Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

Mind you, at least the Blish adaption said Sargon had been there in the globe half a million years, and if the galaxy was seeded with humanoids of identical stock no MORE than 500,000 years ago on improbably similar planets, I don't buy for a second that their descendants would more like us than Tellerites after so long.  It's a suspend-belief-and-don't-think-too-hard-about-that-part thing, IMO...

Well, last thing first, have you seen Dorothy Fontana's Season Four comics from IDW?  She has the Preservers, who transplanted Miramanee's people, connected to the Organians, and even has Aylebourne mention that the Organians used to enjoy a similar relationship with the Metrons that the Federation enjoy with the Klingons.

The Preservers clearly were active fairly recently, or Miramanee would not have been so clearly recognizable as generic Hollywood Native American --- and if you start thinking about all the parallel Earths, you have to assume VERY recently, or never ever think about the Yang planet or the Roman world.  Miri was already born two or three hundred years ago as of 2014, so no way that world was just a forgotten terraformed Earth colony, either.  You know, the conclusion that someone was running experiments very recently is inescapable, and strongly supports what you assert.

I have some thoughts about Sargon, the Preservers, Organia and the galactic barrier, but that's a different conversation than the one about Spock...

[Buster's Uncle]

Not worth digging up, I think, are remarks I made SOMEwhere specifically about The Paradise Syndrome,  to wit:

Miramanee makes some vague representations to Kirk that her ancestors actually MET the Preservers, not having merely woken up on a new planet.

Kirk -who is himself a Whitey-type- came out of the asteroid-repelling monument the Preservers left behind, and the locals immediately proclaimed him a god.  I conclude that there was a translation error - The People would certainly have an oral tradition -Miramanee didn't say much onscreen- including a physical description of whatever they found exotic about the Preservers, and when they saw a white man walking out of the holy site, they naturally knew him as the Preserver he looked like.

-Very much not to be racist, but -it's right there on the screen; all of this is- the galaxy's FULL of white people, and I'm assuming for a reason, not the RW 60s one.

[Buster's Uncle]

SO - as I digressed today in the middle of reacting to a story Mylochka is writing set on the Mugato -white horned biting gorilla- planet Neural, which is one of those worlds adjoining Klingon space, thus hijinks ensue, see also The Trouble with Tribbles and Friday's Child:

Mostly irrelevant but related, the Original Earth has to be SOMEwhere, and almost certainly inhabited by godlike post-humans who are possibly Gary Seven's patrons and the Preservers and the builders of the Shore Leave planet and Sargon's people- not unlikely, it wasn't just the people on Organia in disguise, and that's also a strategically-valuable Klingon-Empire-border world.  See also Dorthy Fontana's making the Preserver connection explicit in Star Trek: Season Four comic and bringing in the Metrons as past ancient enemies - probably same as Henoch in Return to Tomorrow.

Easy to see a story or two in all that, perhaps tied to stuff we've discussed about the Orions and The First Federation and whomever -TNG's T'konn w/ the interstellar portals?- of the last epoch of galactic history, which the Preservers didn't have to stay out of, and -perhaps- already actively making many parallel Earths, probably couldn't...

[Buster's Uncle]

Please nobody waste everyone's time telling me about the realities of 60s TV production - I was there, the 60s, and even remember a few dribs and drabs in person, and that ain't the game I'm playing, so please don't be boring.  Thank you.

[Trenacker]

Aside from the starship battles, my favorite thing about the Xindi Arc was the moral component. Episodes like "The Xindi," "The Anomaly," and "Damage" were standout Trek for me.

Hoshi was a well-acted character, but as with Anthony Montgomery, who played Ensign Mayweather, she received comparatively little attention. I think Mayweather is on record lamenting how little was done with his character.

Interestingly, the writers have said Shran would have joined the crew had the series continued for another season, which I think would have been terrific.

I was also remiss in failing to mention probably my favorite character of all-time, Dr. Phlox, played by the excellent John Billingsley. He was arguably the show's standout actor, and Phlox's warm personality made him my number one choice of Star Trek physician. Despite his love for unconventional treatments involving, well, bugs.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm sure you're too young to know your M*A*S*H, but Phlox was also Col. Charles Emmerson Winchester's nicer little space-brother from the future.  -There was a resemblance, like Niles to Frasier.

They did a LOT more with Hoshi, ultimately, than with the boomer helmsman.  Wasn't Mayweather the English weapons guy?  He got a little play, too, if not enough.

