All right. Switching gears to fiction-writing, after some tedious administrivia this afternoon, carried forward from yesterday's ridiculous 3-hour meeting & debrief.
What is your LEAST favourite sci-fi trope? Bonus points if it's something that gets done to death on #StarTrek!
@MLClark Universal translators. I understand the need for them from a plot point of view, but they always seem like a cheat. Or why "Darmok" is one of the TNG episodes that sticks with me.
Great choice.
I love the acting in "Darmok", and it's a good teaching tool, but it's also lousy on the linguistic science. Our languages are riddled with figurative expressions that the universal translator can handle with ease.
(And not just spoken language, but also tons of visual signs that carry whole embedded meaning structures:
Pikachu, his mouth open!
Monkey-puppet, his gaze to the side!
Kermit, sipping tea!
We are a highly referential species!)