being startled by a hologram with no receiving mechanism at this end given that he's from a society that has the transporter.

 

[Christopher]

OK. Now explain Kirk being startled by a hologram with no receiving mechanism at this end given that he's from a society that has the transporter.

I don't see startlement in "But beautiful, Mister Spock, with no apparatus at this end." He's just impressed that this seemingly 19th-century culture has technology of such sophistication.

Also... hologram? Looks more like a flat projection on the wall to me. https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/al...2-return-of-archons/return-archons-br-361.jpg

 

[Phaser Two]

OK. Now explain Kirk being startled by a hologram with no receiving mechanism at this end given that he's from a society that has the transporter.

I don't find Kirk to be startled by almost anything in this episode, least of all Landru's projection (which doesn't seem to me to be a hologram). In fact, one of the reasons I adore this episode is Kirk's steely demeanor throughout - he's barely rattled by anything he encounters. Heck, he even sleeps standing up. And since it's S1, there's no jokey conclusion like you sometimes see in S2 to undermine the seriousness or core "creepiness" of the premise. (There is a conclusion featuring a couple of lighthearted moments, but not on the level of an S2-style wrapup from, e.g., "The Changeling" or "The Apple.")

The use of the "hollow tube" manifested an audible sound effect when Sulu was absorbed. When Tamar was blasted by the "hollow tube" there was clearly a blast sound effect with sparks and smoke coming out of the tube. Spock was correct in that he could find no obvious visible mechanism on initial examination. But later the tube was explained as part of a larger advanced tech wireless mechanism and even called out by Kirk as the advanced tech is consistent with what they've seen so far.

​

SPOCK: Fascinating. This is merely a hollow tube, Captain. No mechanism.​

...​

KIRK: A lighting panel.​

SPOCK: Amazing in this culture.​

REGER: Comes from a time before Landru.​

KIRK: Before Landru? How long ago was that?​

REGER: Nobody knows positively. Some say as long ago as six thousand years.​

SPOCK: It took a very advanced technology to construct a device like this. Inconsistent with this environment.​

KIRK: But not inconsistent with what we've seen. Security.​

KIRK: Those staffs. Hollow tubes. Antennae for some sort of broadcast power. What is it, Mister Spock?​

SPOCK: Strong power generations, Captain. Near here, but radiating in all directions.​

Yup. As I said, I might have preferred something along the lines of my slightly revised line for the first mention of the "hollow tube." But it's fine as is.

At the risk of further thread drift, I'll also note that elements of the premise of the "Red Hour" - later of course borrowed by a significant film franchise - are mostly original in sci-fi. That's yet another reason I rank this episode so highly.

 

[BillJ]

At the risk of further thread drift, I'll also note that elements of the premise of the "Red Hour" - later of course borrowed by a significant film franchise - is mostly original in sci-fi. That's yet another reason I rank this episode so highly.

Honestly, I think they borrowed from it with the Vulcans and Pon Farr.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I don't see startlement in "But beautiful, Mister Spock, with no apparatus at this end." He's just impressed that this seemingly 19th-century culture has technology of such sophistication.

I didn't really think about it at the time you made this comment, but I think you've probably said it better than anybody else ever has, and certainly better than I could have.

 

[Henoch]

The idea was touched upon in "Return to Tomorrow" when Spock states that Sargon's star-faring ancestors may explain certain aspects of Vulcan pre-history.

We've been stuck in these globes for 500,000 years, so, we are not the Preservers. Seeding planets with our DNA was our modus operandi.

 

[Christopher]

Honestly, I think they borrowed from it with the Vulcans and Pon Farr.

"Amok Time" was written months later than "The Return of the Archons," so no. It's just an old cultural concept that people who tightly control their emotions (or have them tightly controlled from outside, as by Landru) need an occasional release valve for the built-up tensions. A lot of cultures throughout history have had traditional festivals where it was acceptable to indulge in excesses that would not normally be tolerated. We still have elements of that in events like Mardi Gras and spring break.

We've been stuck in these globes for 500,000 years, so, we are not the Preservers. Seeding planets with our DNA was our modus operandi.

It amazes me how many people assume the Preservers were ancient when their one and only documented transplantation could not possibly have occurred earlier than the 17th century or so, since the various far-flung Native American populations Spock cited as the forebears of Miramanee's people would not have simultaneously been in danger of extinction until the era of European colonization. Also, cultures evolve over time, so whatever cultures existed in the Americas thousands of years earlier would not have been recognizable to Spock.

Anyway, Sargon's people didn't seed planets with their DNA, they just colonized them. It was the Progenitors from 4 billion years earlier who did the DNA-seeding thing. And the Preservers just relocated existing populations. Three entirely different MOs, three entirely different eras, yet people insist on confusing them with each other because they're all handwaves for humanoid aliens.

