Gorram it Voyager!
Just watched "Dragons Teeth." That episode was awful. All the people were really stupid for no reason, although Janeway had an unexpected display of ethics, which was...unexpected.
Here's the trouble with Voyager. They have these really bad episodes which completely miss the point of all the things - with like one brilliant moment of awesomeness. Gorram it, Voyager! Why won't you let me hate you???
So, the scene this episode was Competent Linguistic Research by Mr. Neelix. There's this alien race, and Neelix recognizes their name from Old High Telaxian or something. So, when given a moment's free time (after winning major props by taking a small child seriously) he decides to look it up the the OED (OTD? Oxford Telaxian Dictionary?). He gets the definition and the secondary definition, and then asks about attestations. And then tracks down the relevant attestations in their original context! And then, in a masterful fit of being smarter than Deanna Troi, he goes to cross-reference the attestations in Telaxian folk-lore against Seven-of-Nine's cross-cultural database.
In short, he does exactly what he should do given his available resources. Etymology for the WIN.
This is such a huge contrast to Troi's infamous "What is cross-reference?" scene in the otherwise brilliant "Darmok" that attention must be paid. (Seriously, Troi, how did you get a PhD without knowing boolean search terms? Oh right, cheating magical superpowers.) Anyway, it touched my linguistic little soul.
And there are people who don't like Neelix. Seriously, I don't get it. He's one of three entirely worthwhile characters on Voyager. Well, four with Naomi Wildman, who manages by sheer magic to not follow in the footsteps of Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko and become "that annoying little kid." But I can see people just not being into the cute kid thing. But seriously, Neelix is actually flawless. Except the several necessary flaws to make him a well rounded character.
--------------------
In completely unrelated news, "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" is freakin awesome, but I can't say much because all the really good stuff involves the same all-important spoiler. And we do not spoil Babylon 5. But! The scene with Sinclair and Neroon was utterly a joy to read. It went like this.
Neroon: I hate you and I hate your stupid face
Sinclair: This isn't the stupid face that nearly committed genocide for no reason
Neroon: You're such a doo-doo head
Sinclair [aside]: God it's a relief to meet a Minbari who tells you what he really thinks. Neroon = New Favorite Person.
...and for the record, I don't ship it. That would be gross. What's wrong with you people!?
"To dream in the City of Sorrows is to dream a better future"
:D :D :D
The only fault in this book is that there have been so far no mention of Sinclair's Fabulous Eyebrows. And, I mean, I know you can hardly expect it in the Sinclair POV chapters. But would it kill you to have a passage in the Catherine Sakai POV chapters that read something like:
"Gee this new planet sure is messed up in some appropriate mysterious way. I wish I could share it with Jeff. I miss Jeff. God that man has the sexiest eyebrows! I'm so glad I'm marrying him."
...because the rest of that is pretty much in there, just without the eyebrows. Ah well. Maybe when Marcus comes into the story he'll have something to say about them. I dunno, something like: "there he stood, adorned with the most magnificent eyebrows Marcus had ever seen. Eyebrows such as he had only ever read about. Eyebrows Gandalf the Grey would have been proud to know." (Marcus is all about the literary references, yo).
I can dream, right? GUYS SINCLAIR'S EYEBROWS GIVE ME FEELS. It's a problem...
Here's the trouble with Voyager. They have these really bad episodes which completely miss the point of all the things - with like one brilliant moment of awesomeness. Gorram it, Voyager! Why won't you let me hate you???
So, the scene this episode was Competent Linguistic Research by Mr. Neelix. There's this alien race, and Neelix recognizes their name from Old High Telaxian or something. So, when given a moment's free time (after winning major props by taking a small child seriously) he decides to look it up the the OED (OTD? Oxford Telaxian Dictionary?). He gets the definition and the secondary definition, and then asks about attestations. And then tracks down the relevant attestations in their original context! And then, in a masterful fit of being smarter than Deanna Troi, he goes to cross-reference the attestations in Telaxian folk-lore against Seven-of-Nine's cross-cultural database.
In short, he does exactly what he should do given his available resources. Etymology for the WIN.
This is such a huge contrast to Troi's infamous "What is cross-reference?" scene in the otherwise brilliant "Darmok" that attention must be paid. (Seriously, Troi, how did you get a PhD without knowing boolean search terms? Oh right, cheating magical superpowers.) Anyway, it touched my linguistic little soul.
And there are people who don't like Neelix. Seriously, I don't get it. He's one of three entirely worthwhile characters on Voyager. Well, four with Naomi Wildman, who manages by sheer magic to not follow in the footsteps of Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko and become "that annoying little kid." But I can see people just not being into the cute kid thing. But seriously, Neelix is actually flawless. Except the several necessary flaws to make him a well rounded character.
--------------------
In completely unrelated news, "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" is freakin awesome, but I can't say much because all the really good stuff involves the same all-important spoiler. And we do not spoil Babylon 5. But! The scene with Sinclair and Neroon was utterly a joy to read. It went like this.
Neroon: I hate you and I hate your stupid face
Sinclair: This isn't the stupid face that nearly committed genocide for no reason
Neroon: You're such a doo-doo head
Sinclair [aside]: God it's a relief to meet a Minbari who tells you what he really thinks. Neroon = New Favorite Person.
...and for the record, I don't ship it. That would be gross. What's wrong with you people!?
"To dream in the City of Sorrows is to dream a better future"
:D :D :D
The only fault in this book is that there have been so far no mention of Sinclair's Fabulous Eyebrows. And, I mean, I know you can hardly expect it in the Sinclair POV chapters. But would it kill you to have a passage in the Catherine Sakai POV chapters that read something like:
"Gee this new planet sure is messed up in some appropriate mysterious way. I wish I could share it with Jeff. I miss Jeff. God that man has the sexiest eyebrows! I'm so glad I'm marrying him."
...because the rest of that is pretty much in there, just without the eyebrows. Ah well. Maybe when Marcus comes into the story he'll have something to say about them. I dunno, something like: "there he stood, adorned with the most magnificent eyebrows Marcus had ever seen. Eyebrows such as he had only ever read about. Eyebrows Gandalf the Grey would have been proud to know." (Marcus is all about the literary references, yo).
I can dream, right? GUYS SINCLAIR'S EYEBROWS GIVE ME FEELS. It's a problem...