James Stewart’s vertigo “hallucinations” in Vertigo.
I’ve never really understood the need to come up with deep diving explanations like that. It’s much more enjoyable to me to say ‘well, that situation doesn’t actually make sense, but if you ignore that then does the episode work?’, especially since (like in this case) the deep diving explanation ends up completely changing the tone of the episode.
They’re a dumb plot element? They may be poorly executed as a means to simulate the feeling of vertigo, but they seem to fill the need in the story for us to believe in his problem with heights.
True - yeah, if only it was done better.
In Frantic (ok not a “best work” by any means but not Fearless Vampire Killers* either) the baddies could have simply snatched their (misplaced in the airport) suitcase from Harrison Ford’s hotel room instead of having to kidnap his wife from it.
*Gotta say that ballroom dancing scene near the end, though, (quite the amazing single take) was pretty splunge.
If it helps, how about this?
Back when you were in diapers, you maybe came up with your own words for stuff. You know, as babies do, just babbling as they gesture at something. But, eventually, you learned what your mother and father called it; and you went to school, where a succession of teachers all called it that – and all of the kids you went to school with, they all called it that, too. And so did you, eventually.
And so, now, you only ever use that word for it. And if you met a guy who spoke your language, you’d keep using that word; but, if he was from a different culture, you’d be perfectly willing to hear what word his people use for it. Like, even though you and people like you ask for “water” when thirsty, you know that others with a different common language ask for “agua” or “eau” or whatever.
But, again, you no longer spout gibberish to create a word for it – you haven’t done much of that since you were a baby – and you don’t think a grown man who happens to speak a different language is doing that, either? I mean, surely he and his just use an agreed-upon term for it, as must be the custom in their culture? Yes, at some point, somebody must have made up the word he’s using; and, granted, you could babble the way infants do to make up a new word right now. But so what?
Are you even going to think about that?
What?
It’s simple: how do we think about infants babbling when they make up a new word for something? Well, we’d maybe think it’s silly and babyish – except we don’t much think about it at all, since we aren’t much in the habit of doing it nowadays; we pretty much just use whatever agreed-upon word our culture uses. If you ever discover some entirely new thing and feel like making up a word for it, I guess you’re perfectly capable of doing so; but how often does that happen, really?
Anyhow, I figure that’s maybe how a Tamarian thinks about phrases: the way we think about words. He could – and probably did – come up with new ones when he was young; but so what? He hardly ever thinks of that, now; he eventually realized he was supposed to use the agreed-upon phrases used by everyone in his culture, the way you realized you’re supposed to use the agreed-upon words used by everyone in your culture. And, likewise, it’s not that he can’t create an entirely new phrase; he can do it as easily as you can create an entirely new word. But how often do you do that? How often do you seriously think about doing that?
If you met a guy who spoke a different language, would you assume he’s just making up words on the spot? No, you’d assume he’s using his culture’s agreed-upon words, as part of some existing language; it wouldn’t even occur to you to communicate with him by relying on the opposite assumption. And the Tamarian – well, likewise doesn’t assume the bald guy in front of him is making up phrases on the spot; why, surely he’s merely using his culture’s agreed-upon phrases, right?
None of that gets around the fact that on a routine basis they exclusively communicate through the supposed metaphors. If they don’t use the underlying language as adults, that underlying language atrophies and dies out and the metaphors become literal.
Oh, another area where you can have bad plot devices in an otherwise good story is with guns, because a lot of writers tend to go with ‘general hollywood liberal’ ideas on guns without thinking too deeply about how things work, especially on things like serial numbers. This one is pretty common, the specific one that sticks with me is an episode of Babylon 5. The big reveal is that they captured some bad guys who had PPGs (plasma guns, the standard sidearm in the setting) when they tried to trace where the guns came from, they found that there were no serial numbers. This is a big deal because the coils for the guns can’t be manufactured in any kind of private factory, and the serial number is stamped onto all coils as they’re made and can’t be removed without breaking the coils. However, the Earthgov spy agency does get some guns without serial numbers manufactured so that they can’t be traced, which means the guys they captured have some kind of high government connections!
The idea of ‘serial numbers let you trace guns, removing serial numbers is a thing bad guys do, making a gun with no serial number makes it untraceable’ makes a certain amount of sense, but falls apart in practice. Like happened in the episode, it’s basically like putting “I HAS SPY GUN I R SPY” in the serial number spot, and actually makes it more easily traceable - you don’t even have to follow a serial number to find where it came from. A competent spy agency would use guns that trace back somewhere that doesn’t scream “I’m a spy”, like a shipment that went to a foreign resistance group, a lost shipment, a known criminal, or a regular store somewhere. It doesn’t ruin the episode, but I remember standing out as silly at the time.
I’ve never really understood being into science fiction, and not being interested in “deep diving” into the concepts the medium presents. “Literature of ideas,” and all that. Not that I’d call this a particularly “deep” read. The first time I saw this episode and they said, “They only speak in metaphors,” it threw me right out of the story. It’s just too dumb of an idea to suspend my disbelief from.
I mean, I’ll accept goofy bullshit if the story is supposed to just be goofy bullshit. The TOS episode where someone leaves a book on 1930s Chicago behind on a planet, and the inhabitants use it to turn their planet into World of Gangsters, worked because they weren’t doing anything more ambitious than, “Wouldn’t it be hilarious to get Kirk in a pinstripe suit?” “Darmok” is trying to be serious, emotionally effecting television, but the dumb premise spoils the whole thing from the gate. It’s like if, at the end of Wrath of Khan, Spock fixed the engines by replacing the broken dilithium crystals with a bowl of chocolate pudding. As good as the rest of the movie is, it’s tainted by relying on such a transparently stupid idea to carry its plot.
Heh. See, I always thought they were going for something a touch bigger than that, there: “They evidently seized upon that one book as the blueprint for an entire society,” says Spock, and McCoy agrees: “As the Bible.”
“Darmok helping Jalad tighten the 30 micron nuts on the lawn furniture at Tanagra…”
Not sure why you posted this in response to me, since I said nothing against diving into the concepts that the medium presents. What I said was that I don’t understand “deep diving explanations”, meaning things like the post you were pointing out problems with. I’m not saying I ‘don’t understand if people think about the epsiode’, I’m saying ‘I don’t understand when go on a deep diving expedition to come up with a fanwank explanation that doesn’t fit with what the episode is trying to do’. It’s bizarre to me that people will make multi-paragraph explanations of something that’s obviously just an idea of the writer’s that doesn’t work, and keep arguing them (like is happening in this thread), not that people see an idea and find that it doesn’t work.
Right, you don’t try to dive deep for some explanation of the idea that doesn’t actually follow from anything in the episode or the series, and that breaks what the episode is trying to do. If it’s too much for you, then you write off the episode, if (like me) it’s not too much, then you just accept it as something goofy the writers did.
Yeah, and we all know how well that worked out for him.
Because of course that is the only time in all of media that has occurred.:rolleyes:
I mean, it’s pretty famous. “Oedipal complex” and all that…
I suppose in other circles all this “Darmok at Tenagra” business would be the obscure cultural reference that left people scratching their heads, but not on the SDMB. 
Yes, and i knew that, but since Roderick Femm didnt both telling me which one of many representations he was talking about, my confusion. I was thinking there was a Star Trek Oedipus plotline…
Kiteo, his eyes closed.
Temba at rest.
[Moderating]
Roderick Femm, I realize that tone is difficult to convey in a text medium, but that came across as a lot more insulting than it needed to be. Please try to reel it in.