(VI) Uhura gets for not being fluent in Klingon

[Mudd]

I don't give any... (Is there an object in that sentence?) to Uhura. I give lots of it to Nick Meyer. He's a smart man (ask him) who knows a lot of things. But this wasn't his wheelhouse. This seemed to be his shot to take Starfleet (and whatever it might stand in for) down a peg and he took it. (It's funny that the jumping off point for this movie was supposedly The Hunt For Red October --IN SPACE--, yet there is no "Jack Ryan" in this film who is an expert on Klingons.)

For all the... that various nuTrek gets, they have largely done right by Nyota. The books got there first, making Uhura a legend in her field. The movies and SNW have followed after.

I didn't mind (well, I did) Uhura not speaking Klingon NEARLY as much as the ginormous book and the no-name extra TELLING UHURA WHAT TO DO!

As for "the things gotta have a tailpipe", this was fill in the blank writing where they didn't do a good job of filling in the blanks. "The Klingons have an unstoppable weapon. Spock / Uhura will ____ and figure out that ____ will stop them."

There's a fair amount of this in TUC. "Crewmen will now say generalized racist things". "Um, is that racist enough?" "Sure, we're on a schedule!"

"Spock will now track the untrackable Kirk." "How?" "Does it matter? Do we have a small piece of velcro? Get a move on!"

Yep, those are some of the more glaring flaws in an underbudgeted rush job of a movie that is, for whatever reason, a sentimental favorite of a lot of fans,

The movie series ran out of steam after ST IV. On average, the early ones hold up pretty nicely despite being dated; ST III is the weak link, though even there they did a nice job of trying to give the film greater scope of action than the first two films.

 

[Shat Happens]

He's a smart man (ask him)

I asked. He confirmed.

 

[somebuddyX]

I keep imagining a version of Star Trek III where Chekov is on Genesis with David, Sulu has the Styles role on Excelsior and Scotty is with him, and it's Uhura, Saavik and Rand helping Kirk bust McCoy out of lockup and then stealing the Enterprise.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Yeah, it's definitely Red October.

What's your source for that?

(By which I mean one of the creators, Nimoy, Meyer, or Denny Martin Flinn, saying that the concept for the film was "The Hunt For Red October in outer space.")

EDIT: Tagging @Tallguy here since he was the one who originally made the Red October reference above.

 

[ED-209]

It's not that big a stretch, they have the universal translator so she probably very rarely has to speak in actual language. I found the big pile of Books more unbelievable than her not knowing the language.

I don't see how ST6 is Red October, wasn't that about a Russian crew defecting with what was seen as a purely offensive rather than defensive weapon (which they didn't want to see used)?

 

[Tallguy]

It's not that big a stretch, they have the universal translator so she probably very rarely has to speak in actual language

That's a bit like saying mathematicians are bad at math because they have calculators. Maybe some, but this is Nyota Uhura, best of the best. (Anyone else annoyed that Sulu got a first name here but Uhura didn't?)

Star Trek VI is not a literal retelling of The Hunt for Red October: IN SPACE. I think it's on the DVD commentary (I haven't listened to any since then) that they wanted an International Thriller: IN SPACE like THFRO which had just come out the year before and had been a big hit. That was the model. Also Tom Clancy was at the height of his popularity and the Berlin Wall had fallen two years before. So it seemed topical and lucrative.

I had forgotten that Gorbachev (Gorkon) was still in power when TUC premiered but he would be gone by year's end.

 

[Pauln6]

That's a bit like saying mathematicians are bad at math because they have calculators. Maybe some, but this is Nyota Uhura, best of the best. (Anyone else annoyed that Sulu got a first name here but Uhura didn't?)

Star Trek VI is not a literal retelling of The Hunt for Red October: IN SPACE. I think it's on the DVD commentary (I haven't listened to any since then) that they wanted an International Thriller: IN SPACE like THFRO which had just come out the year before and had been a big hit. That was the model. Also Tom Clancy was at the height of his popularity and the Berlin Wall had fallen two years before. So it seemed topical and lucrative.

I had forgotten that Gorbachev (Gorkon) was still in power when TUC premiered but he would be gone by year's end.

I think that the skills of the TOS crew are largely overstated. Later shows became more obsessed with showing the crew as being top of their tree in their specialisms (except Spock). McCoy is an old country doctor. Scotty is an excellent officer and a good engineer but he was never a genius. Uhura is an excellent officer, good at manning her station, a fair technician, and good at doing her job but she isn't a talented linguist like Hoshi (who is a fairly crappy officer). I have no particular issue with Uhura not speaking Klingon, but an excellent officer is briefed on the mission and Uhura should have known who in her communications team, or even the wider crew, could speak Klingon.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If it were an episode of TOS, guest star of the week would be the Klingon linguist.

