Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by late (A) on December 07, 2001 at 07:27:57

In Reply to: Re: the remains of the day posted by Bruce from DC on December 03, 2001 at 06:40:19:

Hi Bruce,
As a card carrying Moral Relativist (or whatever double talk the neocons are using these days)....I don't worry too much about the Canon. No doubt Romeo + Juliet is great stuff; but i think we have a need to wonder. I mean. how the heck would you communicate with an alien? Not a problem we have to face anytime soon I would imagine; but it's a fascinating problem. Some schiolars think that a race that is sufficiently different from us would be impossible to communicate with. That gold plaque we sent out of the solar system used a pictorial system in the hopes an laine would understand the pictures. But what if they don't see quite the way we do? Science Fiction is often a speculation on the effects of technology; and winds up becoming dated after a while. Kirk's Communicator becomes your cellphone. So we can forget about posterity, by and large.
Loved the line about 'dessicated, academic stuff'. I am not surprised you and Stewart had trouble with that one. it's real scifi.
As was pointed out in the story, a translator looks for points of reference. With a real alien language; that could be impossible. It is almost certainly difficult, and likely to take years
in the best of circumstances. With the race in that episode, they used language in an interesting way; they only spoke in metaphor. I have no idea how you could develop a technological civilisation that way; but that is the premise. So there is no way to do a simple I am John you are....The other guy wouldn't understand a subject/object sentence.
"Timba, at rest"