Edges of Forever: Time Travel and the Stories That Might Have Been

The Nightshirt ^

[schurmann]

“...Somebody made me laugh once, saying how is it, that everyone on all these other planets speak English.” [Dilbert San Diego, post 18]

“They had a universal translator for that.” [gymbeau, post 20]

As gymbeau pointed out, the original series imagined a “universal” translator. Spock had to tinker with the device in Episode 9 Season 2 (original series) to get it to function with the cloud-like being who kidnapped Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a UFP diplomat (played by Elinor Donahue) to assuage the loneliness and isolation of Zephram Cochrane (played by the late Glenn Corbett).

If memory serves, universal translation was briefly mentioned in an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation. The translation function was built into the crew’s “communications badges” and operated automatically when needed.

Doctor Who rarely addressed the communications dilemma. When the series was revived in 2005, the Doctor possessed a notepad of “psychoactive paper” (approximate trm) which caused anyone who looked at it to believe it was whatever was written on it. So when the Doctor wrote “police ID badge” on a slip and pinned it to his lapel, those who saw him and read the note believed he was a real police officer with valid ID.

Life is much easier when you simply imagine what you want, and it appears as if by magic. A hint, perhaps, as to why so many Hollywood types are so childish and so clueless: actors can be anyone they want to, at least within the confines of set and script. If you’re playing the role of Sir Isaac Newton, George Washington, Herr Doktor Albert Einstein, or Madame-Docteur Marie Skoldowska Curie you get used to thinking you really are as smart as those historical personages.

And the scriptwriters can simply posit the existence of any device or process that serves the purposes of the production. Shazam, there it is. Applies with greater force to silly utopian social organizations: “Socialism simply has to work, because we imagined it that way when we wrote the film script!”