Comments On The Inner Light (Star Trek: TNG, Season 5, Episode 25).

I was just commenting online on something someone posted about The Inner Light (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, Episode 25).

You know, some people call episodes like that theatre of the absurd or dramatic license. But that is what made it so great. More fiction than science, but it told a great story. Like Darmok in season 5. I brought it up online a while back, and someone pointed out the Tamarian language was based solely on metaphors and allegories, but that would be impossible. Exactly.

 

Great point Jim!

The point of any Star Trek the Next Generation episode was some really good storytelling. The Inner Light set up Picard and his flute for the rest of the series, which I found endearing. Sure, they made some missteps, but they always delivered. The Darmok episode was just interesting and different from whatever was on TV at the time.

We should have more Star Trek threads, I could talk all day about it, lol.

 

Yes, the Darmok episode premise made no sense. I think that episode is one of the worst ever.

Of course most aliens in the series speak Universal English because they all attended US universities (as aliens under DEI). They're all been deported now via space shuttle.

 

No, Darmok didn't make much sense, especially because all of the metaphors were form other cultures and planets, not native to the Tamarians.
But it has been long established that either by use of Comm Badge or Implant, starfleet uses a Universal Translator. and while perfect translators are still Fiction, we do have functional translators and voice recognition in many of our devices today.
I don't have to attend Universities to allow someone to speak close to my Cellphone and have Google Translate turn it into something I can understand.

 

I think the point of that episode is that we use metaphors and allegories a lot in our daily speech but don't realize it. Also every time we reference a name or event that a foreign speaker is unlikely to recognize, our words would be meaningless.

 

The scenes with Dathon and Picard on El Adrell highlights that we should also take the time to talk and try to find common ground, to better understand one another.

 

Nah, just shout louder in the foreigner's face if they don't understand.

 

Yeah, cuz that works all the time...

"SU-ME-MA-SEN! O-TOY-REY WAH DOKO DE-SUE-KA?

 

Thank you everyone for your comments.

I was also going to say that one of the biggest nontruths in the Star Trek universe was that everyone would be on the same physical ship. Like I said on another message board, people would have different temperature and atmospheric pressure needs. Actually it would be dangerous for humans to be for long in a different gravity plane than here. Our muscles atrophy before long, we might even die. (Sorry Mr. Musk. We'll have to take a rain check on your plans to colonize Mars for that reason.) Of course, like I also brought up, who says we'd be in human bodies. Like they ironically brought up in Season 2, Episode 16 of TOS we might all be disembodied brains by then. Living and interacting with other advanced humanoids (and maybe our pet dogs and cats too—think about it) on a simulated plane.