Carol Freeman: Lieutenant Kayshon, welcome to the Cerritos. Lieutenant Kayshon: Rapunki, when he joined the seven. … Ah, sorry. The universal translator doesn’t always – what I meant was, uh, it is my honor, captain.
Kayshon: You getting ‘Bazminti when he pulled back the veil’ vibes from this guy?" Jack Ransom: Oh yeah. Captain Freeman, our Pakled refugee appears to be more of a Pakled spy. Captain Carol Freeman: What? He hasn’t gotten anything, has he? Jack Ransom: No, I think we’ll be okay. He just took a photo of his own foot.
Boimler: ‘Kimarnt, her head cloudy’? Kayshon: Ah, thank you, Ensign… Boimler: Boimler. I took a little Tamarian at the Academy. Kayshon: Oh, ‘Unzak and Vhila as children?’ Boimler: Uh, right. Um, ‘Karno, in the forest with… Mira.’ Kayshon: …It is hard to lose weight when you can replicate any food you want!
Both sides misinterpret the scenario. The Tam really want communication, but because of how their culture works, they have a plan and they stubbornly stick with it. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” isn’t just a metaphor, it’s a fact. They think what they are doing is obvious. To them it is.
Picard views the entire thing as a fight, because his culture is full of strangers fighting rather than working together. Klingons fight, Romulans fight, Cardassians, Gorn, The First Federation, the Husnak, …and humans fight most of all. It isn’t just an idea, it’s a fact. And he stubbornly refuse to change his opinion. He thinks it’s obvious. Because to him, it is.
Both are wrong, but in different ways. (If they both did things perfectly, what would be the point of the episode?) Dathon tries, but truly he is limited by his language. Picard takes too long to figure it out because of his biases (and the meddling of Riker. Thanks, Will, you’re partially responsible for Dathon’s death.) but eventually he gets it. It took the two of them together. Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.
I love the episode for the scene on the bridge, when the Tam and the Enterprise are ready to blow each other to bits, and Picard walks in talking Tam, and resolves the whole battle. You can practically hear jaws hitting the floor. Picard really deserves his rep as a master diplomat. A peaceful resolution, and possibly a new friend.
And THAT is what Star Trek is all about, Charlie Brown.
I’m on record that in Tam society, only engineers and children (eta: and teachers) use sentences. Once they grow up, they speak Metaphorical Tam, like proper adults. To use nouns and verbs is vulgar. It works, because that’s what they are used to. They don’t do subtext, or puns. They don’t need to.
But down in the engine room they’re all “reroute the deflectors through the subspace frackinator and get me 125.9 on the casualation calibrator”, because, you have to.
But it does limit their society, and interactions outside of their group, as this episode shows. Sentences to a Tam are like emotions to a Vulcan. They have them, but to speak of them is impolite.
At least they’re not Pakleds! Why no multi-thread discussion of how literal idiots manage to make themselves go without blowing themselves up?
Except, in order for speaking in metaphors to be understood at all, they must be taught those metaphors, using plain language. And adults understand that sometimes you have to talk to people like you do to children to get them to understand. So, they should have told the Enterprise the story of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. I mean, why would a starfaring race think that everyone has the same cultural history as they do?
I’m glad Just_Asking_Questions brought up the Pakled, because this is a chance to explain my favorite headcanon (which is not so unlike J_A_Q’s own theory):
In “Samaritan Snare” we meet a species callled the Pakled, who are depicted as not very smart. To demonstrate this to audiences, they kind of speak like slow cavemen. I think “Civilization of dumb idiots” is perhaps even a worse concept than “Civilization that speaks exclusively in metaphor.” What makes more sense to me is the Pakled have multiple languages, and the one they’re using in the episode is a simplified trade pidgin.
In “Darmok” we meet a species called the Tamarians, who are depicted as only communicating in referential metaphor. People generally agree that a spacefaring civilization could not function with a language like this. What makes more sense to me is the Tamarians have multiple languages, a public formal one made entirely of metaphor, and a private informal one that is mainly used by children and the adults who are teaching those children the stories that make up the metaphors in the Tamarian formal language. It never occurs to Dathon to use the informal language with Picard because using it between equals is one of the most offensive things you can do in Tamarian culture.
In “Darmok” Data discovers that the references used by the Tamarians lines up with various culture’s mythologies recorded in the Enterprise computer. Why would that be in the computer, unless there was an intermediary culture that the Federation had an easier time communicating with?
So here is what I choose to believe: The Pakled have a simplistic trade language because they experienced great difficulty getting other cultures to understand their actual language. The Tamarians experience great difficulty getting other cultures to understand their actual language. The Pakled and Tamarians can understand each other’s actual languages just fine.
Wow. I didn’t realize that character was supposed to be Tamarian, so when he used a Tamarian metaphor while playing Security Officer Charades, I thought he was mocking the concept.
I’m not so sure. The Pakled display other behavior besides language that generally implies that they aren’t the brightest space-faring species. In my headcanon the Pakled is what can happen when you violate the Prime Directive and a species end up in space before they are ready.
By that standard, are there any good Star Trek episodes? Seems like it’s always the crew of the Enterprise (DS9, Voyager, whatever) trying to understand some new species of aliens, help some humans out of a jam, etc. They are the protagonists, but it seems like they do all the work in these encounters. I wouldn’t single out just Darmok for this criticism.
There are hundreds of episodes across the Trekiverse, so there must be some exceptions.
I’ve long compared this episode to the classic Trek “Arena” where Kirk fights the Gorn. They also have some trouble communicating between the two species/ships and it’s mano -v- gorn at Vasquez Rocks. It’s a fantastic episode of Trek and even when I first saw it when I was about 10 it was both unintentionally funny and kinda cool how Kirk finds just the right stuff to make a cannon.
In “Darmok” we also have a Captain -vs- a foe who I reckon was considerably stronger (at least his species/ship was a real big bad threat) and we get the Epic of Gilgamesh and two absolutely spectacular performances by Paul Winfield and Patrick Stewart.
I don’t give a fuck if “Temba, his arms wide” sounds like nonsense or bad writing. Darmok is right up there with Arena as über-trek.
As far as all that stuff being found around Vaquez Rocks, I reckon the Metrons - the super-advanced race who set up the mano-v-gorn fight had said there’d be stuff laying about to make weapons from. Also they disabled the universal translators till the Gorn is about to stomp out Kirk (hence the broad similarity to Darmok even if that’s more about trying to understand eachother than kill the other)
So Kirk uses his cannon, the Metrons pop in and tell Kirk he can noW destroy the Gorn ship. Kirk refuses and the Metrons are like, “Meh, you’re all savages anyways. Get back to us in 3,000 years” and Kirk is popped back to the Enterprise and the ship is shot really far away.