My theory is that the Progenitors 4 billion years ago are responsible for all humanoid life (and parallels of Earthly plants and animals on other planets); Sargon's people are responsible for the more humanlike aliens like Vulcans and Bajorans (though not humans); and the Preservers are only responsible for the occasional Earth-duplicate culture, although there aren't many in TOS that would actually make sense as Preserver transplants. I also figure the Preservers probably transplanted species other than humans, so they might account for some of the cases where two or more species recycle the same makeup design. I've often though the Talarians from "Suddenly Human" could be a Klingon offshoot.

 

[Metryq]

Three entirely different MOs, three entirely different eras, yet people insist on confusing them with each other because they're all handwaves for humanoid aliens.

If my own post suggested Sargon and company were also the Preservers, then it was my own sloppy writing. The only "equivalence" in my mind was that they were star-faring races potentially accounting for the commonness of the human form. Starfleet might have joined the club in "The Empath," had the Vians sought the Federation's help—and it sounded as though they could have used the help. (I'd have to review the episode. Not one that I frequent.)

 

[Poltargyst]

Yes, that's what I meant about the comic being incompatible with the idea that the timelines only diverged in 2233. The comics' author Mike Johnson worked from the assumption that Kelvin was a parallel universe that had always been separate, even though that contradicted what the movies intended.



Except the 18th- and 19th-century designs in "Archons" didn't exist 6000 years ago, so that has the same problem you just pointed out.

These days, rather than trying to handwave things like I did in Ex Machina, I'd be more inclined to go with the Doylist interpretation that Roddenberry himself favored: that Star Trek is just a dramatization of the ship's "actual" missions, and sometimes liberties were taken for creative or budgetary reasons (like how Roddenberry justified the Klingon redesign in ST:TMP by claiming they'd always looked like that and TOS just couldn't afford to show them correctly). So in this case, the dramatization just used stock Earth-style backlot sets and historical costumes as approximations of whatever the structures and wardrobe on Beta III "actually" looked like, and putting Sulu and Lindstrom in 18th-century clothing in the teaser to contrast to the "modern" Betans' 19th-century fashions was just symbolic, so that the audience could recognize the anachronism. (Although that still doesn't make sense, since the episode claimed the culture was stagnant and unchanging, so why would the fashions change? I think that was part of what I was trying to rationalize with that passage in Ex Machina.)

I dislike the idea that what I see on my screen isn't the way things really are. Why do I want to watch a show that isn't showing me the way things really are?

 

[Christopher]

I dislike the idea that what I see on my screen isn't the way things really are. Why do I want to watch a show that isn't showing me the way things really are?

It's theater. If you see two different productions of Hamlet with totally different casts and set designs, it's still the same play, and the differences in interpretation are part of the artistry of performance and production. There is no "really" to it; it's all imaginary. Throughout history, theater has suggested imaginary realities to the audience through partial or imperfect renditions such as stage sets -- or no sets at all for much of the history of theater -- and it's been up to the audience's imagination to fill in the gaps and take it the rest of the way.

If you can accept that Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis are both Saavik, or that TOS Tellarites and ENT Tellarites are the same species, then it shouldn't be that hard to suspend disbelief about a studio backlot being only an approximation of the Platonic reality the story is suggesting to us.

 

[Phaser Two]

It's theater. If you see two different productions of Hamlet with totally different casts and set designs, it's still the same play, and the differences in interpretation are part of the artistry of performance and production. There is no "really" to it; it's all imaginary. Throughout history, theater has suggested imaginary realities to the audience through partial or imperfect renditions such as stage sets -- or no sets at all for much of the history of theater -- and it's been up to the audience's imagination to fill in the gaps and take it the rest of the way.

If you can accept that Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis are both Saavik, or that TOS Tellarites and ENT Tellarites are the same species, then it shouldn't be that hard to suspend disbelief about a studio backlot being only an approximation of the Platonic reality the story is suggesting to us.

It's not theater—it's another medium. To take perhaps the most obvious difference, it isn't live, but recorded. Also, how many times are episodes of television presented to an audience again, with a different cast, using the same script? (Given your base of knowledge, I'd be disappointed if you didn't respond by mentioning the episode of Star Trek Continues recreating virtually verbatim the closing transporter room sequence aboard the ISS-E from "Mirror, Mirror," and there are a few other examples, but I believe them to be vanishingly rare.)

I'm not really going to argue too strongly against your core premise, because unless I miss my guess, you are taking an angle of attack with which I disagree to arrive at a larger point with which I mostly agree. And that larger point is this—some degree of disbelief just has to be suspended. I don't worry too much about the inhabitants of Beta III using familiar clocks (although I concede that was an easy fix), and the universal translator doesn't bother me either; it rarely if ever does.

