Best Scifi Series ever, canceled! (OT)

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, if you have a galaxy chock full of aliens, then;
1) Many Languages would be derivatives of others, and thus fairly easy to extrapolate to.
2) You meet a race, exchange language knowledge, and then both your translators will work with many races you haven't met yet. Meet one of these new races, and do the same thing. Pretty soon you have all the translation info for the major races, and most of the minor ones too.

There were a few episodes on untranslatable Languages, and some where the delay for sampling & extrapolation was critical to the plot.

[ October 09, 2002, 20:12: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Major Tom]

Tonights "Enterprise" proved to me that they are just going to the old enemies of TNG, VOY and DS9. I was thrilled when they were talking to the Telerites, the guys who disappeared after TOS, but then was dismayed to realize by the end of the episode that all they are doing is to reintroduce another group of dangerous enemies, that got really tiresome in Voyager.

I won't give away more for fears of spoiling the episode for someone who has it on TV later in the week.

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by gregebowman:
my main complaint about sci-fi shows, especially Star Trek, is that everyone knows the same language...

But not many people want to site through a show that is potentially half-subtitles. Nor do the producers/writers/etc want to come up with a new alien language every week. I'm willing to suspend a little disbelief here and there...

[dogscoff]

Realistically, when individuals emigrate to other places they tend to do it with people they are familiar with, who tend to be from their same culture, so you will probably expect to find many ethnically restricted planets.

Personally, i think it is more likely that ethnicity will eventually cease to exist if globalisation continues at its current rate. Space colonisation would probably accelerate the process.

As more and more babies are born with parents of different races, completely white/ completely black/ completely {insert ethnic grouping here} people will become more and more of a minority compared to the growing group of mixed heritage somewhere-in-the-middles. Eventually, dozens or hundreds of generations into the future, everyone will be the same colour.

Looking at the proportions of ethnic groupings in the current world population (ie the vast majority of the human race being in China and the 3rd World), you can try to guess at what the final colour of humanity might be. All those white supremacist arseholes are in for a shock

Granted, loads of people, for whatever reason, find people of their own colour more attractive or at least more available, but eventually globalisation will change this.

This might one day spell and end to racism, which can only be a good thing, but the loss of diversity saddens me. Then again, by that time we'll have the tech to modify our bodies' colour as easily as changing our clothes. Being black or white might one day be nothing more than a fashion statement=-)

It also makes you wonder whether 200 generations ago there might have been racial Groups and genetic features which have been bred out altogether now...

[Wardad]

Dogscoff,

I think the Morman Fanatics would create their own colonies if given the chance.

[Major Tom]

I think that there is enough cultural paranioa in just about every society to keep 'the cultures separate'. Look in any society, and 'intermixing' is looked down upon, even in very liberal societies. You can force equality in law, but never force it in thought, unless some brainwashing machine is used, and that would require a lot of quarters.

(on a side note here, I never understood why different types of people are called different 'races', as you do not call a poodle to be of a different race then a schnauzer. Indeed, isn't there just one race of humans? The Human race?)

[Captain Kwok]

In Toronto, I'm glad to see a lot more inter-racial couples nowadays. It should be really interesting in about 20 years when a lot of the recent immigrant's children begin to move away from a lot of different traditions etc...