The most unfitting translations of Star Trek novels

[Stevil2001]

Okay, granted, that's something you can cite evidence for. And it does suggest a change in usage as a result of DS9's use. But that doesn't refute my statement that it was an aberrant use of the word when DS9: "Vortex" first applied it 23 years ago. That just wasn't what anyone used the word to mean at the time, or earlier. That's what the dictionary shows -- that there was no documented history of the word being used in that way prior to 1993. And that it still isn't standard enough to have made it into current dictionaries. Two media franchises don't really add up to general use.

I actually think the use of the word in "Vortex" isn't entirely inapt; indeed, it seems like it's a nice pun. They both change their form-- but surely one of the reasons people are fearful of Changelings is because they can replace those you love. Julian Bashir, for example, was totally a Changeling!

 

[Christopher]

I actually think the use of the word in "Vortex" isn't entirely inapt; indeed, it seems like it's a nice pun. They both change their form-- but surely one of the reasons people are fearful of Changelings is because they can replace those you love. Julian Bashir, for example, was totally a Changeling!

Yeah, but none of that had happened yet when "Vortex" was written. At the time, IIRC, they had no plans to make Odo's people the heads of the Dominion, or to have them infiltrate the AQ. So it's a name that accidentally works better after the fact than it did when it was coined.

 

[Stevil2001]

Yeah, but none of that had happened yet when "Vortex" was written. At the time, IIRC, they had no plans to make Odo's people the heads of the Dominion, or to have them infiltrate the AQ. So it's a name that accidentally works better after the fact than it did when it was coined.

The idea that shapeshifters would be threatening because they could replace you isn't exactly out of left field, though; indeed, it's difficult to imagine what else could make people be frightened of shapeshifters. I don't know if it was intended when "Vortex" was written, but it doesn't seem impossible.

 

[Christopher]

The idea that shapeshifters would be threatening because they could replace you isn't exactly out of left field, though; indeed, it's difficult to imagine what else could make people be frightened of shapeshifters. I don't know if it was intended when "Vortex" was written, but it doesn't seem impossible.

I'd say it wasn't intended at the time, since Croden tells Odo "I've never heard of a Changeling with such versatility," contradicting what we later learned about Odo's abilities being much less advanced than those of the Founders. So if other Changelings were less versatile than Odo, they'd never be able to impersonate other individuals. Croden also said the Changelings were persecuted, an oppressed minority. Again, they hadn't yet decided that Odo's people would be villains. Granted, Croden was conning Odo and going from centuries-old legends, so his information wasn't necessarily accurate, but it does give an indication of where the writers' heads were at the time. They probably made Croden an unreliable witness because they hadn't yet decided anything about Odo's people for sure and wanted to leave themselves room to contradict his story later. Which they sorta did and sorta didn't, because they dropped the bit about Odo being more versatile than the rest, but kept the history of persecution by "solids" as part of the Founders' motivation.

 

[Stevil2001]

I'd say it wasn't intended at the time, since Croden tells Odo "I've never heard of a Changeling with such versatility," contradicting what we later learned about Odo's abilities being much less advanced than those of the Founders.

Ah, I'd forgotten that line.

 

[Idran]

Let's see, what other terms are there for shapeshifters? Metamorph, polymorph, shapechanger, shifter, lycanthrope, various others. Transformer, I guess, for a certain category. Then there's that weird "allasomorph" term from TNG: "The Dauphin." I never could figure that out. I could understand "allomorph," "other shape," but "allaso-" doesn't seem to be a legitimate Greek prefix.

In another mythological drift brought on by fandom, going back to D&D there's doppelganger again. Protean. Skinwalker. Harry Potter had animagi and metamorphmagi (though that latter name is so clunky compared to the former it actually hurts me). There's a couple more specific examples I can think of too, from mythology or otherwise; not "change into any shape" but "change into a shape": kelpies, selkies, swan maidens.