 

[Tallguy]

If it were an episode of TOS, guest star of the week would be the Klingon linguist.

And now they would be regular on SNW.

 

[Pauln6]

If it were an episode of TOS, guest star of the week would be the Klingon linguist.

[Lt Tiricia McMillan] "With a degree in maths and another in astrophysics, it was either Klingon linguistics or the dole queue again on Monday morning." Bends from waist to push a button on the console.
[Kirk] Shifts uncomfortably in chair. "You seem eminently qualified Lieutenant."
[McCoy] "Wonderful stuff that Romulan ale,"

 

[Iamnotspock]

I think that the skills of the TOS crew are largely overstated. Later shows became more obsessed with showing the crew as being top of their tree in their specialisms (except Spock). McCoy is an old country doctor. Scotty is an excellent officer and a good engineer but he was never a genius. Uhura is an excellent officer, good at manning her station, a fair technician, and good at doing her job but she isn't a talented linguist like Hoshi (who is a fairly crappy officer). I have no particular issue with Uhura not speaking Klingon, but an excellent officer is briefed on the mission and Uhura should have known who in her communications team, or even the wider crew, could speak Klingon.

SNW retroactively making her so (37 languages) makes that scene even harder to square, though I guess we can chalk it up to Nomad's mind wipe.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Good point. It's not part of her day-to-day duties/life, so it's low on the priority scale of things to re-teach her.

 

[fireproof78]

SNW retroactively making her so (37 languages) makes that scene even harder to square, though I guess we can chalk it up to Nomad's mind wipe.

I thought that's how we already squared it?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

 

[JonnyQuest037]

People get too anal about what's just a cute joke in the movie. Honestly, is it that tough to just imagine that the two Klingons at the listening post were speaking an obscure Klingon dialect that Uhura wasn't familiar with? Just because someone speaks Cantonese doesn't automatically mean they speak Mandarin. Just say that Uhura speaks 24 Klingon dialects perfectly, but this was the 25th one she never quite got the hang of. The odd archaic "Whither are you bound?" phrasing the one Klingon used probably added to the confusion.

Uhura's good at her job, but she's not infallible.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I think that the skills of the TOS crew are largely overstated. Later shows became more obsessed with showing the crew as being top of their tree in their specialisms (except Spock). McCoy is an old country doctor. Scotty is an excellent officer and a good engineer but he was never a genius. Uhura is an excellent officer, good at manning her station, a fair technician, and good at doing her job but she isn't a talented linguist like Hoshi (who is a fairly crappy officer). I have no particular issue with Uhura not speaking Klingon, but an excellent officer is briefed on the mission and Uhura should have known who in her communications team, or even the wider crew, could speak Klingon.

Yes, I agree. Uhura's called to do technical repairs on TOS far more than she's ever asked to do translation or linguistics, which makes me think she has more of a science/engineering background than languages. There's also the fact that she's taken over the helm at times. So she's someone who could rewire her station if she had to, but she only has a smattering of language skills.

The Kelvin and SNW versions of Uhura leaned into the "Hoshi Sato, Linguist Supreme" direction more, which is a valid interpretation, but I don't think it's particularly borne out by anything we see on TOS.

 

[Tallguy]

The Kelvin and SNW versions of Uhura leaned into the "Hoshi Sato, Linguist Supreme" direction more, which is a valid interpretation, but I don't think it's particularly borne out by anything we see on TOS.

It's also how she was portrayed in the books as early as the 80's. (1980 if we're going by David Gerrold's Galactic Whirlpool.)

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It's also how she was portrayed in the books as early as the 80's. (1980 if we're going by David Gerrold's Galactic Whirlpool.)

Yeah. And it's not an unreasonable assumption. I just think a technical/engineering background for Uhura works better with what we see her doing on TOS. IIRC, the only languages we see her speak on TOS are English and Swahili.

EDIT: Interestingly, we had a thread about this very topic just over a year ago:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/first-appearance-of-uhuras-linguistic-skills.311482/

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

IIRC, the only languages we see her speak on TOS are English and Swahili.

And even those are both languages any 23rd century ordinary non-linguist from Kenya (as of SNW) could know just by growing up and going to school.

 

[Tallguy]

IIRC, the only languages we see her speak on TOS are English and Swahili.

That's one language more than any TOS Klingons or Romulans.