Gil Hamilton wrote:I wasn't aware I specifically refered to you. Look around to when someone suggests the real explaination for something, there is generally a bit of hostility in the response.
Gil, I didn't say you
were necessarily referring to me, but we went over something very similar just a week or so ago in that post-"Descent" Borg thread. I also haven't seen many other people talking about such things recently, though I don't claim to have read every thread at the BBS from the last 2 weeks or so.
I think that would be an inconsistancy on the writers part, would it not?
If I went that route, sure, but why the dichotomy? "Either it's the writers that were wrong, or Archer's wrong."
As I've said, I act as if the writers don't exist for analysis purposes. They're no more involved in what Archer says than God dictates what
I say.
I realize the writers fucked up, but just as surely, Archer's wrong too. Events in other episodes are testament to that.
Fair enough, but then why was Archer lying about the speed of the ship before?
I didn't say he was lying. I never even intimated that he might be lying, in fact.
I said he was mistaken, which is a good bit different. Someone might've told him the ship was cruising at warp 4, and he might've heard "warp 3."
People make mistakes. Maybe the bastard's dyslexic, or he was just tired when he said that. It doesn't really matter
why, just that it is so.
They stated that the Praxis disaster had mucked up the Qo'nos' atmosphere in ST6, I believe.
Never that it had, only that it probably would if something wasn't done.
I wasn't aware that the Vulcans were stupid. Any spacefaring society is going to be able to be able to tell the difference between a homeworld and a colony world by the lack of pollution, the lack of cities covering the planet and billions of inhabitants.
With respects, you are straw-manning me.
I never said that ENT's Qo'nos is a
colony of the sort you intimate, nor that it is necessarily newly populated--just that the Vulcans might've
presumed that the Klingons' military base was their homeworld which, given even a crude understanding of Klingon culture, isn't such a bad assumption.
Why would that make them stupid? They might not know, as we do, that the Klingon Empire relocates its military headquarters when they see fit. They might've been space-faring for hundreds of years beforehand, but that hardly means they're all-knowing in things Klingon.
Remember, the Vulcans live in that area of space too and have been in space for centuries. They are going to notice that the world that the Klingons claim is their homeworld is much smaller in population and infrastructure than it should be and isn't the center of their society (after all, the Klingons centralize themselves to a stupidly large amount, remember that the loss of a single moon in ST6 was enough to cripple their Empire).
That assumes:
1--This Qo'nos is sparsely populated or developed. Why?
2--This planet can't function as the center of their society. They're warlike. Whereever the military HQ is, there's the center of their empire, just as was the case with Ty'Gokor in DS9 season 5.
I might not've been clear enough, but the alternate "Qo'nos" (Klingon for "homeworld") idea was an effort to try and make Archer's words make a little more sense. I have no idea whether or not it's true, but I cannot simply ignore that possibility.
On a 1-10 scale of importance, I'd put the alt. Kronos thing at 1 or 2. I'd give Archer's verbal misstep a 10.
I've never heard of these "warp highways" ever being mentioned. It sounds like Trekkies made them up.
Does that make the idea any less valid, that Trek fans properly interpreted certain things in the show to indicate a so-called warp highway?
I don't think so. The EU never directly refers to the Endor holocaust, yet I think Curtis' conclusions about as much are spot-on given what happened at the end of "ROTJ."
That's rather beside the point, since Trekkies didn't make that up. The TMs did, as I pointed out:
the old TM bit about how spatial conditions affect warp speed might factor in here.
But forget all that for a moment. I have to ask, if Archer's right, do you really think Qo'nos, the Klingon homeworld, is less than one light year from Earth?
I know you don't think that. You dismiss it as writer's incompetence.
So, I don't really get the dilemma. That's "that," you know? There's nothing else anyone can really say unless you want explanations within the canon, none of which you've liked so far.
If it helps, I don't find it convincing either. How can you dismiss Archer's km/sec if you are gung ho about suspending disbelief is odd to me.
How is it not suspending disbelief to recognize when someone's fucked up?
It'd be failing to do so if I blamed Rick Berman (or whoever) for that slip of the tongue.
I actually am suspending disbelief in the realization that these characters are real enough
to fuck up.
After all, he can't possibly be stupid enough to become the captain of a ship and not know basic technical details about how fast his ship is or is unable to read a technical readout. They'd have never promoted him if he was that dumb (though to be fair, this is the same organization that someday would give Will Riker a commision...).
Gil, you're jumping the gun here. I'm not saying Archer is necessarily stupid, just that he was mistaken in that case.
I don't like calling characters wrong either, but Mike's right: they consistently make mistakes. Even Spock and Data, who are both lauded by their respective crews for great intelligence, are often on the brink of exploding, they're so full of shit.
And the fact is, whether it's the writer or Archer doing it, making a mistake goes a long way toward explaining what's going on in "Broken Bow."
I choose to say that it's Archer's mistake; you say it's the writers'. That's cool. The result is pretty much the same: the Klingon homeworld isn't a ly or less away from Earth.