However, suggesting that we're watching a fictionalization or dramatization of events to handwave any inconsistency—while certainly ingenious and, well, handy—doesn't really float my boat either. I agree with @Poltargyst.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

It's theater.

Indeed.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched my DVD of Edwards & Stone's 1776. As I do every Independence Day.

As a history lesson, it's terrible: by the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, Richard Henry Lee's resolution had already been voted on and adopted. John and Abigail Adams exchanged letters; they didn't have some sort of telepathic contact across the miles between Philadelphia and Braintree. And Martha Jefferson was so frail that there's no way she could have survived a trip to Philadelphia.

But 1776 isn't a history lesson. Nor is it a museum orientation film (and if you think a museum orientation film has to be a slave to historical accuracy, I suggest you watch the greatest museum orientation film ever produced, Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot.)

1776 is a musical comedy about history. Intended to get the audience excited about the goings on in the Second Continental Congress. And so the fantasy scenes with John and Abigail, the fantasy scenes surrounding Martha's conjugal visit to writer's-block-plagued Tom in his Graf House apartment, the theatrical lighting effects in "Molasses to Rum" (and in the movie, the effect of stopping in mid-dissolve between two different angles on Rutledge), weren't revisionism; they were artistic license.

And to get back on-topic, Star Trek is hip-deep in artistic license, and always has been, and if you don't like it, how could you possibly like Star Trek? Wouldn't you be better off sticking to "hard" science fiction?

 

[DSG2k]

I have a stump speech about television and movies being audio-visual storytelling mediums. The words, the actions, the sets, the visual effects . . . everyone's efforts come together to create the complete tale we see and hear and experience. Star Trek has taken pains to try to present its episodes as stories that are real within the universe it inhabits. Otherwise the money to build the orbital drydock and film scenes involving it would not have been necessary . . . otherwise the holodeck recreation from "Relics" or the Defiant bridge from "In a Mirror, Darkly" could've been created in any way the showrunners 'wished to visualize'.

That said, there is a possible exception to this notion of internal realism . . . the concept of Trek as the imaginings of one Benny Russell (provided you don't take Benny Russell as the Oz-like figment of Sisko's imagination). However, even then, it's hard to imagine a guy imagining an Inception-esque imagining of his stories. That makes little sense.

(As an aside, however, it may help explain the "visual reboot" / "reimagine" that is the Discoverse. When you read some sci-fi novel in the 1980s you might've imagined the setting in a rather "cassette futurism" sort of way, but if you were to re-read the novel today you might imagine it with today's tech stylings.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

(As an aside, however, it may help explain the "visual reboot" / "reimagine" that is the Discoverse. When you read some sci-fi novel in the 1980s you might've imagined the setting in a rather "cassette futurism" sort of way, but if you were to re-read the novel today you might imagine it with today's tech stylings.)

Two comments:
1. I distinctly recall that there is at least one TOS novel, in which a retreat from higher levels of integration to lower levels was explained in-universe in terms of maintainability. And indeed, the world has a long history of preferring old technology to new technology in certain applications (one that immediately comes to mind being the triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines that powered the Liberty Ships in World War II: cheap, reliable, and relatively easy to work on). "The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

2. David Gerrold has written two versions of his novel, When HARLIE Was One. In the 1972 original, it was assumed that (1) computers would remain large, expensive, room-filling, timeshared mainframes, (2) IBM Mag-Card Selectric typewriters ("Magtypers") with interface cards installed would be the industry standard terminal, (3) computer-generated documents would remain stacks of fanfold out of IBM 1403 and similar line printers, (4) viruses would spread through modem connections, and (5) a computer capable of running a simulation of the entire world would be so enormous that the speed of current flow would become the controlling factor on its speed, and its "predictions" would not be delivered until the events it "predicted" were already fait accompli.

Then, in 1987, Gerrold released a revised edition, styled When HARLIE Was One, Release 2.0. Desktop computers were a given, the Magtypers were gone, GUIs were a fact of life, and viruses spread via floppy disks.

the imaginings of one Benny Russell (provided you don't take Benny Russell as the Oz-like figment of Sisko's imagination).

The whole sordid notion of Oz being a figment of Dorothy's imagination is an artifact of the movie. Which was made nearly four decades after Lyman Frank Baum wrote the first Oz novel, and two decades after Baum died (having written fourteen canonical Oz novels. In Wizard, Baum (whether by accident or by design) left the in-context reality of Oz ambiguous, but in the sixth novel, The Emerald City of Oz, he finally came down firmly on the "Oz is in-universe real" side.