Oh, turns out Wikipedia's actually got an entire category on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shapeshifting

 

[Christopher]

Back in the '90s, when a college friend and I had plans to get in on the indie comics boom of the era (which never went anywhere since my friend turned out to be all talk and no action), I came up with a whole classification scheme for metamorphs in our comic-book universe. Class 1 was a metamorph with just one alternate form, like Dr. Jekyll or a werewolf. Class 2, probably the rarest in fiction, had a fixed, finite number of alternate forms, like Dracula (bat, wolf, mist). Class 3 would have theoretically unlimited forms within a limited range, e.g. someone who can only impersonate humans (like Mystique in the movies, apparently) or who can only become animals (like Beast Boy). And Class 4 would be effectively unlimited, like Odo (though in my universe they wouldn't have been able to change mass). But I suppose this is an incomplete listing, since there should probably be a category for shapeshifters needing technological assistance, like Ben 10 or Fringe shapeshifters. I guess chemically induced changes like Jekyll/Hyde or Wild Cards' Captain Trips (one of the few Class 2s I'm aware of) would fall there as well.

 

[Kor]

I like to think that, being as xenophobic as they were, the Founders purposefully kept their nature a mystery (like the location of their homeworld), allowing all kinds of unfounded rumors to fly around so that nobody would have an accurate picture of exactly who they were and what they were capable of.

So the general populace of the galaxy would mainly see the Dominion as a Vorta/Jem'Hadar thing, and not perceive the actual power behind the scenes.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, of course, that's exactly what the show explicitly established -- that the identity of the Founders was unknown except by the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar. The reveal that Odo's people were the Founders was the big shocking revelation at the end of "The Search, Part II." As I said, that's why the later revelations were compatible with Croden's beliefs about Changelings in "Vortex." But at the time "Vortex" was written and the term was first coined, nobody had come up with any of that yet.

 

[JD]

^Wow, did you guys not watch TOS or something? The way I learned about the mythological term was from Kirk's explanation in the namesake episode.

I'm not sure if I've seen The Changeling. I thought I had seen every episode of all of the series except ENT, but I honestly have no clear memory of watching The Changeling.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I thought I had seen every episode of all of the series except ENT, but I honestly have no clear memory of watching The Changeling.

Funny, neither does Uhura...

 

[Greg Cox]

I sympathize with Christopher's problem with treating "changeling" as synonymous with "shapeshifter" since a changeling was something entirely different in traditional myth and folklore. It's as though DS9 decided to start calling zombies "centaurs" for some reason.

Alas, I fear that ship has sailed. See also the DC Comics character, Beast Boy, who started calling himself "Changeling" back in the eighties, long before STAR WARS or DS9 misused the term.

 

[Christopher]

It's as though DS9 decided to start calling zombies "centaurs" for some reason.

Kind of a bad example, since the definition of "zombie" has itself changed massively in popular culture. It originally referred to people who died or were placed in a deathlike trance and then revived and enslaved by a voodoo practitioner, and was used that way in film for decades. But in modern usage, that's been almost completely supplanted by "Romero zombies," the decaying, reanimated corpses that hunger for human flesh and/or brains, as established in 1968's Night of the Living Dead and later films (the brain-eating originated with Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead in 1985). So that's actually a lot like "changeling," in that it's a word that historically and mythologically had one meaning but that genre fiction has co-opted to mean something significantly different. (In fact, Romero called his living dead "ghouls" instead of zombies. That term was applied later by fandom, so I gather.)

 

[Greg Cox]

". . . it's as though DS9 decided to start calling witches 'centaurs' for some reason."

Better?

 

[Christopher]

Well... I don't see why a centaur couldn't be a witch... and then die and come back as a zombie.

Hey... This could be something. Teenage Zombie Wicca Centaurs.

 

[Greg Cox]

And changeling could conceivably also be a shape-shifter, but that way madness lies . . .

And somewhere Roger Corman is getting funding for TEENAGE ZOMBIE WICCA CENTAURS.

 

[Christopher]

And somewhere Roger Corman is getting funding for TEENAGE ZOMBIE WICCA CENTAURS.

And I'm sure you're already bidding for the novelization rights.