No love for “A Fist Full of Datas”?
That one is right up there with Star Trek V.
That was just a little over the top for me (Data with boobs? Really?), but it has its moments.
Sorry. I took too long in writing my post and should’ve acknowledged your link re: “USS.”
:: bows to mlees ::
Oooh! Thanks!
:: returns bow ::
So, you don’t think Moriarty’s creation influenced Dr. Louis Zimmerman’s research into the EMH or Felix the programmer’s creation of Vic Fontaine, which were also self-aware autonomous holograms?
Sorry, I got a little confused as to the Moriarti timeline. The big picture I was referencing was how he essentially willed himself into existence.
Moriarty? He became sentient after Geordi was a bit too specific in his instructions to the computer. In other words, he was the product of a holodeck … glitch? Gremlin? :dubious:
It’s no problem and I don’t think the Doctor’s or Vic’s relation to Moriarty’s existence is fully canon. I think it’s logical to fanwank that their existence does stem from Moriarty’s, however.
Not sentience. The episode where he walked out of the holodeck. That’s a hell of a glitch.
I guess it’s a spoiler (for a 20 year old episode) but he never walks out of the real holodeck. Just into a holodeck extension that looks like the Enterprise. He uses it to trick Picard and Data into thinking he somehow made himself corporeal.
The Doctor from Voyager couldn’t leave the Sickbay or the holodecks initially until Voyager obtained the mobile emitter from the 29th century. And Vic Fontaine couldn’t leave the holosuite on DS9. Their lack of mobility doesn’t preclude their being sentient.
“Computer, create an opponent that can outwit Data.” or something like that.
According the excellent chroniclers at Memory Alpha, the United Federation of Planets was established in 2161 CE by United Earth, Vulcan, Andorian Empire, and Tellar.
It eventually grew to include more than a thousand planets and about 150 member worlds, a volume spanning around 8,000 light years.
ETA: Non sequitur alert! I was replying to the subthread before. Should always refresh before posting.
“Capable of defeating Data,” I think was the phrase.
Not sure if they ever specified what the USS stood for, but given that it was decided upon in the early days of the series I can’t help but figure it was probably just ‘United States Ship’ or maybe ‘United Star Ship’. One thing I do know is that the reg number prefix, the NCC in NCC-1701 etc., does ***not ***stand for anything. Matt Jeffries, who designed the original Enterprise, just took the ‘NC’ designation from American civil aircraft, an added an extra ‘C’ to make it ‘futuristic’. Don’t let any fanboy try to convince you otherwise.
As for the Data-Sherlock Holmes-holodeck episode, while it certainly helped start the now incredibly cliched ‘holodeck goes haywire and almost kills everybody’ meme, that particular episode is actually quite good. And the subsequent episode where Moriarity is accidentally ‘restarted’ and tries to take over the ship is even better.
To the OP: Search “Star Trek” in thread titles here. Read until your head explodes.
Every Trek thread somehow gets hijacked, minor or major. I think it’s due to a temporal anomaly.
RE: Klingons… it was revealed in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (S5 episode, I think) that the Klingons were allies of the Federation because a Federation starship (the Enterprise 1701-C, the immediate predecessor to the featured starship in TNG) came to the rescue of a Klingon outpost that was being attacked by Romulans. Since the Klingons valued honor so highly, this was a turning point in Federation/Klingon relations. One of the series best episodes IMHO.
Also, I seem to recall that it was established in one episode or another that one requirement of a planet joining the Federation was that they had to have one single unified planetary government… can’t remember enough to cite a specific episode, does anyone else know what I’m talking about? The gist of the plot was that a planet wanted to join but the Federation uncovered the fact that there was still some civil disorder of some kind going on so they weren’t accepted.
Since Klingons are humanoid and at approximately the same level of physiological development as Terrans, I see no compelling reason why this should be so. Other than their preference for speaking English when they’re alone together ( :rolleyes: ), their language abilities appear to differ little from ours.
The best pharmaceutical for learning languages is alcohol, since it lowers your inhibitions and you’re less afraid of making mistakes. 
As for linguistics being comparable to warp physics, I think the whole business of assembling a “matrix” after hearing a few snatches of an alien language is a bunch of malarkey. The Universal Translator in TOS sensed brainwaves and only identified concepts it could recognize; it then provided the necessary grammar, and Kirk himself admitted it was not 100% efficient. The thought of somehow embedding a system like this into a humanoid’s nervous system to the point where they’re no longer even conscious of it boggles the mind.
For it to work both ways is an even farther stretch. It’s actually easier to believe that (a) most aliens in contact with the Federation have at least some knowledge of Earth Basic or (b) the “infinite universe, infinite possibilities” concept is true, and English is the native language of other alien civilizations.
I don’t have my copy of the original series format handy, nor do I recall exactly how Captain Pike referred to the Enterprise in “The Cage” or “The Menagerie.” However, I do remember from The Making of Star Trek that NBC was nervous about the “United Space Ship” designation before the series went on the air and wanted it changed to “United States Spaceship” (or “Ship”), just as they were nervous about showing a multinational, multiracial crew (remember, this was 1964–66).
According to the original ST Tech Manual, the “NCC” stood for “Naval Construction Contract,” though its origins were indeed in US civil aviation.