[Trenacker]

Ensign Mayweather was the helmsman. Lieutenant Malcom Reed was the Armory Officer.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, Reed, of course.

Everything about Mayweather forgettable, alas, except memory insisting he was Travis Mayweather...

[Buster's Uncle]

Mylochka just sent me this:

[Buster's Uncle]

Now, a few implications I didn't get into above in my speculations about Earth(s), humanoids, galactic history and all that.


TNG and onward doesn't work with Organia/Organians still there, and still fit in the Star Trek universe, and this even goes back to Klingons in the movies.  Organians were an elephant in the room that would be talked of constantly in the same breath as the Klingons.

So, our first sight of knobbies ever was three Klingon ships attacking V'ger at the beginning of TMP.  QED, V'ger passed through the Klingon Empire on its way to 'Earth', and must have eaten Organia, which does canonically lie between the Federation and the Empire.  I don't like supposing that V'ger was THAT powerful, but it's all that makes sense of the Klingons believing they could wage war w/ Federation later and ever since, and at least in DS9 actually did so briefly - and extensively in an alternate TNG timeline.


More to come...

[Buster's Uncle]

I hate that doing walls of text tends to preclude anyone actually reading it all in full, and I hate that no one currently active here Treks hard enough to keep up - I'd REALLY like to discuss.  I don't see any better approach, and it's currently on my mind.

Interesting aside - I discovered yesterday that I can hum a few bars of the opening theme music of the show Here Come The Brides -name where that's a Star Trek connection- which I haven't seen a second of any more recently than 1969, and Mom says I got it more-or-less right.  Mylochka deems that one of my super-powers, remembering the tune to themes.


Golden age science fiction tropes are frequently used as base assumptions in Star Trek.  -I'll bring that up again later on another matter.-  And one such is the sheer number of inhabitable Class M planets out there.  It's possibly more interesting that way, skipping space suits and such and just getting right to the people stories.  Star Trek was always more interested in people than outer space, frankly, and was only decent science fiction in the Jonathan Swift sense, using allegory and metaphor to sneakily comment on current events.

BUT once you assume the Preservers are still out there, and have been fiddling on a massive scale forever in at least this part of the galaxy, you've got a nice handwave for all the Earth trees species in the background on Planet X, and all the locations that look like Ayres Rock and/or Northern California ranches.

Terraforming takes time, IF you don't assume godlike psychic powers being practical to apply on a planetary scale - or at least that the Preserves weren't in that much of a hurry.  We can put a man on the moon for almost my entire lifetime, but a tree I plant -here in the future of the new millennium- still takes few years to grow tall.

We only know of one planet made to look like Earth from orbit, with our continents and all, Miri's world, and the complete lack of clouds in that shot may be a clue to something, dunno what.  The Yang planet and the Roman planet both hint almost certainly that the Preservers had to have interfered to maintain Earth history up to the divergence point w/ different geography.  Indeed, all the humanoids indistinguishable from Europeans on alien worlds require ongoing fiddling to not have diverged if they've been there on the hundred thousand year -or more- timescale.  THIS planet still had Neanderthals running around 40 thousand years ago, no reason to assume different in Star Trek.

SO - I assume that all levels of effort terraforming projects have been going on for millions of years, sometimes probably just dropping a few canisters of algae and coming back millions of years later to transplant some Earth flora and fauna.  Some of it may have been done for as simple a reason as to make places for the humanoids they must like a lot to live - some may have been to create more potential parallel Earth projects they might want to initiate in the future.  Some parallel projects are indisputably underway, and no reason to think they've all been found yet...

[Buster's Uncle]

BTW, anyone looking at the Valjiir thread to get context for my remarks quoted may notice a thing I do - Cher seemed to think she's told me something about her Seeders that she doesn't seem to have actually posted.  Near as I can make out, the Seeders are the Preservers by any other name, or at least a label for Sargon's people, who I assume are the same as the Preservers and the Organians/Metrons.  None of that actually necessarily follows, but I find a grand unified theory more interesting.

[Lord Avalon]

Oh my! Katee Sackhoff interviewed George Takei for "The Sackhoff Show."

[Buster's Uncle]

What in the world happened to his beautiful voice?  Is there more of a story than just turning 88, I wonder?

[Lord Avalon]

Maybe. Or it's just that eventually old people sound old.