What TL is the original Star Trek?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

As I said before that is an etic (external) explanation rather then an emic (internal) one. "Menagerie" provides us with an emic view - what we see for the series is events exactly as they happened via somebody like the Talosians.

On one hand, it's worth noting that one of the characteristics of emic views is that they're false. They're not how things actually are; they're how a culture categorizes them.

On the other, though, the enterprise of trying to come up with a consistent internal view of things that are shown or said in a work of popular entertainment is often futile. Such works don't aim at consistency in the first place! Nor, for that matter, even at the kind of accuracy a scholar might want. They need to have enough coherence to invite "suspension of disbelief" from the audience. But if you try to produce a totally consistent universe that preserves all the data of a movie, let along a series of nearly a hundred television episodes, you're inevitably going to end up producing a new work of fiction—and one that's likely to be radically different in spirit from the source. Taking one detail from one episode, and extrapolating an entire history and setting from it, most often leads to falsification.

Consider one of the most famous poems of the romantic era, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." It compares the poet's reactions to those of a famed explorer: "Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/He gazed on the Pacific—and all his men/Looked at each other with a wild surmise. . . ." Do we want to say that John Keats was creating an alternate history where it was Cortez, and not Balboa, who led the expedition that found the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica, and discuss what kind of allohistorical changes would be needed for that to have happened? Or do we just say that Keats was absent-minded and made a mistake, but one that's not essential to the point of the poem?

There's a lot of room for debate over which details of ST count as random noise, and which are indicators of the true tendency of the work. But I think we just have to do that debate. Asking for an internalist view that preserves every single detail may be a simple rule that avoids such debates, but it produces utterly chimerical results.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On one hand, it's worth noting that one of the characteristics of emic views is that they're false. They're not how things actually are; they're how a culture categorizes them.

On the other, though, the enterprise of trying to come up with a consistent internal view of things that are shown or said in a work of popular entertainment is often futile. Such works don't aim at consistency in the first place!

It doesn't stop people from trying. For example, the Sherlockian game tries to reconcile and fit the canon into actual historical context. The out there is Watson would have reasons to officiate the details for the sake of Holmes clients and to avoid any libel suits.

Other then Enterprise (via "These Are the Voyages..."), Star Trek doesn't really have that out. Besides if you take that route it is like the FNAF dream theory...is there anything really there you can pull out?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

It doesn't stop people from trying. For example, the Sherlockian game tries to reconcile and fit the canon into actual historical context. The out there is Watson would have reasons to officiate the details for the sake of Holmes clients and to avoid any libel suits.

Sure, it can be amusing. I've read Dorothy Sayers's essays on what Watson's name really was and which university Holmes attended, and they were memorably clever. But Sayers didn't try to write a story based on either of them, and coming up with all those explanations and building a world around them wouldn't necessarily make good stories—or good RPG campaigns.

In dealing with the real world we have to assume that everything we observe and verify has a coherent logical explanation. But in dealing with someone's account of the real world, that may not be the case. See Hume's argument about miracles, or Locke's earlier dismissive comment that "he obligeth no man to believe him; who, being a man, may err, or what is more, may lie." And that's even more true of statements in fiction, whether made by the author (who is trying to keep the audience entertained) or by characters (who may themselves err or lie). There's a passage in Heinlein's The Rolling Stones that sums this up: Hazel Stone left the hero of her stereovision serial, The Scourge of the Spaceways, trapped on Jupiter in a sealed cylinder with methane monsters closing in—so at the next episode, he's starting to tell another character, a young woman, about how he escaped, making light of it because he's too noble to boast, and then the villains attack and the explanation is lost in the action, sparing Hazel the need to actually come up with a believable way to save the hero's bacon.

I've run RPGs where I said things casually, or allowed things to happen, that later let the PCs get away with murder, or undermined the logic of the world. And I either had to retcon them, or live with the consequences—because I was improvising stuff as I went no matter how much advance thought I did. And television shows have the same thing going on, and had it even more fifty years ago, though J.J. Abrams's shows seem typically to arrive at a point where the complete absence of a coherent backstory becomes impossible to overlook.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Maybe, but he was also apparently the most amazing political operative in the history of the universe. Here's a man who went as an unsupported alien outsider to a world about which the primary thing we know about it is they were concerned about being infiltrated by alien outsiders, and in less than two decades turns himself into its absolute dictator. And not even by taking over something local, but by getting them to adopt an alien ideology. And a rather flawed one that that which is nevertheless gets to work pretty well.

I've said before the Federation is lucky he went off to Ekos instead of making himself Terran Emperor or something.

John Gill took a badly fragmented world and gave them a focus. It is clear from Daras' reaction that no one knew Gill was an alien.

As for the rest Rod Sterling set out the blueprint:

Let us start by your learning what are the dynamics of a crowd.
How do you move a mob, Mr. Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?

How? Join them first, Mr. Vollmer.

Yes, when you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a member of the mob. Speak to them in their language, on their level. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of poverty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears.

And if they are angry, mr. Vollmer, if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, mr.
Vollmer, is that you make this mob an extension of yourself.

Take a hard look at Gill's own sentances and how they were easily shaped via editing into a speech seemingly supporting genocide:

GILL: The job ahead is difficult. It requires courage and dedication. It requires faith. The Zeon colony has existed for nearly half a century. If we fulfill our own greatness, that will all be ended.

Working together will at times be difficult to reach our goal, And we will reach that goal. (unintelligible due to conversation between Spock and Kirk) must be decisive. Every thought directed toward a goal. This planet can become a paradise, if we are willing to pay the price. As each cell in the body works with discipline and harmony for the good of the entire being (break away to different part of building).

More over we don't know how long Gill has been on the planet but the few years comment indicates it is no where near two decades. I should mention that the Nazi party existed before Hitler became a member so odds are Gill took an already existing group and turned it into a copy of the Nazis.

As the early US Cold War propaganda said in hard times people will look for quick solutions. Something Gill was able to promise and by his own words deliver until he was drugged.