Today is a good day to overthink things.

[zustifer]

We've been watching ST:TNG episodes lately, and, since we broke through the first season and it started getting good, we've been inhaling a lot of them (it's been a while since I've seen some of these, especially in order). We just finished with the two first Locutus episodes, and they made me wonder a bit about a couple of things.

First, the creation of a 'speaker' by the Borg, as an intermediary between them and a soon-to-be-Borged race, makes vague sense on the surface. This wiki says that the role was (at least) retconned in an in-universe Shatner novel (shudder) to be for the purpose of 'less waste' in the assimilation. This is cute, but I don't really think we see any evidence of this from Locutus. He doesn't exactly appeal to the Enterprise on any particularly human basis; he pretty much just hits the 'resistance is futile' button. The most personal he gets is to name people, and to speak directly to Riker. So I'm not really seeing the benefit for the Borg here. Maybe they just have a really bad sense of what people need in order to feel convinced. Maybe Shatner is just not a very good writer.

Second, he has a name. Supposedly this is normal for a speaker (and there is a Romulan in Shatner's book who has the same role, but that means exactly nothing). The funny thing is, 'Locutus' is clearly Latin-derived. Did Picard name himself? He'd know enough Latin to do this, probably, whereas the Borg sure shouldn't. This is a cute idea, that he was their first speaker and therefore they took ideas about how this should be done from his brain. However, the Shatner-book ruins it again by mentioning that the Borg had made a speaker for the Romulan worlds, named 'Vox.' This is just annoying, because what do Romulans care for Latin? Unless the stupid progenitor-race that made all the Star Trek sentient species humanoid also seeded a latinate root-language, but, honestly, that's even too stupid for me to consider. So, again, I must conclude that Shatner ruins everything. But in a hilarious way.

Comments

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Man, don't get me wrong, I listen to his cover of 'Rocketman' on purpose. I love him, but I also think he's a bad writer. I think this because I read three of his 'Tek' universe books.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Did you ever watch the Tek TV show?

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I saw the, um, TV movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111385/)? I had it on tape back in high school. There was a Warren Zevon song (not one of his best) over the end credits.
It's still my strongest referent for dermally-applied future-drugs.

I need a better term than 'irony' for stuff like this. I love it, but I love it in a way that means it can also be really bad.

[jwgh]

A while ago I decided to just accept that how good a thing is doesn't necessarily have a whole lot to do with how much I like it.

[mrvelocipede.livejournal.com]

If there was a word for the concept of "I genuinely love [this thing], even though I know perfectly well it's genuinely bad," I would be very glad of it. Somehow it's a tough idea to express without making it sound like tedious hipster irony.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it. English is SO LIMITED!

[optic-options.livejournal.com]

Oh man, those Tek War movies were awesomely bad and as anything with a low enough budget they tried to set everything in a location that was remotely "futuristic" -- to comical effect for locals. Like the bank building in BCE Place acting as future police headquarters and the amusement park "Ontario Place" acting as some kind of high-tek drug research centre or something (it's been so long). Shows like that make me weep for the quality of CanCon.