[Trailer] Star Trek - Into Darkness

[sabrinathecat]

Aikidoka & Karateka.
But no other episode with BOTH cross dimension and time travel? IE: the time travel creating parallel worlds?

 

[Joker]

I am so glad I brought popcorn.

 

[Morrus]

Dude. Kendo is Japanese fencing. Even the Japanese refer to it as such. Jeez. These nitpicks are just getting inane.

 

[jonesy]

Dude. Kendo is Japanese fencing. Even the Japanese refer to it as such. Jeez. These nitpicks are just getting inane.

Fencing meaning etymogically the act of protecting something a fencing school was therefore a self defense school. Self defense was a term first used for fencing as a martial art for civilian protection. Martial art, given form from martialis or the Roman god Mars, being a loan translation of the meaning of bujutsu in usage. Bujutsu being synonymous in use to kenpō, meaning swordsmanship. Kenpō being a Japanese translation of the Chinese word quán fǎ. Quán fǎ meaning simply boxing, as the cover-all of empty-handed fighting techniques. Inane meaning etymologically 'empty handed'. So yes, inane.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Uh, not really.
And since there is a real word which specifies Katana-style fighting, saying "Fencing" was simply a lame joke.

Sorry, but words have meaning. Grammar has rules. 10,000,000,000 ants can all be wrong.

 

[Mallus]

But no other episode with BOTH cross dimension and time travel? IE: the time travel creating parallel worlds?

Good question. I don't think so. Alternate universes are a thing in the Star Trek universe and so is time travel, but I can't recall any episodes which explicitly combine them. But let's look at how time travel works in Trek.

The Trek universe is paradox-tolerant, ie you *can* go back in time and disintegrate your grandfather with a phaser. The timeline will change, but you won't be wiped from existence. You'll just be a logical impossibility (hopefully with a guilty conscience, because you committed murder to prove a point about time travel paradoxes).

The best example of this is in "City on the Edge of Forever". Drug-addled McCoy jumps into the Guardian of Forever, travels to 1930s Earth, and changes the past. The Enterprise is gone from orbit. Yet the away team is still on the surface, and McCoy is still in 1930s. How did they get there? Were any of them even born? Welcome to Paradoxville. Please enjoy your stay, and refrain from killing you distant ancestors.

The Trek universe also strongly suggests that each universe has a single "correct" timeline. A good example of this is "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG). The Enterprise-D encounters a time-hole (err, temporal anomaly), and out pops her predecessor, the Enterprise-C. In flash the timelines changes. Suddenly the Enterprise is a full-on warship, and the Federation is losing a long war with the Klingons.

Fortunately for the plot, Guinan the mystic space bartender remembers the "correct" timeline, and convinces Picard to send the Enterprise-C back through the time-hole (to it's certain destruction) which restores the "proper" history.

Time travel in Trek is also ridiculously easy to do. By the time of TOS, every warp-capable starship can double as a time machine, via the warp-slingshot maneuver. During TNG, Picard and Co. meet a 22 century con-artist with a more traditional 26th century time machine. In DS9, the crew travels back the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", and runs afoul of the Starfleet Time Travel Police -- who exist, apparently, because the Federation has something of a time-travel problem. By the time we get to Voyager, we meet Federation people from the 28th or 29th century who fly around in "timeships", ie by then, the Federation has a fleet of nacelled TARDISes.

Then Enterpise introduces the "Temporal Cold War", which made things even more confusing.

Put this all together and you see time travel in the Star Trek universe has always been a huge honking mess -- long before the writers of Trek 2009 came on the scene.

Sorry, but words have meaning. Grammar has rules.

Which change over time. Always. Trust me on this, I DM for a PhD in linguistics!

I mean, what does the word 'phone' (n.) mean? Is it the rotary telephone on a table from my youth... or the computer with a touchscreen interface connected to a global data network which also can make telephone calls? The answer of course is *both* are phones -- the definition of the word now includes fancy pocket-computers.

 

[Dannager]

Which change over time. Always. Trust me on this, I DM for a PhD in linguistics!

Especially pertinent since the film takes place more than a century from now, and is easily the equivalent of someone from the year 1900 making fun of us for calling this wrestling.

My favorite thoughts on language:

"The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't know where it was or where it led to." - E.B. White

 

[Dannager]

Also - interestingly, I think - I'd wager the warp-slingshot technique is probably retired at this point. I don't think modern audiences would find that explanation for time travel plausible enough.

 

[Morrus]

Uh, not really.

Yes, really.

And since there is a real word which specifies Katana-style fighting, saying "Fencing" was simply a lame joke.

Many, many things in this world have more than one name. For example, there's a real word for a "car"; that doesn't mean that it isn't an "automobile". Or that it might now also be a "Ferrari". Or a "sportscar". Or your "ride". Or a "vehicle".

Sorry, but words have meaning.

Indeed they do. Here's a dojo which actually teaches it: the Kiraly Fencing Acacemy which teaches.... Kendo.

http://www.kiralyfencing.com/japanese-fencing

The whole point of this is not of course, Kendo or Fencing; it's just that it's not reasonable to slam a perfectly decent movie because Sulu called his swordplay "fencing".

 

[sabrinathecat]

You forgot Trek7, in which Kirk and Picard emerge from the vortex cloud thing Before it arrives at the planet. ??? Yep, that's time travel. And it made no sense.
One of the few trek books I read was about the GatGoF, and it pointed out the Guardian had a relative bubble around it to protect the viewer. Yeah, it's a geeky excuse. But, the Enterprise disappeared IMMEDIATELY.

Language/Linguistics. Yeah, I'm very familiar with the "Living Language" argument.
I have a counter argument. Not appropriate here.